CHAPTER III
INTO THE SHADOWS
There were few preparations to make, for Wilton Grant had planned this thing very carefully. Our chief difficulty was with Bee. The girl was quite distraught; illness, the fear which for weeks had been dragging her down, completely submerged the scientist in her. And then abruptly she mastered herself, smiled through her tears.
"That's more like it, Bee." Will glanced aside at me with relief. "I couldn't understand you. Why Bee, we've been working at this thing for years."
"I'm all right now." She smiled at us—a brave smile though her lips were still trembling. "You're—about ready, aren't you?"
They had set aside a small room on the lower floor of the house—a sort of den which now was stripped of its accustomed hangings and furniture. It had two windows, looking out to the garden and lawn about the house. They were some six feet above the ground. It was a warm mid-summer evening; we had the lower sashes opened, but the shades fully drawn lest some neighbor or passerby observe us from without. On the floor of this room lay a mattress. There was a small table, a clock, two easy chairs. For the rest it was bare. Its white plaster walls, devoid of hangings, gave it somewhat the sanitary look of a room in a hospital.
We had been so occupied with Bee that Will had as yet given me no word of explanation. He left the little room now, returning in a moment with some articles which he deposited on the table. I eyed them silently; a shiver of fear, apprehension, awe—I could not define it—passed over me. Will had placed on the table a carafe of water; a glass; a small vial containing a number of tiny pellets; a cylindrical object with wires and terminal posts which had the appearance of a crude home-made battery—four wires each some ten feet in length, terminating each in a circular metallic band.
I glanced at Bee. Outwardly now she was quite composed. She smiled at me. "He'll explain in a moment, Rob. It's quite simple."
We were ready. By the clock on the table it was twenty minutes of ten. Will faced us.
"I'd like to start by ten o'clock," he began quietly. "The time-factor will be altered—I want to compute the difference—when I return—as closely as I can."
I had the ill grace to attempt an interruption, but he silenced me.
"Wait, Rob—twenty minutes is not a long time for what I have to say and do." He had motioned us to the easy chairs, and seated himself cross-legged on the mattress before us. His gaze was intent upon my face.
"This is not the moment for any detailed explanation, Rob. I need only say this: As I told you a while ago, the fundamental substance of which our bodies are composed is—not substance, but a mere vortex. A whirlpool, a vibration let me term it. And the quality of this vibration—this vortex—the time-factor controlling it, governs the material character of our conscious universe. From birth to death—from the beginning to the end—we and all the substance of our universe move along this unalterable, measured flow of time.
"Do I make my meaning clear? From—nothing but a vibrating whirlpool the magic of chemistry has built with this unalterable time-factor what we are pleased to call substance—material bodies. These material bodies have three varying dimensions—length, breadth and thickness. But each of them inherently is endowed also with the same basic time-factor. The rate of time-flow governing them, let me say, is identical."
He spoke now more slowly, with measured words as though very carefully to reach my understanding.
"You must conceive clearly, Rob, that every material body in our universe is passing through its existence at the same rate. Now if we take any specific point in time—which is to say any particular instant of time—and place in it two material bodies, those two material bodies must of necessity occupy two separate portions of space. That's obvious, isn't it? Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
"Now Rob, I have spoken of this unalterable measured flow of time along which all our substance is passing. But it is not unalterable. I have found a way of altering it."
He raised his hand against my murmur, and went on, carefully as before. "What does this do? It gives a different basic vibration to matter. It gives a different rate of time-flow, upon which, building up from a fundamental vortex of changed character, we reach substance—a state of matter—quite different from that upon which our present universe reposes. A different state of matter, Rob—it still has length, breadth and thickness—but a different flow of time.
"You follow me? Now, if we take a material body of this—call it secondary state—and place it in the same space with a body of our primary state, they can and do occupy that space without conflict at the same instant of time.
