Twice in Time Read online

  Table of Contents

  WHEN THE FUTURE MEETS THE PAST

  LEONARDO BEFORE HIS CANVAS

  TWICE IN TIME Foreword

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XX

  THE TIMELESS TOMORROW CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER IV

  TWICE

  IN

  TIME

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  When the time projector hurled Leo Thrasher 500 years into the past, he didn't expect to find that:

  -He'd need what he'd learned on his college fencing team to keep sword points from his lungs;

  -He'd meet a woman he loved more than life;

  -He'd be at the heart of the battle which decided whether the Turkish Janissaries would sweep over Europe.

  He learned all those things; and learned something that was far more of a surprise....

  FIRST COMPLETE BOOK PUBLICATION OF A TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE BY THE AUTHOR OF JOHN THE BALLADEER!

  TWICE IN TIME

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © by Frances Wellman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  260 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10001

  First printing, November 1988

  ISBN: 0-671-69791-9

  Cover art by Greg A. West

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10020

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-440-6

  To Richard McKenna

  "Let every man be master of his time . . ."

  Acknowledgments

  "Leonardo Before His Canvas" by Leah Bodine Drake. Copyright © 1988 by the Estate of Leah Bodine Drake. Published here for the first time by permission of Frances Wellman.

  Twice in Time by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright © 1940 by Better Publications, Inc., for Startling Stories, May 1940. Reprinted by permission of Frances Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner, Literary Executor for Manly Wade Wellman.

  "The Timeless Tomorrow" by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright © 1947 by Standard Magazines, Inc., for Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1947. Reprinted by permission of Frances Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner, Literary Executor for Manly Wade Wellman.

  "When the Future Meets the Past" by Karl Edward Wagner. Copyright © 1988 by Karl Edward Wagner.

  The Editor wishes to express sincere gratitude to Robert A. Madle, Richard H. Minter, and Frances Wellman for their help in furnishing this material.

  ". . . whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past."

  Montaigne, Book II, Chapter 12

  WHEN THE FUTURE MEETS THE PAST

  During a writing career that spanned six decades, Manly Wade Wellman published over eighty books and more than three hundred short stories. He was an author as versatile as prolific, whose output included science fiction and Civil War biographies, fantasy and novels for young adults, mysteries and regional histories, mainstream novels and nonfiction studies. A Civil War history, Rebel Boast, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Wellman didn't win, but he did win a number of other awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Award.

  Most readers will best remember Wellman as a writer of haunting fantasies rich with Southern folklore—particularly those stories concerning John, a wandering minstrel whose guitar was strung with silver strings, and who battled strange evils in the mountains of North Carolina. These stories were collected in John the Balladeer (Baen Books: 1988). Before concentrating on regional fantasy stories, Wellman was one of the most popular writers for the science fiction pulps. He wrote for most of these magazines, beginning with "When Planets Clashed" in the Spring 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, until he left the field in the late 1940s, as science fiction became more sophisticated and the pulps began to die out.

  Born May 21, 1903, in the village of Kamundongo in Portuguese West Africa, Manly Wade Wellman moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Kansas. Working in Wichita as a newspaper reporter, he quit his job just as the Depression was getting started. Struggling as a freelance writer, in 1934 Wellman moved to New York City in order to be closer to the pulp markets. By mutual good luck, top science fiction agent Julius Schwartz took Wellman on as a client, and from the late 1930s until the close of World War II Wellman was a star in this genre. Wellman's flair for headlong action and rousing melodrama was pure space opera and well suited to the pulp-formula science fiction of the day, whose readers were mostly adolescents whose understanding of science was frequently even less than that of those writing it. While most of Wellman's science fiction has aged not at all well, he did leave a certain core of superior work which can hold its own with the best science fiction of the pulp era.

  Unquestionably Wellman's finest work of science fiction is Twice in Time. Wellman was an omnivorous reader and a dilettante scholar with many areas of interest. One of his chief studies was Renaissance history and culture, and this formed the basis for Twice in Time and for "The Timeless Tomorrow"—presented here together for the first time.

  (Those of you who insist on surprise endings, please stop reading this introduction now and proceed directly to Twice in Time.

  Actually it isn't much of a surprise, and I'm reasonably certain most readers will have stumbled onto it after a chapter or two. Still: Fair warning.)

  Picking up where I left off, then. As I said, Wellman was a keen history buff, and one of his special interests was the Renaissance. Once Wellman became interested in some particular fixation, he researched it tirelessly, ruminated upon it, and eventually would incorporate it into his writing. Leonardo da Vinci was one such obsession.

