Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

by Brian Stableford

  Carp made no attempt to soften the blow by means of tentative phraseology. “Who will Miss Cecilia Langstrade marry?” he asked, intemperately. The snap in his voice reflected his extreme irritation with the progress of the séance.

  “Whomsoever she pleases, if she marries at all,” came the reply, the voice resuming the baritone pitch of the Mistress of the Labyrinth. It was a better reply than Michael had dreaded, although it was by no means as explicit as he could have wished, and he could not help regretting the apparent displacement of the voice that had claimed to be his own.

  “Who am I destined to marry?” Quentin Hope asked, waspishly.

  “Whomsoever wishes to marry you,” was the reply, which did not wait for any intermediation by the Mesmerist. This time, it was Escott who laughed aloud while others contented themselves with muted chuckles.

  “If you will forgive me saying so,” said Signor Monticarlo, speaking from the rear, “it seems rather eccentric to forsake questions about the possible imminent end of the world for questions regarding the romantic fortunes of various members of the company.” His daughter looked at him with an expression that seemed slightly disappointed.

  “That was not my doing, Signor,” Carp said, flatly. “I will consent to relay one last question. Mr. Laurel, since the voice that was speaking through the medium of my somniloquist just now claimed to share your identity, albeit somewhat displaced in time, do you have any question that you would like me to put to the present voice?”

  Michael was taken unawares by that question, but he only paused momentarily, suppressing the temptation to point out to the somniloquist that the voice claiming to be his own seemed to have handed responsibility back to another. “Yes,” he said, hesitantly. “Will you ask the voice what it was that frightened Mademoiselle Evredon so terribly when Signor Monticarlo played his second piece this evening?”

  Carp seemed almost as surprised by that question as Cecilia was, but he shrugged his shoulders, as if accepting defeat in his attempt to restore any vestige of continuity and order to the occasion. “What was it that frightened Mademoiselle Evredon during Signor Monticarlo’s recital?” he asked, wearily.

  Michael immediately regretted having asked the question, because the somniloquist shot to her feet, standing bolt upright as rigid as a ramrod. An expression of pure terror took possession of her features yet again.

  “Because I’m in the maze,” she cried, her voice rising in a rapid crescendo to the pitch of a scream, “and I can’t get out!” Then she collapsed and fell heavily to the floor, unconscious.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE GHOST-HUNTING EXPEDITION

  Like the good servant he was, Heatherington instantly ceased pretending to be a statue. Making quick hand-signals to the waiting servants, he sent willing helpers racing to the stricken woman’s side. Augustus Carp made a quick examination, then asked the servants to pick his assistant up, carry her up to the Violet Room and put her to bed.

  The Mesmerist turned to the audience, most of whom were glued to their seats by shock, and said, in a voice tremulous with strain: “I apologize, ladies and gentlemen. One never has any advance warning as to how somniloquistic séances might progress. I wish I could say that this was the first time that one of mine has produced such bizarre results, or degenerated into such disarray, but I cannot. Such things happen—and I must warn you again not to read too much into anything said here tonight. What it might mean, if it means anything at all, I cannot tell. Once again, I must apologize, and bid you goodnight.” With that, he strode out of the room, hot on the heels of the servants carrying Mademoiselle Evredon, and practically ran up the stairs, overtaking them on the way, with the key to the Blue Room in his hand.

  “That didn’t go as I’d hoped,” Cecilia Langstrade muttered, in a voice that she probably thought inaudible to everyone except Michael.

  Jack Langstrade had, however, contrived to avoid being sent to bed during the intermission between the recital and the séance, and he heard the comment clearly enough. “Well I thought it was simply spiffing, Sis!” he opined.

  Even if Gregory Marlstone had not been locked away in the Keep, trying hard to figure out how and why his time machine had malfunctioned earlier in the day, there would probably have been few volunteers to listen to his proposed lecture on the theory underpinning the construction of his time machine. Michael would have been very interested to hear it, even though he knew that it would be far beyond the grasp of his limited intellect, but he felt quite exhausted in the wake of the violin recital and the séance.

