Time Travel Omnibus, page 430
“Oh dear, I knew this was going to be difficult,” she remarked. “Do you find it difficult?”
I said I did, rather. She went on with a dogged air:
“Well, you see, feeling like that about it is why I took up history. I mean, I could really think myself into history—some of it. And then getting your letter on my birthday was really what made me take the mid-Twentieth Century as my Special Period for my Honors Degree, and, of course, it made up my mind for me to go on and do postgraduate work.”
“Er—my letter did all this?”
“Well, that was the only way, wasn’t it? I mean there simply wasn’t any other way I could have got near a history-machine except by working in a history laboratory, was there? And even then I doubt whether I’d have had a chance to use it on my own if it hadn’t been Uncle Donald’s lab.”
“History-machine,” I said, grasping a straw out of all this. “What is a history-machine?”
She looked puzzled.
“It’s, well—a history-machine. You learn history with it.”
“Not lucid,” I said. “You might as well tell me you make history with it.”
“Oh, no. One’s not supposed to do that. It’s a very serious offense.”
“Oh,” I said. I tried again: “About this letter—”
“Well, I had to bring that in to explain about history, but you won’t have written it yet, of course, so I expect you find it a bit confusing.”
“Confusing,” I told her, “is scarcely the word. Can’t we get hold of something concrete? This letter I’m supposed to have written, for instance. What was it about?”
She looked at me hard, and then away. A most surprising blush swept up her face, and ran into her hair. She made herself look back at me again. I watched her eyes go shiny, and then pucker at the comers. She dropped her face suddenly into her hands.
“Oh, you don’t love me, you don’t,” she wailed. “I wish I’d never come. I wish I was dead!”
“She sort of—sniffed at me,” said Tavia.
“Well, she’s gone now, and my reputation with her,” I said. “An excellent worker, our Mrs. Toombs, but conventional. She’ll probably throw up the job.”
“Because I’m here? How silly!”
“Perhaps your conventions are different.”
“But where else could I go? I’ve only a few shillings of your kind of money, and nobody to go to.”
“Mrs. Toombs could scarcely know that.”
“But we weren’t, I mean we didn’t—”
“Night, and the figure two,” I told her, “are plenty for our conventions. In fact, two is enough, anyway. You will recall that the animals simply went in two by two; their emotional relationships didn’t interest anyone. Two; and all is assumed.”
“Oh, of course, I remember, there was no probative then—now, I mean. You have a sort of rigid, lucky-dip, take-it-or-leave-it system.”
“There are other ways of expressing it, but—well, ostensibly at any rate, yes, I suppose.”
“Rather crude, these old customs, when one sees them at close range—but fascinating,” she remarked. Her eyes rested thoughtfully upon me for a second. “You—” she began.
“You,” I reminded her, “promised to give me a more explanatory explanation of all this than you achieved yesterday.”
“You didn’t believe me.”
“The first wallop took my breath,” I admitted, “but you’ve given me enough evidence since. Nobody could keep up an act like that.”
She frowned.
“I don’t think that’s very kind of you. I’ve studied the mid-Twentieth very thoroughly. It was my Special Period.”
“So you told me, but that doesn’t get me far. All historical scholars have Special Periods, but that doesn’t mean that they suddenly turn up in them.”
She stared at me. “But of course they do—licensed historians. How else would they make close studies?”
“There’s too much of this ‘of course’ business,” I told her. “I suggest we just begin at the beginning. Now this letter of mine—no, we’ll skip the letter,” I added hastily as I caught her expression. “Now, you went to work in your uncle’s laboratory with something called a history-machine. What’s that—a kind of tape-recorder?”
“Good gracious, no. It’s a kind of cupboard thing you get into to go to times and places.”
“Oh,” I said. “You—you mean you can walk into it in 21something, and walk out into 19something?”
“Or any other past time,” she said, nodding. “But, of course, not anybody can do it. You have to be qualified and licensed and all that kind of thing. There are only six permitted history-machines in England, and only about a hundred in the whole world, and they’re strict about them.
“When the first ones were made they didn’t realize what trouble they might cause, but after a time historians began to check the trips made against the written records of the periods, and started to find funny things. There was Hero demonstrating a simple steam-turbine at Alexandria sometime B.C.; and Archimedes using a kind of napalm at the siege of Syracuse; and Leonardo da Vinci drawing parachutes when there wasn’t anything to parachute from; and Eric the Red discovering America in a sort of off-the-record way before Columbus got there; and Napoleon wondering about submarines; and lots of other suspicious things. So it was clear that some people had been careless when they used the machine, and had been causing chronoclasms.”
“Causing—what?”
“Chronoclasms—that’s when a thing goes and happens at the wrong time because somebody was careless, or talked rashly.
“Well, most of those things had happened without causing very much harm—as far as we can tell—though it is possible that the natural course of history was altered several times, and people write very clever papers to show how. But everybody saw that the results might be extremely dangerous. Just suppose that somebody had carelessly given Napoleon the idea of the internal combustion engine to add to the idea of the submarine; there’s no telling what would have happened. So they decided that tampering must be stopped at once, and all history-machines were forbidden except those licensed by the Historians’ Council.”