  Among the many science fiction pulps for which Wellman wrote was Astounding Stories (later Astounding Science Fiction), where his cover novelette, "Outlaws on Callisto," in the April 1936 issue secured his career as a professional writer. When editor F. Orlin Tremaine was replaced in an office coup d'etat by John W. Campbell, Wellman continued to sell to Astounding, although he and Campbell never really got along—to put it mildly. The final break came over Twice in Time. The novel was a labor of love, carefully researched and painstakingly written—as opposed to Wellman's usual slap-dash space opera—and reflected Wellman's fascination with Leonardo da Vinci. Campbell turned down the novel on the grounds that Leonardo's character was all wrong. Campbell, an engineer, could view Leonardo only as a fellow engineer, rejecting any artistic or romantic sides to his personality. Campbell suggested that Wellman revise the novel according to Campbell's theories on Leonardo, Wellman suggested that Campbell seek much warmer climes, and that was that for Wellman at Astounding.

  Fortunately the novel was snapped up by Startling Stories, where it led off the May 1940 issue and
was showcased with striking Virgil Finlay illustrations. It drew considerable acclaim at the moment and was reprinted in Wonder Stories Annual for 1951. In 1957 a new edition of Twice in Time was published in hardcover by Avalon Books, and this version appeared in paperback the following year from Galaxy Novels. Unfortunately this later edition was revised and massively abridged by Wellman, all to the considerable detriment to the novel. This abridgment was necessary to bring it down to Avalon's wordage requirements, and Wellman later disgruntledly protested that there had been no abridgment at all. Considering a comparison of the two texts, this was rather like the captain of the Titanic insisting that the iceberg was never there.

  Now, for the first time, the complete version of Twice in Time appears in book form. This text is that of its original appearance in Startling Stories for May 1940.

  Included in this edition is a previously unpublished poem by Leah Bodine Drake (whose volume of poetry, A Hornbook for Witches, is the rarest Arkham House book). Wellman sent Drake a copy of the Avalon Twice in Time in 1957, and Drake responded with a poem, "Leonardo Before His Canvas," which she dedicated to Wellman. The typewritten poem was recently discovered tucked into Wellman's personal copy of Twice in Time.

  Also reprinted here for the first time is a companion Renaissance novelette, "The Timeless Tomorrow," originally published in the December 1947 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. This time Wellman's story centers upon the enigmatic French astrologer and prophet, Nostradamus. Again Wellman's knowledge of the period and concern for historical detail make this story stand out. "The Timeless Tomorrow" was also one of the last stories he wrote for the science fiction pulps. Wellman could always spin a good adventure yarn, and when he was able to write about a subject he knew something about, he was hard to beat.

  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) spent his last years in the French court of Francis I. Nostradamus (1503-1566) would have been about 16 years old when Leonardo died. One wonders whether they might ever have met and talked. Perhaps therein might lie the source of Nostradamus' prophecies? Only Manly Wade Wellman, who died at his home in Chapel Hill on April 5, 1986, could have told us the story.

  —Karl Edward Wagner Chapel Hill, North Carolina

  LEONARDO BEFORE HIS CANVAS

  "When setting to work in paint, it

  was as if he were mastered by fear. . . .

  he could finish nothing which he had begun."

  (Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo)

  Within my brain lies, pure and clear,

  A land of unfabled rocks and screes,

  Crags cut from jasper rising sheer

  From the slow waves of sunken seas,

  Mountainous isles like dragons' spines

  Cloisoned on glacial waters, and deep

  Grottoes of hollowed tourmalines

  Where the unloving sirens sleep.

  There cities domed, unpeopled, plunge

  Down spiraling stairways to the shore.

  There, like a kestral, thought can range;

  And at that country's secret core.

  Her feet upon shards of agate rent

  By iris and brooding columbine,

  Sits my Enigma, innocent

  And, like her flowers, androgyne.

  Closed in a cone of emerald light

  Is Leda, Narcissus, Anne the Blest—

  Saint, ephebus and water-sprite—

  Synthesis of my soul's unrest!

  The light, the perilous visions fade,

  The emerald is unbroken still:

  The god in me yet hands betrayed

  By the old Judas of my will.

  Leah Bodine Drake

  TWICE IN TIME

  BY

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  Foreword

  The document herewith given publication was placed in the hands of the editors in 1939. Whether or not it explains satisfactorily the strange disappearance of Leo Thrasher near Florence, Italy, in the spring of 1938, we do not pretend to decide.