"Why? Ah Rob, it would take a keener mind than mine or yours to answer that, or to answer the why of almost anything. The knowledge we poor mortals have is infinitesimal compared to the knowledge we have not. I can conceive vaguely, however, that two primary bodies, placed in identical points of space and time would be moving through time at identical rates and thus stay together and conflict. Whereas, with a primary and secondary body, their differing time-flows would separate them after what we might call a mere infinitesimal instant of coincidence."
His gesture waved away that part of the subject. He rose to his feet. "I have particularized even more than I intended, Rob. Let me say now, only that the pellets in this little vial contain a chemical which acts upon the human organism in the way I have pictured. It alters the fundamental vibration upon which this substance—these bones, this flesh we call a body—this substance of my being, is built.
"Just a moment more, Rob, then you shall question me all you like. So much for the transmutation of organic substance. Inorganic substance—that table, my shirt, that glass of water—theoretically all of them could be transmuted as well. I have not, however, practically been able to accomplish that. But I have—invented, if you like, an inorganic substance which I can transmute. It is nameless; it is this."
He was coatless, and now he stripped off his white linen shirt. Like a bathing suit, he had on a low-cut, tight-fitting garment. It seemed a fabric thin as silk, yet I guessed that it was metallic, or akin to metal. A dull putty-color, but where the light struck it there was a gleam, a glow as of iridescence.
"This substance," he added, "I can—take with me." He indicated the wires, the battery if such it were. "By momentarily charging it, Rob, with the current I have stored here. It is not electrical—though related to it of course—everything is—our very bodies themselves—a mere form of what we call electricity."
He was disrobing; the gleaming garment fitted him from shoulder to thigh. About his waist was a belt with pouches; in the pouches small objects all of this same putty-colored substance.
I burst out, "This is all very well. But how—how will you get back?"
"The effect will wear off," he answered. "The tendency of all matter, Rob, is to return to its original state. I conceive also that in the case of the human organism, the mind—the will—to some extent may control it. Indeed I am not altogether sure but that the mind, properly developed, might control the entire transmutation. Perhaps in this secondary state, it can. I am leaving that to chance, to experimentation."
I said, "How long will you be gone?"
He considered that gravely. "Literally, Rob, there is no answer to that—but I know what you mean, of course. I may undergo a mental experience that will seem a day, a week, a month—measured by our present standards. But to you, sitting here waiting for me—" He shrugged. "By that clock there, an hour perhaps. Or five hours—I hope no more."
My mind was groping with all that he had said. I was confused. There was so much that I no more than vaguely half understood; so much that seemed just beyond the grasp of my comprehension. I seemed to have a thousand questions I would ask, yet scarce could I frame one of them intelligently. I said finally:
"You say you may be gone what will seem a day, yet by our clock here it will be only a few hours. This—This other state of existence then moves through time faster?"
"I conceive it so, yes."
"But then—are you going into the future, Will? Is that what it will be?"
He smiled, but at once was as grave as before. "Your mind is trying to reconcile two conditions irreconcilable. You may take an apple and try to add it to an orange and think you get two apple-oranges. But there is no such thing. Our future—let us call it that which has not yet happened to us but is going to happen. I cannot project myself into that. If I could—if I did—at once would the future be for me no longer the future, but the present.
"The conception is impossible. Or again—in this other state—I must of necessity exist always in the present. Nor can you compare them—reconcile one state of existence with the other." He stopped abruptly, then went on with his slow smile. "Don't you see, Rob, there are no words even, with which I can express what I am trying to make you realize. That being reclined there in the other room a while ago and watched us. Perhaps for what it conceived to be what we would conceive a day were we to experience it."
His smile turned whimsical. "The words become futile. Don't you see that? The future of that being is merely what has not yet happened to it. To compare that with our own consciousness is like trying to add an apple to an orange."
During all this Bee had sat watching us, listening to our talk, but had not spoken. And as, an hour before in the other room I had noticed her glancing fearsomely around, again now her gaze drifted away; and I heard her murmur.
"Oh, I hoped it would be gone—not come to us in here!"
