Time Travel Omnibus, page 464
And so, properly insulated just in case, I laid me down to rest.
“Any particular period you fancy?” he said over his shoulder.
I had an answer for that one, too. After all, in case there was anything in this business, I might as well have my money’s worth, so . . .
“1666,” I said.
“Wise choice,” said the Doc, doing things at the panel to make me a spectator at the Great Fire, and I closed my eyes tight as the arcs over my head started to flicker and brighten.
“Ready?”
“Shoot,” said I.
“Right. See you in five minutes, then,” and I heard the klonk of a final switch.
Then came a flash, a bump, a feeling of flying through the air, another bump, and I opened my eyes to find myself in the Doc’s back garden.
“Strewth!” I thought, “that’s dangerous. Lucky I wasn’t killed.” I looked back at his lab window to see the hole I must have made, coming through. Only there was no hole. The lab window was all in one piece, as it shone in the sunlight.
Sunlight! At eight o’clock on a February evening!
I sat gazing at the window, open-mouthed, and should probably be there still, if Browneyes hadn’t appeared at the back door with a tablecloth in her hand.
“Gosh, ducks,” I said. “What’s happened?”
She ignored me, and began to shake the cloth, watched closely by a gang of fat sparrows on the fence.
“Hi, Beryl!” I yelled.
She looked up, at me, through me, all over the local landscape, then looked over her shoulder and said something inside the house. She laughed, shook her head and went in, closing the door. I didn’t like this one little bit, and there was something else nagging at the back of my mind. I suddenly tumbled what it was.
The silence! I couldn’t hear a darn’ thing but a distant rumbling sort of rustle. Ever held a sea shell close to your ear? That kind of noise.
I walked slowly up the garden path with a finger plunged deep into each ear, shaking up the interior furnishings, but it made not the slightest difference. I still couldn’t hear, and I supposed my recent adventures must have disorganised my intercom. Just temporarily, I hoped.
I had a vague idea of confronting the Doc, but it was only a vague idea. All my ideas were vague right then. I hadn’t got over the sunlight yet.
I reached the back door and, with my hand out to grasp the knob, I stopped and looked back. The sparrows were all on the ground, tucking into their breakfasts. Not an unusual sight, except that I had passed that way, not two seconds ago.
I walked back to them and stood on the edge of the crowd. For all the notice they took of me I might not have been there at all.
I knelt on the ground close to the fattest one there and yelled “Boo!” at him. He flew six inches in the air, came back, and carried on eating, with a sort of shamefaced look about him.
Apparently I wasn’t there.
O.K. Then, where was I?
Obviously not in 1666. And thinking of that reminded me that I was due back at the end of five minutes, so I guessed I’d better get back to where I was till I was called for.
I went back to my landing place and waited for the call. While I was hanging around I was trying to make my listening apparatus work by will power—you know, straining my ear drums, and flapping my ears to pick up sounds. The result was that I gave myself a headache all to no purpose. Then amid the rumbling rustle another sound started, no louder, but it had a rhythm to it. I listened to it for a while, then—“S’welp me,” I thought. “Church bells!”
After that it was easy. All the sounds were there as usual, but muffled, as though a long way off, and with a bit of practice I could isolate a few of them. Church bells, for instance, a motor revving up, and the unmistakable sound of a jet going somewhere in a hurry.
Well, I hung around waiting to be picked up for about half an hour before I came to the conclusion that there was to be no collection that day, at least. Then, up the garden path again to see the Doc, although what I expected to happen I don’t quite know. I mean if sparrows couldn’t see me, then it was more than likely doctors couldn’t either. And if I couldn’t hear him, then I don’t suppose he could hear me. However, we could but try.
As I reached the back door again who should come tearing out but the Doc himself, no less. He was clutching a trowel and a bundle of young plants wrapped in newspaper. He was moving fast, intent on getting to his destination before the wet newspaper gave way and scattered his plants to the four winds of heaven. He was heading straight for invisible me, so I sidestepped hurriedly.
I wasn’t quite quick enough though, and realising we were going to collide, I did a mental grin and thought: “Somebody’s going to get such a shock, soon.”
Somebody did, but it wasn’t the Doc. He just walked through me, and carried on down the garden, leaving behind him a nervous wreck that had suddenly realised that it was not only invisible but walk-throughable to boot.
This, as Shakespeare puts it, was the unkindest cut of all. Nothing could happen now, thought I, to make things worse.
As usual, I was dead wrong.
While I was standing there debating my next move the cook poked her head round the back door, and slung a lump of bread at me.
It was a gift for the fat sparrow—the official family dustbin—really, and I just happened to be in the way. I ducked instinctively, but it was through me before I was half way down, and by the time I’d turned round the fat sparrow was onto it, savaging the life out of it.
I watched him for a few seconds, then a horrible thought crept up on me.
If people could walk through me and sling crusts through me, then by the same token I couldn’t pick any material thing up. Food is a material thing, so what does that make me?
The obvious answer is hungry, and I felt the first faint stirrings deep in my stomach that always come when I think of food. I walked over to the sparrow to see if I could swipe his elevenses—not to eat them of course, but to see if my theory held water.
