So the name of this small town was Los Angeles. There wasn’t much to it, back here in this year that he realized now must be 1921. The hills to the north were bare. The lofty roadbeds of the freeways were nowhere to be seen. The street was paved, but it looked like a country lane, hardly fit for heavy traffic. Everything had a raw, new look to it.
Boom—boom—boom—
The red-faced man pointed, waved, clapped his hands in glee. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that Sean had just materialized out of nowhere beside him. Or that Sean was dressed in the strange clothes of another era, an era yet unborn. Well, this was Hollywood, after all. The man probably thought that Sean was in costume for some science-fiction movie and had just stepped out of the studio to see the parade.
It was a fine spring day. The air was fresh and clean. They haven’t even invented smog yet, Sean thought in astonishment.
It all looked so peculiar here. And yet not as peculiar as he had expected. In a way he was surprised to see that 1921 was in actual living color, not in black and white, and that the people moved at a normal pace, not in some herkyjerk frenzy. He had seen ancient movies and he realized that he really had imagined that everything in reality would look the way it did in those movies. Quaint, musty, unreal. Well, it was quaint and musty, yes. But not unreal.
Sean turned to the red-faced man. He was wearing a stiff, uncomfortable dark suit, a necktie, a vest. On a warm spring day like this. But everybody else nearby along the parade route was dressed the same way. So formal, so elaborate. Neckties! Vests! The women all had hats on. And gloves. They were the ones who seemed to be in movie costumes, not he. But this was no movie, for these people. This was the real world of 1921; and in that world, this was how people dressed.
“What’s the parade all about?” Sean asked.
The man frowned at him. “Why, in honor of the President!”
“The President,” Sean said. “Ah—is the President here?”
“The President’s in Washington, getting sworn in. Don’t you know that? But even if we’re three thousand miles away, we can celebrate. Yes, sirree! We’re having a parade to honor the new President. Can’t you see the banners?”
Sean turned and looked. The main float was passing by right now. Real orange trees, laden with fruit, atop a horse-drawn platform. And banners, painted on canvas:
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING, PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES
CALVIN COOLIDGE, VICE PRESIDENT
INAUGURATION DAY MARCH4, 1921
“Three cheers for President Harding!” the red-faced man shouted, waving his hat in the air. “He’s my man! America first! No more wars! Back to normal! Harding! Harding! Harding!” He nudged Sean in the ribs. “What’s the matter, are you a Democrat? Let’s hear you cheer!”
Sean nodded. Why not?
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in 1921, give a cheer for the new President, if that’s what everybody all around you is doing.
“Harding!” he yelled. “Harding! Harding! Three cheers for President Harding!”
17. Eric -5×108minutes
Eric felt a rush of cool sweet air, almost dizzying. After the dank, moist, thick soup that was the air of Santa Barbara in the year 2111, this was like fresh new wine. He was in a forest of towering redwood trees so tall their tops were lost in the mist high overhead. He reached up to take the breathing device from his mouth.
But the breather was gone. Of course. It was impossible to carry any physical object from one shunt to the next except the things he had had with him when the trip began. The laws of conservation of energy were very strict about that. Whatever gear he had set out with from Time Zero would stay with him throughout the journey, but nothing that he picked up along the way could be transported. There wasn’t any possibility of returning from the past with a lost painting of Leonardo da Vinci under your arm, or coming back from the future with some fantastic device that would change the whole world.
Well, he didn’t need any gadgets to help him breathe here. This air was the purest he had ever known. He couldn’t even imagine how air could be cleaner or fresher than this.
He checked his instruments. Longitude 121 degrees W. He was still in California, then. Latitude a little more than 36 degrees N. That would put him a bit north of the midway line between Los Angeles and San Francisco—somewhere around Monterey, Eric guessed. A pretty hefty spatial displacement this time. But he was 500 million minutes in the past, now. That was 951.3 years. By his best calculation this was a mild, misty January morning in the year A.D.1065.
The forest was beautiful. He had never seen a lovelier place than this.
The mighty chocolate-red redwood trunks were like the columns of a vast cathedral. Far above him, nearly four hundred feet up, the treetops met in a roof of foliage. A pearly twilight glow was all that broke through to brighten the forest floor. The stillness was fantastic. He could hear no sound except the gentle patter of the droplets of condensed fog that fell to the soft needle-carpeted floor, and the distant murmur of a brook. The fronds of huge glistening ferns were everywhere about him.
The year 1065! In Europe now, the man who would be called William the Conqueror was laying his plans for the invasion of England. The Crusades would soon be beginning. There were great native American empires in Mexico and Peru. And at this moment, who knew what was happening in the palaces of China, Africa, the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights—?
He felt a moment of something very like regret at finding-himself in this place.
If the spatial displacement had been greater, this shunt might have dropped him down in the hectic midst of history—in Rome, say, or Constantinople, or Venice, or perhaps one of the stone cities of the Mayas. But here—here in this peaceful redwood forest on the California coast—Eric was as alone as though this were the dawn of time. There was no trace here of whatever sparse and scattered Indian population California had at this time. All was silence. All was peace.
That pang of regret vanished as suddenly as it had come.
To be allowed to see such beauty as this was a privilege beyond measure. How could he yearn for some other place?
Quietly, struck by wonder, Eric wandered through the stupendous groves of trees. He thought of the California he had left behind, the roar of the freeways, the droning of the planes overhead, the immense sprawl of the cities. They had saved a few little redwood forests, sure, somewhere far up north of San Francisco. Like museum exhibits. But everywhere else the hand of man had left its mark.
And this was how it all had looked before we came, he thought.
Here, in this awesome solitude, in this place where perhaps no human being had walked before, he felt himself suddenly swept by an emotion that was completely new to him. He wanted to drop to his knees and give thanks—to whom, to what, he wasn’t really certain—for the beauty he beheld. He had never done such a thing before. Even now he hesitated, embarrassed, self-conscious.
Go on, he thought. Nobody’s watching. And even if somebody were, so what?
But it was too late. The moment had passed. It would be forced, artificial, unreal, for him to do it now. Instead he stood quietly, resting his hand lightly on the giant trunk of a tree by the edge of the little stream.
He felt the strength of it, the immensity. This tree, he thought, had made a great voyage through time, of a sort, itself. It must have been living when Jesus was born. Or even earlier. And on and on through the centuries to this year of 1065, and on beyond. Probably it would still be here in 1865 or 1875 or 1885 or whenever it was that men would come along with their saws and hatchets to cut it down. It might have lived on into the twenty-first century, the twenty-second, even the thirty-second, if it had been left to finish its long journey undisturbed.