We followed her gaze. Standing perhaps a foot lower than the floor of our room and slightly behind the side wall was that self-same spectral figure. The intent to watch us, to enter perhaps into a frustration of our plans, with which my imagination now endowed its purpose, made me read into its attitude a tenseness of line; an alertness, even a guarded wariness which had not seemed inherent to it before. Was this thing indeed aware of our purpose? Was it waiting for Wilton Grant to come into the shadows to meet it upon its own ground? With an equality of contact, was it then planning to set upon him?
Bee was murmuring, "It's waiting for you. Will, it's waiting for you to come—" Shuddering words of apprehension, of which abruptly she seemed ashamed for she checked them, going to the table where she began adjusting the apparatus.
"I'm coming," said Will grimly. "It will do well to wait, for I shall be with it presently." He stood for a moment before the thing, contemplating it silently. Then he turned away, turned his back to it; and a new briskness came to his manner.
"Rob, I'm ready. Bee knows exactly what we are to do. I want you to know also, for upon the actions of you two, in a measure depends my life. I shall sit here on the mattress. Perhaps, if I am more distressed than I anticipate, I shall lie down. Bee will have charge of the current. There will come a point in my departure when you must turn off the current, disconnect the wires from me. If I am able, I will tell you, or sign to you when that point is reached. If not—well then, you must use your own judgment."
"But I—I have no idea—" I stammered. Suddenly I was trembling. The responsibility thrust thus upon me seemed at that moment unbearable.
"Bee has," he interrupted quietly. "In general I should say you must disconnect when I have reached the point where I am—" He halted as though in doubt how to phrase it—"the point where I am half substance, half shadow."
To my mind came a mental picture which then seemed very horrible; but resolutely I put it from me.
"You're ready, Bee?" he asked.
"Quite ready, Will." She was counting out a number of the tiny pellets with hands untrembling. The woman in Bee was put aside; she stood there a scientist's assistant, cool, precise, efficient.
"I think I should like less light," he said; and he turned off all the globes but one. It left the room in a flat, dull illumination. He took a last glance around. The window sashes were up, but the shades were lowered. A gentle breeze from outside fluttered one of them a trifle. Across the room the spectre, brighter now, stood immobile. The clock marked one minute of ten.
"Good," said Will. He seated himself cross-legged in the center of the mattress. In an agony of confusion and helplessness I stood watching while Bee attached the four wires to the garment he wore. One on each of his upper arms, and about his thighs where the short trunks ended.
Again I stammered, "Will, is this—is this all you're going to tell us?"
He nodded. "All there is of importance.... A little tighter, Bee. That's it—we must have a good contact."
"I mean," I persisted, "when you are—are shadow, will we be able to see you?"
He gestured. "As you can see that thing over there, yes."
His very words seemed unavoidably horrid. Soon he would be—a thing, no more.
"Shall you stay here, Will, where we can see you?"
He answered very soberly, "I do not know. That, and many other things, I do not know. I will do my best to meet what comes."
"But you'll come back here—here to this room, I mean?"
"Yes—that is my intention. You are to wait here, in those chairs. One of you always awake, you understand—for I will need you, in the coming back."
There seemed nothing else I could ask, and at last the moment had come. Bee handed him the pellets, and held the glass of water. For one brief instant I had the sense that he hesitated, as though here upon the brink the human fear that lies inherent to every mortal must have rushed forth to stay his hand. But an instant only, for calmly he placed the pellets in his mouth and washed them down with the water.
"Now—the current, Bee."
His voice had not changed; but a moment after I saw him steady himself against the mattress with his hands; momentarily his eyes closed as though with a rush of giddiness, but then they opened and he smiled at me while anxiously I bent over him.
"All right—Rob." He seemed breathless. "I think—I shall lie down." He stretched himself at full length on his back; and with a surge of apprehension I knelt beside him. I saw Bee throw on the little switch. She stood beside the table, and her hand remained upon the switch. Her face was pale, but impassive of expression. Her gaze was on her brother and I think I have never seen such an alert steadiness as marked it.