  The manuscript came to America in the luggage of Father David Sutton, an American priest, at the time of the recent outbreak of war in Europe. Father Sutton was in Rome at the time, and elected to remain, in hope of helping war sufferers if his aid should be needed. But since Italy remained neutral, he sent back most of his luggage to America by a friend. Later he sent an urgent letter, asking that this manuscript be examined and published, if possible. It came, Father Sutton said, from the strongroom of an immemorial theological library in Florence, and was in the original casket that had apparently contained it for a long period of time.

  The priest's friend brought us both Father Sutton's letter and the casket with the manuscript. This casket is of tarnished silver, elaborately worked in the Renaissance manner. A plate on the lid bears this legend, in Italian, French, and Latin:

  Let no man open or dispose of this casket, on peril of his soul, before the year 1939.

  Father Sutton's new York friends insist that if he actually wrote this letter and sent the casket, they

  may be taken at face value. If it is a hoax perpetrated in his name, it is both elaborate and senseless. In any case, it is worth the study of those who love the curious.

  Therefore, while neither affirming nor denying the truth of what appears, herewith is given in full the purported statement of the vanished Leo Thrasher.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Time Reflector

  This story, as unvarnished as I can make it, must begin where my twentieth-century life ends—in the sitting room of the suite taken by George Astley and myself at Tomasulo's inn, on a hill above the Arno. It is the clearest of all my clouded memories of that time. April was the month, still chilly for Tuscany, and we had a charcoal fire in the grate.

  I knelt among my dismantled machinery, before the charcoal fire, testing the connections here and there.

  "So that's your time-traveler, Thrasher?" said Astley. "Like the one H. G. Wells wrote about?"

  "Not in the least like the one H. G. Wells wrote about," I said spiritedly, and not perhaps without a certain resentful pride. "He described a sort of century-hurdling mechanical horse. In its saddle you rode forward into the Judgment Day or back to the beginning. This thing of mine will work, but as a reflector."

  I peered into the great cylindrical housing that held my lens, a carefully polished crystal of alum, more than two feet in diameter. I smiled with satisfaction.

  "It won't carry me into time," I assured. "It'll throw me."

  He leaned back in the easy chair that was too small for him.

  "I don't understand, Leo," he confessed. "Tell me about it."

  "All right—if I must," I said. I had told him so often before. It was a bore to have to repeat what a man seemed incapable of understanding. "The operation is comparable to that of a burning-glass," I explained patiently, "which involves a point of light and transfers its powers through space to another position. Here"—I waved toward the mass of mechanism—"is a device that will involve an object and transfer, or rather, reproduce it to another epoch in time."

  "I've tried to read Einstein at least enough to think of time as an extra dimension," ventured Astley. "But, still, I don't follow your reasoning. You can't exist in two places at once. That's impossible in the face of it. Yet from what I gather you can exist, you have existed, in two separate and distinct times. For instance, you're a grown man now, but when you were a baby—"

  "That's the fourth dimension of it," I broke in. "The baby Leo Thrasher was, in a way, only the original tip of the fourth-dimensional me. At ten, I was a cross-section. Now I'm another, six feet tall, eighteen inches wide, eight inches thick—and quite some more years deep." I began to tinker with my lights. "Do you see now?"

  "A little." Astley had produced his oldest and most odorous pipe. "You mean that this present manifestation of you is a single corridorlike object, reaching in time from the place of your birth—Chicago, wasn't it?—to here in Florence."

  "That's something of the truth," I granted, my head deep i
n the great boxlike container that housed the electrical part of the machine. "I exist, therefore, only once in time. But suppose this me is taken completely out of Twentieth Century existence— dematerialized, recreated in another epoch. That makes twice in time, doesn't it?"

  As I have many times before, I thrilled to the possibility. It was my father's fault, all this labor and dream. I had wanted to study art, had wanted to be a painter, and he had wanted me to be an engineer. But he could not direct my imagination. At the schools he selected, I found the wheels and belts and motors all singing to me a song both weird and compelling. The Machine Age was not enough of a wonder to me. I demanded of it other wonders—miracles.

  "I've read Dunne's theory of corridors in time," Astley was musing. "And once I saw a play about them—by J. B. Priestly, wasn't it? What's your reaction to that stuff?"

  "That's one of the things I hope to find out about," I told him. "Of course, I think that there's only the one corridor, and I'm gong to travel down it—or duck out at one point, I mean, and reenter farther along. What I'd like to do would be to reappear in Florence of another age, Florence of the Renaissance."