It might have held water, but it certainly couldn’t hold bread. My fingers just went through that crust as though it were smoke, and the faint stirrings in my stomach grew into a fully-fledged, hundred per cent, starvation feeling.
Black despair crept up, and gave me a hearty smack on the back. “Nevermind, Tosh!” he roared. “Smashing death, starvation. All you’ve got to do is sit and think of sausages and chips, steak and kidney pudding, jam roly-poly and custard, cups of tea . . .!”
I uttered a hollow laugh and wandered along the side passage of the Doc’s house, towards the front gate. I had lost all interest in women, scientists and laboratories. All I wanted was food.
As I went I instinctively reached for a cigarette and, rather to my surprise, they were in my pocket as usual, complete with lighter. I lit up, half expecting the whole place to go sky-high as I did so, but I was spared that, at least. I stood by the Doc’s front gate enjoying the solace of Lady Nicotine.
Wonderful what a cigarette will do to you, isn’t it? I began to feel almost human again, and started churning over a few facts in what in my lighter moments I call my brain.
Firstly: my watch was still ticking, and I could still think dirty thoughts (I tried one to see): so I wasn’t dead. In addition, the only angel I’d seen to date was Browneyes, and as she wore neither wings nor a shiny nightdress, she wasn’t one of the regular ones.
Secondly: everything that was with me on that fatal night was with me still. That, of course, was self-evident, otherwise I should be mooching about stark naked. But I mean the contents of my pockets—fags, money, etc.
I began searching them, half hoping to find a four course dinner somewhere, and did manage to rake up a caramel, and a solitary section off a block of milk chocolate—relics of the last time Brown-eyes and I went to the pictures.
The chocolate was minus silver paper and liberally coated with fluff and tobacco dust. However . . .
Fact three came with a boy on a bike. He was delivering newspapers and, as he entered the Doc’s house, I saw the News of the World. So I knew it was Sunday.
The date, according to the papers in the luggage rack thing on the front of his bike, was October 24th, 1953. “Last night” was February 25th, 1954, so I was four months adrift and rather late for the Great Fire.
“The last Sunday in October,” mused I. “That was before I met Browneyes. I had a date with that redhead from P.P., and we . . .” I stopped, pondered, and arrived at the following conclusions.
“If I’m here, I can’t be there as well. But that was then, while this is—er—then too, I suppose. So, if ‘I’ meet her, ‘outside,’ today I can watch ‘me’ do it. Then there must be two of me—like a split personality, perhaps. Good. Then—whoa—that’s not right, for if I can see ‘me’ now, then another ‘I’ must have been watching me when I was outside. If so, he’s still here somewhere, and if I meet him, then there’s three of us.
It would probably sound better set to music.
There was only one thing to do—go to Shepherds Bush and see me for myself.
It was then that I saw the streak.
Though, come to think of it, I had seen it for quite a while but had other things to worry about, as it was not a conspicuous sort of streak at all, but one of those “out of the corner of your eye” objects.
You know what the shadow of a cloud is like, tearing across the ground in the distance? Well, it was that sort of thing, only (a) it wasn’t there when you looked direct, and (b) it wasn’t tearing anywhere, but bobbed up—out of the corner of your eye—in all directions.
By screwing my eyeballs round almost to my ears, I was able to pin it down and decided that it was heat haze holding close to the ground. Then the sun took time out behind a cloud and I decided that it wasn’t, for it grew more distinct and I was able to trace it along the ground almost to my feet, running locally at just above pavement level, filling the roadway and . . .
For a science fiction fan I was a disgrace to my publishers. Invisible, inaudible, walk-throughable—it stuck out a mile what the streak was. Earth, ground or whatever you like to call it.
Seems like I’d got myself a transfer altogether, even having my own soil to walk on.
I did a quick check up with my feet. As I thought, I was poised half an inch above the normal pavement. Looking straight down, my ground was invisible, though it felt solid enough. Presumably I’d been a little above ground level all the time, but in my bemused condition I wouldn’t have noticed a mere half inch or so.
I wondered if my earth followed the contours of the one outside, because if it didn’t, I should have to “gang warily” . . . very warily.
The scene changes to High Street, Kensington. I was on my way to Shepherds Bush, and had got this far without anything extraordinary happening, my ground behaving reasonably well, so that I was seldom more than a couple of feet either above or below the outside ground level—until I reached Kensington Church Street, which is a hill.
My normal route to my digs was along said Church Street, but as my ground seemed determined to keep its own level I was faced with the choice of either going through the hill or round it. I got nearly neck deep, then lost my nerve and beat it back to the leveller High Street. It was a darned sight farther, going via Hammersmith Broadway, but it was flatter—I hoped.
I was in no hurry, however, as I wouldn’t be meeting the redhead until six o’clock, and according to the public clocks in the vicinity, the time was something between 1.50 and 2.05. So I took it easy, smoking and watching the “walk-throughables” going by.
There was a nice little blonde standing outside of the Underground Arcade, and as I sauntered past, secure in my invisibility, I murmured, politely: “How d’ye do.”
“Greetings,” she replied. “Where’s your party?”
