Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  She looked at me mournfully for about a second and a half, then became brisk and cheerful again. ‘He’s in there now,’ she added, and bustled away to the other side of the bar, where two carters were demanding half-pints.

  I went to the outer door and stood there a moment, watching the persistent rain. It looked as if I should not be able to make a move for at least half an hour. So I ordered another drink and asked the landlady to serve it in the Private Bar, where Mr. Strenberry was hiding his queerness. Then I followed her and took a seat near the window, only a few feet away from Mr. Strenberry.

  He was sitting there behind a nearly empty glass, with an unlighted stump of cigarette drooping from a corner of his mouth. Everything about him was drooping. He was a tall, slack, straggling sort of fellow; his thin greying hair fell forward in front; his nose was long, with something pendulous about its reddened tip; his moustache drooped wearily; and even his chin fell away, as if in despair. His eye had that boiled look common to all persevering topers.

  ‘Miserable day,’ I told him.

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘Rotten day.’ He had a high-pitched but slightly husky voice, and I imagined that its characteristic tone would probably be querulous.

  There was silence then, or at least nothing but the sound of the rain outside and the murmur of voices from the bar. I stared at the Highlanders and the hunting men who, from various parts of the room, invited you to try somebody’s whisky and somebody else’s port.

  ‘Got a match?’ said Strenberry, after fumbling in his pockets.

  I handed him my matchbox and took the opportunity of moving a little nearer. It was obvious that the stump of cigarette would not last him more than half a minute, so I offered him my cigarette case too.

  ‘Very quiet in here,’ I remarked.

  ‘For once,’ he replied, a kind of weak sneer lighting up his face. ‘Lucky for us too. There are more fools in this town than in most, and they all come in here. Lot of loud-mouthed idiots. I won’t talk to ‘em, won’t waste my breath on them. They think there’s something wrong with me here. They would.’ He carefully drained his glass, set it down, then pushed it away.

  I hastened to finish my glass of bitter. Then I made a pretence of examining the weather. ‘Looks as if I shall have to keep under cover for another quarter of an hour or so,’ I said carelessly. ‘I’m going to have another drink. Won’t you join me?’

  After a little vague humming and spluttering, he said he would, and thanked me. He asked for a double whisky and a small soda.

  ‘And so you find the people here very stupid?’ I said, after we had taken toll of our fresh supply of drink. ‘They often are in these small towns.’

  ‘All idiots,’ he muttered. ‘Not a man with an educated mind amongst them. But then—education! It’s a farce, that’s all it is, a farce. I come in here—I must go somewhere, you know—and I sit in a corner and say nothing. I know what they’re beginning to think. Oh, I’ve seen them—nudging, you know, giving each other the wink. I don’t care. One time I would have cared. Now I don’t. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, really.’

  I objected mildly to this pessimism.

  ‘I know,’ he went on, looking at me sombrely. ‘You needn’t tell me, I can see you’re an intelligent man, so it’s different. But you can’t argue with me, and I’ll tell you why. You see, you don’t know what I know. Oh, I don’t care if they do think I’m queer. I am queer. And so would you be if you’d seen what I’ve seen. They wouldn’t because they wouldn’t have the sense …’ His voice trailed away. He shrugged his thin sloping shoulders. His face took on a certain obstinate look that you often see on the faces of weak men. Evidently he thought he had said too much.

  I was curious now. ‘I don’t see what you mean,’ I began. ‘No doubt you’ve had unpleasant experiences, but then most of us have at some time or other.’ I looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he said, raising his voice and adding a touch of scorn. ‘This is different. You wouldn’t understand, unless I told you it all. Even then you mightn’t. It’s difficult. Oh, what’s the use!’ He finished his whisky in one quick gulp.

  ‘Well, I wish you’d tell me.’

  Doubtfully, mournfully, he examined my face, then he stared about the room, pulling his straggling and drooping moustache. ‘Could I have another cigarette?’ he asked, finally. When he had lit it, he blew out a cloud of smoke, then looked at me again.

