𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗪𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗜𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 2020

THE ETERNAL WALL

 Small Story In English 2020

 THE ETERNAL WALL By  RAYMOND Z. GALLUN _A scream of brakes, the splashinto icy waters, a long descent into alkaline depths ... it was death. But Ned Vince livedagain a million years later! "See you in half an hour, Betty," said NedVince over the party telephone. "We'll be out at the Silver Basket be fore ten-thirty" Ned Vince was eager for the company of thegirl he loved. That was whyhe was in a hurry to get to the neigh boring town of Hurley, where shelived. His old car rattled and roared as he swungit recklessly around Pit Bend. There was where Death tapped him on the shoulder. Another car leapedsuddenly into view, its lights glaring blindingly past a high,up jutting mass of Jurassic rock at the turn of the road. Dazzled, and befuddled by his own rash speed,Ned Vince had only swift young reflexes to rely on to avoid a fearful,telescoping collision. He flicked his wheel smoothly to the right but the County Highway Commission hadn't yet tarred the traffic loosened gravel at the Bend. Ned could scarcely have chosen a worse placeto start sliding and spinning. His car hit the white painted wooden railside ways, crashed through tumbled down a steep slope, strucka huge boulder, bounced up a little and arced out ward falling as gracefullyas a swan-diver toward the inky waters of the Pit fifty feet be neath  Ned Vince was still dimly conscious when that black quiet pool gey sered around him in a mighty splash. He had only a dazing welt on his fore head, and a gag of terror in his throat. Movement was slower now as he began to sink,trapped in side his wrecked car. Nothing that he could imagine could mean doom more certainly than this. The Pit was a tremendously deep pocket in the ground, spring fed. The edges of that almost bottom less pool were caked with a rim of white for the water  on which dead birds so often floated  was surcharged with alkali. As that heavy  natronous liquid rushed up through the openings and cracks beneath his feet Ned Vince knew that this friends and his family would never see his body again lost beyond recovery in this abyss. The car was deeply submerged. The light had blinked out on the dash panel, leaving Ned in absolute darkness. A flood rushed in at the shattered window. He clawed at the door  trying to open it,but it was jammed in the crash bent frame, and he couldn't fight against the force of that incoming water. The welt  left by the blow he had receivedon his fore head  put a thickening mist over his brain  so that he could not think clearly. Presently, when he could no longer hold his breath bitter liquid was sucked into his lungs. His last thoughts were those of a drowning man. The machine shop he and his dad had had in Harwich. Betty Moore, with the smiling Irisheyes like in the song. Betty and he had planned to go to the State University this Fall. They'd planned to be married some time Good bye,Betty  The ripples that had ruffled the surface waters in the Pit  quieted again to glassy smoothness. The eternal stars shone calmly. The geologicDakota hills, which might have seen the dinosaurs still bulked alongthe highway. Time the Brother of Death and the Fatherof Change, seemed to wait "Kaalleee! Tik!... Tik, tik, tik!... Kaalleee!..." The excited cry, which no human throat couldquite have duplicated accurately, arose thinly from the depths ofa powder dry gulch water scarred from an inconceivable antiquity. The noon day Sun was red and huge. The air was tenuous dehydrated, chill. "Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, tik!..." At first there was only one voice uttering those weird triumphant sounds. Then other vocal organs took up that trillingwail and those short sharp chuckles of eagerness. Other questioning wondering notesmixed with the cadence. Lacking qualities identifiable as human the disturbance was still like the babble of a group of work men who have discovered something remarkable. The desolate expanse around the gulch was all but with out motion. Theicy breeze tore tiny puffs of dust from grotesque, angling drifts of soil nearly water less for eons. Patches of drab lichen grew here and there on the up jutting rocks but in the desert it self no other life was visible. Even the hills had sagged away flattened by incalculable ages of erosion. At a mile distance a crumbling heap of rubblearose. Once it had been abuilding. A gigantic  jagged mass of detritus slanted up ward from its crest red debris that had once been steel. A launching catapult for the last space ships built by the gods in exodus, perhaps it was half a million years ago. Man was gone from the