To distract both of us, she took me on a tour of the cave dwelling. The rooms were typical of a Tibetan house, the furnishings perhaps a little more lavish than usual, indicating that Ti Nih’s father was a man of more than ordinary wealth. But then we entered a large enclosure at the rear of the cave and my jaw dropped as I did a series of double takes.
The place was tilled with machinery. The second part of my double take told me that most of it consisted of crude, but identifiable appliances. I inspected one of them. Rough-made as it was, there could be no doubt that it was a washing machine. Another turned out to be a vacuum cleaner. There was a pop-up toaster, a radio, an electric stove, a refrigerator, an adding machine and a sewing machine. None of these were manufactured items. All were crude and had undoubtedly been painstakingly assembled by hand. In one corner of the room was a very large, equally crude, electric generator.
“What is all this?” I asked Ti Nih.
She told me. It seemed that Papa Baapuh fancied himself an inventor. In this primitive spot, secluded from the outside world, uninhibited by any knowledge of the progress of mankind, he had developed the principle of electric energy, built the generator, which was operated by a hand crank, and gone on to create the gadgets which fed off that energy.
The man was a genius. Thomas Edison was a mere tinkerer compared with him. There was only one trouble. All the things Papa Baapuh had invented had been in production in the U.S.A. for many years. All but one, that is.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the one contraption I couldn’t identify. It was a large boxlike structure taller than a man and attached to a gadget that looked like a cross between a diathermy machine and one of Dr. Frankenstein’s bad dreams.
“Is Papa’s latest invention, not work yet.” Ti Nih crossed over to pull aside a sort of sliding door. The inside of the large cabinet was revealed to have a raised platform with a screening of wire filaments around it. The screening went over the top, too, forming a transparent roof.
Ti Nih moved to the machine and threw a switch. The filaments crackled and multicolored electric sparks bounced inside the wire screening. Obviously some sort of force field was being created in the wire enclosure.
“What’s it supposed to do?” I asked Ti Nih.
“Is timing machine,” she told me. “Travel past, future, present,” she paused. “Much frustrating Papa. He finish, but not going no place.”
“Oh, well, back to the drawing board.” I chuckled to myself at the naiveté of this simple Tibetan inventing things long since invented and then going on to try to develop a time machine, which would mean solving a problem that baffled the world’s top Einsteins. “What’s that?” I added, pointing to a gadget hanging from the inside of the door to the time machine.
“Is radio both ways so when machine work travel man talk back-forth with control here.”
“Just like Dick Tracy, hey?” Now that she’d explained, I realized that the gismo did indeed look like a two-way wrist radio. I came up beside her to look at it more closely.
The proximity was too much for us. The bhang was still operative. Before I knew it, my hands were on her hips and I was yanking up yards of material to get at her. ZIP! Ti Nih freed rne. I fastened my hands over her now bare derrière and slammed into the target. Her body arched to meet me. We swayed back and forth for a long moment. Then Ti Nih gave a little leap and locked her legs around my hips. Her arms around my neck, she rotated like a spinning wheel. It wasn’t easy to stay on my feet, but I managed. Finally I whirled in a dervish circle as the two of us exploded together.
The way we were feeling, that probably wouldn’t have ended it if outside circumstances hadn’t intruded. What happened was that Papa Baapuh had returned home. He was calling Ti Nih’s name, the way his voice was getting louder telling us that he was approaching the laboratory.
During the action I had dropped my pants and kicked them to one side. They had landed on the platform of the time machine. Now I scrambled for them. Papa Baapuh’s voice was very close now. As I bent to retrieve them, Ti Nih thought fast and closed the door to the time machine behind me. I could hear them talking as I pulled on my pants.
Of course, since they were speaking their native lingo, I couldn’t understand a word they said. Still, from the tone I could tell that the old man sounded angry. Then there was the slamming of a door. Ti Nih must have left, because I could hear her father mumbling to himself as he moved around the laboratory.
Suddenly there was a hum within the cabinet where I was hiding. It grew and there was a crackling of electricity. The wire filaments began to glow. They shot off a crossfire of sparks and it felt like I was getting a scalp massage all over my body. I lunged for the door and in my frenzy I grabbed onto the wrist radio hanging there. The platform spun under my feet. The sparks whirled. I whirled-—right out of this world. Then everything went black.
I came to in the middle of a desert, the hot sun beating down on me, an oasis in the distance. It was a long time before I could even begin to try to orient myself. When I was able, the attempt was still a long way from successful.
Finally I noticed that I was still clutching the wrist radio. Still completely confused, I twisted one of the miniature dials. A voice snag out loud and clear.
“HEADACHE GOT YOU DOWN? . . .”
Yeah!
“DO YOU FEEL NERVOUS AND JITTERY? . . .”
Uh-huh!
“ARE DAILY TENSIONS TOO MUCH FOR YOU? . . .”
And how!
“ARE MILLIONS OF TINY NERVE BUDS JANGLING YOUR BODY? . . .”
You said it!
“THEN NOW’S THE TIME TO VISIT YOUR LOCAL DRUG STORE AND . . .”
The hell it is!
I twirled the dial. Then I looked more closely at the wrist radio and found the switch to transmit. I flicked it and spoke into the tiny mouthpiece. My message was short and to the point:
“HELP!”
I repeated it several times. Then I switched back to receive and tuned the dial until I recognized the voice of Papa Baapuh. The only trouble was that he was speaking Tibetan. I couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me. Finally I managed to get across to him that I wanted to talk with Ti Nih.
“Ooh!” she opened. “Is terrible mistake you time travel. Papa much angry. He no know you there but hear voice from radio. How I ever explain?”
“Never mind that! I thought you said this thing didn’t work? What happened?”
“Is peculiar. Papa hook washer machine make undies snow white. Him not know I hook time machine before leave hooked. So him crank generator then washer time machine go same time make time machine work. Him no understand. Me neither.”
“Me neither,” I agreed. “But all I know is I want to get out of here. Wherever the hell I am. Where is the time machine anyway? If I got here on it, how come it’s not here now?”
“Is here like always. Wait.” There was a pause during which Ti Nih and her father spouted Tibetan at each other. Then she got back to me. “Him say machine no move, only what in it. Force field fourth dimension make travel.”
“Can he get me back?’
“Maybe later.”
“Why not now?”
“Him very angry you in time machine. Guess about us humpty—humpty. Clothes in washer, he no turn off before done. Until turn off, washer work, time machine no. Only so much electric. Him very stubborn. You wait.”
“The hell you say. Go get my friend Dudley Nightshade. He’s probably at the temple. Tell him to get me out of here. Hurry!”
“Will do. Talk later.” Ti Nih signed off.
I took a look around me. Nothing but desert. Only the oasis in the distance. I became increasingly aware of how hot the sun was. The only thing to do if I was to avoid being fried was to head for the oasis. That’s what I did.