  ‘I’ve seen something nobody else has seen,’ said Mr. Strenberry. ‘I’ve seen the end of it all, all this,’ he waved a hand and gave a bitter little laugh, ‘building houses, factories, education, public health, churches, drinking in pubs, getting children, walking in fields, everything, every mortal blessed thing. That’s what I’ve seen, a glimpse anyhow. Finish! Finish! The End!’

  ‘It sounds like doomsday,’ I told him.

  ‘And that’s what it was,’ cried Mr. Strenberry, his face lighting up strangely. ‘Anyway, that’s what it amounted to. I can’t think about anything else. And you couldn’t either, if you’d been there. I’ve gone back to it, thought about it, thought round and round it, oh, thousands of times! Do you know Opperton Heath? You do? Well, that’s where it happened, nearly three years ago. That’s all, three years ago. I’d gone up there for a walk and to have a look at the birds. I used to be very interested in birds—my God, I’ve dropped that now—and there are one or two rare kinds up on the Heath there. You know what it’s like— lonely. I hadn’t met a soul all afternoon. That’s the worst of it. If there’d only been somebody else there—’

  He broke off, took up his smouldering cigarette, put it down again and stared in front of him. I kept quiet, afraid that a chance word might suddenly shut him up altogether.

  ‘It was a warm afternoon,’ he said, beginning again as abruptly as he had stopped, ‘and I was lying on the grass, smoking. I remember I was wondering whether to hurry back and get home in time for tea or to stay where I was and not bother about tea. And I wish to God I’d decided to go back, before it happened. But I didn’t. There I was, warm, a bit drowsy, just looking at the Heath. Not a soul in sight. Very quiet. If I could write poetry, I’d write a poem about the Heath as I saw it then, before the thing happened. It’s all I would write too. The last five minutes there.’ He broke off again, and I believe there were tears in his eyes. He looked a figure of maudlin self-pity, but nevertheless it may have been the lost peace and beauty of the world that conjured up those tears. I did not know then. I do not know now.

  ‘Then I saw something,’ said Mr. Strenberry. ‘It was a sort of disturbance in the air, not fifty yards from where I was. I didn’t take much notice at first, because you get that flickering on a warm day up there. But this went on. I can’t describe it properly, not to make you see it. But in a minute or two, you couldn’t help noticing it. Like a thin revolving column of air. A waterspout made of air, if you see what I mean? And there was something dark, something solid, in the centre of it. I thought it must have something to do with a meteor. I got up and went closer, cautiously, you know, taking no chances. It didn’t seem to be affecting anything else. There was no wind or anything. Everything was as quiet as it was before. But this column of air was more definite now, though I can’t exactly explain how it came to look so definite. But you knew it was there all right, like seeing one piece of glass against another piece. Only there was movement in this, and faster than the fastest piece of machinery you ever set eyes on. And that dark thing in the centre was solider every second. I went closer still. And then the movement inside the column—like a glassy sort of pillar it was, though that doesn’t quite give you the idea -stopped, though there was still a flickering and whirling on the outside. I could see that dark thing plainly now. It was a man—a sort of man.’

  Mr. Strenberry shut his eyes, put his hands up to them, and leaned forward on his elbows. In the quiet that followed, I could hear two fellows laughing in the bar outside. They were shouting something about a litter
of pigs.

  ‘He was a lightish greeny-blue in colour, this man,’ Mr. Strenberry continued, ‘and the same all over. He’d no clothes on, but I got the idea that he’d a very tough skin, leathery, y’know. It shone a bit too. He’d no hair on him at all, and didn’t look as if he’d shaved it all off but as if he’d never had any. He was bigger than me, bigger than you, but no giant: I should say he was about the size and figure of one of your big heavyweight boxers—except for his head. He’d a tremendous head—and of course as bald as an egg—and a wonderful face. I can see it now. It was flattish, like some of the faces of the Egyptian statues in the British Museum, but what you noticed the minute you saw it, were the eyes. They were more like a beautiful woman’s eyes than a man’s, very big and soft, y’know, but bigger and softer than any woman’s eyes—and such a colour, a kind of dark purple. Full of intelligence too. Blazing with it, I knew that at once. In fact, I could see that this man was as far above me as I am above a Hottentot. More highly developed, y’know. I’m not saying this because of what I learned afterwards. I saw it at once. You couldn’t mistake it. This greeny-blue hairless man knew a million things we’d never heard of, and you could see it in his eyes. Well, there he was and he stared at me and I stared at him.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, for Mr. Strenberry had stopped and was now busy staring at me.

