PENDULUM

byRay Bradbury & Henry Hasse

Prisoner of Time was he, outlawed from Life and Death alike the strange, broodingcreature who watched the ages roll by and waited half fearfully for—eternity?

“I THINK,” shrilled Erjas , “that this is our most intriguing discovery on any of theworlds 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-golddown on their slender necks ruffling softly. They were perched on whathad once been a moving sidewalk but was now only a twisted ribbon of wreckageoverlooking 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 thehigh stone plaza a short distance away. “Look at it! Just a huge tubular pendulumhanging from that towering framework! And the machinery, the coggery Page 1

whichmust have once sent it swinging … I flew up there a while ago to examineit, but it’s hopelessly corroded.”

“But the head of the pendulum!” another of the bird creatures said awedly . “A hollowchamber—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 cityas though regarding with amusement the heaps of powdery masonry and the baresteel girders that drooped to the ground, giving the effect of huge spiders poisedto 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 skeletalremains of one of the mammal creatures who once, undoubtedly, inhabited thisworld.” He shifted nervously from one spindly leg to the other, as he glancedagain 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?”

“We shall soon know,” another of the bird creatures trilled softly, glancing at theirspaceship which rested amidst the ruins, a short distance away. ” Orfleew iseven 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 Orfleew got it out, but he saved most of it.”

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“I wish he would hurry! Why must he—”

” Shh! Give him time. Orfleew will decipher the writing; he has an amazing genius foralien languages.”

“Yes. I remember the metal tablets on that tiny planet in 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 theirspaceship, carefully carrying a sheaf of yellowed pages. He waved to them, spreadhis wings and soared outward. A moment later he alighted beside his companionson their narrow perch.

“The language is simple,” Orfleew told them, “and the story is a sad one. I will readit 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 transparenthead only a few feet above the plaza floor. The grinning skull still peeredout as though hugely amused or hugely satisfied. Orfleew took one more fleetinglook 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 fromall over the world, come to look at me in my swinging pendulum. School children, on the electrically moving sidewalks surrounding the plaza, stare at Page 3

mein childish awe. Scientists, studying me, stand out there and train their instrumentson the swinging pendulum head. Oh, they could stop the swinging, theycould release me—but now I know that will never happen. This all began as apunishment 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 whenall this started. I remember I had found a way to bridge time gaps and travelinto futurity. I remember the time device I built. No, it did not in any wayresemble this pendulum—my device was merely a huge box-like affair of speciallytreated metal and glassite , with a series of electric rotors of my own designwhich set up conflicting, but orderly, fields of stress. I had tested it toperfection 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 thegreatest minds in the scientific world. At last, anticipating an amusing eveningat my expense, they agreed.

I shall never forget that evening when a hundred of the world’s greatest scientistsgathered in the main Council laboratory. But they had come to jeer, notto cheer. I did not care, as I stood on the platform beside my ponderous machineand listened to the amused murmur of voices. Nor did I care that miliionsof other unbelieving eyes were watching by television, Leske having indulgedin a campaign of mockery against the possibility of time travel. I did notcare, because I knew that in a few minutes Leske’s campaign would be turned Page 4

intovictory 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 concentrationin the room affected the stress of the timefields my rotors set up. The last thing I remember seeing, as I reached out and touched the main controlswitch, were the neat rows of smiling white faces of the important men seatedin the laboratory. My hand came down on the switch….

Even now I shudder, remembering the vast mind-numbing horror of that moment. A terrificsheet of electrical flame, greenish and writhing and alien, leaped acrossthe laboratory from wall to wall, blasting into ashes everything in its path!

Before millions of television witnesses I had slain theworld’s greatest scientists!

No, not all. Leskeand myself and a few others who were behind the machine escapedwith severe burns. I was least injured of all, which seemed to increase thefury of the populace against me. I was swept to a hasty trial, faced jeering throngswho 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 Page 5

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 hissmouldering eyes looked at me. That’s all I could see of him, just his eyes; therest of him was swathed in bandages. For a moment he just looked; and if everI 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, bandagedarm at me.

“No, do not destroy him,” he mumbled to the authorities gathered around.

“Destroy his machine, yes, but save the parts. I have a better plan, a fitting one, for this man who murdered the world’s greatest scientists. “

I remembered Leske’s old hatred of me, and I shuddered.

IN THE weeks that followed, one of my guards told me with a sort of malicious pleasureof my time device being dismantled, and secret things being done with it. Leske was directing the operations from his bed.

At last came the day when I was led forth and saw the huge pendulum for the firsttime. As I looked at it there, fantastic and formidible , I realized as neverbefore the extent of Leske’s insane revenge. And the populace seemed equallyvengeful, equally cruel, like the ancient Romans on a gladiatorial holiday. In a sudden panic of terror, I shrieked and tried to leap away.

That only amused the people who crowded the electrical sidewalks around the plaza. They laughed and shrieked derisively.

My guards thrust me into the glass pendulum head and I lay there quivering, realizingthe irony of my fate. This pendulum had been built from the precious Page 6

metaland glassite of my own time device! It was intended as a monument to my slaughtering! I was being put on exhibition for life within my own executioning device! The crowd roared thunderous approval, damning me.