A moment passed. The current was on, but I remarked unmistakably that no sound came from it. The room indeed had fallen into an oppressive hush. The flapping shades momentarily had stilled. Only the clock gave sound, like the hurried thumping of some giant heart, itself of all in the room most alive.
Wilton Grant lay quiet. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling; he had gone a trifle pale and moisture was on his forehead, but his breathing, though faster, was unlabored.
I could not keep silent. "You—all right, Will?"
At once his gaze swung to me. A smile to reassure me plucked at his parted lips. "All—right, yes." His voice a half-whisper, not stressed, almost normal; and yet it seemed to me then that a thinness had come to it.
Another moment. The putty-colored garment he wore had lost the vague sheen of its reflected light and was glowing with an illumination now inherent to it. A silver glow, bright like polished metal; then with a greenish cast as though phosphorescent. And then, did I fancy that its light, not upon it or within it, but behind it, showed the garment turning translucent?
I became aware now of a vague humming. An infinitely tiny sound—a throbbing hum fast as the wings of a hummingbird, near at hand, very clear, yet infinitely tiny. The battery—the current; and yet in a moment with a leaping of my heart, I knew it was not the current but a humming vibration from the body of Wilton Grant. A sense of fear—I have no memory adequately to name it—swept me. I rose hastily to my feet; as though to put a greater distance between us I moved backward, came upon a leather easy chair, sank into it, staring affrighted, fascinated at the body recumbent before me.
The change was upon it. A glow had come to the ruddy pink flesh of the arms and legs, bared chest, throat and face. The pink was fading, replaced, not by the white pallor of bloodlessness but by a glow of silver. A mere sheen at first; but it grew into a dissolving glow seeming progressively to substitute light for the solidity of human flesh.
And then I gasped. My breath stopped. For behind that glowing, impassive face I saw the solid outlines of the mattress taking form, saw the mattress through the face, the chest, the body lying upon it.
Wilton's eyes were closed. They opened now, and his arm and hand with a wraith-like quality come upon them, were raised to a gesture. The signal. I would have stammered so to Bee, but already she had marked it and shut the current off. And very quietly, unhurried, she bent over and disconnected the wires, casting them aside.
The humming continued; so faint, so rapid I might have fancied it was a weakness within my own ears. And presently it ceased.
Bee sat in the chair beside me. The body on the mattress was more than translucent now; transparent so that all the little tufts of the mattress-covering upon which it lay were more solidly visible than anything of the shadowy figure lying there. A shadow now; abruptly to my thought it was Wilton Grant no longer.
And then it moved. No single part of it; as a whole it sank gently downward, through the mattress, the floor, until a foot or so beneath, it came to rest. With realization my gaze turned across the room. The silent spectre was still there, standing beneath the floor, standing I realized, upon the same lower level where the shadow of Wilton Grant now was resting.
I turned back, saw Bee sitting beside me with white face staring at the mattress; and I heard myself murmur. "Is he all right do you think? He hasn't moved. Shouldn't he move? It's over now, isn't it?"
She did not answer. And then this wraith of Will did move. It seemed slowly to sit up; and then it was upright, wavering. I stared. Could I see the face of my friend? Could I mark this for the shadow of his familiar figure, garbed in that woven suit? It seemed so. And yet I think now that I was merely picturing my memory of him; for surely this thing wavering then before me was as formless, as indefinable, as elusive of detail as that other, hostile spectre across the room.
Hostile! It stood there, and then it too was moving. It seemed to sweep sidewise, then backward. Ah, backward! A thought came to me that perhaps now fear lay upon it. Backward, floating, walking or running I could not have told. But backward, beyond the walls, the house, smaller into the dimness of distance.
Was the shadow of Wilton Grant following it? I could not have said so. But it too was now beyond the room. Moving away, growing smaller, dimmer until at last I realized that I no longer saw it.
We were alone, Bee and I; alone to wait. The mattress at my feet was empty. I heard a sound. I turned. In the leather chair beside me Bee was sobbing softly to herself.