Time Travel Omnibus, page 476
We were standing in the projection box of his private cinema arguing quietly about his latest brainchild, and it was only when our voices stilled that one noticed the soothing, unobtrusive 50-cycle hum of a bank of high tension transformers squatting sturdily along one wall of the box. I moved unhappily over to the sound proof door and felt for a cigarette as Tim fussed busily over a large control panel let into the side of something that looked like a hybrid between a film projector and a television camera.
A queer type, this Swanson man, but very likeable. We had first met towards the end of the war in a rowdy pub off Lower Regent Street, a pub well known as the haunt of junior signal officers of all three services. Swanson was one of the few civilians in there, using the bar condescendingly to make up for his lack of uniform. Much later I found out that he was doing his stint as one of the back-room boys. He looked the part, too. Medium built, rather round-shouldered, lank lifeless hair plastered haphazardly over a high forehead, rimless, pebble glasses and the world-is-my-oyster attitude about him.
We met several times after that, and became good friends, probably because I’m that rarity, a good listener. Odd, really, because we’re poles apart, the only links between us being a fondness for a good tipple, and a liking for electrical gadgets.
At his invitation I spent a couple of weeks of my demob, leave with him out at his house at Cockfosters—for house read mansion, hall or what you will—a huge, rambling, friendly place, efficiently run by a housekeeper, a couple of female domestics and a male factotum answering cheerfully to the name of Spike.
I learnt a lot about Tim Swanson in those few days of transition—a, he was worth a lot of gold, his old man having been in the brewery business; and b, he was a near genius when it came to electronics. Both a and b are important to this story, because the former enabled Tim to chuck his job with the Ministry when the war ended, thus giving him all the time in the world to concentrate on being the latter.
At the end of my holiday I said no to Tim’s generous offer to work with him as his assistant, and returned to my old job as senior development engineer with a North London firm of television manufacturers, but I used to go to Swanson’s place most weekends.
In the months that followed, this routine seldom varied except for the winter I spent in the States quizzing production methods. Tim was a bachelor by inclination, whilst I was still hopefully awaiting the arrival of my future soul-mate—but here and now I must admit that this Miss Right would have to be quite a gal to compete with the many and profitable inventions that flowed out from our Cockfosters lab. That little idea, for instance, on D.C. amplification, or again, the colour television process which is due to hit the home market in a few months’ time.
I was still eyeing Swanson quizzically from my vantage point by the door when he straightened up from the control panel.
“You think I’m off my rocker, don’t you, Jim?”
“Check.”
“Fair enough, old man, but the proof of the pudding and all that. Come over here a minute, will you?”
I ground out my cigarette and did as instructed. Swanson stood back and jerked a square-topped thumb at the control panel. Most of it was taken up by a large dial marked in non-linear graduations, the rest of the panel sprouting push buttons and flush-mounted indicator fights. The dial was set at minus 2500. A faint, derisive high-pitched whine came from the machine and I could smell seaweed.
“Fine,” I said sarcastically. “You’ll make a fortune with this contraption at Brighton.” He reached out and tapped the dial.
“B.C., of course.”
“Of course,” I snapped. Swanson grinned. “Sorry, Jim, if I’m taking too much for granted, but I’m a little keyed up, you know. Look, it’s as simple as this. B.C. on the negative side of the zero fine and good old Anno Domini on the positive side. By adjusting the dial I can dig down into the past or reach forward into the future.” If Tim was excited he was making a darn good job of concealing it from me. His voice was flat and unemotional, and he might have been reading aloud the obituary notices from the Times. The trouble was that I knew him to be sincere. When Tim made a statement on his chosen subject it was a statement of fact and as solid as a reinforced concrete block. But, somehow, the whole thing seemed ridiculous. It smacked of April the first and a bucket of water poised on a half-open door. I felt myself flush.