Earth. Glacial ages war decadence disease and a final scattering of those ultimate super humans to newer worlds in other solar systems had done that. "Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, tik!..." The sounds were not human. They were more like the chatter and wail of small desert animals. But there was a seeming paradox here in the depths of that gulch, too. The glint of metal, sharp and burnished. The flat stream lined bulk of aflying machine shiny and new. The bell like muzzle of a strangeexcavator apparatus which seemed to depend on a blast of atoms to clear away rock and soil. Thus the gulch had been cleared of the accumulatedrubbish of antiquity. Man it seemed, had a successor, as ruler of the Earth. Loy Chuk had flown his geological expeditionout from the far low lands to the east, out from the city of Kar Rah. And he was very happy now flushed with a vast and unlooked for success. He crouched there on his haunches, at thedry bottom of the Pit. The breeze rumpled his long, brown fur. He wasn't very different inappearance from his ancestors. A foot tall perhaps, as he squatted there in that antique stance of his kind. His tail was short and furred,his undersides creamy. White whiskers spread around his inquisitive pink tipped snout. But his cranium bulged up and forward between shrewd  beady eyes  betraying the slow heritage of time, of survivalof the fittest, of evolution. He could think and dream and invent  and the civilization of his kind was already far beyond that of the ancient Twentieth Century. Loy Chuk and his fellow workers were gathered,tense and gleeful  around the things their digging had exposed to the day light. There was a gob of junk scarcely more than an irregular formation of flaky rust. But imbedded in it was a huddled form, brown and hard as old wood. The drymud that had encased it like an airtight coffin  had by now been chipped away by the tiny investigators but soiled clothing still clung to it,after perhaps a million years. Metal had gone into de cay yes. But nott his body. The answer to this was simple alkali. A mineral saturation that had held time and change in stasis. A perfect preservative fororganic tissue aided probably during most of those passing eras by desert dryness. The Dakotas had turned arid very swiftly. This body wasnot a mere fossil. It was a mummy. "Kaalleee!" Man  that meant. Not the star conquering demi gods  but the ancestral stock that had built the first machines on Earth  and in theearly Twenty-first Century  the first interplanetary rockets. No wonderLoy Chuk and his co workers were happy in their paleontologicalenthusiasm! A strange accident  happening in a legendary antiquity  had aided them in their quest for knowledge. At last Loy Chuk gave a soft, chirping signal. The chant of triumphended  while instruments flicked in his tiny hands. The final instrumenthe used to test the mummy  looked like a miniature stereoscope  with complicated details. He held it over his eyes. On the tiny screenwithin  through the agency of focused X-rays, he saw magnified images ofthe internal organs of this ancient human corpse. What his probing gaze revealed to him, made his pleasure even greater than before. In twittering, chattering sounds  he communicatedhis further knowledge to his hench men. Though devoid of moisture, the mummy was perfectly preserved, even to its brain cells! Medical and biological sciences were far advanced among Loy Chuk's kind. Perhaps, by the application of principles long known to them, this long dead body couldbe made to live again! It might move speak  remember its past! What amarvelous subject for study it would make, back there in the museums of Kar-Rah! "Tik, tik, tik!..." But Loy silenced this fresh, eager chattering with a command. Work was always more substantial than cheering. With infinite care small  sharp hand toolswere used  now the mummy of Ned Vince was disengaged from the worth lessrust of his primitive automobile. With infinite care it was crated in a metalcase, and hauled into the flying machine. Flashing flame, the latter arose, bearingthe entire hundred members of the expedition. The craft shot eastward at bullet like speed. Thes preading continental plateau of North America seemed to crawl backward beneath. A tremendous sand desert marked with low was hed down mountains and the vague angular  geometricmounds of human cities that were gone forever. Beyond the eastern rim of the continent  the plain dipped downward steeply. The white of dried salt was on the hills but there was a little green growth here  too. The dead sea bottom of the vanished Atlantic was not as dead as the high lands. Far out in a deep valley  Kar Rah, the cityof the rodents  came into view a crystalline maze of low, bubble like structures glinting in the red