  ‘This is the part you’ve got to try and understand,’ he cried, excitedly. ‘You see, this queer revolving cylinder of air was between us, and if it had been glass two feet thick it couldn’t have separated us any better. I couldn’t get at him. I don’t say I tried very hard at first; I was too surprised and frightened. But I did try to get nearer after a minute or two, but I couldn’t, and I can’t possibly explain to you—no, not if I tried for a week—how I was stopped. Call it a transparent wall, if you like, but that doesn’t give you the idea of it. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter about me. The point is, he couldn’t get out, and he obviously knew more about it than I did and he was trying desperately hard. He’d got some sort of little instrument in each hand—I could see them flash— and he kept bringing these together. He was terribly agitated. But he couldn’t get out. He’d stopped the inside of this column revolving, as I said, but apparently he couldn’t stop the outside, which was whirling and whirling just as fast as ever.

  ‘I’ve asked myself thousands of times,’ Mr. Strenberry went on, more reflectively now, ‘what would have happened if he had got out. Would he have ruled the whole world, knowing so much more than we do? Or would these fools have shoved him into a cage, made a show of him, and finally killed him? Though I don’t imagine they could have done that, not with this man. And then again, could he have existed at all once he got out? I don’t mean just microbes and things, though they might easily have killed him off, because I don’t suppose his body knew anything about such a germ-ridden atmosphere as ours. No, I don’t mean that. This is the point. If he’d got out, really burst into this twentieth-century world, he might have stopped existing at all, just vanished into nothing, because after all this twentieth century isn’t just a date, it’s also a condition, a state of things, and—you see—it doesn’t include him. Though, of course, in a sense it does—or it did—because there he was, on the Heath that day.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow all this,’ I said. ‘But go on, perhaps it will become clearer.’

  Mr. Strenberry leaned forward and fixed me with his little boiled eyes. ‘Don’t you see, this man had come from the future? Fellows like H. G. Wells have always been writing about us taking a jump into the future, to have a look at our distant descendants, but of course we don’t. We can’t; we don’t know enough. But what about them, taking a jump into the past, to have a look at usl That’s far more likely, when you come to think of it. But I don’t mean that is what this man was doing. He was trying to do more than that. If you ask me, they’d often taken a peep at us, and at our great-great-grandparents, and for that matter at our great-great-grandchildren too. But he wasn’t just doing that. He was trying to get out to escape from his own time altogether.’

  I drew in a long breath, then blew it out again, slowly.

