The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (27 page)

At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for experimental work and the help of haven members in the project. Since both requests were modest, their granting would ordinarily have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr. Midbin wouldn’t like to elaborate a little on the purpose of his experiment.

I knew her manner was a danger signal. However Midbin merely answered good-humoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced physical handicap could be cured by recreating in the subject’s mind the shock which had caused—if he might use a loose and inaccurate term—the impediment.

“I thought so. He wants to waste the haven’s money and time on a little tart with whom he’s having an affair while important work is held up for lack of funds.”

One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and there were exclamations of disapproval. Mr. Haggerwells, after trying unsuccessfully to hold Barbara’s eye, said, “I must apologize for my daughter—”

“It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s notions. I’m sure no one here really thinks there is anything improper between the girl and me. Outside of this, Barbara’s original question seems quite in order to me. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve been trying to restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use an inaccurate term for convenience—during an afflicting experience. Preliminary experiments indicate the likelihood of satisfactory response to my proposed method, which is simply to employ a kinematic camera like those used in making entertainment photinugraphs—”

“He wants to turn the haven into a tinugraph mill with the fellows as mummers!”

“Only this once, Barbara. Not regularly; not as routine.”

At this point her father insisted the request be voted on without any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with Barbara, the only dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s photinugraph relying pretty heavily on me, but I didn’t have the courage. Instead, I merely abstained, like Midbin himself, and Ace.

The tinugraph did indeed demand much of my time. I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had taken place and approximate as nearly identical conditions as possible. (Here Midbin was partially foiled by the limitations of his medium, being forced to use the camera in full sunlight rather than dusk.) I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s concession that I needn’t play the part of myself, since in my early role of spectator I would be invisibly concealed, and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself, of course, did nothing but tend his camera.

Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After much wavering Midbin had finally decided against making a phonoto of it, feeling that the use of sound would add no value but considerable expense, so that the film did not even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately, for whatever involuntary professional pride involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and I, Ace to work the magic-lantern, and Midbin.

In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave—after the first few minutes—such an astonishing illusion of reality that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back a little. In spite of its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed to us an artistic success, but no triumph in satisfying the reason for its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward the drawings: her inarticulate noises ran the same scale from pleasure to terror; nothing new was added. But Midbin slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the year was out.

I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one session and the next. Yet the boring routine was continued day after day, and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.

After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that she would begin talking at a great rate. She didn’t, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, high-pitched and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangled noises we were accustomed to. There was no doubt Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.

Pursuing another of his theories, Midbin soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish, but concentrated on teaching her English. It was soon clear she must have had some grounding in this language, and it seemed an amazingly short time before she pointed to me and said clearly, “Hodge... Hodge...”

A month of common nouns followed, interspersed with a few easy verbs, before she touched her own breast and said, shyly, “Catalina.”

Her name was Catalina García; she was the much younger sister of Dońa María Escobar, with whom she had lived after the death of her parents. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?

Again Mr. Haggerwells communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning their aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response—perhaps he had. Nevertheless he confirmed the existence of one Catalina García and at last satisfied himself that she and our Catalina were the same person. Further, the Seńorita García was heiress to a moderate estate. According to embassy records the seńorita was not yet eighteen; as an orphan living in foreign lands she was a ward of the Spanish Crown. The seńorita would return with him to Philadelphia where she would be suitably accommodated until repatriation could be arranged. The—ah—institution could submit a bill for board and lodging during her stay.

But Catalina protested so earnestly, appealing alternately to me and to Mr. Haggerwells, that Midbin, who was hovering solicitously, insisted he could not guarantee against a relapse. The official shrugged, managing to intimate in that gesture his opinion that the haven was of a very shady character indeed and had possibly engineered the holdup itself. However, if the seńorita wished to remain, he had no authority at the moment either to inquire into what influences had persuaded her nor to remove her by—ah—nor to remove her. Of course the—ah—institution understood it could hope for no further compensation, that the seńorita would be visited without notification from time to time by an official, that she might be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty saw fit, that none of her estate would be released before her eighteenth birthday, and that the whole affair was entirely irregular.

After he left, Catalina put her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief, and I must admit, now she was able to talk I no longer found her devotion so tiresome—even though I was somewhat uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this situation.

And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to all the rest. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of 23; I left in 1952 at the age of 31. Indisputable, but not quite believable; like the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into one another.

There was no question about success in my chosen profession—not even the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on
The Timing of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania.
This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable schools.

But I could not think of leaving the haven. The world into which I had been born had never been revealed for what it was until I had escaped from it.

The idea of returning to enter into daily competition with other underpaid, overdriven drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a dilute coating of culture to the unresponsive surface of unwilling students was abhorrent. Life at Haggershaven suited me perfectly.