Then a little click and a whirring above me, and my glass prison began to move.

It increased in speed. The arc of the pendulum’s swing lengthened. I remember howI pounded at the glass, futilely screaming, and how my hands bled. I rememberthe rows of faces becoming blurred white blobs before me….

I did not become insane, as I had thought at first I would. I did not mind it so much; that first night. I couldn’t sleep but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The lights ofthe city were comets with tails that pelted from right to left like foaming fireworks. But as the night wore on I felt a gnawing in my stomach that grew worseuntil I became very sick. The next day was the same and I couldn’t eat anything. In the days that followed they never stopped the pendulum, not once.

They slid my food down the hollow pendulum stem in little round parcels that plunkedat my feet. The first time I attempted eating I was unsuccessful; it wouldn’tstay down. In desperation I hammered against the cold glass with my fistsuntil they bled again, and I cried hoarsely, but heard nothing but my own weakwords muffled in my ears.

Afteran infinitude of misery, I began to eat and even sleep while traveling backand forth this way … they had allowed me small glass loops on the floor withwhich I fastened myself down at night and slept a soundless slumber, withoutsliding. I even began to take an interest in the world outside, watching ittip one way and another, back and forth and up and down, dizzily before my eyesuntil they ached. The monotonous movements never changed. So huge was the Page 7

pendulumthat it shadowed one hundred feet or more with every majestic sweep of itsgleaming shape, hanging from the metal intestines of the machine overhead. I estimatedthat it took four or five seconds for it to traverse the arc.

On and on like this—for how long would it be? I dared not think of it….

DAY by day I began to concentrate on the gaping, curiosity-etched faces outside—faces that spoke soundless words, laughing and pointing at me, the prisonerof time, traveling forever nowhere. Then after a time—was it weeks or monthsor years?—the town people ceased to come and it was only tourists who cameto stare….

Once a day the attendants sent down my food, once a day they sent down a tube to vacuumout the cell. The days and nights ran together in my memory until time cameto mean very little to me….

IT WAS not until I knew, inevitably, that I was doomed forever to this swinging chamber, that the thought occurred to me to leave a written record. Then the ideaobsessed me and I could think of nothing else.

I had noticed that once a day an attendant climbed into the whirring coggery overheadin order to drop my food down the tube. I began to tap code signals alongthe tube, a request for writing materials. For days, weeks, months, my signalsremained unanswered. I became infuriated—and more persistent.

Then, at long last, the day when not only my packet of food came down the tube, butwith it a heavy notebook, and writing materials! I suppose the attendant abovebecame weary at last of my tappings ! I was in a perfect ecstasy of joy at thisslight luxury.

I have spent the last few days in recounting my story, without any undue elaboration. I am weary now of writing, but I shall continue from time to Page 8

time—in the present tense instead of the past.

My pendulum still swings in its unvarying arc. I am sure it has been not months, butyears! I am accustomed to it now. I think if the pendulum were to stop suddenly, I should go mad at the motionless existence!

(Later): There is unusual activity on the electrically moving sidewalks surroundingme. Men are coming, scientists, and setting up peculiar looking instrumentswith which to study me at a distance. I think I know the reason. I guessedit some time ago. I have not recorded the years, but I suspect that I havealready outlived Leske and all the others! I know my cheeks have developed ashort beard which suddenly ceased growing, and I feel a curious, tingling vitality. I feel that I shall outlive them all! I cannot account for it, nor can theyout there, those scientists who now examine me so scrupulously. And they darenot stop my pendulum, my little world, for fear of the effect it may have onme!

(Still later): These men, these puny scientists, have dropped a microphone down thetube to me! They have actually remembered that I was once a great scientist, encasedhere cruelly. In vain they have sought the reason for my longevity; now theywant me to converse with them, giving my symptoms and reactions and suggestions! They are perplexed, but hopeful, desiring the secret of eternal lifeto which they feel I can give them a clue. I have already been here two hundredyears, they tell me; they are the fifth generation.

At first I said not a word, paying no attention to the microphone. I merely listenedto their babblings and pleadings until I weared of it. Then I grasped themicrophone and looked up and saw their tense, eager faces, awaiting my words.

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“One does not easily forgive such an injustice as this,” I shouted. “And I do notbelieve I shall be ready to until five more generations.”

Then I laughed. Oh, how I laughed.

“He’s insane!” I heard one of them say: “The secret of immortality may lie somehowwith him, but I feel we shall never learn it; and we dare not stop the pendulum—that might break the timefield , or whatever it is that’s holding him inthrall….”

(MUCH LATER): It has been a longer time than I care to think, since I wrote thoselast words. Years … I know not how many. I have almost forgotten how tohold a pencil in my fingers to write.

Many things havetranspired, many changes have come in the crazy world out there.

