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  “You wondering—along what line?” I wanted to know, understanding perfectly that I would get the story in Doody’s own good time.

  “Ah, that’s a secret,” he evaded amusedly. “Seriously, though, Johnny, I’ll tell you the tale, and we’ll see whether it doesn’t evoke some speculation on your part—not overly pleasant, some of it. Push the signal for a waiter and order more champagne, Johnny, so they won’t be considering giving us the respectfully firm send-off; and I’ll give you the straight of it.”

  It seems that Doody, on his last safari into the dark hinterlands of the unexplored aeons, had decided to try a longer jump across time than he ever had made before. It happened that on a previous excursion into one of the odd nooks and corners of chronology, he had had an intriguing little chat with a savant of the time, by name, I believe, Rudnuu Something-or-Other—the surname being placed first—who belonged to a period which Doody estimated in the neighborhood of 13,000 A. D. (They had no system of dates reconcilable with ours, and their records of the elder civilizations of the Indo-European and Neo-European cycles were incomplete and unreliable.) This fellow, who was something of a philosopher and historical student as well as an important member of the technocratic government of his era, was frankly worried about the future of the human race.

  In Rudnuu’s day, eleven thousand years from our own, the civilization of the machine had advanced so far on Earth that there was no longer need for men to labor, with muscle or with mind. Briefly, the worldwide society of abundance had come at last into being; and, as the result of every culture which eliminates natural selection by permitting the survival of all, humanity was swiftly going to pot.

  Of course, that was nothing new; it has never been new. It is the old, old cycle of man—hardship, ingenuity, civilization, ease, degeneracy, hardship again.

  But in the fourteenth millennium the mechanical refinement of life had risen to such a high that the unescapable collapse must be more than catastrophic. The scientist-leader believed that it would be final; that mankind would follow many another dominant breed into the long oblivion of extinction. Unchecked, morbid mutation, without selection, was precipitating the race into a bottomless slough of physical and mental decay.

  Scientist Rudnuu had enough curiosity—a quality well-nigh unheard of in his day—to wonder, with a touch of wistfulness, what reasoning race would inherit the Earth when man was gone. Whatever that future breed might be, it must develop from one of two definite groups: either from among the few surviving wild species, which by tenacity and cunning had held their own on the outskirts of human civilization, or from among the tamed animals which man had continued to rear through all these ages for pets or servants, such as dogs and cats and some of the apes.

  Even now the members of those groups were far better fitted to rule than decadent humanity. Fierce and quick and clever the wild things had grown, driven by the life struggle of existence in unnoticed crevices and hiding places of a world monopolized by man; strong and sharp-sighted and intelligent the beasts of man had become, bred through the hundreds of centuries for physical and mental perfection. Strong new races, lacking only the skillful hands and the tools of fire and metal to push man off the Earth and claim it for their own.

  “So, then,” said Rudnuu, with a shrug of defeat accepted sadly yet without bitterness, “the end is drawing near.”

  The upshot of the scientist’s aeration of his views was that Nick Doody, in a hotel room in Brooklyn on a gray evening of 1976, set the simple adjustment of his absurd little instrument and closed its single switch. At once his three-dimensional being in space no longer existed; its four-dimensional counterpart, tenuous, fantastic, and unreal by human standards, was swept away along the world line of the Earth, rushing faster and yet faster, like a fleeting phantom, past the rise of empires and the fall of peoples, past the births and deaths of four hundred generations, to come to a final stop at a point twenty thousand years in our future—nine thousand years beyond the day of Doody’s gloomily prophetic friend.

  Though one is unconscious of the flight through time, the sensation, as the synthetic extension through the fourth dimension collapses once more into normal space, is one of inexpressible relief. Doody, gasping and dizzy, sank down upon a heavy carpet of moss and rested for a time, his breathing becoming more even and his eyes refocusing on this unknown future world.

