Miracle

In this episode, we continue to re-discover sci-fi short stories from the Golden Age of pulp magazines. "Miracle" from October 1948, written by Ray Cummings.
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Transcript

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Hi friends, and welcome to another episode of Forward Into the Past. I'm JC Rede, your host and narrator, and today we're still exploring our sci-fi roots with this story pulled from the pages of Astonishing Stories magazine published in October of 1942, simply entitled Miracle and written by Ray Cummings. Pulp Magazines, as has been mentioned many times in this podcast and indeed will be mentioned again and again. Truly filled a need in American literature by providing an outlet for up and coming authors that otherwise would never have been considered to be published. Names that are very well known today all got their start in the sci-fi pulps like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Azimov, and Ray Bradbury. Writers who eventually became editors of their own imprints like Lester Del Rey and Donald Wollheim, and names that you will hopefully become familiar with, thanks to this podcast like Henry Cutner murray Lester and the author who wrote today's story, Ray Cummings. Ray Cummings was born in New York City in 1887, and he is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of the science fiction genre. And his specialty in that field was, as we will see time travel. His first short story, the Girl in the Golden Atom, was written in 1919, first appearing serialized in the Pulp Magazine All Story magazine. He is credited with writing this very well known phrase. Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. It is frequently attributed to actual science geniuses like Albert Einstein, but it was actually created by a different type of genius, as you will no doubt see, as we rediscover his time travel, short story called Miracle. Miracle by Ray Cummings. But how can you possibly know that time traveling has never been done? The chemist protested Someone from our future may have gone into the past many times. I should think they would've created quite a commotion. The lawyer observed. Wouldn't we have heard of it from our historical records? Oh, of course the chemist was smiling now. We probably have history tells of many important occasions on which a vision appeared a miraculous presence such as Joan of Ark, for instance, or the Angel of Mons. or the appearance of the sun, God, to the Aztecs. I get your point. One of the other men interjected. You think that there might have been a time traveler who materialized just long enough to take a look. And the superstitious natives took him for a God. Why not? That's probably just what would happen! Young Allen Dane sat in the corner of his grandfather's laboratory listening to the argument of the group of men. He was well over six feet in height, A sun bronzed, crisply, blonde young Viking, beside him sat Ruth Vincent, his fiance, a slim girl of 20. Alan's heart was pounding. Somehow it seemed as though this bantering talk of time, traveling were something momentous to him, something requiring a great and irrevocable decision. Then abruptly old Professor Dane held up his hand and quite casually said, what you do not know, gentlemen, is that for half of my life I have been working to discover the secret of time travel. His audience was suddenly tense. Professor Dane was loved and respected by each of them and his word in his chosen field of physics was final. If he said a thing could be done, There was no mistake. The chemist broke the silence. You've succeeded. He asked. You've, you've made experiments that show. The old man shook his head. No. No, not yet, but I am close to it. I know I am. He was staring at some infinitely distant thing beyond the room in which they were sitting, staring as though he were trying to penetrate the grim curtain of the future or the past, almost as though to himself, he went on. I've often wondered what made me work on this thing. All these years, it's been like an inner urge driving me a, a pre-ordained destiny that is making me accomplish something. Metaphysics, the lawyer interrupted. Do you believe in predestination? Well, I believe there is a plan. Professor Dane said simply, but what it is and what my part in it may be, I don't know. That's the queer part. I know instinctively that I must do something, something connected with traveling through time. Some task I must accomplish, but what it is and how I am to do it. I don't know. Yet. I feel that if the moment came, I would know what to do. He was gently smiling now at Alan and his fiance, but perhaps I am too old. I have thought that this is true. He continued. So I sent for my grandson, and as you see, he brought his fiance here with him. The old professor was staring at the startled Ruth Vincent now. And gentleman. He added earnestly meeting her has somehow seemed to intensify that feeling. There is something that must be accomplished in the past or the future, and it concerns Ruth Vincent. Alan's hands were gripping the arms of his chair. These things which his grandfather had been feeling, he was feeling them. Now, this urge, this apprehension that something was left undone. I am going to ask Alan now to carry on for me. His grandfather finished abruptly. He is young and strong, educated and able. I want him to feel the things I've been feeling. Oh, I do Allen Exclaimed. I'll do what I can grandfather. I have to do it even if I didn't want to. Don't you see? I feel the same urge. The gray moving shadows all around. Alan Dane were blurred. Formless. He was seated hunched on what had been the ground. It was the ground no longer, but now an undulate gray surface that was underneath him supporting his weight, but imperceptible to his touch. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything but the racking strain of his headlong drive through the vast infinities of time. He alone of all things in this great gray monochrome of scene seemed substantial. Everything else flowed, invisibly away into the emptiness. The thin skeleton of the metal headgear clamped on his forehead so that his temples throbbed the wires to his wrists and ankles were luminous, glowing strands. The electoral current from the batteries lashed across his back was throbbing and pulsing into every fiber of his tingling body. Alan shifted restlessly and glanced at the little time dial on his wrist. The needle was creeping slowly back, showing a hurdling progression through time to the past. He closed his strained eyes. Glad of the relief from the impossible attempt to focus his gaze on the weirdly distorted scene before him. Where should he stop and what would he find? Alan's imagination went back to the scene when his grandfather had first told others of his fantastic creation that would permit voyaging through the years. What had the old man said then? Something about a purpose. Alan was almost on fire with the consciousness of that set purpose. Now, something within him, something that could not be denied, was guiding his hand on the control switch of the time traveler. He was voyaging backward into time, so strange a thing, and so simple in fundamental conception. He recalled how his grandfather had explained it back in the laboratory. Everything had been created at once. On the scroll of time, everything is permanent. We live our infinitesimal lifetime. Progressing forward through ordained, predetermined events. All the past and all the future exist, but we can only be aware of that forward moving instant, which we call the present and old professor, Dan's fundamental conception certainly could now be considered finally proven with his grandson actually applying it to really travel through time. He had thought that all material things strewn in sequence on the scroll of time were of different physical characteristics, different states of matter, a, a different vibration rate, so that to change the vibratory frequency of any object would be to change its position. On the time scroll. Alan had started from his grandfather's laboratory near Riverside Drive in Midtown, New York. The date had been May of 1942. His watch set above the other time recording instrument on his wrist, told him that his start had been made only a scant half hour before by his personal consciousness of time. How long ago, how far away that seemed now. There had been a reeling of his sense, the soundless clapping of swiftly alternating light and darkness at the shadowy laboratory windows. Then as his rate of change accelerated the days and nights merged into this flat dead emptiness of gray. Then the house had abruptly dwindled, thinned out, and disappeared from around him. He had reached a time era before its construction, still with greater speed. The shadowy shifting outlines of the great city were in motion, shrinking into smaller and smaller buildings, narrower, shorter roads, more shadowy open spaces. Appeared then were replaced by towering giants of trees. 1850 he reached and passed. Then 1800 and 1750. The city had been long gone by then. The little village of British New York was a shrunken settlement of a few thousand persons clustered down about the battery four miles from where Alan Dane was. He could see that he was poised now on what seemed a little wooded hill sloping down to the broad Hudson River, a few hundred feet away. It was a strange transition indeed. And yet, to Alan Dane, the strangeness of his own emotions seemed not the least of it. Three years of his life had passed since that night when he had promised his grandfather, he would carry on the experiments three years in which he had lost his grandfather, but gained a wife and son, Ruth Vincent had married him and together they had worked on this fragile thing that he bore now on his back. Fragile, but more potent in a strange, incredible way than any other device. Alone, Alan would've failed. Even with Ruth helping him, he could not have hoped to succeed so soon, but his grandfather had left researches only a hair's breath from completion, and the young couple had finished them. Even so, the thing had come almost by accident. Alan was far from sure that he could, again, compound the strange, unstable mixture of rare chemicals from which his nameless alloys were made. Alloys, which formed the plates in the time batteries, but at least he had enough for this one brief trip. Alan was curiously sure that this one trip was all he needed to make that after it was done, the curious driving compulsion that had seized him three years before would leave him. His