The Coils of Time

by A Bertram Chandler

  The rear of the van flared into sudden incandescence and fell away with a crash, the guttering edges of the panels dulling to red heat. There was a wave of scorching air, tainted with the acridity of burning paint and metal. Framed in the opening were men, armed men, clad in what Wilkinson had come to recognize as police uniforms. There was a shocking hammering of automatic weapons against a background of shouting and screaming — and then the bodies of Hugo and the Major were lifted from Wilkinson, flung contemptuously aside, and Wilkinson was dragged into the open. He had a fleeting glimpse of towering black buildings against a yellow sky, of rank after rank of stalled road traffic, and then he was thrown into another vehicle, another of the sinister black vans, that at once, with its siren shrilling, forced its way into a side street and rocked along at increasing speed.

  XVIII

  WILKINSON STARED up helplessly at his new captors. They stared back at him. He thought, these look more … human than the others. … He asked, his voice dull, “Who are you?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, Wilkinson,” replied their leader, a tall, slender man who, to judge by the weight of gold ornamentation, must be at least a full Colonel. He looked worried. “You are Wilkinson, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. But you should know.”

  “I agree. We’ve paid enough for information over the last few decades, but not all of it was accurate. However, this time it was worth taking a gamble. Whether it comes off or not it’ll mean the breaking off of diplomatic relations and the shutting down of the Embassy.”

  “And about time!” declared another of the men. “Boy, am I sick and tired of this stinking — and I mean stinking, in every conceivable way — hothouse of a planet!”

  A voice came from a speaker set in the roof of the van. “All clear, sir. Nary a witness.”

  “O.K., Joe. Change over.” He returned his attention to Wilkinson. “It may comfort you to know, young man, that at the touch of a switch this vehicle lost its distressing similitude to a paddy wagon and is now revealed in its true colors — to wit, maroon, and embossed on each of its sides an arrowed golden circle. And now we’d better change ourselves.”

  The men stripped off their kilts, reversed them, and put them back on. They were maroon now, and emblazoned in gold with the symbol of the planet Mars. The pseudo-Colonel unclipped the badges of rank from his upper arms, throwing them contemptuously into a corner. One of the others produced a key and unlocked Wilkinson’s cuffs. Before he had time gratefully to stretch his released arms, a maroon kilt was buckled about his waist.

  Wilkinson desperately tried to gain more information. “Just what is happening?” he demanded.

  “You’re very slow on the uptake, young man — but then, if the stories that were sold to us are true, you’ll be a stranger here yourself. Anyhow, I’ll try to put you in the picture. We’re proceeding, quietly and respectably now, to the spaceport. Martian Maid is there, her tubes warmed up ready for blast-off, and the rest of the Embassy staffs is already on board. It’s supposed to be a farewell party to the Skipper — he’s retiring at the end of this trip.” He laughed. “He has no option. There’ll be no traffic now between Mars and Venus for quite a while”

  “Aren’t you risking a war?” asked Wilkinson.

  “And you’re supposed to be a spaceman! Have you never considered the insoluble problems of logistics that would arise in the unlikely event of a war between two planets?”

  “Frankly, no.” Wilkinson thought hard and desperately. He had been rescued by the Martians (but why? but why?) — but would Henshaw’s mechanism for snatching him back to his own Universe operate in the event of his being taken from this planet? He said, slowly and carefully, “I appreciate what you’ve done for me. But I have to stay on this world. There’s a girl …”

  “Sorry, chum,” broke in one of the younger men roughly, “but you’ll have to come with us. If it’s a girl you want, there’re plenty on Mars, and with some fire to them. Better than these cows.”

  “But why am I so important? What do you want from me?”

  “Knowledge,” said the pseudo-Colonel. “Knowledge that will be of inestimable value to the Federation.”

  “Dr. Voronsky’s secret, I suppose?” muttered Wilkinson sardonically.

