Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

by Brian Stableford

  Michael assumed that the old man was referring to the conversations he supposedly held with the dead via his somniloquist. He had also been introduced to the woman currently playing that role: a buxom Frenchwoman named Jeanne Evredon, not much older than Carmela Monticarlo, to whose reluctant care the old man had confided his ward before coming to supervise the transfer of his luggage.

  Michael’s equipment was unloaded first, and Michael had to leave the old man alone temporarily in order that he might transfer the fragile items to the diligence personally. He took great care to check that the tools of his trade were safely stowed on top of the coach. By the time he was satisfied, Augustus Carp had finished supervising the securing of his own trunks to the postilion’s station, and the two were able to walk to the Inn together.

  The low ceiling of the inn’s dining-room was stained yellow between its oaken beams by tobacco-smoke, and the walls were hung with a random admixture of horse-brasses and prints reproducing badly-painted hunting-scenes or steeplechases. There was a strong odor typical of such institutions, which Michael always took care to think of as the odor of oxtail soup, although he knew that it was really the olfactory ambience of human body-odor.

  The Minotaur’s refuge would doubtless have emitted a more intense version of the same odor, he thought. But one always gets used to it after ten minutes or so—unless, of course, mine host takes it into his head to serve oxtail soup.

  Fortunately, this being Yorkshire, the innkeeper’s wife was busy serving plates loaded with mutton chops, potatoes and Yorkshire pudding to all the diners.

  Their companions had secured a trestle-table long enough to accommodate the entire party, but the two seats still vacant were positioned at one corner, between Mademoiselle Evredon and Lady Phythian. Politely standing aside to let the Mesmerist sit next to his protégée—although Carp hesitated before accepting the invitation—Michael sat down between the old man and the dowager.

  Revived by the change of scene, Hope and Escott had begun holding forth again, but the size and shape of the table were such that other conversations could be comfortably undertaken in parallel. Lady Phythian did not seem ill-disposed toward Michael any longer, having obviously found his relative quietness and amiability a welcome contrast to Hope and Escott’s warmongering in the railway-carriage, but she did not seem inclined to talk to him either, evidently preferring to cultivate the acquaintance of her other neighbor, Signor Monticarlo. Michael had no alternative but to resume his interrupted conversation with Augustus Carp, but he did not mind that; he was still curious to know more about the vocation of Mesmerism.

  “It must be uncommon, Mr. Laurel,” Carp suggested, before Michael could frame a question of his own, “for you to receive a commission to paint a building like Langstrade Keep. Recently-elevated aristocrats often have their brand new stately homes painted, I believe, but not their Follies.”

  “Do you consider the Keep to be a Folly, then, Dr. Carp?” Michael asked. “Hope and Escott do, of course, but I thought that you might be more sympathetic to Lord Langstrade’s…eccentricities.”

  “I have long since learned to keep an open mind,” Carp replied, with another sigh, “and I would not be so impolite as to say so to Lord Langstrade, but yes, I do consider the Keep to be a Folly, and I fear that the likelihood of my satisfying his lordship’s expectations is far less than the likelihood of you completing the commission that he has imposed on you. If Jeanne were actually able to contact the spirit of Harold Longstride, I would be utterly amazed.”

  “But Lady Phythian is convinced that there really are ghosts haunting Langstrade,” Michael told him. “She was telling us during the journey that she has seen them several times over, albeit in the grounds rather than in the Hall itself.”

  “There are ghosts everywhere,” Carp said, morosely, “but they rarely turn out to be the shades we expect and desire them to be. Revenants have their own reasons for visiting the mundane world, and our ability to fathom those reasons is far more limited than we might wish. Thanks to the great Anton Mesmer, we have recently opened up channels of communication with the dead, but the inhabitants of the afterlife have, alas, proved no more reliable as helpers and informants than the present inhabitants of the mundane world.”

