“Naturally,” said Ward.
Gamble Two reflected. “A man from this century, in the Greece of Pericles. He might stand a somewhat better chance. He could at least get an academic knowledge of the language. But could he survive?”
“Probably not,” said Ward.
“Definitely not,” agreed Gamble Two. “The change in environment. He would have no resistance to germs. Disease bacteria evolve. He would miss all the conveniences of civilization he had come to accept as a part of the environment. His ideas would be completely out of tune with the time. He would be shunned. He might even be stoned. He would last perhaps a week.”
“One out of every five science fiction stories I illustrate,” said Ward, “is based on just this conclusion. Finish, please, and let me get back to work.”
But Gamble Two could not be hurried. “Could any man survive in an era other than his own?” he wondered. “Could any man usefully employ his knowledge of his original environment?”
“Probably not.”
Gamble Two held up a finger. “One kind of man can survive in environments other than his own,” he suggested. “Think of ship-wrecked sailors on South Sea islands.”
“They usually went mad.”
“Precisely the point,” said Gamble Two. “Before one can integrate himself into a new environment, he must divorce himself from the old. There is only one way to divorce oneself from one’s environment. Insanity. Psychosis.”
“A psychotic divorces himself from all environments,” Ward suggested.
“Exactly. He doesn’t even hear doorbells.”
Emory Ward flushed. “Now, wait a minute; I heard that doorbell. I got a deadline. I never answer the doorbell when I got a deadline.”
“I am almost finished,” Gamble Two assured him. “We have already answered one point. Only a psychotic could make the necessary adjustment to a totally new environment. Now. Is there any man who could survive at the economic level in an environment other than his own? A physicist from this century, for instance, would be an unskilled laborer in Julius Caesar’s Rome. As environment changes, vocations change.”
“What about a doctor?” asked Ward. “A twentieth century doctor in second century Rome.”
Gamble Two shook his head. “Useless. Doctors do not cure, they only prescribe cures. And what good would it do a doctor to prescribe penicillin, aureomycin, or even aspirin, in an environment where such products do not exist?”
“Then,” said Ward, “The answer is no one.”
“There is a possibility, however,” Gamble Two corrected him gently. “What about an artist, an illustrator? All he requires are the drawing tools of the period. Pencil on paper, berry juices on stone, what does it matter to him? He can draw with anything.”
Emory Ward was stunned. “You’re not suggesting.”
“It is a severe crime,” Gamble Two told him, “to attempt to escape one’s obligations by running away through time. You are well aware of that.”
Ward shook his head. “You’re out of your mind.”
Gamble Two ignored him. “Return with me to the South Seas,” he said. “The shipwrecked sailor again. He always retains his European clothing, although the native dress, or undress, is much more suitable for the environment. Why is that?”
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Ward said urgently.
“It is not possible,” Gamble Two said sadly, “for man to divorce himself entirely from his native environment. The sailor keeps his European clothes. You wistfully draw pictures of the machines you once knew and loved, the machines that once seemed so necessary to civilized life, and which you now must try to get along without. Gamble Two pointed an accusing finger. “You are from the twenty fifth century.”
Defiantly Emory Ward stated, “I am not.”
Gamble Two sighed. “I wish you would just admit it and be done with this foolishness. They should have sent an esper. I wish I could read your mind. The only thing for me to do now is return you for identification: You are from the twenty fifth century, aren’t you?”
“I am not.” Emory Ward erected a force field around himself, then he put Gamble Two in a temporary state of paralysis. Very flamboyant. Finally, he withdrew from a desk drawer a hand weapon precisely like one in an illustration on the wall. Very functional. “I am from the thirtieth century,” he said.
Journey to Death
Although ocean voyages are not new to me, I have never grown accustomed to the sway and roll of ships, especially at night. For that reason, I normally get very little sleep while crossing the Atlantic, not being able to close my eyes until I have reached such a point of exhaustion that it is no longer possible for me to keep them open. Since business often makes it necessary for me to journey to America, my wife has urged me, from time to time, to go by air, but I’m afraid I’m much too cowardly for that. The rolling of a ship at sea causes uneasiness in both my stomach and mind, but the mere of traveling through the air terrifies me. A sea voyage, then, is the lesser of two evils, and I face my insomnia, after all these years, with the calm of old resignation.
And yet, it is impossible to merely lie in bed awake, eyes staring at the ceiling, through all the long rolling nights between Dover and New York, and even reading begins, at last, to pall. On so many voyages, I have been reduced to aimless pacing of the deck, watching the million moons reflected in the waves surrounding me.
I was delighted, therefore, on the last and latest crossing, to discover, the third night out, a fellow-sufferer, an insomniac like myself, named Cowley. Cowley was an American, a businessman, younger than me, perhaps forty five or fifty. A direct and sensible man I found him, and enjoyed his company, late at night, when all the other passengers slept and we were alone in an empty and silent sea. I found no fault in him at all, save for an occasional example of rather grim and tasteless humor, a reference to the decaying bodies in Davy Jones’s locker, or some such thing.
The nights were spent in conversation, in strolls about the decks, or in billiards, a game which we both loved but neither had ever mastered. Being of equal incompetence in the sport, we contentedly wiled away many hours in the large billiard room located on the same deck as my cabin.
The eighth night of the voyage was spent in this room, where we puffed happily at cigars, played with our normal lack of skill, and waited patiently for dawn. It was a brisk and chilly night, with a cold wet wind scampering across the waves like a chilled and lonely ghost searching for land, and we had closed every door and window in the room, preferring an atmosphere polluted by cigar smoke to being chilled to the bone.
It was only fifteen minutes after thus sealing ourselves into the room that the catastrophe struck. I don’t know what it could have been, an explosion in the huge and mysterious engines somewhere in the bowels of the ship, perhaps unexpected contact with a mine still unreclaimed from the Second World War. Whatever it was, the silence of the night was suddenly torn apart by a tremendous and powerful sound, a roar, a crash that dulled the senses and paralyzed the body, and the whole ship, the Aragon, shuddered and trembled with a violent jerking spasm. Cowley and I were both thrown to the floor, and on all the tables, the billiard balls clacked and rolled, as though their hysteria and fear were equal to our own.