“Sit down,” she invited; “there’s nothing to do or see till Ace comes. Ive missed you, Hodge.”
I felt this was a dangerous remark, and wished I’d stayed far away from the workshop. I hooked my leg over a stool—there were no chairs—and coughed to hide the fact I was afraid to answer, Ive missed you too; and afraid not to.
“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says youre having difficulties.”
I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara at all or specifically for revealing something unheroic, I didnt stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance diluted my feeling of disloyalty for conversing with Barbara at all. Or it may be the old, long-established bond—I almost wrote, of sympathy, but it was so much more complex than the word indicates—was reawakened by proximity and put me in the mood to tell my troubles. It is even possible I had the altruistic purpose of fortifying Barbara against inevitable disappointment on a misery-loves-company basis. Be that as it may, I found myself pouring out the whole story.
She jumped up and took my hands in hers. Her eyes were gray and warm. “Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?” “Oh....” I was completely confused. “I ... uh....”
“The solution. The answer. The means. Look: now you can go back, back to the past in your own person. You can see everything with your own eyes instead of relying on accounts of what other people said happened.”
“But ... but—” “You can verify every fact, study every move, every actor. You can write history as no one ever did before, for youll be writing as a witness, yet with the perspective of a different period. Youll be taking the mind of the present, with its judgment and its knowledge of the patterns, back to receive the impressions of the past. It almost seems HX-1 was devised especially for this.”
There was no doubt she believed, that she was really and unselfishly glad her work could aid mine. I was overcome by pity, helpless to soften the disillusionment so soon to come and filled with an irrational hatred of the thing she had built and which was about to destroy her.
I was saved from having to mask my emotions by the arrival of her father, Ace, and Midbin. Thomas Haggerwells began tensely, “Barbara, Ace tells me you intend to try out this—this machine on yourself. I can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.” Midbin didnt wait for her to reply. I thought with something of a shock, Midbin has gotten old; I never noticed it. “Listen to me. There’s no point now in saying part of your mind realizes the impossibility of this demonstration and that it’s willing for you to annihilate yourself in the attempt and so escape from conflicts which have no resolution. Although it’s something you must be at least partly aware of. But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling with unknown natural laws—” Ace Dorn, who looked as strained as they in contrast to Barbara’s ease, growled, “Let’s go.”
She smiled reassuringly at us. “Please, Father, don’t worry; there’s no danger. And Oliver....”