“Let’s get this thing straight, or before I know where I am you’ll be asking me to believe in the Indian rope trick, or that the earth is flat, or that little thing about Chinese women, or—”
I tailed off weakly. The grin on Swanson’s face had broadened.
“Have a look-see,” he invited.
He pressed a button, and high up on the wall to the right of the machine a metal shutter slid back on quiet runners, disclosing an aperture roughly the same size as the hole framing the snout of Swanson’s machine. I clambered up onto a small platform and looked down into the theatre. It was very much the same as I had last seen it, although the rather arty proscenium curtains had been taken down and the tip-up seats removed. Perfectly normal that is, except for a huge tiger padding smoothly up and down what used to be the centre aisle. I closed my eyes, counted slowly up to ten in Urdu and then opened them again. The tiger was still there.
It was then that I realised that this was no ordinary tiger.
“My God,” I heard myself babbling, “it’s a sabre-toothed tiger.”
There was a vomitive sawn-off cough, then the explosion of a venom-packed body hitting the wall below me. I slid nervelessly off the platform, patting the wall fondly with my hands. I suddenly needed a lot of reassurance.
“No,” I croaked in answer to Tim’s raised eyebrows. “No, it just can’t be. It’s some sort of 3-D film.” The wall felt good to my back.
Swanson flipped over a cigarette.
“Here, make yourself comfortable. I’ll fill in a few details.”
I lit the cigarette with hands that continued to shake as hysteria sat grimacing on my shoulder. All right, fellows, let’s go dance on the lawn in the moonlight. Over here, Titania. This way, dear . . . I drew in a lot of smoke.
“Let’s have it, Tim, but nice and slow so that I can stay with you.”
On the other side of the wall old man tiger sounded as clamorous as a cash register at a January sale, but the initial shock to my nervous system was nicely submerged now under an eager flood of curiosity.
“For a long time,” began Tim, slowly, “it’s been my belief that some feature of a past event may depend on an event in the far future. The passage of events is real, and, obviously, time is the successiveness of passing events, but though events have passage, they must have also eternal being. You follow me?”
I didn’t, but I nodded.
He went on: “Thus, I reasoned, from this integration of space and time, from this intercourse of past, present and future, it should be possible to clip out an event as easy as it is to remove a photograph from a family album, and with as little disruption. It’s true that the sequence is temporarily broken, but the balance is restored when the photo is put back in its proper place.
“I’ve been working on this idea since late ’48, but I’ve kept it very hush-hush, even from you, Tim. You see, it could so easily have been a complete and utter flop. As it is, it’s still far from being one hundred per cent.” Swanson took off his glasses and looked blindly in my direction. “I’ll cut out the technicalities until we’ve both got used to the idea. I say we, Jim, because I made the first test only two or three hours before you arrived.”
I choked on the cigarette.
“You mean that this is as fresh to you as it is to me?” Tim nodded gravely. “Although I’ve spent most of the past week checking and re-checking every single circuit and control, I made the final adjustment late this afternoon. I then had a cuppa and strolled round the grounds until I had calmed down sufficiently to come back here and make the initial test.
“I switched on, smoked a pensive cigarette while she warmed up, set the period selector switch, pressed the main control button and, hey presto, one perfect specimen of Felis Machairodus.”
“But why that big cat, Tim?”
Swanson shrugged. “Unfortunately, I seem to have no choice in the matter. I select the approximate age I want, press the button and take what comes.”
I came to my feet with a rush as a chilling thought struck me.
“But that means that instead of that overgrown pussy next door you might have conjured up a brontosaurus as big as a ruddy house.”
Tim shrugged again.
“I think you’ve got your periods mixed, old man,” he mumbled vaguely. “Apart from that, I did mention a few moments ago that my machine if far from being perfect. In any case—”
“All right,” I said, impatiently, “so you’ve gone back a few thousand years and produced that programme seller down there in the auditorium. Now what?”
No shrugging this time, but an airy wave of the hand. At times he could be insufferable.