task completed. Alan glanced again at the time dial. The transition was slowing. Now, he had hardly been aware that a moment ago he had decreased the current 16 99, 98, 97. The retardation was progressive. It was almost as though the apparatus itself were dictating his stopping point, and then the date 1650 flashed into his mind. That was when he had to stop. It was as though he had always known it. Was this a cave here at his back? He was aware that he was sitting at its entrance, facing the shadowy declivity and the deep woods, through which he could see the broad gray river. An instant later, he shoved the lever to shut off the current. The shock of the halt made his senses swoop. Then as he studied with the ground solid under him. He was aware that it was night. The hum of the throbbing electoral current was gone, but there was still a pulsing note in the air. The throbbing voice of the deep forest through which the river was shimmering pallid in the moonlight. Alan staggered to his feet, stated himself a shaft of moonlight was on him and abruptly in the dimness of the cave, he heard a sound. A man's muttered, astonished, exclamation, blended with a startled high gasp of a girl. As he turned, he saw them. The man was hardly more than a boy. 20 perhaps. And garbed. Curiously in gray blouse and brown baggy pantaloons, knitted brown stockings and thick, clumsy shoes. The girl was even younger. A slim little thing in a quaint, bodiced dress with her braided flaxen hair tumbling forward over her shoulders in Double Strand. Terrified. Wide-eyed with utter astonishment. They mutely gaped at Alan. Well, he said it last. Do you speak English? I'm sorry, I I don't speak Dutch. That's your language, isn't it? This is Dutch, new Amsterdam. He checked himself inside. The Dutch boy and girl were gulping, numbly, staring at him. they didn't speak English. Of course, it would've been too much of a coincidence, but so welcome. If they had I'm sorry, Alan went on. Not hopefully. Look here, I, I don't wanna frighten you. I only wanna know. He took a step forward. For a second the two looked utterly incredulous as though disbelieving the evidence of their eyes, and then they shrank away with terror on their white faces. The youth whirled, the girl behind him, confronted Alan. What? What do you want? He faltered. It was English, curiously and quaintly intoned. Are you real? Where do you come from? The lad was recovering rapidly. You speak English, but not like the traders or my teacher. What are you? Alan tried to smile. I won't hurt you. He repeated. I'm a friend, a, a visitor from a well, from a far off place. It would never do to say that he came from 1942. Already, they were staring at him as though he were mad huddled back against the cave of the wall. Abruptly behind Alan, there was a whizz, a thud, and the cave was lighted by a flickering yellow glare. It made the youth momentarily overlook his astonishment, his terror at Alan, so that he gasped to the girl. Oh, Greta a fire arrow. They are out there. Just as we feared, Alan turned. An Indian fire arrow had whizzed into the cave mouth from the forest outside. It quivered sticking upright in the guano floor of the cave. A little torch of flame with thick resinous smoke surging up from it. With a side wise kick, alan's foot knocked it loose and he trampled on it. He swung around with a leap so that he was close to his cowering Companions. Indians are out there. He demanded. Is that what you were afraid of before you saw me? The girl was coughing with the drifting smoke, already choking her a little in the fetid air of the cave. Yes, the lad muttered. That's it. They saw us in the woods as we came up from the Bowery. So we ran in here. Another arrow came, flaming. It barely missed Alan, struck against the rock wall and fell nearby, still flaming. He and the lad rushed at it. They stamped it out together. You have no guns. Alan demanded. Guns? To shoot with to fight our way out of here. Oh, not, not guns on a ship. Uh, you mean fouling pieces? N n no, we have none. Despite his terror at the flaming arrows of the Indians outside of the cave, the frightened Dutch boy was forcing himself to answer Alan's questions. But still, both he and the girl were incredulously staring at their miraculously appearing companion. Greta was showing me the way up from the town. The Dutch boy was murmuring. She has a boat at the riverbank. Then I was going up with the tide, uh, in the fog last night, an English frigate got past our forts at the bowling green. It is up the river now, and Stuyvesant has. Under Alan's urging questions, the boy and girl swiftly explained. This was a Dutch boy born here in New Amsterdam, but he had lived most of his life in London. His name was Peter Van Saant. She was Greta Dyckman. Her father was one of Governor's Stuyvesant Burgers of the Town Council. The English fleet was here off the hook, and yesterday Nichols, Emissary of the Duke of York had come ashore to demand that the Dutch surrender the city, henceforth, according to the demands of the Duke, this would not be new Amsterdam, but New York. A British settlement with a destiny of greatness here in the new world. As he mutely listened, Alan's mind again swept to his own time world of 1942, this same space. And he envisioned the huge city of 1942 when