Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

by Brian Stableford

  Having drunk his coffee, however, Michael sat down to listen to Signor Monticarlo with only one significant expectation: that he would be able to spend a further hour sitting next to his beloved Cecilia, rejoicing in her proximity, while no one else would be able to bother, interrupt or undermine him.

  “First of all,” said the violinist, after bowing respectfully in response to Lady Langstrade’s fulsome introduction, “I should like to play two pieces by my honorable compatriot Pietro Locatelli, written almost exactly a century ago. I shall play the first in his series of capricci enigmati—‘enigmatic caprices’ in English—exactly as it was published, but I shall introduce a small variation in the scordatura—the unorthodox tuning of the violin—required by the second, in order to correct an apparent error in the published version. I hope you will find it interesting. Afterwards, I shall play a sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach, at the request of Lady Langstrade, with apologies for the fact that the choice of such a piece was severely restricted by the lack of an accompanist.”

  Michael listened to the first few chords of the first capriccio, but quickly decided that it was too sophisticated a piece for his simple tastes. It was too rapid and too jerky, and seemed to be designed to show off the cleverness of the instrumentalist’s fingers rather than provide aural pleasure for the audience. He did not mind at all, though, for he was perfectly happy to ignore the music and focus his attention on Cecilia—even though he noticed, when he glanced across the room, that Quentin Hope was now looking at him with frank hostility. The optimist had evidently come to the conclusion that Cecilia’s manifest fondness for a younger and more romantically-inclined rival would almost certainly provide a fatal stumbling-block to his own covertly-nursed ambitions.

  When the first capriccio reached its conclusion, Michael clapped politely along with everyone else, but a rapid glance around the room suggested that no one else had appreciated the piece much more than he had, with the inevitable exception of Carmela Monticarlo. Even Lady Langstrade, who obviously wanted the concert to go well, had to feign her moderate gratitude.

  The violinist swiftly retuned his instrument, but Michael did not expect to be able to tell the difference once it launched into the second piece, which he imagined in advance as a virtual cacophony. He realized his mistake, though, as soon as the bow was first drawn across the strings. All of a sudden, it was as if he had been snatched back to the heart of the Langstrade Maze, at the very climax of his unsteadiness.

  This time, Michael knew full well that it was his own body—or perhaps his soul—that had been mysteriously “charged”, without his being fully aware of it. He was perfectly certain that Signor Monticarlo had not been significantly affected by anything that had occurred in the Keep, and that his violin had not been magically transformed into an angelic harp, so it followed logically that he was the one who had been “magnetized” by Marlstone’s temporal trickery.

  Had there been any doubt about the matter, a single glance around the faces of the audience reassured him completely. Although Lady Langstrade and Cecilia were doing their best once again to feign a kind of artistic rapture, and Carmela was responding with dutiful loyalty to her parent’s genius, Lord Langstrade was obviously bored and his mother’s thoughts were evidently elsewhere, as were Dr. Carp’s. Hope and Escott were listening dutifully, but without any undue excitement. Jack, who had not yet been sent to bed, in order that he might enjoy a little cultural improvement, did not seem to be enjoying the privilege at all. Heatherington, stationed beside the door, seemed to be putting all his concentration into his conscientious imitation of a statue, and the various other servants scattered around the room seemed intent on enjoying the luxury of having nothing to do for a defined interval. Indeed, the only person who seemed to be responding spontaneously to the music, with as much alarm as Michael, was Jeanne Evredon.

  As soon as he had framed that thought, Michael knew that alarm, and not delight, was the operative word. As the music gripped him, and overwhelmed him—much as the Maze had done while he made his way out of it earlier that afternoon—he did not feel the slightest pleasure, although he knew that an audience ought to take pleasure in music composed and played with flair and feeling. That the music was good, and the playing first-rate, he did not doubt; nor did he doubt that the composer’s aim had been to produce a piece by means of which a violinist might move his hearers to pleasurable rapture—but that was by no means the sensation that was provoked in his own nerves and brain.

  He felt unease. He felt alarm. He felt danger. He felt that he was hanging in some kind of balance, in the sway of some fateful machine, or some mechanical fate.

  He felt, as the piece progressed, that he had somehow become lost, in spite of the fact that he had known while he sat beside Cecilia at dinner exactly where he was, and had felt that it was exactly the place that he wanted to be.

  As his love for Cecilia had expanded in the knowledge that she obviously favored his attention and affection, Michael had felt, for the first time in his life, that he knew exactly who he was, and that he was exactly the person he wanted to be. Now, without any warning, all of that had somehow been cast into a strange kind of doubt, which was all the stranger because he had no idea what kind of doubt it was, or how it had come about that he had been cast into it.

  The music carried him away. It transported him, although he did not move a muscle, and Cecilia did not seem to have the slightest awareness that anything was happening at all. He felt that he was being spread out, not in any of the dimensions of perceptible space, or even in time as he normally experienced and imagined it, but in some other dimension that did not share the scrupulous linearity of the spatial dimensions, nor the inexorable flow of experienced time, but was, instead, tangled and labyrinthine, and whose flux was utterly chaotic.

