“I don’t want a brilliant young scientific genius!” Derringer had roared when Brent answered his cryptically worded ad. “I’ve got ‘em here in the laboratory. They’ve done grand work on the time machine. I couldn’t live without ‘em, and there’s not a one of ‘em I’d trust out of this century. Not out of this decade. What I want is four things: A knowledge of history, for a background of analogy to understand what’s been going on; linguistic ability, to adjust yourself as rapidly as possible to the changes in language; physical strength and dexterity, to get yourself out of the scrapes that are bound to come up; and social adaptability. A chimpanzee of reasonably subhuman intelligence could operate the machine. What counts is what you’ll be able to do after you get there.”
The knowledge of history and the physical qualities had been easy to demonstrate. The linguistic ability was a bit more complex; Derringer had contrived an intricate series of tests involving adjustment to phonetic changes and the capacity to assimilate the principles of a totally fictitious language invented for the occasion. The social adaptability was measured partly by an aptitude test, but largely, Brent guessed, by Derringer’s own observation during the weeks of preparation after his probationary hiring.
He had passed all four requirements with flying colors. At least Derringer had grinned at him through the black beard and grunted the reluctant “Good man!” that was his equivalent of rhapsodic praise. His physical agility had already stood him in good stead, and his linguistic mind was rapidly assimilating the new aspects of the language (there were phonetic alterations as well as the changes in vocabulary and inflection—he was particularly struck by the fact that the vowels a and o no longer possessed the diphthongal off-glide so characteristic of English, but were pure vowels like the Italian e and o), but his social adaptability was just now hitting a terrific snag.
What the hell do you do when a Roman matron whom you have never seen, born five hundred years after you, welcomes you by name and exclaims that it haves beed a long time? (This regular past participle of be, Brent reflected, gives the speaker something the quality of a Bostonian with a cold in the nose.)
For a moment he toyed with the rash notion that she might likewise be a time traveler, someone whom he had known in 1942. Derringer had been positive that this was the first such trip ever attempted; but someone leaving the twentieth century later might still be an earlier arrival in the twenty-fifth. He experimented with the idea.
“I suppose,” Brent ventured, “you could call five hundred years a long time, in its relative way.”
The Roman matron frowned. “Do not jest, John. Fifty years be not five hundred. I will confess that first five years seemed at times like five centuries, but after fifty—one does not feel so sharply.”
Does was of course pronounced dooze. All r’s, even terminal, were lightly trilled. These facts Brent noted in the back of his mind, but the fore part was concerned with the immediate situation. If this woman chose to accept him as an acquaintance—it was nowise unlikely that his double should be wandering about in this century—it meant probable protection from the Stapper. His logical mind protested, “Could this double have your name?” but he shushed it.
“Did you,” he began, and caught himself. “Doed you see anyone in the hall—a man in white?”
The Roman matron moaned. “Oh, John! Do Stappers seek you again? But of course. If you have comed to destroy Barrier, they must destroy you.”
“Whoa there!” Brent had seen what happened to one person who had merely “speaked against Barrier.” “I didn’t ... doedn’t ... say anything against Barrier.”
The friendliness began to die from her clear blue eyes. “And I believed you,” she said sorrowfully. “You telled us of this second Barrier and sweared to destroy it. We thinked you beed one of us. And now—”
No amount of social adaptability can resist a sympathetic and dignified woman on the verge of tears. Besides, this apartment was for the moment a valuable haven, and if she thought he was a traitor of some sort—
“Look,” said Brent. “You see, I am—there isn’t any use at this moment trying to be regular—I am not whoever you think I am. I never saw you before. I couldn’t have. This is the first instant I’ve ever been in your time.”
“If you wish to lie to me, John—”
“I’m not lying. And I’m not John—at least not the one you’re thinking of. I’m John Brent, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I was born in 1914—a good five and a half centuries ago.”
According to all the time travel fiction Brent had ever read, that kind of statement ranks as a real stunner. There is a deathly hush and a wild surmise and the author stresses the curtain-line effect by inserting a line-space.
But the Roman matron was unmoved. The hush and the surmise were Brent’s an instant later when she said, with anguished patience, “I know, John, I know.”
“Derringer left this one out of the rule book,” Brent grunted. “Madam, you have, as they say, the better of me. What does A do now?”
“You do be same John!” she smiled. “I never beed able to understand you.”
“We have much in common,” Brent observed.
“And because I can’t understand you, I know you be you.” She was still smiling. It was an odd smile; Brent couldn’t place its precise meaning. Not until she leaned toward him and for one instant gently touched his arm.
He needed friends. Whatever her wild delusions, she seemed willing to help him. But he still could not quite keep from drawing back as he recognized the tender smile of love on this dignified ancient face.
She seemed to sense his withdrawal. For a moment he feared a gathering anger. Then she relaxed, and with another smile, a puzzled but resigned smile, said, “This be part of not understanding you, I guess. Cosmos knows. But you be so young, John, still so young ...”
She must, Brent thought with sudden surprise, have been a very pretty girl.
The door opened. The man who entered was as tall as the Stapper, but wore the civilian’s iridescent robes. His long beard seemed to have caught a little of their rainbow influence; it was predominantly red, but brown and black and white glinted in it. The hair on his head was graying. He might have been anywhere from forty-five to a vigorous and well-preserved seventy.
“We have a guest, sister?” he asked politely.
The Roman matron made a despairing gesture. “You don’t recognize him? And John—you don’t know Stephen?”
Stephen slapped his thigh and barked—a sound that seemed to represent a laugh of pleasure. “Cosmos!” he cried. “John Brent! I told you, Martha. I knew he wouldn’t fail us.”
“Stephen!” she exclaimed in shocked tones.
“Hang the irregularities! Can’t I greet John with the old words that comed—no, by Cosmos—came from the same past he came from? See, John—don’t I talk the old language well? I even use article—pardon me, the article.”
Brent’s automatic mental notebook recorded the fact, which he had already suspected, that an article was as taboo as an irregular verb. But around this self-governing notation system swirled utter confusion. It might possibly have been just his luck to run into a madwoman. But two mad brains in succession with identical delusions were too much. And Stephen had known he was from the past.
“I’m afraid,” he said simply, “this is too much for me. Suppose we all sit down and have a drink of something and talk this over.”