My reaction to this imagined interjection was frenzied, unreasonable. I cursed Tyss and his damnable philosophy. I cursed the insidiousness of his reasoning which had planted seed in my brain to sprout at a moment like this.
Yet in spite of the violence of my rejection of the words I attributed to Tyss, I accepted one of them. I relaxed. The decision had been made. Not by mechanistic forces, nor by blind response to stimulus, but by my own desire.
And now to my aid came the image of Tyss's antithesis, Ren Enfandin. Be a skeptic, Hodge; be always the skeptic. Prove all things; hold fast to that which is true. Joking Pilate, asking, “What is truth?” was blind. But you can see more aspects of the absolute truth than any man has had a chance to see before. Can you use the chance well, Hodge? That is the only question.
Once I could answer it with a vigorous affirmative, and so buttress the determination to go, I was faced with the problem of telling Catty. I could not shut her out of so important a move. I told myself I could not bear the thought of her anxiety; that she would worry despite the fact others had frequently used HX-1, for my object could not be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours. I was sure she would be sick with apprehension during the days I would be gone. No doubt this was all true, but I also remembered, Promise me, Hodge…
I finally took the weak, the ineffective course. I said I'd decided the only way to face my problem was to go to Gettysburg and spend three or four days going over the actual field. Here, I explained unconvincingly, I thought I might at last come to the conclusion whether to scrap all my work and start afresh or not.
Her faintly oblique eyes were inscrutable. She pretended to believe me and begged me to take her along. After all, we had spent our honeymoon on battlefields.
Would it be possible? Two people had never stood under the reflector together, but surely it would work? I was tempted, but I could not subject Catty to the risk, however slight. Besides, how could I explain?
“But, Catty, with you there I'd be thinking of you instead of the problem.”
“Ah, Hodge, have we already been married so long you must get away from me to think?”
“No matter how long, that time will never come. Perhaps I'm wrong, Catty. It's just a feeling I have.”
Her look was tragic with understanding. “You must do as you think right. Don't .. don't be gone too long, my dear.”
I dressed in clothes I often used for walking trips, clothes which bore no mark of any fashion and might pass as current wear among the poorer classes in any era of the past hundred years. I put a packet of dried beef in my pocket and started for the workshop.
As soon as I left the cottage I laughed at my hypersensitivity, at all the to-do I'd made over lying to Catty. This was but the first excursion; I planned others for the months after Gettysburg. There was no reason why she shouldn't accompany me on them. I grew lighthearted as my conscience eased, and I even congratulated myself on my skill in not having told a single technical falsehood to Catty. I began to whistle, never a habit of mine, as I made my way along the path to the workshop.
Barbara was alone. Her ginger hair gleamed in the light of a gas globe; her eyes were green as they always were when she was exultant. “Well, Hodge?”
“Well, Barbara, I…”
“Have you told Catty?”
“Not exactly. How did you know?” “I knew before you did, Hodge. After all, we're not strangers. All right. How long do you want to stay?”
“Four days.”
“That's long for a first trip. Don't you think you'd better try a few sample minutes?”
“Why? I've seen you and Ace go often enough and heard your accounts. I'll take care of myself. Have you got it down fine enough yet so you can invariably pick the hour of arrival?”
“Hour and minute,” she answered confidently. “What'li it be?”
“About midnight of June 30, 1863,” I answered. “I want to come back on the night of July 4.”
“You'll have to be more exact than that. For the return, I mean. The dials are set on seconds.”
“All right, make it midnight going and coming then.”
“Have you a watch that keeps perfect time?”
“I don't know about perfect—”
“Take this one. It's synchronized with the master control clock.” She handed me a large, rather awkward timepiece which had two independent faces side by side. “We had a couple made like this; the duplicate dials were useful before we were able to control HX-1 so exactly. One shows 1952 Haggershaven time.”
“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.
“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won't be able to reset the first dial—but for goodness sake remember to keep it wound—and set the second for - . - 11:54, zero. That means in six minutes you'll leave, to arrive at midnight. Remember to keep that one wound, too, for you'll go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever else happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow yourself some leeway—by midnight, July 4. I don't want to have to go wandering around 1863 looking for you.”
“You won't. I'll be here.”
“Five minutes. Now then, food.”
“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.
“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I suppose it won't hurt to drink the water if you're not observed, but avoid their food. One never knows what chain might be started by the casual theft—or purchase, if you had enough old coins—of a loaf of bread. The possibilities are limitless and frightening. Listen: how can I impress on you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly change the future—our present? I'm sure to this day Ace doesn't understand, and I tremble every moment he spends in the past. The most trivial action may begin a series of disastrous consequences. Don't be seen, don't be heard. Make your trip as a ghost.”
“Barbara, I promise I'll neither assassinate General Lee nor give the North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”
“Four minutes. It's not a joke, Hodge.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”
She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head and began making her round of the engines, adjusting the dials. I slid under the glass ring as I'd so often seen her do and stood casually under the reflector. I was not in the least nervous. I don't think I was even particularly excited.
“Three minutes,” said Barbara.
I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.
She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge…”
“Yes?”
She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a little absently. “Clod!”
I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.
She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July 4, 1863.”
“Right. Good-bye, Hodge. Glad you didn't tell Catty.” The expression on her face was the strangest I'd ever seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the switch. I began to answer something, perhaps to bid her wait—then the light made me blink and I, too, experienced the shattering feeling of transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my body exploded to the ends of space.
The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an I in which the I that was me merged all identity.