sunshine. But this was only its surface aspect. Loy Chuk's people had built their homes mostly under ground  since the beginning of their foggy evolution. Besides  in this latter day  the nights were very cold, the shelter of subterranean passages and rooms was welcome. The mummy was taken to Loy Chuk's laboratory a short distance below the surface. Here at once  the scientist began his work. The body of the ancient man was put in a large vat. Fluids submerged it  slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it for so long. The fluid was changed often  until woody musclesand other tissues became pliable once more. Then the more delicate processes began. Still submerged in liquid, the corpse was submitted to a flow of restorative energy, passing between complicated electrodes. The cells of antique flesh and brain gradually took on a chemical composition nearer to that of the life that they had once known. At last the final liquid was drained away,and the mummy lay there a mummy no more but a pale, silent figure inits tatters of clothing. LoyChuk put an odd, metal fabric helmet on its head, and a second  much smaller helmet on his own. Connected with this arrangement, was a black box of many uses. For hours he worked with his apparatus studying and guiding the recording instruments. The time passed swiftly. At last  eager and ready for what ever might happen now, Loy Chuk pushed another switch. With a cold  rosy flare energy blazed around that move less form. For Ned Vince  time less eternity ended likea gradual fading mist. When he could see clearly again he experienced that inevitable shock of vastchange around him. Though it had been dehydrated, his brain had been kept perfectly in tact through the ages, and now it was restored. So his memories were as vivid as yesterday. Yet through that crystalline vat in which he lay he could see a broad, low room in which he could barely have stooderect. He saw instruments and equipment whose weird shapes suggested alienness, and knowledgebeyond the era he had known! The walls were lavender and phosphorescent. Fossil bone fragments were mounted in shallow cases. Dinosaur bones some of them seemed  from their size. But there was a complete skeleton of a dog, too, and the skeleton of a man, and a second man skeleton that was not quite human. Its neck vertebrae were very thick and solid its shoulders were wide  and its skull was gigantic. All this weirdness had a violent effect onNed Vince a sudden  nostalgic panic. Something was fearfully wrong! The nervous terror of the unknown was on him. Feeble and dizzy after his weird resurrection  which he could not understand  remembering as he did that moment of sinking to certain death in the pool at Pit Bend  he caught the edge of the transparent vat, and pulled himself to a sittingposture. There was a muffled murmur around him, asof some vast, un Earthly metropolis. "Take it easy, Ned Vince" The words the mselves, and the way they were assembled, were old familiar friends. But the tone was wrong. It was high, shrillparrot like, and mechanical. Ned's gaze searched for the source of the voice located the black box just outside of his crystal vat. From that box the voice seemed to have originated. Before it crouched a small brownish animal with a bulging head. The animal's tiny fingeredpaws hands they were, really were touching rows of keys. To Ned Vince it was all utterly insane and incomprehensible. A rodent looking like a prairie dog a little  but plainly possessing a high order of intelligence. And a voice whose soothingly familiar words were more repugnant some how simply because they could never belong in a place as eerie as this. Ned Vince did not know how Loy Chuk had probed his brain, with the aid of a pair of helmets, and the black box apparatus. He did not know that in the latter, his language, taken from his own revitalized mind, was recorded  and that Loy Chuk had only to press certain buttons to make the instrument express his thoughts in common, long dead English. Loy whose vocal organs were not human, would have had great difficulty speaking English words, anyway. Ned's dark hair was wildly awry. His gaunt, young face held befuddledterror. He gasped in the thin atmosp here. "I've gone nuts," hepronounced with a curious calm. "Stark starin' nuts" Loy's box with its recorded English words and its sonic detectors, could translate for its master too. As the man spoke  Loy read the illuminated symbols in his own language  flashed on a frosted crystalplate before him. Thus he knew what Ned Vince was saying. Loy Chuk pressed more keys, and the box reproduced his answer: "No, Ned, not nuts. Not a bit of it! There are just a lot of things that you've got to get used to, that's all. You drowned about a million years ago. I discovered your