“When you think of it,” said Carroll thoughtfully, “it is perfectly reasonable! After all, this is 1804 and I certainly haven’t gotten married in 1804! Or 1803 or 1802 or any year before that! So that as of the first of August in 1804, I have never been married! Quaint, eh? And if I’m the Bassompierre who’ll write the letters you’ll discover, Harrison, nearly a score of decades in the future, I will die in 1858 at the age of ninety-one. And that will be almost a safe century before Valerie’s aunt comes into the world! So I obviously can’t marry her!” he added. “Somehow I am not moved to tears.”
Harrison said, with the beginning of doubt:
“But you did marry her… If you hadn’t married her there’d have been no Carroll, Dubois et Cie, I wouldn’t have met Valerie, I wouldn’t have found you, and you wouldn’t have come back here. None of this would have happened!”
“True,” agreed Carroll, with a vast calm. “But you’re on no rational foundation either, Harrison! This is eighteen-four, and you were born at least a century and a half in the future. If you stay here you’ll die of old age some decades before you’re born! What are you going to do about that?”
The clatter of horses’ hoofs outside was suddenly muffled, as if they trotted over earth washed by rain upon the cobblestone military highway. Carroll said reflectively:
“Anyhow, she looks good-natured…” He stirred. Then his tone changed. “Do you know, Ybarra wasn’t a very good student at Brevard. But I didn’t flunk him. Perhaps it was unconscious great-great-grandparental favoritism! Eh?”
Harrison did not like Paris. Pepe liked it less. Valerie liked it least of all. There were the smells. There were the shocking differences in social status which had been destroyed, in theory, by the Revolution of the 1790’s, but had now been re-established by the Emperor Napoleon. He was already Emperor of the French and would shortly be crowned by the Pope. These things offended Valerie. And there were others.
They had taken lodgings—the four of them—in the same building in which Ignacio Ybarra and his wife lodged in considerable grandeur. To that house there came a coach, one day, bringing a dark-haired girl with an expression of habitual sadness. She was the girl they’d seen in the post house yard when Albert unwittingly stole female garments from the coach’s boot. She was an orphaned female connection of the Ybarra family. Pepe’s great-great-grandfather—he was actually a year or so younger than Pepe—had generously provided her with a dowry and arranged a marriage for her. He’d sent de Bassompierre to bring her to Paris, duly chaperoned by Madame de Cespedes. She now came to pay her respects. Her expression of sadness was now heart-breaking. Valerie did not like this period of time. Pepe restlessly explored the city. Carroll spend much time with Talleyrand.
They’d been in Paris for two weeks, and Harrison was about to make depressed inquiries for an estate to which he and Valerie could retire after their marriage, when Carroll came zestfully to him. He spread out one of the newspapers of the twentieth century, now creased and beginning to be tattered. It had seemed to fascinate Talleyrand. He’d read even the advertisements over and over again, and cynically decided that he preferred the period in which he had been born.
“Harrison! Look at this!”
Harrison read where Carroll pointed. He’d bought the paper in Paris of the twentieth century when they went back for Valerie before the bombs should fall. It was an item in a grieved editorial, speaking of the tragedy it was for France that one of her sons, a renegade of renegades, had given the atom bomb to China. Disgracefully, it was a French nuclear scientist who’d first defected to Russia and then, dissatisfied by the reactionary policies of that nation, defected again to China. The editorial named him. The name was de Bassompierre.
“Talleyrand pointed it out,” said Carroll. “I guessed that this de Bassompierre could be my great-great-grandson, but more probably would be the great-great-grandson of the man who’d been impersonating me. Talleyrand looked very cynical, but he politely accepted my statement. Do you see?”
Harrison felt what might be called tentative relief.
“Maybe it’s all right, and if so I’m certainly glad. But—”
“The newspaper,” said Carroll, “is a remarkable invention. It enlightens, it informs, and sometimes it solves problems. I have two problems, Harrison. One is that Ybarra’s great-great-grandfather has hinted that he would consider the arrangement of a marriage between Madame Cespedes and myself. She is moderately dowered, and with my wealth in rubies and sapphires it would be an admirable match. And she seems to be an amiable woman.”
Harrison said restlessly:
“I suppose it’s all right…”
“But,” said Carroll, “there is Valerie. I suspect she’d consider me a bigamist. Which is my second problem. Our time-tunnel was destroyed. But I would like to know that in causing the death of this de Bassompierre who stole jewels and perfumery together, we prevented him from having a renegade great-great-grandson who would defect to the Russians and then the Chinese with very practical knowledge of how to make atomic bombs. If we prevented him from existing, and thereby avoided an atomic war, I would be pleased. But without a time-tunnel to our own era there is no way to be sure. I would like, Harrison, to feel that I helped avoid the extermination of the human race!”