“Before selecting our next period of time, Felix must be sent back to his proper niche in the past, and to do that we simply press the button marked return.” Swanson patted me affectionately on the shoulder. “I brought him here, Jim, but you shall give him his exit.”
I waited as Swanson scrambled up on the platform, feeling like a kid with his first chemistry set. After all, it’s not every day that one can play space-time yo-yo with the ancestor of Blake’s original “burning-bright” model.
“Cut,” said Tim’s voice.
I pushed the button and kept my fingers crossed that our involuntary visitor wouldn’t sidetrack anywhere on the Einstein Highway. A small indicator bulb burnt red above the button.
“Cut, Jim, old man.”
Tim’s voice again, but this time louder, a trifle petulant.
I pressed the button and left my finger there. A long minute grouched by into eternity.
“All right, Jim, you can release the button.”
Under the strip lighting Swanson’s face looked white and strained, and the grin had disappeared. He jumped down off the platform.
“It’s no go, Jim, he must like it here,” he joked, but there was a break in his voice.
I went back to the door, leaving Tim to fiddle about behind the machine. There was nothing I could do. Over his shoulder I could see a nest of miniature-type valves ensconced in an ordered confusion of multi-coloured wiring and prim little relays. Swanson appeared satisfied.
He snapped back the inspection cover and turned round and looked at me thoughtfully.
Swanson wasn’t the type you could ever feel sorry for—he was too self-satisfied—but I felt genuinely sorry for him now. Not that this prevented me from getting in a malicious dig.
“That big cat’ll take an awful lot of house-training, Tim.”
He muttered a rude word. Then: “You save your breath, my lad; you will need a lot of it later.”
He crossed over to the extension house telephone and lifted the receiver. More mutterings, tongue-clickings, an impatient rattling of the ’phone rest.
“Hello, Spike. I’m speaking from the projection box of the cinema. Bring over the shooting brake and the old man’s 450/400 rifle . . . Yes, a couple of shells should be enough. Oh, and a bottle of Scotch and three glasses.”
Swanson replaced the receiver, looking at me smugly.
“Well, that’s the only way out of this mess. It might take me several days, or even weeks, to rectify the trouble in the return circuits, and as I don’t fancy hanging on to that brute any longer than I can help, it will have to be shot.”
“And the body?” I enquired, casually.
“Oh, we’ll load it onto the shooting brake and dump it over in Regent’s Park.” He chuckled. “It should provide quite a sensation.”
We stood and smoked in silence whilst I tried hard to think up some water-tight objections to Swanson’s scheme, but the reaction had set in and my brain was confused and muddy. In the hours that followed it remained that way, the cold nervous journey through the frost-sharpened streets of London providing no antidote; fortunately the unloading of the carcase went off without a hitch and I was snug in bed by the early hours of the morning.
As I anticipated, the Sunday newspapers carried no mention of our tiger, although there was a brief statement on the nine o’clock news to the effect that a tiger had been found shot in Regent’s Park. Just a tiger, mind you, and no suggestion of sabre-tooths or any other peculiarity.
The story broke on Monday morning—in the more sensational papers taking pride of place over an eloping South American heiress. Even the romantic deliberations of Miss Eva Bartok failed to furnish adequate competition. “Primeval Tiger Shot by 20th Century Weapon,” screamed one headline. Some papers toned it down a lot, as the Piltdown Skull hoax was still fresh in the public memory.
I rang Tim up during the day but he seemed preoccupied, and he gave me the impression that it would be greatly appreciated if I stayed away until I was sent for. “You see, old man, it’s essential that I devote every waking moment to correcting that fault in my machine, but I promise you that you’ll be in at the kill.”
I was afraid of that.
The days slipped by, taking with them into obscurity the sabre-tooth tiger mystery, although it still continued to tax the brains of the best zoologists in the country. One Friday night in late February Spike came for me in the Sunbeam-Talbot with strict instructions from Tim to drop everything and come on over.
