Ray Bradbury, Henry Hasse
Pendulum
«I THINK,»; shrilled Erjas, «that this is our most intriguing discovery on any of the worlds we have yet visited!»;
His wide, green-shimmering wings fluttered, his beady bird eyes flashed excitement. His several companions bobbed their heads in agreement, the greenish-gold down on their slender necks ruffling softly. They were perched on what had once been amoving sidewalk but was now only a twisted ribbon of wreckage overlooking the vast expanse of a ruined city.
«Yes,»; Erjas continued, «it’s baffling, fantastic! It-it has no reason for being.»; He pointed unnecessarily to the object of their attention, resting on the high stone plaza a short distance away. «Look at it! Just a huge tubular pendulum hanging from that towering framework! And the machinery, the codger which must have once sent it swinging… I flew up there a while ago to examine it, but it’s hopelessly corroded.»;
«But the head of the pendulum!»; another of the bird creatures said awedly. «A hollow chamber-transparent, glassite — and that awful thing staring out of it….»;
Pressed close to the inner side of the pendulum head was a single human skeleton. The whitened skull seemed to stare out over the desolate, crumbling city as though regarding with amusement the heaps of powdery masonry and the bare steel girders that drooped to the ground, giving the effect of huge spiders poised to spring.
«It’s enough to make one shudder ? the way that thing grins! Almost as though?»;
«The grin means nothing!»; Erjas interrupted annoyedly. «That is only the skeletal remains of one of the mammal creatures who once, undoubtedly, inhabited this world.»; He shifted nervously from one spindly leg to the other, as he glanced again at the grinning skull. «And yet, it does seem to be almost ? triumphant! And why are there no more of them around? Why is he the only one… and why is he encased in that fantastic pendulum head?»;
«Wes hall soon know,»; another of the bird creatures trilled softly, glancing at their spaceship which rested amidst the ruins, a short distance away. «Or fleew is even now deciphering the strange writing in the book he salvaged from the pendulumhead. We must not disturb him.»;
«How did he get the book? I see no opening in that transparent chamber.»;
«The long pendulum arm is hollow, apparently in order to vacuum out the cell. The book was crumbling with age when Or fleew got it out, but he saved most of it.»;
«I wish he would hurry! Why must he?»;
«Shh! Give him time. Orfleew will decipher the writing; he has an amazing genius for alien languages.»;
«Yes. I remember the metal tablets on that tiny planetin the constellation?»;
«Here he comes now!»;
«He’s finished already!»;
«We shall soon know the story….»;
The bird creatures fairly quivered as Orfleew appeared in the open doorway of their spaceship, carefully carrying as heaf of yellowed pages. He waved to them, spread his wings and soared outward. A moment later he alighted beside his companions on their narrow perch.
«The language is simple,»; Orfleew told them, «and the story is a sad one. I will read it to you and then we must depart, for there is nothing we can do on this world.»;
They edged closer to him there on the metal strand, eagerly awaiting the first words. The pendulum hung very straight and very still on a windless world, the transparent head only a few feet above the plaza floor. The grinning skull still peered out as though hugely amused or hugely satisfied. Orfleew took one more fleeting look at it… then he opened the crumbling notebook and began to read.
MY NAME John Layeville. I am known as «The Prisoner of Time.»; People, tourists from all over the world, come to look at me in my swinging pendulum. School children, on the electrically moving sidewalks surrounding the plaza, stare at me in childish awe. Scientists, studying me, stand out there and train their instruments on the swinging pendulum head. Oh, they could stop the swinging, they could release me ? but now I know that will never happen. This all began as a punishment for me, but now I am an enigma to science. I seem to be immortal. It is ironic.
A punishment for me! Now, as through a mist, my memory spins back to the day when all this started. I remember I had found a way to bridge time gaps and travel into futurity. I remember the time device I built. No, it did not in any way resemble this pendulum ? my device was merely a huge box ? like affair of specially treated metal and glassite, with a series of electric rotors of my own design which set up conflicting, but orderly, fields of stress. I had tested it to perfection no less than three times, but none of the others in the Council of Scientists would believe me. They all laughed. And Leske laughed. Especially Leske, for he has always hated me.
I offered to demonstrate, to prove. I invited the Council to bring others ? all the greatest minds in the scientific world. At last, anticipating an amusing evening at my expense, they agreed.
I shall never forget that evening when a hundred of the world’s greatest scientists gathered in the main Council laboratory. Butthey had come to jeer, not to cheer. I did not care, as I stood on the platform beside my ponderous machine and listened to the amused murmur of voices. Nor did I care that millions of other unbelieving eyes were watching by television, Leske having indulged in a campaign of mockery against the possibility of time travel. I did not care, because I knew that in a few minutes Leske’s campaign would be turned into victory for me. I would set my rotors humming, I would pull the control switch ? and my machine would flash away into a time dimension and back again, as I had already seen it do three times. Later we would send a man out in the machine.
The moment arrived. But fate had decreed it was to be my moment of doom. Something went wrong, even now I do not know what or why. Perhaps the television concentration in the room affected the stress of the time- fields my rotors set up. The last thing I remember seeing, as I reached out and touched the main control switch, were the neat rows of smiling white faces of the important men seated in the laboratory. My hand came down on the switch….
Even now I shudder, remembering the vast mind ? numbing horror of that moment. A terrific sheet of electrical flame, greenish and writhing and alien, leaped across the laboratory from wall to wall, blasting into ashes everything in its path!
Before millions of television witnesses I had slain the world’s greatest scientists!
No, not all. Leske and myself and a few others who were behind the machine escaped with severe burns. I was least injured of all, which seemed to increase the fury of the populace against me. I was swept to a hasty trial, faced jeering throngs who called out for my death.
«Destroy the time machine,»; was the watchword, «and destroy this murderer with it!»;
Murderer! I had only sought to help humanity. In vain I tried to explain the accident, but popular resentment is a thing not to be reasoned with.
One day, weeks later, I was taken from my secret prison and hurried, under heavy guard, to the hospital room where Leske lay. He raised himself on one arm and his smouldering eyes looked at me. That’s all I could see of him, just his eyes; the rest of him was swathed in bandages. For a moment he just looked; and if ever I saw insanity, but a cunning insanity, in a man’s eyes, it was then.
For about ten seconds he looked, then with a great effort he pointed a bulging, bandaged arm at me.
