CHAPTER IV

"A Stitch in Time"

"M-might have been?" I repeated.

I didn't say it just like that, I guess. I said it more like, "M-m-m-might have b-b-been?" All right, so my teeth were chattering! So what? So maybe it was cold; how do you know?

Hank said woefully, "There's millions of 'em, mebbe billions. Mebbe trillions; I dunno. I was just 'sperimentin', tryin' to find which course this here machine took--if any--so I'd know--"

Helen's eyes were deep with surmise. She said, "Do you mean, Hank, that any of these different existences _might_ have been the history of the United States if other things had happened?"

"Might have been," agreed Hank, "and is. You gotta get that clear in your minds. These places is just as real to the people in 'em as our world is to _us_. If we was to try to tell 'em about our civilization, they'd think we was nuts. Because things took a different twist for them, and they got a way of livin' which don't even conceive of our ways."

"And I can't conceive of their ways!" I interrupted flatly. "Hank, this is going too far! You admit we've been in the United States--all right, make it the North American continent if you want to!--all along. But we've seen men of a dozen different races, heard a dozen tongues spoken--"

Hank scratched his head.

"Well, now, Jim, I guess you know I'm not what you mought call a scholar. But I done read up a leetle bit about hist'ry. An' it 'pears to me like all them things we seen _could_ o' happened, if things had tooken jest the littlest bit of shift somewheres in the past.

"Take that first city we seen, f'rninstance. Kinda funny, accordin' to American standards, I'll admit. But suppose the Greek Empire hadn't never fell? Ain't it plausible to figger as how maybe some day the expandin' Greeks might o' colonized America? They was a sea-farin' people, you know--an' great lovers o' beauty, Art and the social graces. But they was rotten bad scientists, f'r the most part. Seems to me like their civilization woulda reached a high peak, then never got no higher...."

Helen, her fears assuaged by a reasonable explanation, nodded vehement agreement.

"He's right, Jim. And those women _were_ talking in Greek--or at least a modified form of it. I remember, now, a few words--"

"Them other guys," mused Hank, "them sojers, seems like they mought o' been Romans. They was great ones to let the conquered people work the fields for them, an' I noticed they had the Injuns on W.P.A.

"But all them guys talking Dutch--I can't figger that. It ain't reasonable to suppose it would be on account of if Germany had won the first World War. Even if they did, they couldn't o' made the United States talk German an' act German in twenty-five years!"

For once I knew more than Hank Cleaver! I gloried in my little instant.

"I'll bet I know what 'moment in history' made that existence possible! Back around the time of 1776, Hank, the fathers of the infant United States gathered to decide which language should be the official tongue of their new nation. The choice was a toss-up between English and German. English became the official language of our country by the slim margin of _one_ vote--cast by a German-American who based his decision on the belief that English was the more pliable tongue!"

* * * * *

Hank smacked his hands together. "That's it, by gum! Purty nigh has to be! Now you see whut a diff'rence one little incident makes? If that man had voted f'r his native tongue, this country woulda become a lazy, self-contained Tootonic colony, 'stead of an up-an'-at-'em, commercial sea-power. An' them other places we seen--"

It was easy now that we understood the system.

"Gas lights," supplied Helen, "if Spencer Tracy--I mean Thomas Edison--hadn't been fired from his job as candy-butcher on the railroad." "America a French colony," I suggested, "if Napoleon hadn't been defeated at Waterloo. He had designs on us, you know. That's why he placed Maximilian in Mexico--"

"A powerful priesthood governing the world," broke in Helen again. "Would that be the Papal State? Or could it have been--Atlantis? If that island had not sunk?"

"That there 'C.S.A.' had me stumped f'r a minute," said Hank, "but I got it now. That stands f'r the 'Confederate States of America!' If Pickett had come up at Gettysburg!"

"But that other world of 'might-have-been'?" I demanded eagerly. "The most awe-inspiring one we saw? The one where giant spacecraft lay in their cradles? What could that have sprung from?"

There was silence for a moment. Then Hank queried, "Did either o' you happen to notice the name o' that port?"

Helen said, "I--I'm not exactly sure, but I thought it was the daVinci Spaceport--"

"That's whut I thought, too," said Hank. "I reckon there's your answer, Jim. Back there in the Middle Ages, one day old Leonardo musa blew his nose or stubbed his toe or done somethin' he didn't do in _our_ hist'ry--an' as a result, he succeeded in doin' whut he never done in our time, though he spent half his life atryin' to. He invented aircraft.

"Which give man a flyin' start o' four hundred years or so over where he is in our universe. So that in the mebbe world which sprung from daVinci's accident, man has learned how to navee-gate space."

* * * * *

Well, that was all very well. I suppose I was getting an education in cockeyed history that Beard or Gibbon or any tome-pedant would have swapped his eyeteeth for. But I'm not the kind of guy who exists on brain-food alone. I've got a hollow, pear-shaped bulb a few inches south of my diaphragm, and regularly, about six times a day, this aforesaid vacancy declares itself ready, willing and able to take care of a few pecks of assorted groceries.

A mild attack of looseness around the belt reminded me that this was one of those times. I said, "Talking about space, Hank, that's what I've got the most of in my stomach. What say we tool this period-perambulating push-cart up to an 'ought-to-have-been' café and give the inner man something to think about?"

Helen nodded approval to my idea.

"I could use a little food myself, Hank."

Hank wet his lips. "J-jim--" he faltered.