In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I narrowed my field. Perhaps it was presumptuous to take the War of Southron Independence as my specialty when there were already so many comprehensive books on the subject and so many celebrated historians engaged with this epochal event. However, my choice was not made out of arrogance but of fascination, and the readiness of the scene and materials influenced the selection of my goal, which was to be a definitive work on the last thirteen months of the war, from General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania to the capitulation at Reading.

My monographs were published in learned Confederate, British, and German journals—there were none in the United States—and I was rejoiced when they brought attention, not so much to me as to Haggershaven. I could contribute only this notice and my physical labor; on the other hand I asked little beyond food, clothing and shelter—just books. My field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual labor for farmers, paying for access to private collections of letters or documents by indexing and arranging them.

But it was not the time devoted to scholarship which alone distinguished these eight years. The absence of the shadows of anxiety and violence, the freedom from constant harassment and fear, as well as the positive aspects of life at the haven—the companionship of like-minded people, labor to achieve ends rather than just to stay alive—the surety of acceptance and unselfish praise for achievement, all set this time apart, so I think of it as a golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.

Though sometimes I was inclined to wonder if Barbara Haggerwells’ neurosis was not precarious—on the edge of sanity, and there were moments when I found her morality distasteful, it was impossible to deny her attraction. Often we were lovers for as long as a month before the inevitable quarrel came, followed by varying periods of coolness between us. But during those weeks of distance I remembered how she could be tender and gracious, just as during our intimacy I remembered her ruthlessness and dominance.

It was not only her temperamental outbreaks nor even her unappeasable hunger for love and affection which thrust us apart. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her work behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget either by her own insatiable drive nor by outside acknowledgement that she was already one of the foremost physicists in the country. She had been granted so many honorary degrees she no longer traveled to receive them; offers from foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with their munitions industries were frequent. Articles were written about her equation of matter, energy, space and time, acclaiming her as a revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed them contemptuously as evaluations of elementary work they nevertheless added to her isolation and curtailed her freedom.

Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace or myself. His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took lightly now it was accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions was the victory he wanted. Patiently, whenever she would grant the time—and this was increasingly less often—he tried with her new techniques, but to no apparent effect. Indeed, it seemed he was, if anything, retrogressing; she no longer paid him the respect of even partial co-operation; instead she made fun of his efforts.

There was a great unlikeness between Barbara and Catalina. That the Spanish girl had in her own way as strong a will was demonstrated in her determination to become part of Haggershaven. She had gone resolutely to Thomas Haggerwells. She knew quite well, she told him, she had neither the aptitudes nor qualifications for admission to fellowship, nor did she ask it. All she wanted was to live in what she now regarded as her only home. She would gladly do any work from washing dishes to running errands. When she came of age she would turn over whatever money she inherited to the haven without qualification.

Long after this and similar conversations I heard how he had patiently pointed out that a Spanish subject was a citizen of a wealthier and more powerful nation than the United States; as an heiress she could enjoy the luxury and distractions of Madrid and eventually make a suitable marriage. How silly it would be to give up all these advantages to become an unnoticed, penniless drudge for a group of cranks near York, Pennsylvania.

Catty—as we soon called Catalina—was adamant. What Mr. Haggerwells said might be true, but she was simply not interested. Evidently he realized the quality of her determination for eventually he proposed to the fellows that she be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected; the motion was carried, with only Barbara—who spoke long and bitterly against it—voting “no.”

Catty, she of enchanting voice, so expressive, so controlled, was a very different creature from the nameless dumb girl. Even her beauty, always undeniable, was now heightened and sharpened by the fact of her speech. I suppose it is a confession of weakness or obtuseness to say that where I had been inclined to impatience or even annoyance at her former all too open devotion, I now felt deprived and even pettish at its lack.

I don’t mean by this that Catty was either disingenuous or coquettish. But with the return of speech came a certain maturity and an undeniable dignity. She was self-possessed, self-contained and just a trifle amusedly aloof. Having made it clear she had interest in no other man, she withdrew from all competition. When I wished to seek her out she was there, but she made no attempt to call me to her.

Perhaps I sensed from the beginning what was to happen. Perhaps I was polygamous as Barbara was polyandrous or Catty monogamous. It would be inaccurate to say I wavered between the two; every break with Barbara drew me closer to Catty and there was never any counter-force to reverse the process. What was adventurous and juvenile in me reached out to Barbara; whatever was stable and mature pulled me toward Catty.

The final decision (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never know now) hardened when I had been nearly six years at Haggershaven. It had been “on” between Barbara and me for the longest stretch I could recall and I had even begun to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not somehow finally been established in our volatile relationship.