“But there’s no way to make a time-tunnel—”
“Unless you know of metal,” said Carroll, “which has not been disturbed since it solidified from a melted state. But that’s why I eulogize the press.”
He turned back to the first page of the newspaper. He put down his finger on the news account of the conflagration that had destroyed the oldest wooden house in Paris. That very ancient dwelling in the Rue Colbert had belonged to Julie d’Arnaud, mistress of Charles VII in ages past. It had still been covered with the quarter-inch-thick leaden roof originally placed upon it. The roof had melted, of course, from the fire.
“I saw the ruin,” said Harrison. “On the way to the shop to try to persuade Valerie—” He stopped. “I saw what looked like an icicle, only it was lead from the melted-down roof, freezing to solidity as it dripped down. Do you mean—?”
“Talleyrand,” said Carroll, “has agreed that it would be interesting to find out. There may be pools of solidified lead among the ruins. He’s arranged to borrow the house, which isn’t burned down here. I’m to make the necessary technical devices. Perfectly simple!”
Harrison said yearningly:
“If only everything’s all right and the war is cancelled! Valerie would like so much to leave here.”
“So would Ybarra,” said Carroll benignly. “I’ve no reason to leave and plenty of reason to stay. For one thing, I have some letters to write during the next few years. And for a reason affecting Ybarra.” He said vexedly, “Dammit, if I’m to be Ybarra’s great-great-grandfather, it seems I should be able to call him by his first name! But I can’t seem to do it! Anyhow, I think I can make a new time-tunnel. If there hasn’t been war, rather, if the war-scare is over, you and Valerie and Ybarra can go back to your own time, which won’t be mine any longer.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Harrison feverishly.
The house was empty and even in the early nineteenth century smelled musty and ancient. Harrison and Valerie and Pepe rode to it in Carroll’s coach. Carroll had set up the technical part of the performance. It was irritatingly simple, but Harrison could make nothing of the circuit. Talleyrand, inscrutably smiling, looked on.
“It looks like everything’s all right,” said Carroll. “Nothing seems to have happened to Paris, but it’s been daylight. I’ve been waiting for dark, when somebody can appear from nowhere with a chance of not being seen. Change your clothes, Harrison, and you can make a trip through to get a newspaper. If all’s well—Valerie’s clothes are ready for her too. And—ah—those of my great-great-grandson-to-be.”
It happened that the time-tunnel existed at a spot closely corresponding to a doorway in the ancient house. Harrison wen
t through. Giddiness. A spasm of nausea. Then he smelled charred wooden beams and wetness and ashes. He heard taxicabs. He heard the sounds of up-to-date Paris. It was night. There was a newspaper kiosk not far away. He went to it and bought newspapers. He scanned the headlines by the light of street lamps as he hurried back to the barricaded, blackened ruin of an old, old, heavy-beamed house.
“It happened!” he said exultantly, back in the First Empire. “The headlines are about a monte pietá scandal in Boulogne! There’s been a row in the Chamber of Deputies about a political appointment! There was an explosion in a coal mine in the Ruhr! Nothing about China! Nothing about Formosa! Nothing about atomic war! Not on the front pages, anyhow. We did it!”
So, very shortly, three figures in perfectly ordinary twentieth-century costume emerged inconspicuously from the scorched ruins and ashes of the very ancient residence of the mistress of a forgotten king. Immediately afterward there was a peculiar musical noise, like the string of a gigantic harp plucked once and then allowed to die away.
The sun shone placidly upon Formosa. People moved without haste through its cities’ crowded streets. There were steamships in its harbors, some of them languidly loading cargo, or unloading it, or laying at anchor. Nobody thought of killing anybody else except for strictly personal reasons. There was no haste. There was no tumult. There was no war or rumor of war. It was as placid and commonplace and tranquil a picture as, say, the great wide flight of steps before the principal entrance to the Louvre. Above and upon those steps pigeons fluttered. In the wide street before it, taxicabs trundled and on the sidewalks children walked sedately with grown-ups. Harrison was on those steps, and Valerie was with him, and they had come to see a picture Pepe had urged them to look at. Pepe seemed somewhat embarrassed about it.
They entered the splendid building. They consulted the memorandum Pepe had given them. They consulted a guard, who gave them directions. They wandered vaguely through the vast corridors. Presently they found what they were looking for.
It was a portrait by Antoine Jean Gros, though not of his best period. It was a bit late for that. It had been painted in the 1830’s, when Gros had passed his peak, but it was still a highly satisfactory piece of work. They stared at it, and Valerie shrank a little closer to Harrison. The portrait stared back at them. Humorously.