Once I saw wave after wave of planes, so many that they darkened the sky, far outin the direction of the ocean, moving toward the city; and a host of planes arisingfrom here, going out to meet them; and a brief, but lurid and devastatingbattle in which planes fell like leaves in the wind; and some planes triumphantlyreturning, I know not which ones…

But all that was very longago, and it matters not to me. My daily parcels of foodcontinue to come down the pendulem stem; I suspect that it has become a sortof ritual, and the inhabitants of the city, whoever they are now, have long sinceforgotten the legend of why I was encased here. My little world continues toswing in its arc, and I continue to observe the puny little creatures out therewho blunder through their brief span of life.

Already I have outlived generations! Now I want to outlive the very last one of them! I shall!

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… Another thing, too, I have noticed. The attendants who daily drop the parcelsof food for me, and vacuum out the cell, are robots! Square, clumsy, ponderousand four-limbed things—unmistakably metal robots, only vaguely human inshape.

… I begin to see more and more of these clumsy robots about the city. Oh, yes, humans too—but they only come on sight-seeing tours and pleasure jaunts now; they live, for the most part, in luxury high among the towering buildings.

Only the robots occupy the lower level now, doing all the menial and mechanical tasksnecessary to the operation of the city. This, I suppose, is progress as theseself centered beings have willed it.

… robots are becoming more complicated, more human in shape and movements .

. .and more numerous … uncanny … I have a premonition….

(Later): It has come! I knew it! Vast, surging activity out there … the humans, soft from an aeon of luxury and idleness, could not even escape …

thosewho tried, in their rocket planes, were brought down by the pale, rosy electronicbeams of the robots … others of the humans, more daring or desperate, tried to sweep low over the central robot base and drop thermite bombs—but the robots had erected an electronic barrier which hurled the bombs backamong the planes, causing inestimable havoc….

The revolt was brief, but inevitably successful. I suspect that all human life exceptmine has been swept from the earth. I begin to see, now, how cunningly therobots devised it.

The humans had gone forward recklessly and blindly to achieve their Utopia; they Page 11

haddesigned their robots with more and more intricacy, more and more finesse, untilthe great day when they were able to leave the entire operation of the cityto the robots—under the guidance perhaps of one or two humans. But somewhere, somehow, one of those robots was imbued with a spark of intelligence; itbegan to think, slowly but precisely; it began to add unto itself, perhaps secretly; until finally it had evolved itself into a terribly efficient unit of inspiredintelligence, a central mechanical Brain which planned this revolt.

At least, so I pictured it. Only the robots are left now—but very intelligent robots. A group of them came yesterday and stood before my swinging pendulum and seemedto confer among themselves. They surely must recognize me as one of the humans, the last one left. Do they plan to destroy me too?

No. I must have become a legend, even among the robots. My pendulum still swings. They have now encased the operating mechanism beneath a protective glassitedome. They have erected a device whereby my daily parcel of food is droppedto me mechanically. They no longer come near me; they seem to have forgottenme.

This infuriates me! Well, I shall outlast them too! After all, they are but productsof the human brain … I shall outlast everything even remotely human! I swear it!

(MUCH LATER): Is this the end? I have seen the end of the reign of the robots!

Yesterday, just as the sun was crimsoning in the west, I perceived the hordes of thingsthat came swarming out of space, expanding in the heavens … alien creaturesfluttering down, great gelatinous masses of black that clustered thicklyover everything….

I saw the robot rocket planes criss-crossing the sky on pillars of scarlet flame, blasting into the black masses with their electronic beams—but the alien Page 12

thingswere unperturbed and unaffected! Closer and closer they pressed to earth, untilthe robot rockets began to dart helplessly for shelter.

To no avail.The silvery robot ships began crashing to earth in ghastly devastation, like drops of mercury splashing on tiles….

And the black gelatinous masses came ever closer, to spread over the earth, to crumblethe city and corrode whatever metal was left exposed.

Except my pendulum.Theycame dripping darkly down over it, over the glassite domewhich protects the whirring wheels and roaring bowels of the mechanism. The cityhas crumbled, the robots are destroyed, but my pendulum still moves, the onlymoving thing on this world now … and I know that fact puzzles these alienthings and they will not be content until they have stopped it….

This all happened yesterday. I am lying very still now, watching them. Most of themare gathering out there over the ruins of the city, preparing to leave—

excepta few of the black quivering things that are still hanging to my pendulum, almost blotting out the sunlight; and a few more above, near the operatingmachinery, concentrating those same emanations by which they corroded therobots. They are determined to do a complete job here. I know that in a few minutesthey will begin to take effect, even through the glassite shield. I shallcontinue to write until my pendulum stops swinging. ….it is happening now. I can feel a peculiar grinding and grating in the coggery above. Soon my tiny glassiteworld will cease its relentless arc.

I feel now only a fierce elation flaming ithin me, for after all, this is my victory !I have conquered over the men who planned this punishment for me, and Page 13

overcountless other generations, and over the final robots themselves! There is nothingmore I desire except annihilation, and I am sure that will come automaticallywhen my pendulum ceases, bringing me to a state of unendurable motionlessness….

It is coming now. Those black, gelatinous shapes above are drifting away to join theircompanions. The mechanism is grinding raucously. My arc isnarrowing …

smaller… smaller….

I feel … so strange….

THE END

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