  What had been a blurred gold-and-green haze before then became the sunlit summer verdure of a great forest, a forest that was the work of ages. Giant trees, with spreading limbs and twisted roots that clutched the earth protectively, rose on all sides to support the green, leafy ceiling overhead, shutting out vision; the hard, solid surface which supported his back, but which now was becoming painful to his spine and shoulder blades, was the rough bark of a massive trunk with the gnarled branches of an aged oak.

  Somewhat giddily, Doody scrambled to his feet once more and stared around him. In all directions nothing was apparent but the primeval forest, hardly an insect song stirring the still, sultry air of the midsummer noonday. It had been autumn when he closed the switch; but that signified nothing. Nevertheless—unless the world lines had become unthinkably tangled—he should still be on Long Island. But if this was Long Island, real-estate values had evidently suffered a sharp decline since the late twentieth century—to say nothing of Rudnuu’s nearer day, when from the Catskills to the Susquehanna had stretched the great world city.

  “Well!” remarked Doody under his breath. “So the old boy was right, after all, and the human race has handed in its checks.” It was easy to believe that, there in the virgin woodland, seeing no trace of human life and knowing what Doody knew. He shook his head to dispel disgust; he had preferred to think that mankind was made of sterner stuff.

  Quickly and efficiently, he made certain that the equipment he always carried on such expeditions—a camera, flashlight, camp ax, and automatic pistol—was still with him and ready for use. Also, with a trace of gingerness, he felt the special inside pocket where, just in case of emergencies, he generally packed a pineapple—not the Hawaiian kind.

  On consideration, he unfastened the little, sharp-edged ax, for use in blazing a trail as he explored these woods farther. If he could not find his initial location again for the return to his own time, he might find himself in any one of a number of awkward spots—under the wheels of a motor car, or in someone’s boudoir.

  Doody strolled away down the gentle, tree-covered slope, with the vague idea of eventually reaching the ocean shore which could not be far away. Dead leaves crackled, shockingly loud, beneath his feet at intervals, and birds twittered in fright and fluttered confusedly away from the branches where they had been drowsing in the shady heat; yet as he proceeded, perhaps because he himself was the child of a highly advanced civilization, he could not shake off the illusion that this whole pleasant woodland was merely an extensive municipal park, or could he suppress a guilty feeling whenever he knocked a gleaming chip or two out of a tree trunk as he passed by. Objectively, he noted that the forest was entirely devoid of such common but galling annoyances as tangled and unlovely undergrowth, poison oak and ivy, and thorny trees and bushes; tall, graceful ferns and leafy shrubbery gave it an almost cared-for appearance. Of course, the whole Earth had been purified of such useless and troublesome flora many thousands of years ago, the planet turned by science into an Eden for the pleasure of a declining, luxurious race that—apparently—was gone.

  Still, Doody glanced up hastily when, just as he was about to gash the straight, round trunk of a particularly fine Norway spruce, he heard a twig snap in the nearer bushes. His subconscious still half expected to behold a wrathful park policeman and be summarily pinched for trespassing, wanton vandalism, and wholesale destruction of public property; but the half a dozen warlike, seminaked figures advancing toward him at a swift trot looked like no policemen Doody had ever been arrested by.

  They were short but well-proportioned and splendidly muscled figures, clad
in clothing which even when new had been scanty, but which none the less informed Doody’s alert eye that their people had invented—or retained—the knowledge of the loom and weaving. More immediately important, they brandished wicked-looking spears and knives, knowingly fashioned of gleaming bronze. And that, in turn, meant a tremendous past of evolution through the use of wood, of stone, of metal—or an equally long background of degeneration.

  But these people did not look like degenerates; they resembled more an idealist’s conception of the Noble Savage. That idea, of course, was fantastic; even nine thousand years could hardly have wiped out the corruption, the decadence, the utter decay of mind and body that had marked Rudnuu’s machine civilization. This must be a new stock—but from where?

