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.