“No more tigers, eh, Spike?” I asked, resignedly.
“M’gawd, I ’ope not. That last perisher weighed a ton.”
Swanson shook me warmly by the hand.
“Glad to see you, Jim. You’re shaking hands with Mr. Success himself.”
“No more snags then, Tim?”
“Never a one, boy. I’ve been backwards and forwards, a dozen times, but no mishaps. It’s working beautifully. Let’s go through and I’ll show you all the refinements I’ve introduced.”
I followed him through the connecting door and down the steps into the theatre. The walls had been fined with rubber and all sharp corners rounded off. Obviously Swanson was taking no chances on his guests hurting themselves in a moment of panic. A concealed microphone led through to a tape recorder and the overhead fighting was such that a 16mm. camera could take a permanent record of the proceedings. I said: “I can see a use for all this rubber, but why should you have to take such a precaution?”
Swanson pulled at his chin.
“I can’t give you a worthwhile explanation, but for some reason I can only produce an animated object, and not the surroundings common to it at the time of the transfer. You saw that for yourself in the case of the tiger. Believe me, it’s been a hell of a shock for most of the characters I’ve had down here to find themselves suddenly and inexplicably pitchforked into strange, unfamiliar surroundings—rather like a bad dream for them, I should imagine. But let’s get back and then you can see for yourself.”
We went back into the projection box, Swanson shutting the door behind us.
“We’ll have a beer while she’s warming up, Jim. I got Spike to fetch over a crate this afternoon.”
We had a bottle, several bottles, as Tim gave me a brief summary of the past weeks. It made fascinating, uncomfortable listening, the purr of the transformers providing a Greek chorus for the monotonous, matter-of-factness of Swanson’s voice describing a succession of nearmiracles. I could never get used to Tim’s almost inhuman detachment, regarding it as something akin to ruthlessness.
“You make it sound as commonplace as fish and chips out of a newspaper,” I said, truculently.
“Well, it had to come,” replied Tim, mildly, “and there’s no point in sitting on one’s backside goggle-eyed with amazement. Why not try it out for yourself?”
“Cocky little swine,” rumbled half a dozen beers making merry on an empty stomach. Anyway, it was Swanson’s fault for whisking me away before I had a chance to get to grips with my evening meal. I put down my empty glass and followed Tim over to the machine, standing behind him as he went through the procedure. It was perfectly simple. Set the selector, check various meters, including the voltage stabiliser indicator, then, a touch on the main control button. Swanson climbed up onto the platform.
“It’s all yours, Jim. Glorious past or the uncertain future.”
My mind was made up. I set the selector dial approximately midway between 1600 and 1700 A.D. and proceeded to check the meters. I heard Tim cluck disgustedly.
“What’s the matter with you, Jim? Don’t you want to see how your great-great-great grandchildren look and behave?”
I scowled up at him.
“The hell I do. I’ve had a belly-full of my contemporaries without seeing what a mess their brats have made of themselves and the future. Oh, no, my choice is the 17th century, an age of individuality and expression.” I squared my shoulders. “In any case, I’ve always fancied myself in a cloak and three-cornered hat.”
I returned to the control panel smarting under the lash of Swanson’s final derogatory sniff and pressed the button. As I took my thumb away I heard a long, low whistle of amazement from Swanson, followed by a shriek from the theatre. I tugged impatiently at his trouser leg.
“What is it, Tim?”
He whistled again before tearing his face away from the peephole.
“It looks like the answer to all your prayers, old man. Come on up.”
We changed places in an undignified scramble of arms and legs—me eagerly and Swanson rather reluctantly. I peered down into the theatre.
She was beautiful, truly beautiful.
I think that the first thing I noticed was how her glossy hair, blue-black as a raven’s wing, shone under the harsh fights. It was piled high up on her head and decorated with a bow of jewels. Her nose was slender with wide-flared nostrils, the mouth moist and sensual and the corners of her eyes slanted entrancingly up towards the temples.