body. I brought you back to life. We have science that can do that. I'm Loy Chuk" It took only a moment for the box to tell the full story in clear  bold friendly terms. Thus Loy sought  with calm, human logic, to make his charge feel at home. Probably, though he was a fool to suppose that he could succeed, thus. Vince started to mutter struggling desperatelyto reason it out. "Aprairie dog," he said. "Speaking to me. One million years. Evolution. The scientists say that people grew up from fishes in the sea. Prairiedogs are smart. So may be super prairie dogs could come from them. A loteasier than men from fish" It was all sound logic. Even Ned Vince knew that. Still, his mind, tuned to ordinary, simple things, couldn't quite realize all the vast things that had happened to him self  and to the world. The scope of it all wastoo staggeringly big. One million years. God!... Ned Vince made a last effort to control him self. His knuckles tightenedon the edge of the vat. "I don't know what you've been talking about" he grated wildly. "But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! Do you understand whoever, or whatever youare?" Loy Chuk pressed more keys. "But you can't go back to the Twentieth Century" said the box. "Nor is there any better place for you tobe now, than Kar Rah. You are the only man left on Earth. Those men that exist in other star systems are not really your kind any more though their fore fathers originated on this planet. They have gone far beyond you in evolution. To them you would be only a senseless curiosity. You are much better off with my people our minds are much more like yours. We will take care of you, and make you comfortable...." But Ned Vince wasn't listening, now. "You are the only man left on Earth." That had been enough for him to hear. He didn't more than half believe it. His mind was too confused for conviction about anything. Everything he saw and felt and heard might be some kind of nightmare. But then it might all be real instead, and that was abysmal horror. Ned was no coward death and danger of any ordinary Earthly kind  he couldhave faced bravely. But the loneliness here and the utter strangeness were hideous like being stranded alone on another world! His heart was pounding heavily  and his eyes were wide. He looked acrossthis eerie room. There was a ramp there at the other side leading upward instead of a stairway. Fierce impulse to escape this namelesslair to try to learn the facts for him self  possessed him. He bounded out of the vat  and with head down  dashed for the ramp. He had to go most of the way on his hands and knees  for the up slanting passage was low. Excited animal chucklings around him  and the occasional touch of a furry body  hurried his feverish scrambling. Buthe emerged at last at the surface. He stood there panting in that frigid, rarefiedair. It was night. The Moon was a gigantic, pock marked bulk. The constellations were unrecognizable. The rodent city was a glowing expanse of shallow crystalline domes, set among odd, scrub trees and bushes. The cragsloomed on all sides, all their jaggedness lost after a million years of erosion under an ocean that was gone. In that ghastly moon light  the ground glistened with dry salt. "Well, I guess it's all true, huh?" Ned Vince muttered in a flat tone. Behind him he heard an excited, squeaky chattering. Rodents in pursuit. Looking back, he saw the pin point gleams of countless little eyes. Yes,he might as well be an exile on another planet so changed had the Earth become. A wave of intolerable home sickness came over him as he sensed the distances of time that had passed those inconceivableeons, separating him self from his friends, from Betty from almost every thing that was familiar. He started to run, away from those glitteringrodent eyes. He sensed death in that cold sea bottom, but what of it? What reason did hehave left to live? He'd be only a museum piece here a thingto be caged and studied  Prison or a mad house would be far better. He tried to get hold of his courage. But what was there to inspire it? Nothing! He laughed harshlyas he ran  welcoming that bitter killing cold. Nostalgia had him in its clutch  and there was no answer in his hell world  lost beyond the barrier of the years Loy Chuk and his followers presently came upon Ned Vince's unconscious form, a mile from the city of Kar Rah. In a flying machine they took him back  and applied stimulants. He came to, in the same laboratory room as be fore. But he was firmly strapped to a low plat form this time, so that he could not escape again. There he lay helpless  until presently anidea occurred to him. It gave him a few crumbs of hope. "Hey, somebody!" he called. "You'd better get some rest, Ned Vince," came the answer from the black box. It was Loy Chuk