  ‘Don’t you think I’m merely guessing that,’ cried Mr. Strenberry, ‘because I’m not. I know. And I know because he told me. I don’t mean to say we talked. As a matter of fact, I did try shouting at him—asking him who he was and where he’d come from, and all that—but I don’t think he heard me, and if he did, he certainly didn’t understand. But don’t make any mistake—he saw me all right. He looked at me just as I looked at him. He made a sign or two, and might have made more if he hadn’t been so busy with those instruments and so desperately agitated. He didn’t shout at me, never opened his lips. But he thought at me. That’s the only way I can describe it. Messages from him arrived in my head, and turned themselves into my own words, and even little pictures. And it was horrible—horrible, I tell you. Everything was finished, and he was trying to escape. The only way he could do it was to try and jump back into the past, out of the way. There wasn’t much of the world left, fit to live in. Just one biggish island, not belonging to any of the continents we know—they’d all gone, long ago. I don’t know the date. That never came through, and if it had, I don’t suppose it would have told me much. But it was a long time ahead—perhaps twenty thousand years, perhaps fifty thousand, perhaps more—I don’t know. What I do know is that this man wasn’t anybody very important, just a sort of minor assistant in some kind of laboratory where they specialised in time experiments, quite a low-class fellow among his own kind, though he would have seemed a demigod to me and you. And I knew that while he was so terrified that he was frantic in his attempt to escape, at the same time he was ashamed of himself, too— felt he was a kind of dodger, you see. But even then, what was happening was so ghastly that he’d never hesitated at all. He had run to the laboratory or whatever it was, and just had time to jump back through the ages. He was in terror. He didn’t show it as we might, but I tell you—his mind was screaming. Some place—a city, I think it was— had been entirely destroyed and everything else was going too, everything that had once been human. No words came into my mind to describe what it was that was destroying everything and terrifying him. Perhaps I hadn’t any words that would fit in. All I got were some little pictures, very blurred, just like bits of a nightmare. There were great black things rolling about, just wiping everything out. Not like anything you’ve ever seen. You couldn’t give them a shape.’

  Here Mr. Strenberry leaned further forward still, grasped my coat sleeve, and lowered his voice.

  ‘They weren’t beasts or huge insects even,’ he whispered. ‘They weren’t anything you could put a name to. I don’t believe they belonged to this world at all. And something he thought rather suggested that too. They came from some other place, from another planet perhaps. Don’t you see, it was all finished here. They were blotting it out, great rolling black things—oh, horrible! Just imagine what he felt, this man, who had just managed to escape from them, but now couldn’t get out, into this world and time of ours. Because he couldn’t, that was the awful thing. He tried and tried, but it couldn’t be done. And he hadn’t long to try either, I knew that. Because of what was happening at the other end, you see. I tell you, I stood there, looking at him, with his thoughts buzzing round my own head, and the sweat was streaming down my face. I was terrified too, in a panic. And then he was in an agony of fear, and so was I. It was all up. The inside of that column of air began revolving again, just as it had done when it first came, and then I couldn’t see him distinctly. Only his eyes. Just those eyes, staring out of the swirl. And then, I saw something. I swear I did. Something black. Just a glimpse. That’s all. A bit of one of those things, getting hold of him—the last man left. That’s what it must have been, though how I came to see it, I don’t quite know, but I’ve worked it out this way and that way, and it seems to me—’

  ‘A-ha, who have we here?’ cried a loud, cheerful voice. ‘How’s thin
gs, Mr. Strenberry?’

  Two red-faced men had just entered the room. They grinned at my companion, then winked at one another.

  ‘A nasty day, Mr. Strenberry,’ said the other fellow. ‘What do you say?’

  Mr. Strenberry, who appeared to have crumpled up at their approach, merely muttered something in reply. Then, giving me a hasty glance, in which shame and despair and scorn were mingled, he suddenly rose and shuffled out of the room.

  The two newcomers looked at one another, laughed, and then settled into their corner. The landlady appeared with their drinks. I stood up and looked out of the window. The downpour had dwindled to a few scattered drops, brightening in the sunlight.

  ‘I seen you talking to Mr. Strenberry,’ the landlady said to me. ‘Least, I seen him talking to you. Got him going, too, you did. He’s a queer one, isn’t he? Didn’t I tell you he was a queer one? Telling you one of his tales, I’ll be bound. Take no notice of him, mister. You can’t believe a single word he says. We found that out long since. That’s why he doesn’t want to talk to us anymore. He knows we’ve got a pinch of salt ready, Mr. Strenberry does.’

  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

  Arthur C. Clarke

  When the quiet knock came on the door, Robert Ashton surveyed the room in one swift, automatic movement. Its dull respectability satisfied him and should reassure any visitor. Not that he had any reason to expect the police, but there was no point in taking chances.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, pausing only to grab Plato’s Dialogues from the shelf beside him. Perhaps this gesture was a little too ostentatious, but it always impressed his clients.