"Now, look, pal," I declared firmly, "I know you're having a good time. This sort of thing is right up your pet alley. But have a little consideration for your passengers. All Helen and I want is victuals, and we'll travel with you from here to the universe where Adam didn't eat the apple--right, Helen? A round trip for a square meal; that's a fair exchange, isn't it?"

* * * * *

Hank said, "Jim--Helen--whut I got to say ain't nice. From the minute we started this trip, I been worryin' about one thing. The other 'me' which we met back there in the room realized it, too, an' he was also worried. You see, like Jim oughta realize atter he couldn't grab aholt o' that likker bottle--we can't eat or drink while we're travelin' in this crate!"

"We can't--!" I realized, suddenly and completely, that he was right. That was one of the things he had tried to make clear. We had no real existence to these other worlds, nor they to us. I'm afraid I went into a sort of panic, then. I said, "Then we've got to get back to our own time, Hank, or we'll starve to death!"

Hank said miserably, "But that's jest it, Jim--how are we gonna git back to our own Time? We don't know where it is. Like I awready said, we seem to be travelin' sideways across a billion possible Times. An' since I didn't get the temporal grapple installed, like I planned to before Helen--"

He stopped. But Helen had caught the implication of his words. She cried suddenly, "It's all my fault! Because I thought I knew it all, Hank, I've let us in for this. Oh, I wish I'd never tried to be so smart--"

"That's a woman for you!" I grunted disconsolately. "Better late than clever! Hell, Hank--you mean we're doomed to sit here in nothing, looking at worlds of food and liquid, until we check out from malnutrition?"

Hank said staunchly, "We ain't gonna give up that easy, Jim. We're gonna keep on tryin'. Mebbe by plain dumb luck I can work us back to our own proper place in Time."

And thus we started anew our time-hopping. Hank's fingers went to work on the cryptic studs and keys. Again we became the wraithlike visitants of fourscore and umpteen odd, incredible worlds. We saw one in which great bearded Norsemen ruled America ... another in which the Union Jack flapped above the docks of a great sea-port ... dozens upon dozens of Americas we saw, and each of them was, by some guess, quite plausible and logical. Had Leif the Lucky's colony not been wiped out by the pox ... had the Sons of Liberty not roused the colonists to rebellion against George III ... had Aaron Burr not duelled and killed Hamilton ... had Columbus not believed himself headed toward the Indies....

Hank's brow was as smooth as a corrugated washboard by now, and there was nervous haste to even his customarily placid fingers as he continued to press our shimmering buggy forward along the transverse lines of maybe.

"It ain't logical!" he moaned once, softly. "Even if they _is_ diff'rent circumstances, they oughta spring from each other outa certain points. Like the pictures you see of fam'ly trees, or genee-ologies. But we ain't getting nowhere an' we ain't gettin' there fast!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile, I was getting hungrier by the minute. I don't know why it is, but there's nothing will make a man want to eat more than the knowledge that the cupboard is bare. My thoughts were not nearly so concerned with the wonders I was viewing than with visions of ten-inch T-bone steaks smothered in mushrooms ... roast fowl ... cranberry sauce and gravy ... fried country ham with apples ... things like that.

And the drink question was even more acute. After all, we had been caged up in our little egg, now, for several hours. We were beginning to feel puh-lenty thirsty, and our desire for water was not lessened by the thought that it was impossible to get any.

That's when it began to seem to me that everywhere we visited, food and drink were prominently displayed. Once we landed in the middle of a gigantic banquet-hall. Tables groaned with dainties fit for a king--and sure enough, there was a king seated at the head of the table! He was a mighty sick-looking king, though, when he laid eyes on us! He let loose a howl in what Helen claimed was modified Spanish, and dived under the table. We left hastily, before his Kingship should leave his subjects kingless.

I've often wondered, since, how many legends sprang from our visitations. There must have been hundreds of wild stories told by Indians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards and Dutch who saw a shadowy egg with three wraiths in it appear suddenly out of nowhere, and as quickly disappear.

It was probably because of this that Hank turned to me, finally, with a pledge.

"Tell you one thing, Jim," he said earnestly. "If we get outa this here now mess, the fust thing I'm gonna do is bust this machine into a million pieces. I done learned a lesson. It ain't right to go messin' around in things like this when you can't control 'em perfect. It just ain't according to Hoyle to do it."

"But if it contributes to science--" I said.

"It don't, Jim. It's all puffectly clear an' logical to me, now. You see, it wouldn't do a man no good to go gallivantin' off into the past, because all he'd do is start a new chain of could-bes. An' it don't do no good for a man to slide sideways through Time, because whut he learns ain't of no consequence to him in his Time, an' just disturbs the folks he meets. So after this, I'm gonna confine myself to tryin' to improve the affairs o' the world we do live in--

"Hey! What was that?"

I had heard it, too. I stared at him wildly. "It sounded like--like somebody calling your name!" I said doubtfully.

"That's whut I thought!" yelled Hank. "Listen--it's a voice, comin' closer!"

We all heard it plainly now. A voice calling curiously, pleadingly, through the gray mists that engulfed us.

"Hank! Oh, Hank Cleaver! Where are you?"

We all yelled. And what I mean, we yelled loud!

And then, out of the formless veil, came a shimmer of light. A nebulous _something_ that grew more solid, became more and more sharply visible as our cries attracted it, and finally coalesced into--

Our own time-machine! With us sitting in it!