As always, when the mutual hostility which complemented our mutual attraction was eased, Barbara spoke of her work. In spite of such occasional confidences, it was still not her habit to talk of it with me. That intimacy was obviously reserved for Ace, and I didn’t begrudge it him, for after all he understood it and I didn’t. But now I suppose she was so full of the subject she could hardly hold back, even from one who could hardly distinguish between thermodynamics and kinesthetics.

“Hodge,” she said, gray eyes greenish with excitement, “I’m not going to write a book.”

This hardly seemed startling. “That’s nice,” I answered idly. “New, too. Saves time, paper, ink. Sets a different standard; from now on scholars will be known as ‘Jones, who didn’t write
The Theory of Tidal Waves
,’ ‘Smith, un-author of
Gas and Its Properties
,’ or ‘Backmaker, non-recorder of
Gettysburg and After
.’ ”

“Silly. I only meant it’s become customary to spend a lifetime formulating principles—then someone else comes along and puts your principles into practice. It seems more sensible for me to demonstrate my own conclusions instead of writing about them.”

I still didn’t grasp the import. “You’re going to demonstrate—uh...?”

“Cosmic entity.”

“You mean you’re going to turn matter into space or something like that?”

“Something like that. I intend to attempt translating matter-energy into terms of space-time.”

I started up. “You’re going to—” I groped for words. “Build an engine which will move through time?”

“That’s putting it crudely. But it’s close enough for a layman.”

“You once told me your work was theoretical. That you were no vulgar mechanic.”

“I’ll become one.”

“Barbara, you’re crazy! As a philosophical abstraction this theory of yours is interesting—”

“Thank you!”

“Barbara, listen to me. Midbin—”

“I haven’t the faintest interest in Midbin’s stodgy fantasies.”

“He has in yours, though, and so have I. Don’t you see, this decision is based on the fantasy of going back through time to—uh—injure your mother—”

“Midbin is a coarse, stupid, insensate lout. He has taught the dumb to speak, but he’s too much of a fool to understand anyone of normal intelligence. He had a set of idiotic theories about diseased emotions and he fits all facts into them even if it means chopping them up to do it or inventing new ones to piece them out. ‘Injure my mother’ indeed! I have no more interest in her than she ever had in me.”

“Ah, Barbara—”

“ ‘Ah, Barbara,’ ” she mimicked. “Run along to your pompous windbag of a Midbin, or your cow-eyed Spanish strumpet—”

“Barbara, I’m talking as a friend. Leave Midbin and Catty and personalities out of it and just look at it this way. Don’t you see the difference between promulgating a theory and trying a practical demonstration which will certainly appear to the world as going over the borderline into charlatanism? Like a spiritualist medium or—”

“That’s enough! ‘Charlatan.’ You unspeakable guttersnipe. What do you know about anything beyond the seduction of cretins? Go back to your trade, you errand boy!”

“Barbara—”

Her hand caught me across my mouth. Then she strode away.

The fellows of Haggershaven were not enthusiastic for her project. Nineteen fifty was a bad year; the war was coming closer. At the least, what was left of United States’ independence would likely be extinguished. Our energies at the haven had to be directed toward survival rather than new and expensive ventures. Still, Barbara Haggerwells was a famous figure commanding great respect; reluctantly the fellows voted an appropriation.

We had not spoken since the day of the quarrel, nor was there inclination on either side toward reconciliation. She and Ace with a group of the fellows attacked the preliminary job of remodelling an old barn furiously, sawing and hammering, bolting iron beams together, piping in gas for reflected lights which allowed them to work into the night. As for me, I had little interest. I did not believe Barbara Haggerwells would play a further part in my life.

For I finally saw Catty as she really was: loyal, steadfast, sustaining. Suddenly, I was utterly unable to understand how I had hesitated so long. Barbara now seemed brittle and masculine beside Catty. It was Catty with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life and I regretted wasted time.

Something of this I told her and begged forgiveness.

“Dear Hodge,” she answered, “there is nothing to forgive. Love is not a business transaction, nor a case at law in which justice is sought, nor a reward for having good qualities. I understand you, Hodge, better, I think, than you understand yourself. You are not satisfied with what is readily obtained; otherwise you would have been content back in—what is the name?—Wappinger Falls. I have known this for a long time and I could, I think (you must excuse my feminine vanity), have enticed you at any moment by pretending fickleness. Besides, I think you will make a better husband for realizing your incapacity to deal with Barbara.”

I can’t say I enjoyed this speech. I felt, in fact, rather humiliated, or at least healthily humbled. Which was no doubt what she intended, and as it should be. It also revealed that Catty bore no animosity toward her former rival. This didn’t surprise me, but Barbara’s attitude did, for as soon as Catty’s engagement to me was known the two girls became very friendly. I almost wrote, “became fast friends,” but this would overlook their lack of common interests on which to build genuine friendship. However, Catty now spent hours with Barbara and Ace in the workshop (as they called the converted barn) and her real admiration for Barbara grew. Her conversation frequently turned to Barbara’s genius, courage and imagination.