  The leader of the little band, a powerful, stocky fellow with a mane of lank, uncombed red-brown hair that mingled with his great beard to fall to his heavily muscled shoulders, pressed forward before the rest to approach Doody, who stood erect, shoulders thrown back and head haughtily high, waiting with an immobility which he hoped was impressive—his right forefinger meantime crooked tensely about the trigger of his loaded automatic, where it rested in his pocket with the muzzle pointed toward the savage. The latter just might try to use the sharp, bronze-headed javelin in his hairy hand, which would prove that he thought Doody, as a visiting god, a failure; but a touch of the finger would send three .45-caliber explosive slugs at that formidable-looking head man, and Doody would at least make a name for himself as a very dangerous sort of devil!

  The barbaric leader paused before the tall stranger, half crouching as he stared; he fidgeted for an uncomfortable moment, then sank slowly to his knees in the grass at his sandaled feet, bowing his shaggy head in sudden humility.

  His next move startled even Doody, who had had previous experience in godhead far back in the icy Pleistocene. Carefully the kneeling savage laid his long-hafted spear crosswise on the earth before the unmoving Doody, and beside it his broad-bladed dagger of hammered bronze.

  Evidently these people took their gods seriously; sullen yet awed, the six remaining hunters advanced one by one, similarly to do reverence and unburden themselves of their weapons. Some of them bore a.quite inclusive equipment for war or the chase; when the impromptu disarmament program was finished, a sprawling heap of spears, daggers, and short, leaf-bladed bronze swords, as well as a couple of heavy stone-headed axes, lay on the ground at Doody’s feet. He was uncertain of his part in this little ritual; if they expected him to carry all those away, he was afraid he wasn’t equal to the job.

  The leader arose, spread both calloused hands above his head, palms outward—the old, old gesture of peace—and spoke, in a voice which was gruffly tremulous, a gutturally monosyllabic tongue.

  “It’s all Sanskrit to me, old boy,” said Doody, shaking his head half amusedly as he became aware of the incongruity of his position—the anachronistic traveler from the forgotten past, receiving deific worship from the uncultured children of the far future in that little, leaf-shaded forest clearing. But an instant later he was shocked and appalled as the savage, apparently misinterpreting his mere gesture of negation, flinging himself frantically to the ground and pressed his bearded face into the soft leaf mold, his hands and body quivering in abject terror. It was quite plain that he conceived the mysterious avatar to have denied his homage, and believed himself in peril of instant destruction.

  At that moment Doody thought of an article which he should have remembered before—the convenient little telepathic mechanism which Rudnuu, back in the fourteenth millennium, had called a “translator,” and which even now nestled in Doody’s inside coat pocket. Hastily fumbling for the flat little cylinder of the device, he unfolded its three thin, silvery aluminum grid plates, equivalent to the earphones of a radio headset, and slipped them over his head, sides and back; the vibration given off by the apparatus, which derived its feeble energy from the pulsation of the veins in the temples on which it pressed, hypersensitized the language centers of the human brain to such an extent that, with a little concentration, Doody could address the savages in their own idiom, and their words, coming to his ears, would be resolved by his brain into English terms and phrases.

  At the moment he wished ardently for an all-purpose telepathor, which would enable him to read the thoughts of his new acquaintances—an achievement which could be very useful. However, one cannot have everything.

  “Ah-poonay—rise,” so commanded Doody in a deeply impressive voice. The rapport linking of his mind with the linguistic centers of his listeners’ brains brought the alien words easily to his lips. “I will not harm any of you.”

  Tremblingly, abashedly, the seven kneeling warriors clambered to their feet and stood facing Doody in obvious unquiet—half a dozen fierce, mighty hunters of the woods, any one of whom, given a hold, could practically have torn the man of the twentieth century apart. Yet their glances were sidelong, and they fidgeted before him like small boys caught throwing spit-balls in school. Doody was surprised, although gratified. Most primitive races have at least a modicum of healthy doubt respecting their gods—enough to make them somewhat wary of accepting to readily anyone representing himself as such.