speaking again. "But listen!" Ned protested. "You know a lot more than we did in the Twentieth Century. And well there's that thing called time travel that I used to read about. May be you know how to make it work! May be you could send me back to my own time after all!" Little Loy Chuk was in a black, discouraged mood, him self. He could understand the utter sick dejection of this giant from the past  lost from his own kind. Probably insanity looming. In far less extre me circumstances than this, death from home sickness had come. Loy Chuk was a scientist. In common with all real scientists  regardlessof the species from which they spring  he loved the subjects of his researches. He wanted this ancient man to live and tobe happy. Or this creature would be of scant value for study. So Loy considered carefully what Ned Vincehad suggested. Time travel. Almost a legend. An assault upon an intangible wall that had baffled far keener wits than Loy's. But he was bent  now  on the well being ofthis anachronism he had so miraculously resurrected this human, this Kaalleee  Loy jabbed buttons on the black box. "Yes, Ned Vince," said the sonicapparatus. "Time travel. Perhaps that is the only thing to do to sendyou back to your own period of history. For I see that you will never be your self, here. It will be hard to accomplish, but we'll try. Now Ishall put you under an anesthetic" Ned felt better immediately, for there was real hope now, where there had been none before. May be he'd be back in his home town of Harwichagain. May be he'd see the old machine shop, there. And the treesgreening out in Spring. Maybe he'd be seeing Betty Moore in Hurley soon Ned relaxed  as a tiny hypo needle bit into his arm As soon as Ned Vince passed into unconsciousness Loy Chuk went to work once more  using that pair of brain helmetsagain exploring carefully the man's mind. After hours of research, he proceeded to prepare his plans. The government of Kar Rah was a scientificoligarchy, of which Loy was a prime member. It would be easy to get the help he needed. A horde of small  grey furred beings and their machines toiled for many days. Ned Vince's mind swam gradually out of the blur that had enveloped it. He was wandering aimlessly about in a familiar room. The girders of theroof above were of red painted steel. His tool benches were there greasy and littered with metal filings, just as they had always been. He had a tractor to repair, and a seed drill. Outside of the machine shop the old, familiar yellow sun was shining. Across the street was thes mall brown house  where he lived. With a sudden startlement  he saw Betty Moorein the door way. She wore ablue dress  and a mischievous smile curved her lips. As though she had succeeded in creeping up on him, for a surprise. "Why  Ned " she chuckled. "You look as though you've been dreaming and just woke up!" He grimaced ruefully as she approached. With a kind of fierce gratitude he took her in his arms. Yes, she was just like always. "I guess I was dreaming, Betty," he whispered feeling that mighty sense of relief. "I must have fallen a sleep at the bench, here,and had a night mare. I thought I had an accident at Pit Bend and that a lot of worse things happened. But it wasn't true" Ned Vince's mind, over which there was stillan elusive fog that he did not try to shake off accepted apparent facts simply. He did not know anything about the invisibleradiations beating down upon him, soothing and dimming his brain so that it would never question or doubt or observe too closely the incongruous circumstances that must often appear. The lack of traffic in the street without for instance and the lack of people besides him self and Betty. He didn't know that this machine shop was built from his own memories of the original. He didn't know that this Betty was of the same origin a miraculous fabrication of metal and energy units and soft plastic. The trees outside were only lantern slide illusions. It was all built inside a great opaque dome. But there were hiddentelevision systems  too. Thus Loy Chuk's kind could study this ancientman this Kaalleee. Thus, their motives were mostly sel fish. Loy  though was not observing, now. He had wandered far out into cold sad sea bottom, to ponder. He squeaked and chatted to him self contemplating the magnificent, inexorable march of the ages. Here membered the ancient ruins, left by the final supermen. "The Kaalleee believes him self home" Loy was thinking. "He will survive and be happy. But there was no other way. Time is an Eternal Wall. Ourarcheological researches among the cities of the supermen show the truth. Even they, who once ruled Earth, never escapedfrom the present by so much as an instant" END of THE ETERNAL WALL By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN