You will whirl. You will see an unfamiliar type of cordage in mid-air. You will suspect Hari and Stan of a practical joke. Your face will turn purple and you will yank at the rope, while you howl that it is all blank-blank foolishness.
And at that moment I will fall on your head out of the thin air above you, and wind up sitting on your stomach as you flop on the floor. Nearly the only gratitude I feel toward you, Charles, is for breaking my fall in that way. I might have bumped myself in a six-foot fall for which I was—will be—unprepared. Doubtless this would be an appropriate place to speculate on why, when I pulled a piece of sash cord from the twentieth century and heaved it from me in horror, it should tickle your neck in the thirty-fourth century. But I admit candidly that I haven’t any ideas on the subject. Professor Hadley’s inadvertent time-transporter worked that way. I’m going to let it go at that.
I sat up and gazed blankly at you. You thought I was a practical joker, hired or persuaded to play a part. You panted at me. And I was a bit embarrassed. You weren’t Joe, whom I’d hoped would pull me out of nowhere. You were a stranger to me then. You were a red-faced, rather foolish-looking stranger, drawing in your breath to swear.
So I said politely, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”
To you this was further evidence of a put-up job. You heaved up mightily, gasping. I got off your stomach and tried to help you up with proper courtesy. But you swung wildly, connected, and I went banging into the wall. Then, your great-great-etc.-grandmother tells me indignantly, you grabbed a chair and prepared to commit mayhem on me. Hardly the way to treat a distinguished progenitor, Charles, let me tell you.
This was the first moment when your great-and-so-on-grandmother felt really certain you were not the gentle soul she had hoped. Moreover, knowing that I was destined to woo and win her, she forestalled any hindrance to her tender dreamings by swinging on you with a hartlegame bat from the rumpus-room equipment nearby. And when you collapsed, she, with the fine competence of which small and beautiful women are capable in emergencies, discovered a piece of sash cord fastened to my belt in the back, untied it, and deftly knotted it to a piece of furniture for later reference.
Here, perhaps, my letter to you could end. The other events in your rumpus-room, your time, your historical period, followed an absolutely inevitable pattern.
Laki screamed piercingly. Your father heard, and came rushing with a first-aid kit. He arrived to view Ginny—bless her—standing embattled above me with the hartlegame bat in her hand and blood in her eye. You were collapsed on the floor.
Your father gasped: “Wha—what—”
And Ginny said in a level and determined tone, “He’s Charles’s fifty-second-great-grandfather, sir, and Charles hit him. It wasn’t respectful—so I clobbered him.”
The word “clobbered” is not in thirty-fourth century common speech. Ginny had learned it from the reading of this missive to you. She had not known what it meant, but when the emergency arrived she not only knew what to do, but had the word for it. Your great-great-great-etc.-ancestress is a remarkable woman, Charles! She has brains, determination, intuition, clarity of thought, and she is deliciously cuddlesome besides. Even after having been married to her for a considerable time, I like her very, very much!
“What’s that?” demanded your father dazedly. “Great-great—”
Hari and Stan tried to explain, together. I opened my eyes and saw Ginny. My last previous view had been of a hamlike fist gaining momentum before my nose. Ginny was a welcome change. I sat up, staring at her. My mouth dropped open.
I heard myself saying earnestly: “Look, angel! It’s not true there’s no marrying in Heaven, is it? With you around that would be a dirty trick.”
And Ginny kissed me. It was quite proper. She had read this letter, and she knew that she was going to marry me—knew it in fact the instant she saw me—and even that nearly two years later I would still be bragging about it. In fact, I would be—I am—gloating over it in a quite unseemly manner. So her engagement to you, Charles, was automatically terminated by my arrival. In its place an arrangement of much longer standing matured. And while I do not believe in long engagements as a rule, Ginny’s and mine of some fourteen centuries’ duration has worked out all right.
You stirred and rose. I was still there. Ginny was very close to me. You howled and leaped toward me again. I got in one gratifying punch on the nose—which does resemble mine, by the way—and then Harl and Stan and your father grabbed you, and Ginny grabbed me. When she touched me, all my belligerent impulses died. I felt infinite love for all the world. I might even have forgiven you, Charles, temporarily, for being my rival as well as my fifty-two-times removed grandson.
Your father said desperately, “Let me understand this thing!” He pushed you into a chair and looked unhappily at me. My costume was eccentric. Harl and Stan again tried to explain.
But you, Charles, bellowed, “It’s a lie! It’s a trick! It’s a stupid practical joke! I’ll kill—”
Laki said shakily, “Suppose we let the police settle it. If he really is who the book says—”
You bounced up and roared, “I’ll get ’em! You hold that faker here, Father, and I’ll teach these idiots to play jokes.” You rushed out. Your father mopped his face.
I said mildly to Ginny, still standing close by me, “Where am I, anyhow? Not that it matters.”
Ginny reached out her hand to Stan. As if somnambulistically, he handed her a book. It was an ancient, crumbling, tattered volume of fiction. Ginny opened it with fingers that trembled only a very little. I read:
To: Charles Fabius Granver
Sector 233, Zone 3, Home 1254, Radii.
The Thirty-Fourth Century, a.d.
My dear great-great-great-etc.-grandson
Charles:
Ginny said softly in my ear, “Read it! Fast!”
I read.
I heard your father saying harassedly, “His face does look familiar…”
I handed him the book and bowed benignly. I said, “Sir, I am very happy to have met you. It is a rare privilege.”
And so it was. And will be. One does not meet even a fifty-one-times-removed grandson every day.
There was a scraping sound. Hari turned pale. Stan jumped. Somehow, I think that up to this moment they had not quite fully believed. But that scraping sound… Ginny had competently untied a piece of sash cord from my belt in the back and fastened it to a chair. It had reached up to the ceiling. Having admitted my failure to notice that Joe—back in the laboratory—had tied a cord to my belt with a very clumsy granny-knot, I don’t feel I have to justify my not connecting the facts of time-travel with that piece of rope. Not up to this moment. But Ginny had realized from the beginning. She’d been previously informed. I’m informing her now. She’d tied the cord to a chair, and some fourteen centuries away my colleague Joe was dragging on the cord. He’d taken his time about it!
Ginny said shakily, “I—guess we’d better hurry…”
She was a little bit scared. To tell the truth, so was I. I said somehow hoarsely, “I’ll stay here if you’d rather—”
But I’d read this letter. And I felt—well, Charles, perhaps you can never understand how magnificent I felt when Ginny smiled at me and put her hand in mine and said to Laki, “You might try to explain to Uncle Seri for me.”