That stopped me—with a jerk. I stood yammering for a second or so, and finally managed to come out with: “Good Heavens! Can you see me?”
Which, I suppose, is as daft a question as I’ve ever asked anyone.
She burst out laughing. “Of course I can. This is your first time through, isn’t it? Don’t wander too far from your party, will you?”
“Party?” said I, like a dim-witted parrot.
She waved back into the Arcade, and I saw half a dozen people watching us, hanging about self-consciously, like Englishmen who haven’t been introduced.
“Party,” she said. “That’s a party. You must have one, somewhere. What period are you from?”
That was it. The good old science fiction formula. So this is where time travellers get, is it. No wonder nobody’s ever seen them. I felt loads better, thinking that I wasn’t stuck here for good, and I laughed light-heartedly, replying light-headedly: “No. No party. Lone scout, me. I’m from next year, and ought to be in the seventeenth century but through a technical hitch this is as far as I’ve got.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “Then you’re channelled.”
“That,” said I, “is a nice way of putting it, although it’s hardly a lady-like thing to suggest—unless you mean something else.”
Instead of answering, she beckoned the rest of the gang, and as they came trooping up she introduced me. Like this:
“Meet the newest channeller.”
The “channel” is the no-man’s-land running parallel to the “outside”—or “inside,” depending on your position—and is there for the express purpose, as far as I can see, of making time-travel possible.
It works this way. When a would-be traveller enters the “Projection Field,” said field alters his ‘wavelength’ enough to make him permeable to the “channel” wall—or the channel wall permeable to him, one of the two. Then he is shoved down the channel to whatever period he wants to look at, stays there till he’s had his bob’s worth, pulled back again to his “present,” re-wavelengthed, and there he is.
If, however, he does something that the Field doesn’t agree with, he doesn’t last long. The procedure being almost instantaneous, he’s in the channel and starting his journey before the Field can take the necessary action to clear itself.
My trouble, as the gang explained enthusiastically, was this. I took a rubber mat, to lie on. The part of the Field flowing between the arc-lamps and the plastic “projector” was partially blocked by it. And the circuit promptly cleared itself by ejecting this as quickly as it could. Unfortunately, I was on top of it, so I got ejected too.
And, once ejected, you stay ejected. When that sank in and I found I was here for keeps, I didn’t exactly jump for joy, but the blonde said:
“Cheer up. You’re not the only one over here in this predicament—not by a long way. You’ll have plenty of company, both from normal visitors as well as channellers.”
“That,” I said, “is something, I suppose, but touching on the matter of food—how do I eat?”
An important question, this, to a chap that’s only had one caramel and one tiny piece of chocolate in four months.
“Like all of us stranded here,” said the blonde, “you will be a guide. You’ll have a Tours Itinerary delivered weekly, giving details of parties operating, period and place to be visited, route to be taken, etc. Your food and other necessities will come with it. Each of us guides work two parties a week, spending a couple of days in the place chosen before the party arrives. That way we know the best way to proceed when they do come. Incidentally, you will have a guide with you for a time to instruct you—and I expect it will be me.”
Actually she didn’t say that at all at the time but handed me a super sandwich, and while I was polishing it off I got the above information. I’m just sacrificing veracity on the altar of continuity.
I’m settling down quite nicely, thank you, and June—the blonde—has shifted her quarters to the 20th century. Apparently there is quite a number of channellers in the 22nd century where she cornea from, since that’s where this time travel lark first starts, which makes me a what-d’ye-call-it? An anachronism.
I’ve seen quite a few scientists and chronologists from up ahead, and not one of them has heard of the Doc’s experiments. One, the Einstein of his time, no doubt, put it down to the Final War, which, being due in the not too distant future, probably wiped out all records. They’ve never studied the Doc’s lab, because they’ve had no reason to.
There was . . . eh? Oh, this Final War. No, I’m not telling you the date. You’ll find out soon enough, when it comes.
As I was saying, there was another reason why Einstein II came to see me, and it’s this.
Until I bobbed up, every channeller had been carried back some hundred years or more from their starting point before they were dumped off the Field. As natural laws work the same this side as they do your side, they always die before they re-reach the time when they came in.
So nobody knew what would happen to a living person who caught up with himself from inside. If you see what I mean.
I, therefore, having but a few months to go, seem to be the answer to the research worker’s prayer, and on The Night there will be a couple of “observers” in the Doc’s lab with me, as the favourite theory seems to be that when I get level with my “wavelength” radiations again I shall get pulled back inside.
There was nobody—no other “me”—in this place, before I came, but that’s quite in order apparently, as, according to this Einstein bloke—”. . . the past is generally more fluid than was once supposed. Small incidents can and do vary from time to time, but the general pattern of events remains constant.”
The idea being, as far as I can see, that as long as there is a “me” outside to carry on with the good work, it doesn’t matter which one it is. So if I get taken back in the place of the “me” which makes the trip, it may set up a sequence of events to be followed by all future “me’s”—at four monthly intervals.
“There’s a flaw there,” said I, in another of my lucid moments, “for there was nobody to take my place when I came through.” I thought that was unanswerable, but Tosh had one all ready for me.