“It—it is he!” said Valerie breathlessly.
Harrison nodded. He read the identification plate. It read, “Portrait of M. de Bassompierre as an Alchemist.” There was other data, but Harrison did not need it. The portrait was of Carroll. He was older than when they’d left him a few days since. Naturally! He wore over his alchemists’ robe a cordon and the badge of one of the highest Bourbon decorations.
Behind him, for background, there were various cryptic symbols and bits of alchemical apparatus. And there was a glowing design which didn’t belong in a picture painted in the 1830’s. It was a perfectly modern symbol for an atom of something or other, but it didn’t belong so far back. Yet it belonged in a picture of Carroll, if he’d had it painted expressly to tell somebody in the remote future that he’d made out all right.
They didn’t comment. They looked, and looked, and then they went quietly away. And as they went down the wide, long steps to the street again, Harrison said:
“He handled it just right. De Bassompierre didn’t have a son, which he would have had but for our appearance on the scene. But Carroll, marrying Madame de Cespedes as he, had a daughter—so there wasn’t a renegade to give China the bomb. So Carroll wrote those letters to Cuvier and Ampère and Lagrange and all the rest. If he hadn’t written them, there might have been other changes. When our present de Bassompierre didn’t have a son, no other changes were needed—”
He felt slightly giddy. He stopped. It was not a marked giddiness. It was not easy to be sure he felt it. Still, Valerie pressed closer to him again, and for an instant it seemed that all the world blurred just a little. Buildings became indistinct and clarified again not exactly as they’d been. The taxicabs were longer and lower. The noises of the city became confused, and then cleared again. Harrison blinked.
A cannon boomed somewhere, and the humming of innumerable saucer-shaped aircraft overhead wavered in a peculiarly flute-like fashion. The cannon boomed again. Of course! The guns were firing a salute to the brand-new son and heir of Napoleon the Fifth, born that morning and already King of Rome.
Harrison watched the ground-cars, floating swiftly through the streets of Paris, not on wheels, like the coaches of ancient days, but on sustaining columns of rushing air. The costumes were familiar, too; men wearing furs and women garbed in those modern, brilliant, and practical fabrics of metal foil.
“Nothing’s changed!” said Harrison, in satisfaction. “Nothing!”
He and Valerie continued down the steps. Halfway to the bottom, there was the feeling of giddiness again. It was very slight, and the fresh blurring of all outlines and their re-solidification happened so quietly and quickly that one could ignore it. A chuffing taxicab with badly-worn tires came to a halt at the curb in response to Harrison’s gesture. He helped Valerie in. He felt slightly puzzled; just slightly. But then he didn’t remember what he’d been puzzled about.
“Yes,” said Harrison. “Nothing’s changed at all. Just there’s no more threat of immediate atomic war.”
And he was quite right. Nothing had changed. Not so one would notice. It couldn’t. Because Paris was part of the cosmos and the cosmos was made for people to live in. And since it happens that humans will always try industriously to destroy themselves there have to be safety devices built into the scheme of things. So they go into operation if atomic war becomes really inevitable, for one example. They may turn up as time-tunnels, or somebody going back in time and accidentally killing their grandfathers, or—or.
But it could be anything. For example, a man needn’t kill his own grandfather. If somebody else, however accidentally, killed somebody who was somebody else’s great-great-grandfather, and this happened before his great-grandfather was fathered, then obviously his great-grandfather could not have existed to carry on the family name, nor his father, nor he himself. And a radical nuclear scientist would never be born to defect to Russia and afterward to China. Somebody else might be born instead. For instance, Pepe.
It was perfectly simple. The mainland Chinese didn’t have an atom bomb. They’d never had one. They’d never fired off even low-yield ones, and certainly no fifty-megaton ones. They hadn’t exploded any atomic bombs at all. So there’d never been a threat to Formosa or the rest of the world, and therefore no time-tunnel, and therefore no Carroll, Dubois et Cie, and therefore…
Harrison thrust things out of his mind. They would only be confusing. They were useless.
“Nothing’s changed!” said Harrison doggedly. “Facts are facts! And if they’re impossible, they’re still facts!”
It was true. Harrison was pleased that it was true.
He and his wife went back to their hotel.
Notes
[1] Note: This is historical fact. The theory was recorded with derisive gestures by John Asdruc, physician to Louis XIV of France. The germ theory was held by Augustine Hauptman and Christian Longius, among others. M.L.
[2] The writing of a book of etiquette was, historically, the principal interest of Maximilian while he was being besieged in Queretaro, before his capture and execution. M.L.
[3] These items are reported in reputable histories, except the computer, which exists in an Athens museum and which I heard about from someone working on it from photographs, in the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. M.L.
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Time Tunnel Page 16