  “Well,” said Michael, feeling obliged to attempt a compensatory cheerfulness, “for what it may be worth, I think that you have more chance of achieving some effect, even if your success seems less than total to Lord Langstrade, than Gregory Marlstone has of breaching the boundaries of time and allowing us to see into the past—not that we’ll be able to see very much, since we’ll be enclosed by tall hawthorn hedges.”

  “That is exactly the point, as I understand it,” Carp suggested. “Because the hedges are recently-grown, and the Keep recently-built, he hopes that we might be able to see them shrink and expand, perhaps even to vanish and let us watch the Hall in the process of construction. I haven’t discussed the matter with Marlstone personally, mind—but that’s the inference I draw.”

  “You’re probably right,” Michael conceded, readily enough. “In that respect too, the Keep and its environs might be reckoned a particularly suitable location for his third full-scale trial. Will it be suitable, do you think, for your own endeavors?”

  “Marlstone and I have the same objective, even if our instruments are very different,” Carp observed, reflectively. “We both aspire to cross commonplace boundaries, and rumor has it that he also expects to make contact with phantoms if he should ever succeed in getting his apparatus to work. I too am dependent on an instrument whose unreliability can be frustrating—but if there are phantoms at Langstrade, as I’m assured that there are, I certainly hope that I might be able to make contact with them, and perhaps elicit some explanation of their presence.” He glanced sideways as he spoke at Mademoiselle Evredon, who blushed slightly at the reference to her unreliability, but pretended not to have heard it because she was concentrating on whatever Hope was saying. Michael winced on her behalf, and dropped his fork, which clattered embarrassingly on the table-top.

  “Personally,” Carp continued, “I wish Mr. Marlstone every success. If his machine really can permit people in the present to catch glimpses of people in the past or the future, if only as silent phantoms, that would be a wonder to outshine all the others that we have recently seen. It might change the world far more profoundly than the steam engine.”

  “If we were to receive news from the future rather than the past, it surely would,” Michael reflected. “If we were able to discover today what we would otherwise not discover for a hundred years…well, that way lies paradox.”

  “Only logic fears paradoxes,” Carp said, in a rather mechanical fashion, as if quoting a saw. “We should be braver, if we are not to be prisoners of our own intellectual inventions.”

  “That’s a nice thought,” Michael said. “Even so, if Marlstone ever does get his time machine to work, there might be hazards involved, just as there must be in your work. If you or he can obtain accurate knowledge of the world to come, or transmit information from the present into the past, it seems to me that history itself must be at risk. The world would be in danger of dissolving into the kind of chaos that could only gladden the heart of a woemonger like Mr. Escott.”

  Carp was wise enough to appreciate that this was as much a challenge to the pretensions of Mesmerism as a comment on the potential dangers of chronovisual technology, but he did not take offence.

  “People did wax lyrical about the potential dangers of animal magnetism when somniloquists first began claiming that they could obtain visions of the future,” Carp admitted, gloomily, “but the utility of such visions has proved to be little greater than that of the enigmatic pronunciations of the pythoness of Delphi. When there is truth in what such visions offer, it tends to be cloaked in sufficient mystery to prevent the whole truth from being perceived until after the event,
when rational reaction can no longer be effective.”

  “If you’ll forgive me saying so, Dr. Carp,” Michael said, “you sound a trifle disenchanted with your science.”

  “I have reached an age at which it is difficult to preserve a sense of enchantment,” Carp told him. “To tell the truth, I suspect that tomorrow night’s séance might be the last I shall ever hold, not merely at Langstrade but anywhere. Perhaps I should have retired when I lost my previous somniloquist, with whom I had built up a fine and irreplaceable rapport, but one is always tempted to continue one’s life’s work a little too long…not that you need to think of such things, Mr. Laurel, given that you’re at the very beginning of your own life and career. For you, this weekend will be a stepping-stone to success, and you are fully entitled to rejoice in that. Forgive my bad mood—comfortable as the railway train is, at least by comparison with the mail-coach, I found the experience of traveling in it rather stressful.”