this cave and forested glade were mid Manhattan, where giant buildings towered and the great ramp of the automobile highway bordered the river. Another flaming arrow came whizzing into the mouth of the cave. Peter rushed for it, stamped it out. The woods beyond the cave mouth now were lighted with torch glare and echoing with the war whoops of the natives, emboldened because no fouling pieces of the trapped pale faces were exploding to hurl lead at them. Outside the cave arrows were continuously striking. The brush was on fire with a red yellow glare that came in here and painted Alan and his two confused, terrified companions with its lurid sheen. I've got to get up the river to that frigate. The lad was muttering. If I got killed here, or even Grether got killed, what matter, but I've got to reach the frigate. He was a secret emissary of Stuyvesant, this momentous night sent to the English commander of the frigate sent because he spoke English so well and they would trust him. Stuyvesant will yield to the Duke of York in a day or two. Peter was swiftly saying, but he is afraid the frigates man will land and attack the city from the north. If they do that, stuyvesant's prestige before his own people will make him fight. Without it he will try to drive a bargain for his own self-respect and then yield. I am to tell the frigates commander that if only he will, but half patience and wait. Stuyvesant will surrender. Upon that mission tonight, might depend the whole course of history in the new world. There's no back way out of here. Demanded, Alan? No. Just this one entrance. And if we should try to run out there into the glare. We'd get arrows in us. Alan finished wryly. Those natives are pretty close now. The shouts of the natives were audible, where they crouched in the bush just beyond the line of fire. They were whooping with anticipatory triumph and showering the cave mouth with their flaming missiles. Acrid yellow smoke was welling into the cave in clouds. Peter had shoved Greta to the floor where the air so far was a little pure. He too was coughing and Alan felt the clutch of the resin smoke in his own throat. To stay here another five or 10 minutes would be death. If only his time traveling mechanism would take more than one person, but it would not. He himself was safe, of course. He had taken a step toward the cave mouth and abruptly he recoiled as an arrow whizzed narrowly past his shoulder. No, nothing safe about this, and then he knew what he must try to do. You two stay here just a few minutes. He said swiftly. Keep down by the floor, both of you. The air's still much better down there. I'm going away, but I'll be back. He gazed down at them from his stalwart six foot height as they crouched terrified at his feet. He was smiling a little as his fingers shoved the lever of the time mechanism on his chest to the first stop. He could see the astonished horror and awe on their faces as slowly he faded and vanished before them. A little movement forward in time. Just about 24 hours. The blurred and shadowy cave briefly was filled with daylight and then with the darkness of night again. Alan switched off the current. Night was here, deep and silent enshrouding the forest. No war. Whoops. No glare of flaming arrows and burning brush that had been last night. From the empty cave ,alan walked slowly out into the woods. A northward vista of the Broad River for a moment was visible. A little blob was out there in the river. An English frigate awaiting the outcome of the parlay of Nichols, Emissary of the Duke of York with Governor Stuyvesant, Alan selected a flat topped rock, which stood about a hundred feet off to one side of the cave mouth, a rock whose top was some 20 feet above the surrounding rocks and thickets. He climbed it and stood on. Its summit. If only this would work. Despite his efforts at calmness, he was shuddering inside, not for his own safety. Was it for his wife and their little son out there in 1942? an absurd thought, but somehow it was turning him cold with apprehension. He set his tiny time dial for the moment of his departure from the smoke-filled cave last night and turned the current on again, 24 hours backward into time, a retrogression of that same swift daylight again. Then the previous dawn swiftly fading into night. Again, his time movement stopped and the forest sprang into ringing war whoops and crackling. Yellow red glare of torch light and burning brush. On top of the little Butte, Alan stood poised. An amazing figure he came out of nothingness, solidifying before the astounded eyes of the stricken natives. The war, whoops, died into a tense, terrified silence. To Alan it was a breathless moment of apprehension. His fingers went to the time lever alert to shove it if necessary, and then in the wave of silence, which flooded the pallid Forest glade, he flung out his arms. Drawn to his full height with arms outstretched as though in benediction. He stood gazing down upon the silent natives. A pale cathedral shaft of moonlight was filtering through the overhead branches, and it struck upon him, illumined him with its eerie glow. The tense moment passed. The natives, their war painted bodies glistening in the glare of the burning brush were all silently staring. There seemed a hundred or more of them. Then one of them with