“Just hold it a minute,” I said. “Look, if a thing is done, it’s done. I mean, well, for example, I am here. I couldn’t suddenly cease to be, or to have been, if somebody were to go back and kill my grandfather when he was a boy.”
“But you certainly couldn’t be here if they did, could you?” she asked. “No, the fallacy that the past is unchangeable didn’t matter a bit as long as there was no means of changing it, but once there was, and the fallacy of the idea was shown, we had to be very careful indeed. That’s what a historian has to worry about; the other side—justhow it happens—we leave to the higher-mathematicians.
“Now, before you are allowed to use the history-machine you have to have special courses, tests, permits, and give solemn undertakings, and then do several years on probation before you get your license to practice. Only then are you allowed to visit and observe on your own. And that is all you may do, observe. The rule is very, very strict.”
I thought that over. “If it isn’t an unkind question—aren’t you breaking rather a lot of these rules every minute?” I suggested.
“Of course I am. That’s why they came after me,” she said.
“You’d have had your license revoked, or something, if they’d caught you?”
“Good gracious. I could never qualify for a license. I’ve just sneaked my trips when the lab has been empty sometimes. It being Uncle Donald’s lab made things easier because unless I was actually caught at the machine, I could always pretend I was doing something special for him.
“I had to have the right clothes to come in, but I dared not go to the historians’ regular costume-makers, so I sketched some things in a museum and got them copied—they’re all right, aren’t they?”
“Very successful, and becoming, too,” I assured her. “—Though there is a little something about the shoes.”
She looked down at her feet. “I was afraid so. I couldn’t find any of quite the right date,” she admitted. “Well, then,” she went on, “I was able to make a few short trial trips. They had to be short because duration is constant—that is, an hour here is the same as an hour there—and I couldn’t get the machine to myself for long at a time. But yesterday a man came into the lab just as I was getting back. When he saw these clothes he knew at once what I was doing, so the only thing I could do was to jump straight back into the machine—I’d never have had another chance. And they came after me without even bothering to change.”
“Do you think they’ll come again?” I asked her.
“I expect so. But they’ll be wearing proper clothes for the period next time.”
“Are they likely to be desperate? I mean, would they shoot, or anything like that?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. That’d be a pretty bad chronoclasm—particularly if they happened to kill somebody.”
“But you being here must be setting up a series of pretty resounding chronoclasms. Which would be worse?”
“Oh, mine are all accounted for. I looked it up,” she assured me, obscurely. “They’ll be less worried about me when they’ve thought of looking it up, too.”
She paused briefly. Then, with an air of turning to a more interesting subject, she went on:
“When people in your time get married they have to dress up in a special way for it, don’t they?”
The topic seemed to have a fascination for her.
“M’m,” mumbled Tavia. “I think I rather like Twentieth Century marriage.”
“It has risen higher in my own estimation, darling,” I admitted. And, indeed, I was quite surprised to find how much higher it had risen in the course of the last month or so.
“Do Twentieth Century marrieds always have one big bed, darling?” she inquired.
“Invariably, darling,” I assured her.
“Funny,” she said. “Not very hygienic, of course, but quite nice all the same.”
We reflected on that.
“Darling, have you noticed she doesn’t sniff at me any more?” she remarked.
“We always cease to sniff on production of a certificate, darling,” I explained.
Conversation pursued its desultory way on topics of personal, but limited, interest for a while. Eventually it reached a point where I was saying:
“It begins to look as if we don’t need to worry any more about those men who were chasing you, darling. They’d have been back long before now if they had been as worried as you thought.”
She shook her head.
“We’ll have to go on being careful, but it is queer. Something to do with Uncle Donald, I expect. He’s not really mechanically minded, poor dear. Well, you can tell that by the way he set the machine two years wrong when he came to see you. But there’s nothing we can do except wait, and be careful.”
I went on reflecting. Presently:
“I shall have to get a job soon. That may make it difficult to keep a watch for them,” I told her.
“Job?” she said.
“In spite of what they say, two can’t live as cheap as one. And wives hanker after certain standards, and ought to have them—within reason, of course. The little money I have won’t run to them.”
“You don’t need to worry about that, darling,” Tavia assured me. “You can just invent something.”
“Me? Invent?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. You’re already fairly well up on radio, aren’t you?”
“They put me on a few radar courses when I was in the R.A.F.”
“Ah! The R.A.F.!” she said, ecstatically. “To think that you actually fought in the Second Great War! Did you know Monty and Ike and all those wonderful people?”
“Not personally. Different arm of the Services,” I said.
“What a pity, everyone liked Ike. But about the other thing. All you have to do is to get some advanced radio and electronics books, and I’ll show you what to invent.”
“You’ll—? Oh, I see. But do you think that would be quite ethical?” I asked, doubtfully.
“I don’t see why not After all the things have got to be invented by somebody, or I couldn’t have learnt about them at school, could I?”
“I—er, I think I’ll have to think a bit about that,” I told her.