  “Take your weapons without fear,” he said reassuringly; then added, as an inspired afterthought, “I do not need them; I have means of slaying my enemies far more potent.”

  The savage leader advanced a step hesitantly, his shoulders hunched as if to ward off a blow, and knelt again to fumble with jerky fingers at the pile of arms.

  “That we know, O Man,” he faltered fearfully, eyes on the ground. “We know that your lightning strikes dead whomever you will.”

  Doody himself was slightly thunderstruck at the moment; his jaw dropped as he stared at the seven sturdy, humbly bowed figures before him. “Man,” the savage had called him! If they did not believe him a god, why did they submit to him?

  He made his voice steady, confident, as he said, not daring to make any inquiries for fear of betraying a lack of divine omniscience—one of the great drawbacks to being a deity among primitive peoples—“You must take me to your village at once.” Since the translator told him that they had a word for village, he knew they must have villages.

  “At once, O Man.” The leader repeated the mystifying term, which he pronounced as if it were a title of honor. “We will take you to Kuvurna, and you shall speak with him.”

  “Who is Kuvurna?” demanded Doody, unable to suppress the question this time. “Your-chief—king?”

  The eyes of the barbarian opened wide in obvious surprise, which he with equal obviousness endeavored to mask. Those eyes were large and brown in color, Doody noticed, with a curious wistful expression—hardly as fierce and bold as the eyes of an independent primitive man should be. “Do you not know who Kuvurna is? He is the Lord. He is our master, who rules over our village and over us all.”

  This was a shock, because it sounded very much like competition. But Kuvurna could be dealt with when the question of Kuvurna came up. “Lead on!” said Doody.

  As he trudged northward through the parklike woods in the midst of his barbarically armed escort, which moved in a subdued, respectful silence, Doody found time to notice the curious uniformity displayed by these people. They were of even stature, about five feet six or seven; their hair and eyes were always reddish-brown; different, he thought, from any hair or eyes that he had ever seen before, yet somehow vaguely familiar. Their skin was quite white, though browned by the sun to which it was largely exposed. They were strangely different, less noisy and garrulous than any savages whom Doody had ever met before, utterly unlike the hairy Paleolithic brutes who had wanted to make living sacrifices to him forty thousand years before—yet for some odd reason he could not rid himself of the nagging conviction that somewhere he had seen these people before.

  “Time traveling gets a man mixed up like the dickens,” he growled to himself in English, passing a hand through his own curly black hair.

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nbsp; The village huddled about the base of a low, partially tree-clad hill; the ocean glinted, barely visible, beyond the slope on which it lay. It was about what you might expect of a backward bronze-age people—a squalid, degraded-looking assemblage of huts, built in this case of fairly substantial logs and timbers, in the manner of early American blockhouses, but with straw-thatched roofs, such as one still finds once in a while on European peasant cottages. The size of the dwellings clearly indicated that, like Dyak long houses, they were meant to hold several families.

  The thatch, of course, meant an agricultural community rather than a hunting tribe; and, indeed, fields of tasseled maize were apparent beyond the village on the seaward slope of the island. For meat, however, they still depended on wild game, as was evidenced by the hunting party which Doody had encountered, and the fact that no livestock, or corrals or pens for livestock, were in evidence.

  Another feature which Doody noted with mild surprise was the total absence of the usual canine riffraff of savagely barking, cowardly mongrel dogs which usually greet visitors to a savage kraal. In lieu thereof, innumerable naked and unbelievably dirty brats played and squabbled in the sun-baked mud of the crooked streets, while their fond mothers—clad quite as insufficiently as their mates in a single garment of coarse fabric which was draped from the waist to an undefined distance above the ground—stood about in chattering clusters, comparing extravagant notes on the spectacularly precocious attainments of their own particular offspring. A few males were in evidence, idling in doorways and conversing in rough voices, occasionally whittling lazily at sticks which might some day become spear shafts or ax handles; under the noontide heat, activity was at its daylight low.