Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  “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.”

  On his way to the door he paused.

  “Meanwhile, my dear, do be careful. These things are so delicate and complicated. I tremble to think of the complexities you might set up if you—well, say, if you were to do something irresponsible like becoming your own progenetrix.”

  “That is one thing I can’t do, Uncle Donald. I’m on the collateral branch.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, that’s a very lucky thing. Then I’ll say au revoir, my dear, and to you, too, Sir—er—Mr. Lattery. I trust that we may meet again—it has had its pleasant side to be here as more than a mere observer for once.”

  “Uncle Donald, you’ve said a mouthful there,” Tavia agreed.

  He shook his head reprovingly at her.

  “I’m afraid you would never have got to the top of the historical tree, my dear. You aren’t thorough enough. That phrase is early Twentieth Century, and, if I may say so, inelegant even then.”

  The expected shooting incident took place about a week later. Three men, dressed in quite convincing imitation of farmhands, made the approach. Tavia recognized one of them through the glasses. When I appeared, gun in hand, at the door, they tried to make for cover. I peppered one at considerable range, and he ran on, limping.

  After that we were left unmolested. A little later we began to get down to the business of underwater radio—surprisingly simple, once the principle had been pointed out—and I filed my applications for patents. With that well in hand, we turned to the curved-beam transmission.

  Tavia hurried me along with that. She said:

  “You see, I don’t know how long we’ve got, darling. I’ve been trying to remember ever since I got here what the date was on your letter, and I can’t—even though I remember you underlined it. I know there’s a record that your first wife deserted you—‘deserted,’ isn’t that a dreadful word to use: as if I would, my sweet—but it doesn’t say when. So I must get you properly briefed on this because there’d be the most frightful chronoclasm if you failed to invent it.”

  And then, instead of buckling down to it as her words suggested, she became pensive.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I think there’s going to be a pretty bad chronoclasm anyway. You see, I’m going to have a baby.”

  “No!” I exclaimed delightedly.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? I am. And I’m worried. I don’t think it has ever happened to a traveling historian before. Uncle Donald would be terribly annoyed if he knew.”

  “To hell with Uncle Donald,” I said. “And to hell with chronoclasms. We’re going to celebrate, darling.”

  The weeks slid quickly by. My patents were granted provisionally. I got a good grip on the theory of curved-beam transmission. Everything was going nicely. We discussed the future: whether he was to be called Donald, or whether she was going to be called Alexandra. How soon the royalties would begin to come in so that we could make an offer for Bagford House. How funny it would feel at first to be addressed as Lady Lattery, and other allied themes . . .

  And then came that December afternoon when I got back from discussing a modification with a manufacturer in London and found that she wasn’t there any more . . .

  Not a note, not a last word. Just the open front door, and a chair overturned in the sitting room . . .

  Oh, Tavia, my dear . . .

  I began to write this down because I still have an uneasy feeling about the ethics of not being the inventor of my inventions, and that there should be a straightening out. Now that I have reached the end, I perceive that “straightening out” is scarcely an appropriate description of it. In fact, I can foresee so much trouble attached to putting this forward as a conscientious reason for refusing a knighthood, that I think I shall say nothing, and just accept the knighthood when it comes. After all, when I consider a number of “inspired” inventions that I can call to mind, I begin to wonder whether certain others have not done that before me.

  I have never pretended to understand the finer points of action and interaction comprehended in this matter, but I have a pressing sense that one action now on my part is basically necessary: not just to avoid dropping an almighty chronoclasm myself, but for fear that if I neglect it I may find that the whole thing never happened. So I must write a letter.

  First, the envelope:

  To my great, great grandniece,

  Miss Octavia Lattery.

  (To be opened by her on her 21st birthday. 6th June 2136.)

  Then the letter. Date it. Underline the date.

  My sweet, far-off, lovely Tavia,

  Oh, my darling . . .

  THE CHRONOLOGY PROTECTION CASE

  Paul Levinson

  Carl put the call through just as I wa
s packing up for the day. “She says she’s some kind of physicist,” he said, and although I rarely took calls from the public, I jumped on this one.

  “Dr D’Amato?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I saw you on television last week—on that cable talk show. You said you had a passion for physics.” Her voice had a breathy elegance.

  “True,” I said. Forensic science was my profession, but cutting-edge physics was my love. Too bad there wasn’t a way to nab rapist murderers with spectral traces. “And you’re a physicist?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, sorry,” she said. “I should introduce myself. I’m Lauren Goldring. Do you know my work?”

  “Ahm . . .” The name did sound familiar. I ran through the rolodex in my head, though these days my computer was becoming more reliable than my brain. “Yes!” I snapped my fingers. “You had an article in Scientific American last month about some Hubble data.”

  “That’s right,” she said, and I could hear her relax just a bit. “Look, I’m calling you about my husband—he’s disappeared. I haven’t heard from him in two days.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well that’s really not my department. I can connect you to—”

  “No, please,” she said. “It’s not what you think. I’m sure his disappearance has something to do with his work. He’s a physicist too.”

  I was in my car forty minutes later on my way to her house, when I should have been home with pizza and the cat. No contest: a physicist in distress always wins.

  Her Bronxville address wasn’t too far from mine in Yonkers.

  “Dr D’Amato?” she opened the door.

  I nodded. “Phil.”

  “Thank you so much for coming,” she said, and ushered me in. Her eyes looked red, like she suffered from allergies or had been crying. But few people have allergies in March.

  The house had a quiet appealing beauty. As did she.

  “I know the usual expectations in these things,” she said. “He has another woman; we’ve been fighting. And I’m sure that most women whose vanished husbands have been having affairs are quick to profess their certainty that that’s not what’s going on in their cases.”

  I smiled. “OK, I’m willing to start with the assumption that your case is different. Tell me how.”

  “Would you like a drink, some wine?” she walked over to a cabinet, must’ve been turn of the century.

  “Just ginger ale, if you have it,” I said, leaning back in the plush Morris chair she’d shown me into.

  She returned with the ginger ale, and some sort of sparkling water for herself. “Well, as I told you on the phone, Ian and I are physicists—”

  “Is his last name Goldring, like yours?”

  Lauren nodded. “And, well, I’m sure this has something to do with his project.”

  “You two don’t do the same work?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “My area’s the cosmos at large—big bang theory, blackholes in space, the big picture. Ian’s was, is, on the other end of the spectrum. Literally. His area’s quantum mechanics.” She started to sob.

  “It’s OK,” I said. I got up and put my hand on her shoulder. Quantum mechanics could be frustrating, I knew, but not that bad.

  “No,” she said. “It isn’t OK. Why am I using the past tense for Ian?”

  “You think some harm’s come to him?”

  “I don’t know,” her lips quivered. She did know, or thought she knew.

  “And you feel this has something to do with his work with tiny particles? Was he exposed to dangerous radiation?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not it. He was working on something called quantum signalling. He always told me everything about his work—and I told him everything about mine—we had that kind of relationship. And then a few months ago, he suddenly got silent. At first I thought maybe he was having an affair . . .”

  And the thought popped into my head: if I had a woman with your class, an affair with someone else would be the last thing on my mind.

  “But then I realized it was deeper than that. It was something, something that frightened him, in his work. Something that I think he wanted to shield me from.”

  “I’m pretty much of an amiable amateur when it comes to quantum mechanics,” I said, “but I know something about it. Suppose you tell me all you know about Ian’s work, and why it could be dangerous.”

  THE CLOCK

  A.E.W. Mason

  Mr. Twiss was a great walker, and it was his habit, after his day‘s work was done, to walk from his pleasant office in the Adelphi to his home at Hampstead. On an afternoon he was detained to a later hour than usual by one of his clients, a Captain Brayton, over some matter of a mortgage. Mr. Twiss looked at his office clock.

  “You are going west, I suppose?” he said. “I wonder if you would walk with me as far as Piccadilly. It will not be very much out of your way, and I have a reason for wishing your company.”

  “By all means,” replied Captain Brayton, and the two men set forth.

  Mr. Twiss, however, seemed in a difficulty as to how he should broach his subject, and for a while the pair walked in silence. They, indeed, reached Pall Mall, and were walking down that broad thoroughfare, before a word of any importance was uttered. And even then it was chance which furnished the occasion. A young man of Captain Brayton’s age came down from the steps of a club and walked towards them. As he passed beneath a street lamp, Mr. Twiss noticed his face, and ever so slightly started with surprise. At almost the same moment, the young man swerved across the road at a run, as though suddenly he remembered a very pressing appointment. The two men walked on again for a few paces, and then Captain Brayton observed: “There is a screw loose there, I am afraid.”

  Mr. Twiss shook his head.

  “I am sorry to hear you say so,” he replied. “It was, indeed, about Archie Cranfield that I was anxious to speak to you. I promised his father that I would be something more than Archie’s mere man of affairs, if I were allowed, and I confess that I am troubled by him. You know him well?”

  Captain Brayton nodded his head.

  “Perhaps I should say that I did know him well,” he returned. “We were at the same school, we passed through Chatham together, but since he has relinquished actual service we have seen very little of one another.” Here he hesitated, but eventually made up his mind to continue in a guarded fashion. “Also, I am bound to admit that there has been cause for disagreement. We quarrelled.”

  Mr. Twiss was disappointed. “Then you can tell me nothing of him recently?” he asked, and Captain Brayton shrugged his shoulders.

  “Nothing but what all the little world of his acquaintances already knows. He has grown solitary, forbidding in his manner, and, what is most noticeable, sly—extraordinarily sly. While he is speaking with you, he will smile at some secret thought of his; the affairs of the world have lost their interest for him; he hardly listens and seldom speaks. He is concerned with some private matter, and he hides it cunningly. That is the character, at all events, which his friends give of him.”

  They had now reached the corner of St. James’s Street, and as they turned up the hill, Mr. Twiss took up the tale.

  “I am not surprised at what you tell me. It is a great pity, for we both remember him ambitious and a good soldier. I am inclined to blame the house in the country for the change in him.”

  Captain Brayton, however, did not agree.

  “It goes deeper than that,” he said. “Men who live alone in the country may show furtive ways in towns, no doubt. But why does he live alone in the country? No, that will not do”; and at the top of St. James’s Street the two men parted.

  Mr. Twiss walked up Bond Street, and the memory of that house in the country in which Archie Cranfield chose to bury himself kept him company. Mr. Twiss had travelled down into the eastern counties to see it for himself one Saturday afternoon when Cranfield was away from home, and a walk of six miles from the station had taken him to its door. It stood u
pon the borders of Essex and Suffolk, a small Elizabethan house backed upon the Stour, a place of black beams and low ceilings and great fireplaces. It had been buttressed behind, where the ground ran down to the river bank, and hardly a window was on a level with its neighbour. A picturesque place enough, but Mr. Twiss was a lover of towns and of paved footways and illuminated streets. He imagined it on such an evening as this, dark, and the rain dripping cheerlessly from the trees. He imagined its inmate crouching over the fire with his sly smile upon his face, and of a sudden the picture took on a sinister look, and a strong sense of discomfort made Mr. Twiss cast an uneasy glance behind him. He had in his pocket a letter of instructions from Archie Cranfield, bidding him buy the house outright with its furniture, since it had now all come into the market.

  It was a week after this when next Captain Brayton came to Mr. Twiss’s office, and, their business done, he spoke of his own accord of Archie Cranfield.

  “I am going to stay with him,” he said. “He wrote to me on the night of the day when we passed him in Pall Mall. He told me that he would make up a small bachelor party. I am very glad, for, to tell the truth, our quarrel was a sufficiently serious one, and here, it seems, is the end to it.”

  Mr. Twiss was delighted, and shook his client warmly by the hand.

  “You shall bring me news of Archie Cranfield,” he said—“better news than I have,” he added, with a sudden gravity upon his face. For in making the arrangements for the purchase of the house, he had come into contact with various neighbours of Archie Cranfield, and from all of them he had had but one report. Cranfield had a bad name in those parts. There were no particular facts given to account for his reputation. It was all elusive and vague, an impression conveyed by Archie Cranfield himself, by something strange and sly in his demeanour. He would sit chuckling in a sort of triumph, to which no one had the clue, or, on the other hand, he fell into deep silences like a man with a trouble on his mind.

  “Be sure you come to see me when you return,” said Mr. Twiss, and Captain Brayton replied heartily: “Surely I will.” But he never did. For in a few days the newspapers were busy with the strange enigma of his death.