  Michael did his best to reassure the old man by telling him that he was looking forward very eagerly to seeing a demonstration of somniloquism for the first time, but his efforts seemed to be in vain.

  “You must forgive Dr. Carp,” Mademoiselle Evredon eventually put in. “I am the one who has vexed him. He is disappointed in me.” Like Carmela Monticarlo, she spoke English fluently, with only a hint of an accent, but she spoke relatively slowly, choosing her words with care.

  “I have no right to be disappointed, my dear,” Carp was quick to say. “You are in no way responsible for what happens while you are entranced. Your own personality is set aside, and the part of your brain that takes over the control of your voice is very different from the part that comprises your waking personality. I should not chide you for what you cannot help.”

  “Perhaps it’s simply a matter of settling into a new partnership,” Michael suggested. “With luck, tomorrow night’s séance might cement the relationship and produce revelations that will restore your enthusiasm, Dr. Carp.”

  “Well,” said the Mesmerist, making an obvious effort to rally his spirits, “we must certainly hope so. I would certainly like to repay Lady Langstrade’s faith in me, if I can—and as you say, Mr. Laurel, the Hall certainly does seem to be haunted. If we can, indeed, produce revelations that might be of some use to the Earl, or to anyone else in the audience, that would be very gratifying. It is, after all, an auspicious occasion, even if it is one that has been invented by legend-making rather than occasioned by an actual event. Perhaps, if we cannot contact Harold Longstride, we might be able to contact Emund Snurlson, of whose real existence history seems reasonably certain.”

  The dinner was over soon enough, Yorkshire coaching inns having no inclination toward sweet desserts. As the inn offered surroundings in which few diners would be tempted to linger, the travelers immediately made preparations to continue their journey. As they got up from the table and began making token protests against Hope’s insistence on settling the entire bill himself, Jeanne Evredon slid close to Michael and said: “Thank you for that, Mr. Laurel. Dr. Carp was in need of a boost to his morale, and I think you have provided it.”

  Michael attempted to insist that he had done nothing at all, but that only made the somniloquist smile at his modesty—and Michael could not help noticing that Carmela Monticarlo, who was watching them, lost her own smile in response. He was so embarrassed by that occurrence that he stubbed his toe on the table-leg as he moved away, and limped all the way back to the diligence.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE POTENTIAL COMPLEXITIES OF TRAVELING IN TIME

  The late summer sun had not yet set as the passengers made arrangements to take their places in the diligence. The three ladies were, of course, entitled to three of the seats inside by virtue of their sex, and Carp and Monticarlo were entitled to two of the remaining three by virtue of their age, but when those five had been loaded there was very little room left for anyone at all to take the sixth seat, because the luggage had overflowed the roof and several of the smaller bags had had to be stowed inside.

  “You’ll be much better off with Escott and myself in the coupé, Laurel,” Quentin Hope suggested. “There’ll be more amusing conversation there, I dare say, than there will inside. It’ll be a warm evening, even when night falls completely—the sky’s clear and there’s a three-quarter moon—so you’ve nothing to fear from the weather, and the wind is a blessing in August, rather than the deadly curse it becomes once winter sets in.”

  “It’s always a pleasure to hear philosophers like yourself and Mr. Escott displaying your wisdom,” Michael replied, deciding that the coupé did, indeed, seem the preferable alternative and accepting the stirrup that Escott made with his hands in order to provide him with an upward boost. “I lost the thread of your debate at dinner, I fear, but I’m sure I’ll pick it up again soon enough.”

  “We should have saved you a seat between us,” Escott said, as Hope gave him a similar boost. “but we didn’t think of it. Carp’s not a bad old stick, though, in spite of his delusions. Did he regale you with tales of his exploits as a youth, when he was employed in James Graham’s Temple of Health and Hygiene and knew the Duchess of Devonshire?”

  “Alas, no,” Michael said.