a faint awed cry, flung himself, prostrate with forehead to the ground in terrified homage to this shining God of the rock who had appeared so suddenly .And then they were all prostrate in groveling worship until one of them who might have been their leader abruptly leaped to his feet and dashed away through the thickets. The others in another second were up after him. It was a frightened scramble, a terrified rush to escape the wrath of this stalwart God who so silently was poised above them in the forest. For a moment, the woods resounded with the cries in the tramp of escaping natives distant cries until at last. There was only silence. Alan leaped from the rock and dashed for the burning brush outside of the cave mouth if only he had calculated his time correctly. Then at the cave entrance, Greta and Peter appeared. His arm held her as she sagged against him with the yellow red glare painting them and the turgid smoke swirling around them. Here I'll carry her, Alan exclaimed. He caught the girl up in his arms, a slim, frail little thing, fighting in terror with him for an instant, and then relaxing. Peter, staggered after them, as Alan led the way down into the silent forest where the night air was pure and all the fire and smoke were above them with the silent, shimmering river gleaming there ahead. You're better now? He murmured to the girl. Yes. Yes I am. All right. Oh, who, what are you? He did not answer. Holding her in his arms, suddenly made him think of Ruth out there waiting for him in 1942, and a new apprehension struck at him. Would his time current last to get him back home? He was not using it now, but still he knew the volatile chemicals in the batteries were subject to evaporation. He set little Greta on her feet. Your boat is near here. He demanded Oh yes. Right at the bank. Well, you find it for Peter. Start him up for the frigate, and then you get back home. Yes. I, I will. It is not far To the north stockade. They were both staring at him. Confused, numbed with awe. I. We must. Thank you. Peter Muttered. We saw the Indians as they fled. Oh, that's all right. Glad to do it. But I've, well, I've, I've gotta go away. Now I've gotta get back to where, where I came from. Then Greta took a step toward him. Oh, please, who, what are you? This thing you have done for us? Alan was gently smiling. Hard to explain. You better just call it a miracle. He said his finger pressed the time lever. He could see Peter grip the girl as they shrank away with terror staring at him while slowly he faded into nothingness. May, 1942 in a dim, quiet room of the New York Historical Society, alan sat pouring over an old Dutch Chronicle of New Amsterdam, and then he found what he was after, an account of Stuyvesant's Surrender to the Duke of York. It was a modern English translation of an account by someone who had lived in the little Dutch city. Alan read it, awed. Here was mentioned of young Peter Van Saant. Who had gone up the river to the Queen Catherine, the English Frigate, which had slipped past the forts in the fog that night, and it told of Greta Dyckman, who had shown him the way to where her rowboat was hidden, and then the miracle. Greta Dyckman and Peter Van Saant. So the Chronicle stated, had been attacked by Indians that night. They had taken refuge in a cave where a great shining presence in the guise of a strange man had come and frightened away the Indians. He had led Peter and Greta to safety and then had vanished. Silently alan left the historical society. Why had it seemingly been his destiny to rescue that Dutch boy and girl? That strange urge, which both he and his grandfather before him had felt so strongly. Why was that? Van Saant? Why, that suggested the name Vincent. The one Dutch and the other, just its English modernized equivalent. Alan hurried to the genealogical room at the public library, and there he found it. Ruth's family, the Vincent, and before that the Van Saants. Then he came to 1656. The marriage of Peter Van Sand to Mistress Greta Dykeman. Alan sat numbly staring in awe. If they had died in that smoke-filled cave. This son of theirs recorded here as Hans Vasant born 1657, would never have been born, nor any of his descendants. No. Ruth Vincent now in 1942 and no little son of hers and Allen. Alan was smiling to himself, a whimsical, odd smile. He certainly had had no cause to be apprehensive that his mission back into time would fail. It was ordained, predestined. A million events down from Peter and Greta to Ruth were recorded with his own action fitting into them. Nothing else was possible. Miracle there is so much that none of us will ever understand. Well gang, that concludes another thrilling story from the pages of the past. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, please consider taking the time to rate and review the show. It does wonders to help get this podcast in front of new people. And of course, if you like the show, I would really appreciate you becoming a monthly supporter of the show for about the cost of a Starbucks run. You can support me in providing stories like this one from fading into obscurity and ensuring that the work of these authors will remain known and celebrated. Okay, time to go once again. Friends. Thank you for listening. Keep sharing the stories. Be a good human Bye for now.