Naturally this didn’t please me too well, but I could hardly ask Catty to forego society I had so recently found enchanting, nor establish a taboo against mention of a name I had lately whispered with ardor. Besides, I was exhilarated by my own plans. I had completed my notes for
Chancellorsville to the End
, and Catty and I were to be married as soon as volume one was published—shortly after my thirtieth and Catty’s twenty-fourth birthday. Although there was no doubt the book would bring an offer from one of the great Confederate universities, Catty was firm for one of the miniature cottages or even smaller apartments the haven provided for married fellows.

From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing difficulties now the workshop was complete and actual construction of what was referred to—with unnecessary crypticism, I thought—as HX-1 had begun. The impending war created scarcities, particularly of such materials as steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1 seemed inordinately greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.

The next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven wouldn’t take my money.”

“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in everything we get. We owe it to the haven anyway. But you should keep your independence.”

“Hodge, I’m going to give it all to Barbara for her HX-1.”

“What? Oh, nonsense!”

“Is it any more nonsensical for me to put in money I didn’t do anything to get than for her and Ace to put in time and knowledge and labor?”

“Yes, because she’s got a crazy idea and Ace has never been quite sane as far as Barbara’s concerned. If you go ahead and do this you’ll be crazy as they are.”

When Catty laughed I remembered with a pang the long months when that lovely sound had been strangled by terror inside her so that these priceless instants were irrevocably lost. I also thought with shame of my own failure and contumely. Had I appreciated her when her need was greatest I might have changed the long and painful process which restored her voice in Midbin’s way, or at least eased and quickened it.

“Perhaps I’m crazy—do you think they would admit me to fellowship on that basis? Anyway, I believe in Barbara, even if the fellows don’t. Not that I’m criticizing the haven. You were right to be cautious, you have a great deal to consider. I haven’t. I believe in her—or perhaps I feel I owe her something. Anyway, with my money she can finish her project. I only tell you this because you may not want to marry me under the circumstances.”

“You think I’m marrying you for your money?”

She smiled. “Dear Hodge. You are in some ways so young. No, I know very well you aren’t marrying me for money. That would be too practical, too grown up. I think you might not want to marry a woman who’d give all her money away. Especially to Barbara Haggerwells.”

“Catty, are you doing this absurd thing to get rid of me? Or to test me?”

This time she again laughed aloud. “Now I’m sure you will marry me after all and turn out to be a puzzled but amenable husband. You are my true Hodge, who studies a war because he can’t understand anything simpler or subtler.”

She wasn’t to be dissuaded from the quixotic gesture. I might not understand subtleties but I was sure I understood Barbara well enough. Foreseeing her request for more funds would be turned down, she had deliberately cultivated Catty in order to use her. Now she’d gotten what she wanted she’d undoubtedly drop Catty or revert to her accustomed virulent abuse.

She did neither. If anything, the amity grew. Catty’s vocabulary added words like “magnet,” “coil,” “induction,” “particle,” “light-year,” “continuum” and many others either incomprehensible or uninteresting to me. Breathlessly she described the strange, asymmetric structure taking shape in the workshop, while my mind was busy with Ewell’s Corps and Parrott guns and the weather chart of southern Pennsylvania for July 1863.

The great publishing firm of Ticknor, Harcourt & Knopf contracted for my book—there was no publisher in the United States equipped to handle it—and sent me a sizable advance in Confederate dollars which became even more sizable converted into United States’ money. I read the proofs of volume one in a state of semi-consciousness, sent the inevitable telegram changing a footnote on page 99, and waited for the infuriating mails to bring me my complimentary copies. The day after they arrived (with a horrifying typographical error right in the middle of page 12), Catty and I were married.

Perhaps reticence in this narrative has given less than a picture of my wife. I can only say that no man could ask for one more beautiful, finer or more desirable. With the approval of the fellows, I used part of the publisher’s advance for a honeymoon. We spent it going over some of the battlefields of the War of Southron Independence.

We settled down in the autumn of 1951, I to work on volume two, Catty to help me and keep house. Somewhat, I admit, to my disappointment, she resumed her daily visit to Barbara’s workshop and again regaled me with accounts of my ex-sweetheart’s progress.

HX-1 was to be completed in the late spring or early summer. I was not surprised that Barbara’s faith survived actual construction of the thing, but that such otherwise level-headed people as Ace and Catty could envisage breathlessly the miracles about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even after all these years, was still bemused—but Catty...?

Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter: