The Time Axis

It was gathering in an egg-shaped oval that nearly filled the chamber.

By the gray luminous dimness I could see Dr. Essen with her hands on a flat thick sheet of metal which she held across her knees. There were raised bars of wire across its upper surface and she seemed almost to be playing it like a musical instrument as her fingers moved over the bars. There was no sound but the light slowly, very slowly, broadened around us.

“In theory,” Dr. Essen said, “this would have worked years ago. But in practice, only this very special type of space provides the conditions we need. I published some papers in Forty-one on special atomic structures and the maintenance of artificial matrix. But the displacement due to temporal movement made practical application impossible. Only at the time-axis would that displacement theory became invalid.

“I am creating a rigid framework of matter now. Call it a matrix, except that the vibratory period is automatically adaptive, so that it’s self-perpetuating and can’t be harmed. Really, the practical application would be something like this—if you were driving a car and saw another car—about to collide with you, your own vehicle could automatically adjust its structure and become intangible. So—”

“It isn’t necessary for Mr. Cortland to understand this,” De Kalb said, his voice suddenly almost gay. “Eager seeker after truth though he may be. There is still much I don’t understand. We go into terra incognita—but I think we will come to the Face in the end.

“Somehow, against apparent logic, we have managed to follow the rules of the game. Somehow events have arranged themselves—in an unlikely fashion—so that all four of us are entering the time axis where all four of us lie asleep—intangible, impalpable and invisible except under ultraviolet.

“Murray may die. But since the nekronic creature attacked through time, as I believe, then perhaps sympathetic medicine may cure the Colonel. Some poisons kill but cure in larger doses. I don’t know. Perhaps the long catalepsy outside time will enable Murray’s wound to heal—wherever it is. I suspect that the people of the Face may have foreseen all this. Are you getting drowsy, Mr. Cortland?”

I was. The softly whirling tree, the sweet, thin, monotonous sound of its turning were very effective hypnotics though I hadn’t realized it fully till now. I made a sudden convulsive effort to rise. On the very verge of the plunge I realized that my decision had been made for me.

I felt my nerve going. I didn’t want to embark on this crazy endeavor at all. A suicide must know this last instant of violent revulsion the moment after he has pulled the trigger or swallowed the poison. I put out every ounce of energy I had—and moved with infinite sluggishness, perhaps a quarter of an inch from where I sat.

De Kalb’s voice said, “No, no. The matrix has formed.” My head was ringing.

The gray light was like a web that sealed my eyes. Through it, dimly, remotedly, far off in space and time, I thought I could see motion stirring that was not our motion—and perhaps was—

And perhaps was ourselves, at the other end of the closing temporal circle, rising from sleep after adventures a million years in the future, a million years in the past. But that motion was wholly theirs. I could not stir.

Sealed in sleep, sealed in time, I felt my consciousness sinking down like a candleflame, like a sinking fountain, down and down to the levels below awareness.

The next thing I saw, I told myself out of that infinite drowsiness, would be the Face of Ea looking out over the red twilight of the world’s end. And then the flame went out, the fountain sank back upon the dark wellspring of its origin far below the surfaces of the mind.

“And now we wait,” De Kalb’s voice said, ghostly, infinities away. “Now we wait—a million years.”

9. Strange Awakening

There was a rhythmic ebb and flow of waves on some murmurous shore. It must, I thought, be part of my dream.

Dream?

I couldn’t remember. The murmur was a voice, but the things it said seemed to slip by over the surface of my mind without waking any ripples of comprehension. Sight? I could see nothing. There was movement somewhere, but meaningless movement. Feeling? Perhaps a mild warmth, no more. Only the voice, very low—unless, after all, it were some musical instrument.

But it spoke in English.

Had I been capable of surprise that should have surprised me. But I was not. I was utterly passive. I let sensations come and go in the darkness that lay just beyond me, on the other side of that wall of the silenced senses. What world? What time? What people? It didn’t matter yet.

“—of waiting here so long,” the voice said on a minor chord of sadness so intensely sweet that my throat seemed to tighten in response. Then it changed. It pleased—and I knew even in my stupor that no one of flesh and blood could possibly deny whatever that strange sweet voice demanded. “So I may go now, Lord? Oh, please, please let me go!” The English was curious, at once archaic and evolved. “An hour’s refreshment in the Swan Garden,” the plaintive voice urged, “and I shan’t droop so.” Then a sigh, musical with a deliberate lilt.

“My hair—look at it, Lord! The sparkles all gone, all gone. Poor sparkles! But only an hour in the Swan Gardens and I’ll serve you again. May I go, Lord? May I go?”

No one could have denied her. I lay there enthralled by the sheer music of that voice. It was like the shock of icy water in the face to hear a man’s brisk voice reply.

“Save your tongue, save your tongue. And don’t flatter me with the name of Lord. This is business.”

“But so many hours already—I’ll die, I know I’ll die! You can’t be so cruel—and I’ll call you Lord anyhow. Why not? You are my Lord now, since you have the power to let me live or—” Heart-rending sorrow breathed in the sigh she gave.

“My poor hair,” she said. “The stars are quite gone out of it now. Oh, how hideous I am! The sight of me when he wakes will be too dreadful, Lord! Let me take one little hour in the Swan Garden and—”

“Be quiet. I want to think.”

There was silence for a moment or two. Then the sweet voice murmured something in a totally unfamiliar language, sullenly. The man said, “You know the rules, don’t you?”

“Yes, Lord. I’m sorry.”

“No more impudence, then. I know impudence, even when I can’t understand it. Pay attention to me now. I’m going to put an end to this session. When this man wakes bring him—”

“To the Swan Garden? Oh, Lord Paynter, now? I will love you forever!”

“It isn’t necessary,” the crisp voice said, “Just bring him to the right station. The City’s the nearest co

“The City? Walk through the City? I’ll die before I’ve gone a dozen steps. My poor slippers—oh, Lord Paynter, why not direct transmission?”

“You’ll have new slippers if you need them. I don’t want to remind you again all this is secret work. We don’t want anybody tuning in accidentally on our wave-length. The transmitter in the City has the right wave-band, so you can bring him—”

His voice trailed off. The girl’s tones interrupted, dying away in the distance in a faint, infinitely pitiable murmuring quaver. There was a pause, then the sound of light feet returning on some hard surface and a rush of laughter like a spurt of bright fountaining water.

“Old fool,” she said, and laughed again. “If you think I care—“ The words changed and were again incomprehensible, in some language I had never heard even approximated before.

Then movement came, and light—a brief, racking vertigo wrenched my brain around,

I opened my eyes and looked up into the face of the girl, and logic was perfectly useless after that. Later I understood why, knew what she was and why men’s hearts moved at the sight and sound of her. But then it was enough to see that flawless face, the lovely curve of her lips, the eyes that shifted from one hue to another, the hyacinth hair where the last stars pulsed and died.