  Hope accepted a boost from the obliging coachman, who then showed surprising agility in climbing up to his own seat. “Must be saving the juicy stuff for Langstrade’s dinner-table,” Hope opined, as he clambered past his companions in order to sit down on the far side of the coupé’s bench, thus placing Michael in the middle. “You and I had better be careful that we don’t run out of conversation before we arrive, Jim—things will be direly dull if we’re all talked out.”

  They both laughed, utterly fearless of any such peril.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Michael said, as the coachman used his long whip to tickle the rumps of the four horses tethered to the diligence and set the rig in motion, “I’d be glad to know a little more about Gregory Marlstone’s time machine, if you’re in a position to enlighten me beyond what I’ve read in the newspapers. Dr. Carp says that Marlstone and he have the same objective, although their instruments are very different, but I wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to imply.”

  “Carp would say that,” Hope declared. “He’s interpreting the matter from his own standpoint—but Marlstone might take offence if you start talking to him about ghosts, so you’d best be careful when you meet him.”

  “If you meet him,” Escott corrected. “Until I see him, I’ll persist in picturing him bogged down in the Midlands. Hope’s right, though—for once. Marlstone doesn’t like the images that his machine is supposed to produce being described as ghosts, even though he thinks that they’ll be intangible and inaudible, and in spite of the fact that he hopes, eventually, to offer us glimpses of people now dead.”

  “Why won’t we be able to hear through time as well as see through it?” Michael asked,

  “For the same reason that we won’t be able to touch through time,” Hope told him. “Marlstone doesn’t believe that any physical displacement of matter by means of a time machine like his is possible—not yet, at any rate—and sound consists of vibrations in matter.”

  “Why not yet?” Michael queried.

  “What Hope means,” Escott put in, “is that, according to Marlstone’s theory of time, the transportation of matter through time would require two time machines—one to transmit and one to receive. Once his first machine is working properly—if he ever does succeed in getting it to work properly—he intends to build a second, which might then allow material objects to be transported. Or, of course, it might not, depending on the correctness of his theory.” Escott obviously thought that might not was the likelier alternative, but that was entirely in character.

  “But in what sense would the objects be transported through time,” Michael asked, “if both machines exist at the same time.”
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  “Simultaneous transport is travel in time,” Hope told him, “but that’s not the point. Once the second machine is in working order, according to Marlstone’s theory, the first wouldn’t simply be able to transport matter to it now, but also to its future situation—or vice versa. It’s all hypothetical, of course. Material displacement might simply be impossible, as Escott says. Indeed, any sort of temporal displacement beyond the stately march measured by our chronometers might simply be impossible, although I certainly hope that Marlstone’s right about the bounds of reality being less disobliging.”

  “You might well be wondering, of course,” Escott hastened to say, “why the first time machine, if Marlstone ever does get it to work, couldn’t just transport material objects to its own future self, if any such transfer were possible at all, but apparently there’s some reason why that’s not practicable. There really would need to be two distinct machines in order to attempt physical displacement. Marlstone babbles on about a law of conservation of non-identity.”

  “You might also be wondering,” Hope was quick to add, “why Marlstone’s machine, if it were ever to succeed in doing anything, couldn’t simply transmit material objects to machines in the future that haven’t yet been constructed but eventually will be, and receive material objects in the same way, but Marlstone reckons that there’s a problem there too, arising from what he calls complementary attunement and difficulties in overcoming intertemporal gravity. The fellow might simply be talking through his hat, of course—he’s crazier than Langstrade, in many people’s opinion—but he’s no fool.”

  Michael thought about that for a moment, enjoying the play of the wind of the vehicle’s progress upon his face—which did, indeed, produce a welcome relief from the somnolent heaviness of the sultry evening air. Then he decided to set aside the elements of the argument that he could not comprehend and return to simpler matters. “I see,” he lied. “But if sound can’t be displaced in time because it consists of physical vibrations, why does Marlstone think that light can be transmitted? Isn’t light a matter of vibrations in the ether, or of exceedingly tiny material particles?”