It was, I suppose, coincidence that I should have mentioned the lack of interruption that particular morning—at least, it may have been: I have become increasingly suspicious of coincidences since I first saw Tavia. At any rate, in the middle of that same morning Tavia, looking out of the window, said:
“Darling, there’s somebody waving from the trees over there.”
I went over to have a look, and sure enough I had a view of a stick with a white handkerchief tied to it, swinging slowly from side to side. Through field-glasses I was able to distinguish the operator, an elderly man almost hidden in the bushes. I handed the glasses to Tavia.
“Oh, dear! Uncle Donald,” she exclaimed. “I suppose we had better see him. He seems to be alone.”
I went outside, down to the end of my path, and waved him forward. Presently he emerged, carrying the stick and handkerchief bannerwise. His voice reached me faintly: “Don’t shoot!”
I spread my hand wide to show that I was unarmed. Tavia came down the path and stood beside me. As he drew close, he transferred the stick to his left hand, lifted his hat with the other, and inclined his head politely.
“Ah, Sir Gerald! A pleasure to meet you again,” he said.
“He isn’t Sir Gerald, Uncle. He’s Mr. Lattery,” said Tavia.
“Dear me. Stupid of me. Mr. Lattery,” he went on, “I am sure you’ll be glad to hear that the wound was more uncomfortable than serious. Just a matter of the poor fellow having to lie on his front for a while.”
“Poor fellow—?” I repeated, blankly.
“The one you shot yesterday.”
“I shot?”
“Probably tomorrow or the next day,” Tavia said, briskly. “Uncle, you really are dreadful with those settings, you know.”
“I understand the principles well enough, my dear. It’s just the operation that I sometimes find a little confusing.”
“Never mind. Now you are here you’d better come indoors,” she told him. “And you can put that handkerchief away in your pocket,” she added.
As he entered I saw him give a quick glance round the room, and nod to himself as if satisfied with the authenticity of its contents. We sat down. Tavia said:
“Just before we go any further, Uncle Donald, I think you ought to know that I am married to Gerald—Mr. Lattery.”
Dr. Gobie peered closely at her.
“Married?” he repeated. “What for?”
“Oh, dear,” said Tavia. She explained patiently: “I am in love with him, and he’s in love with me, so I am his wife. It’s the way things happen here.”
“Tch, tch!” said Dr. Gobie, and shook his head. “Of course I am well aware of your sentimental penchant for the Twentieth Century and its ways, my dear, but surely it wasn’t quite necessary for you to—er—go native?”
“I like it, quite a lot,” Tavia told him.
“Young women will be romantic, I know. But have you thought of the trouble you will be causing Sir Ger—er, Mr. Lattery?”
“But I’m saving him trouble, Uncle Donald. They sniff at you here if you don’t get married, and I didn’t like him being sniffed at.”
“I wasn’t thinking so much of while you’re here, as of after you have left. They have a great many rules about presuming death, and proving desertion, and so on; most dilatory and complex. Meanwhile, he can’t marry anyone else.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t want to marry anyone else, would you darling?” she said to me.
“Certainly not,” I protested.
“You’re quite sure of that, darling?”
“Darling,” I said, taking her hand, “if all the other women in the world—”
After a time Dr. Gobie recalled our attention with an apologetic cough.
“The real purpose of my visit,” he explained, “is to persuade my niece that she must come back, and at once. There is the greatest consternation and alarm throughout the faculty over this affair, and I am being held largely to blame. Our chief anxiety is to get her back before any serious damage is done. Any chronoclasm goes ringing unendingly down the ages—and at any moment a really serious one may come of this escapade. It has put all of us into a highly nervous condition.”
“I’m sorry about that, Uncle Donald—and about your getting the blame. But I am not coming back. I’m very happy here.”
“But the possible chronoclasms, my dear. It keeps me awake at night thinking—”
“Uncle dear, they’d be nothing to the chronoclasms that would happen if I did come back just now. You must see that I simply can’t, and explain it to the others.”
“Can’t—?” he repeated.
“Now, if you look in the books you’ll see that my husband—isn’t that a funny, ugly old-fashioned word? I rather like it, though. It comes from two ancient Icelandic roots—”
“You were speaking about not coming back,” Dr. Gobie reminded her.
“Oh, yes. Well, you’ll see in the books that first he invented submarine radio communication, and then later on he invented curved-beam transmission, which is what he got knighted for.”
“I’m perfectly well aware of that, Tavia. I do not see—”
“But, Uncle Donald, you must. How on earth can he possibly invent those things if I’m not here to show him how to do it? If you take me away now, they’ll just not be invented, and then what will happen?”
Dr. Gobie stared at her steadily for some moments.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I must admit that that point had not occurred to me,” and sank deeply into thought for a while.
“Besides,” Tavia added, “Gerald would hate me to go, wouldn’t you darling?”
“I—” I began, but Dr. Gobie cut me short by standing up.
“Yes,” he said. “I can see there will have to be a postponement for a while. I shall put your point to them, but it will be only for a while.”