  “Dr. Voronsky? Who’s he?” The men exchanged dubious glances. “If you’d said ‘Dr. Henshaw’s secret’ it would have made sense. According to our sources of information, your re-appearance ties up with the experiments that Dr. Henshaw was carrying out before he fell foul of the blasted Security Police. We managed to get hold of him before too much damage was done, and smuggled him off the planet, but he can recall little of his experimental work. We hoped that you might be able to help him regain his memory.”

  “So Henshaw’s on your world.”

  “Of course.”

  Wilkinson felt better. There was hope once again. The Henshaw on Mars would be able to work out some way to send him back to the Henshaw on his, Wilkinson’s, Venus, and surely by the time that this was accomplished he would find Vanessa waiting for him there. And if not — then he could be returned to this Venus, to the same time as before, but better prepared…. There were all sorts of paradoxes involved, but Henshaw would be able to sort them out.

  The van stopped with a jerk.

  “The spaceport gates …” muttered one of the men. “Do you think they’ll search? They must know by this time that Wilkinson has been hi-jacked.”

  “They’ll not blame us,” said the man who had worn the Colonel’s uniform, his voice confident. “We have always fostered the impression that the last thing in the whole wide world that we want to do is to alienate their stinking autocracy. They’ll let us through.”

  The van moved forward again.

  XIX

  THE VAN stopped, the rear doors opened and, without haste, the men got out. Wilkinson tried hard to copy their assumed nonchalance, but at the sight of the spaceship he could only stand and stare. From his point of view she was an anachronism, but a splendid one. A great spire of gleaming metal, supported by vanes like graceful buttresses, she towered into the gathering dusk. She was clad in a beauty and a dignity altogether lacking from the utilitarian spheres with which Wilkinson was familiar — but they were spacecraft pure and simple, and had not been designed in accordance with the laws of aerodynamics. Their shape had not been dictated by the necessity of getting upstairs in a hurry.

  “Come on!” said one of the men, laying a rough hand on Wilkinson’s shoulder. “Don’t stand there gawking; you’ve seen ships before. If you don’t get a move on we shall miss the party.”

  But it’s my party, thought Wilkinson, with wry amusement. It’s my party, and I’ll not miss it.

  “Come on,” said the man again.

  “All right,” Wilkinson told him.

  The group closed in about him; in a body they walked up the long ramp to the after airlock. The door was open, the light inside the chamber gleaming warm and inviting.

  There was an officer on duty there, straightening to attention at their approach. He wore crimson coveralls and a peaked cap with a badge that was a silver rocket surrounded by the Martian symbol in gold. He saluted smartly. He said, “They are waiting for you in the Captain’s quarters, gentlemen.”

  The man who had masqueraded as a Colonel stopped abruptly, peering at the face that was shadowed by the cap peak. “I can’t quite place you,” he muttered.

  “This is my first trip to Venus, sir. I was on the Jovian run before I was transferred here.”

  “Your first trip — and your last!” laughed the pseudo-Colonel.

  “Yes, sir. Do you wish me to operate the elevator for you?”

  “No thanks. We can manage. We’re probably more familiar with the old Maid than you are.”

  “That could well be, sir.”

  The party passed from the airlock into the body of the ship. Wilkinson could not keep himself from gawking. That affair, like the breech of a huge cannon, must be one of
the firing chambers. He wondered what it would be like to ride the flame and the thunder and not, as he had done all his working life, a grumbling, querulously whining engine that lifted itself by its bootstraps. He thought, If should be marooned in this Universe I could do worse than to become a spaceman again. I could learn how to handle one of these things. I could make a start as soon as we get away and things settle down. … Then he reproached himself for his disloyalty. There was Vanessa. He had to find her again, even if he had to search through an infinitude of alternative Time Tracks.

  “Come on!” growled the man who had exhibited his impatience outside the ship.

  They were standing before what looked like a huge pillar. It must be the axial shaft, thought Wilkinson, running the length of the ship. The tall man, the leader, had pressed a button and a door had quietly opened. Inside it was a brightly illumined elevator cage. It was large enough to accommodate Wilkinson and his four companions without crowding. At the touch of another button the doors, inner and outer, slid shut and the cage rose smoothly.

  Wilkinson tried to identify the various levels as they passed through them. There was one with the noise of machinery; that would be the auxiliary engine room. The one above that would probably be hydrophonics — the ship’s farm and air purifying plant. And the next one … Storerooms, possibly. But did these people go in for tissue culture and yeast vats? And what about cargo spaces? Wouldn’t the center of gravity be kept as low as possible? In Space it wouldn’t matter, but on the surface of a planet a lofty structure such as this would have to be kept stable.

  And there would be passenger accommodation, an officers’ accommodation and, at the very stem of the ship, the control room. But he would have ample time to explore during the Free Fall voyage to Mars. Free Fall — that was another thing. He was not used to it; he was accustomed to continuous acceleration.

  The cage stopped.

  The doors slid open.

  The tall man said, “This is it, fellows. We’ll report to old Copper Whiskers and in a few seconds we shall be on our merry way.”

  They stepped out into a narrow alleyway that curved sharply around the axial shaft. They must be very close to the pointed stem of the ship. Almost directly opposite to the elevator door was another one, set practically flush with the plating. Over it, in polished letters, was the word “CAPTAIN.” The tall man pressed a bell push set to one side of the door. It slid open, revealing a plainly furnished day-room-cum-office. Facing the door was a desk. Behind the desk sat a man in the maroon and gold uniform, the color of which clashed badly with the ginger beard that framed his face. But the blood that still dribbled from the neat round hole in his forehead was a good enough match.

  Then the room was alive with men in the silver kilts of the police.

  The Martians had disposed of their incriminating pistols on the way from the scene of the ambush to the spaceport, and were unarmed save for the ornamental dirks they carried at their belts. But they fought, somehow they fought, and the police were hampered in the use of their automatic weapon by the fear of hitting each other.

  In the brief respite so gained the tall man grabbed Wilkinson’s arm, pulled him back into the elevator and sent the cage climbing to one last level. They emerged into the control room. The spaceman stood staring at the banked instruments, at the pilot lights glowing white and red and green and amber.

  “Take her up!” shouted the tall man. “You’re a spaceman, and she’s warmed up, ready to go. Shut airtight doors and blast-off, and once we’re up and out we may be able to do something about these bastards!”

  Wilkinson looked long and sadly at the enigmatic controls, the controls that he had dreamed, briefly, of one day using.

  He said, “I … I can’t….”

  And then a hatch in the deck opened, and from it half emerged a police officer who, taking leisurely aim, almost tore the tall man in two with his stream of bullets.

  XX

  WILKINSON WAS bruised and bleeding after his hopeless fight in the control room of the ship, and he was shivering in the chill of the air-conditioned building to which he had been brought. The two police officers, almost as naked as he was, did not seem to be worried by the relative cold — but they were not tired, they were not hungry, they had not been subjected to extreme physical abuse.

  Wilkinson sat on the hard plastic bench waiting. But for what? He looked at the policemen, and they stared back, arrogantly, contemptuously. He looked at a piece of apparatus in a corner, an affair of reels of tape and glass tubes. He decided that it was some kind of a recorder. He looked at the featureless walls. He looked at the ceiling. He looked again at the policemen. He swallowed his pride — what was left of it. He asked, “What now?”

  “You’ll soon find out,” replied the one in the golden kilt. The other one laughed. It was not a reassuring laugh.

  The men came to perfunctory attention as a woman entered the room. She was as Wilkinson had last seen her — tall, slim, dark, attired in a white laboratory smock. He cried out, “Olga!”

  The fine eyebrows arched in surprise. “You know my name?”

  “Of course. Did Henshaw send you to get me out of here?”

  Her face hardened. “Henshaw is a traitor.”

  He winked at her, hoping that the police officers would not notice. She would have to be careful, although, by the sleek appearance of her, she was making out better in this crazy world that he was. Much better.

  She turned to the man in the gold kilt. “Lieutenant, I think I’ll have a few words with the prisoner before the real interrogation starts. Manacle him to the bench, will you? And start the recorder before you go.”

  “Our orders, Miss, were to maintain a close guard on him.”

  “And my orders,” she snapped, “are that top secret information is not to be divulged to unauthorized personnel.” She added nastily, “If you wish, I can take the matter up with Colonel Craven.”

  “The Lieutenant flushed. “That will not be necessary, Miss.” He gestured to the other man, who unhooked another pair of cuffs from his belt and, working with practised economy of motion, and a deliberate brutality, shackled the prisoner’s right ankle to a leg of the bench. When he had done this he walked over to the recorder, and depressed a switch. The reels began to turn; the vacuum tubes glowed into life.

  Radiating resentment the policemen left the room.

  Olga sat down on a chair facing Wilkinson. She looked at him curiously, as though he were some odd specimen. She said at last, “So you’re the man who died under interrogation, whose body — what was left of it — was thrown into the incenerator, and who turned up alive and kicking, a few months later, nattily attired in a lightweight spacesuit, hung around with all manner of equipment that couldn’t have originated on this world, or, come to that, any of the other worlds of the System….”

  Wilkinson felt the beginnings of doubt.

  The woman’s name was Olga — she had admitted it — and her appearance was that of Olga, but her manner was not. There was an alien hardness, a ruthlessness. But …

  He said desperately, “You must have been sent by Henshaw.”

  She smiled coldly. “Henshaw defected. Henshaw is on Mars. Your friends from the Red Planet managed to smuggle him out of the prison, and off Venus. I don’t think that his mind is working too well, and I am sure that his memory isn’t what it was. But the Martians hoped that with you to jog his memory, he might be able to reconstruct the apparatus with which he was working at the time of his arrest.” She smiled coldly. “I’m trying to reconstruct it myself.” She got to her feet, and began to pace slowly up and down. “If you are what we have reason to think you are, you may be able to help us. Where you come from, there must have been another Dr. Henshaw. You must have some idea of his theories, his modus operandi.” Her manner softened, but it was a patently spurious softness. “If you decide to help me, I can have things made easier for you.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” growled Wilkinson.
/>   “Have you? Then this is not your first … jump?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But you must. Otherwise you would not be here — on a world in which you’re officially dead and cremated. Perhaps if I refresh your memory a little? Henshaw you know, obviously. And your Henshaw has — or had? — a woman called Olga Kubischev working for him. Right?”

  “Right. And when I compare the two Olgas I’m convinced that environment, at times, plays a greater part in the formation of character than heredity.”

  “Just what did you mean by that nasty crack, Wilkinson?” A thin smile seeped over her mouth. “Oh, I see. Your Olga let you sleep with her. Well, if you co-operate I may be able to get the real interrogation canceled, and then we shall see what we shall see.”

  “A woman can be womanly without entering into a relationship.”

  “We’re discussing advanced physics, Wilkinson, not sexual mores. But I’ve made an offer. In return for your knowledge I’m willing to be … amenable? Yes. Amenable.”

  “You must know more about it than I do.”

  “As far as theory is concerned, yes. Time is a spiral, and worlds and people recur and recur, from the Beginning (if there was one) to the End (if there will be one). But it’s not necessarily an exact recurrence. History need not follow the same course on every arm of the spiral. Physical laws may be different. The formation of planets may not occur in exactly the same way …”

  “The Venus from which I was sent here,” said Wilkinson, becoming interested in spite of himself, “was nothing like this world.”

  “So you admit having made the jump from one arm of the spiral to another?”

  “I’ve been trying to convince people of that ever since I came here,” said Wilkinson bitterly. “But I was a fool to expect credulity. How many instances are there of men and women, obviously castaways from some utterly alien culture, who have appeared suddenly and mysteriously, and who, when they have told their stories, have been branded as madmen or charlatans?”