  It’s the Maze! he thought, suddenly, as the music continued to evolve. It’s the Maze! It didn’t release me when I stepped out of it. I’m still in harmony with it, somehow, and so is the music—not by some freak of chance, but because the Maze is taking possession of the music, molding it to its own design. The Maze is reaching out through time, from this very moment, into the mind of the composer, and replicating itself in another form, laying foundations for today and tomorrow and…who can tell how many other tomorrows, or even how many other todays?

  Once he had realized that and put it into words, Michael was able to relax slightly. The unease and the alarm did not go away, but he felt that he now had a slightly better understanding of what they might signify. After all, if the music and the Maze were somehow the same, then he ought to be able to find his way through the music as easily as he had been able to find his way through the Maze.

  For several minutes, he concentrated on trying to feel his way through the exotic contours of the music, translating its sonic imagery into visual imagery, or at least becoming aware of the resonance between the two.

  So there is a way that sound can be transmitted through time, he thought, albeit an indirect one. Like visual imagery, sound can be distilled into thought, and thought is transmissible. Perhaps it’s only thought that can move through time. That would make sense, after all; the whole purpose of thought is surely to conquer and master time, by means of memory and foresight, history, hope and fear.

  He glanced sideways at Gregory Marlstone’s empty chair, wondering whether the inventor would have been able to feel the maziness of the music too, had he been present. He could not quite believe it. In fact, he had a sudden image of Marlstone’s ghost, shifting restlessly in the seat that he would have occupied, had it not been for the advent of the anomalous ripple in time. The incipient scowl on the ghost’s face was surely symptomatic of ennui—but Marlstone was not really there, in the flesh or in any other form, and the vision faded away.

  Michael glanced at Jeanne Evredon then, and immediately jumped to the opposite conclusion: that the impression she gave of having
been gripped and devoured by the magic of the music was authentic, and akin to his own. She could hear what he could hear—but how? She had gone into the Maze that morning, and had certainly been in it when the first ripples had spread out from the Keep, but surely she had not been there in the afternoon, when the most powerful pulse had occurred?

  It didn’t make any difference, Michael thought. She’d already been attuned.

  For a moment, he regretted hurrying past the doors of the Blue and Violet Rooms on more than one occasion, in order not to hear the raised voices within. He wished that he had paused instead, and placed his ear to the door, in order to discover exactly what it was that she and Dr. Carp were arguing about, and what the Mesmerist thought about her conviction that she was afflicted by an evil spirit.

  Is it evil? he thought. If it’s merely the Maze…but perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s a dragon, or a Minotaur.

  That was no help, though. In spite of having asked Hope and Escott the question, Michael had no idea where the Minotaur fitted into his flight of fancy, if it fitted in at all, nor whether mazes really could contain and confine dragons.

  What Jeanne Evredon had told him in the Maze offered a clearly legible clue to what was happening, though. Somehow she had anticipated this moment. Somehow, she had known that something was going to happen here at Langstrade that would change her—and she had been afraid. She had not wanted to come here, and she had not wanted to remain—but Carp had given her no choice. Carp had insisted, and because he was a Mesmerist, and she a mere somniloquist, she had been obliged to yield the point. She had protested, but she had been obliged to given in.

  Michael could not believe for a moment that Augustus Carp wished his new assistant any harm, but the Mesmerist presumably felt very differently about the prospect of something happening here, especially if he had meant what he said about this being his last séance. Michael did not know whether the séance would actually go ahead, but he suspected that if it did, it might qualify as a breakthrough in the science of psychognosis to compare with the breakthrough that Gregory Marlstone was still hoping to make in physical science.

  While these thoughts ran through Michael’s head, Signor Monticarlo played on, and on. The musical maze did not lose its grip on him for an instant—but he no longer felt lost. Although he was by no means free of anxiety, he did not feel trapped. He felt that, although he was not entirely certain where he was, he now knew which way to go. Even though he could not see what was at the heart of the Maze, as yet, he was confident now that he could find his way there—and back again.

  Eventually, the Italian paused in his playing for a second time, and lowered his instrument again. Everyone in the audience clapped politely and murmured approvingly, Michael included. As he applauded, though, Michael breathed a literal sigh of relief, and glanced around the room again. Little had changed, in the attitudes adopted and expressions worn by all but one of his neighbors. Lord Langstrade, the dowager Lady Langstrade and Jack were still concealing their boredom. Hope and Escott were still relaxed. Carmela was still adoring, the younger Lady Langstrade, Augustus Carp, Lady Phythian and Cecilia still striving heroically to surrender themselves to the genius of the music and its performance. Jeanne Evredon, by contrast, looked even more terrified than before.

  Unlike Michael, the conclusion of the supernatural communion did not seem to have left the somniloquist relieved. It had, instead, confirmed her worst fears. She knew that whatever had begun had not concluded, and the urgency of her terror seemed to indicate that it was not the events of the morrow whose prospect was frightening her. Michael was tempted to lean forward and ask whether she was all right, if only to offer her the comfort of hearing a friendly voice, but did not dare give any attention to another woman while Cecilia was beside him. He was glad to observe, though, that Augustus Carp had become belatedly aware of his protégée’s distress, and was now leaning toward her to take her hand and speak to her in a whisper. The manner in which she consented to be calmed, although the wildness in her eyes suggested that she was not much comforted, informed Michael that she had lost her contest with the Mesmerist yet again. She still had to make her own contribution to the party this evening, allowing herself to be put into a trance by the imperious magnetism of Augustus Carp’s hands and eyes.

  But we all have our parts to play, Michael inferred. Some of us are more aware of that than others, perhaps because some parts are more crucial than others and perhaps because of the mere apparent order of events, but Gregory Marlstone’s time-field has us all in its grip. Whether or not we have gone into the heart of the maze already, we shall all be in its toils tomorrow, when the crucial switch is thrown—and there is, in consequence, a sense in which we are already there, already enclosed, captured and overwhelmed…but not irredeemably trapped. There is a way out of this, for those who can find it—and to those who can find it, the duty falls of leading the others to the exit. This is not necessarily the end of the world as we know it. It is an opportunity as well as a threat. Every labyrinth awaits its Theseus, and Theseus will always triumph over the Minotaur, provided that he has the loving assistance of Ariadne.

  That was a fine thought, Michael judged, worthy of a hero and surely symptomatic of his own heroism—but as he looked again at the terror still written on Jeanne Evredon’s face, his confidence could not help but falter.

  That terror gradually ebbed away, though, as Signor Monticarlo’s third piece continued. A sequence of covert glances informed Michael that the somniloquist was gradually recovering from her shock, perhaps beginning to convince herself that what she had just experienced had been some kind of waking dream, brought on by her own anxiety, and was not to be taken seriously.

  When Michael looked back at Cecilia’s face, however, he saw the ghost of a frown in her features. Covert as they were, his glances had not gone unnoticed, and they had been construed as a minuscule but tangible betrayal. It required no effort for Michael to smile adoringly, and emphasize with the full authority of his sadly unmagnetic eyes that hers was the only beauty in the world. He saw her smile in response, but he knew that there was still a slight hint of doubt in that smile, and more than a hint of criticism.

  He knew that he would have to be very careful during the séance that was scheduled to follow the recital. He would have to keep his attention focused on the only thing that really mattered, compared to which such matters as the supernatural power of the Langstrade Maze and the possible end of the world as he knew it paled into utter insignificance. And that was what he resolved to do, as the gentler strains of the Bach sonata lulled him as well his companions, and helped him become fully aware and appreciative once again of the divine presence beside him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  UNEXPECTED SOMNILOQUISTIC REVELATIONS

  When Signor Monticelli put his violin down for the last time, and welcomed the loud applause of his audience with a sequence of bows, there was a general stir of movement. Many of the audience-members got to their feet and moved to the back of the room, to stretch their legs and exchange comments on what they had just experienced. The Mesmerist and his assistant got up together, leaving an empty space in front of Michael and Cecilia. Signor Monticarlo immediately came over to them, while Carmela collected his violin and two servants gathered up the music-stand.

  “It was not a success,” I fear, the virtuoso declared, looking Michael straight in the eyes.

  “Oh, but it was magnificent,” Cecilia protested.

  “I thought the second piece very effective,” Michael added.

  “Si,” said the violinist. “I observed that—but I think that you were the only person who really heard it.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” Michael protested, but offered no other names.

  “Mademoiselle Evredon, for one, seemed quite moved,” Cecilia observed, obligingly, “and mother was quite delighted.”

 
“Mademoiselle Evredon was terrified,” Signor Monticarlo said, in a voice whose polite softness belied his meaning. “Do you know why that was, Mr. Laurel?”

  “The exotic tuning of the instrument certainly had a rather disconcerting effect,” Michael said, “but I think you are perfectly entitled to consider the intensity of her emotional reaction as a tribute to your playing, and your perception of the way in which the piece needed to be played. Perhaps she mistook the nature of her own reaction, and expressed as apparent terror something that was really more…primal.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Laurel?” Cecilia asked, unsure as to whether she ought to take offense at the suggestion.

  “I believe I understand what Mr. Laurel means, Miss Langstrade,” Monticarlo said, “and I thank him for it. He has the makings of a connoisseur.” The little man reached into his pocket, and produced a visiting-card, which he handed to Michael. “That is my London address,” he said. “You would be welcome to call, while we are still in residence there.” Then he bowed and followed Carmela out of the room.

  “What on Earth does he mean by that?” Cecilia asked, obviously suspecting that it was for Carmela’s sake that the invitation had been issued.

  “He’s simply being polite,” Michael told her, feeling guilty about the slight insincerity. “When we traveled up in the railway carriage I asked him about his music, merely by way of conversation, and he seems to have inferred that I have a genuine interest in his countryman, Signor Locatelli. I must admit that the second capriccio he played was like no other piece of music I have ever heard, and that it struck a chord within me.” He hastened to add: “But I doubt that I shall take up his invitation. I shall be far too busy.”