  Lord Langstrade took control of the situation, exactly as a good host should, and opined that it would probably be best for the gentlemen to retire to the smoking room for a strong brandy or three, while the ladies took cocoa in the small drawing-room. The chorus of approval was distinctly muted, but no one raised any objection to what was, in the circumstances, virtually a command.

  “If you don’t mind, Milord,” Signor Monticarlo said, making use of the only escape route available to him, “I am very tired following my performance. I shall wish you all goodnight.”

  Everyone wished the violinist goodnight—including Carmela, who did not accompany him upstairs, but followed the elder Lady Langstrade into the dining-room instead.

  Michael was strongly tempted to follow the Italian’s example, but he could not bear the thought of leaving Quentin Hope, James Escott and Lord Langstrade to talk about him behind his back—as they would be bound to do, given the extent to which his name had featured in Augustus Carp’s séance—so he made a manful attempt to shrug off his feeling of exhaustion.

  “And then there were four,” said Escott, looking at Michael with an element of sly challenge in his gaze.

  “I knew it was a mistake to invite that fellow Carp,” Lord Langstrade opined. “You’d expect that a man of his experience could mount a better performance than that.”

  “I honestly believe that he was trying with all his might to do so,” Escott said. “The fault, if there was one, lay with Mademoiselle Evredon’s attempt to masquerade as the Mistress of the Labyrinth. I know that Hope and I have a reputation for mischief-making, but I suspect that young woman could give us a run for our money, and she was surely trying to do so. Perhaps she was trying to pay Carp back for the unkindness he has showed her in their recent quarrels. I suspect that he won’t be working with her again.”

  “Once word of this evening’s fiasco gets around,” Hope opined, “he probably won’t be working anywhere that people of our sort are likely to encounter him. That medium of his seems quite sweet on you, though, Laurel—almost as sweet as Carmela Monticarlo. You certainly have a way with the ladies.” The optimist did not go so far as to add that he did not envy the woman unlucky enough to marry such an obvious libertine.

  “I don’t believe that her comments were a subtle way of expressing an attraction to me,” Michael said, firmly. “Wherever her voices come from, I think they really were trying to say something meaningful about the Langstrade Maze and tomorrow’s experiment. I have no idea who Edward Kelley is, though.”

  “Don’t you?” Hope was quick to say. “If you’d gone to a decent public school you’d know. Educational standards obviously aren’t what they used to be.”

  “That’s a trifle harsh, Quentin,” Escott chipped in. Turning to Michael, he explained: “Edward Kelley was a minor member of John Dee’s secret college. He never produced any significant advances in mathematics, like Dee or the two Diggeses, or any notable invention, like Bacon or Drebbel, but he was as much a member of the inner circle as Raleigh. He was said to be Dee’s skryer, but the secrecy of the college makes it difficult to be sure.”

  “What’s a skryer?” Michael asked, figuring that it as better to confess his ignorance rather than take the risk of being caught out by Hope.

  “A kind of seer,” Escott replied, promp
tly. “A somniloquist, I suppose, although it was long before Mesmer’s day, so that term hadn’t yet acquired its modern meaning. He was said to be able to communicate with angels by means of a shiny black stone—a similar process, I presume, to that by which Mademoiselle Evredon communicates with her voices, except that the modern fashion is to identify such dubious informants as the voices of the spirits of the dead, rather than as angels.”

  “That explains, I suppose, why Edward Kelley might be reaching out with his mind in search of the voices of angels, even as far as present-day Langstrade,” Michael conceded, “but I don’t see how Mr. Hope and I can possibly be expected to answer his desire.”

  “We can’t,” Hope said, squarely. “You need to remember Carp’s warning, Laurel, and take heed of it. These spirit-mimics invariably spout a good deal of nonsense, perhaps innocently and perhaps in the hope that absurdity will pass for enigmatic meaning. Don’t bother your young head with trying to figure it out.”

  “You don’t believe that the voice speaking through Mademoiselle Evredon really was an external agency of some sort?” Michael asked.

  “Of course not,” Hope replied. “When she—the Frenchwoman, that is—was tired of pretending to be the Mistress of the Labyrinth she claimed to be you, remember? Do you believe that?” He looked hard at Michel, then at the other members the company in turn. No one admitted to the belief that the spirit of Michael’s future self really had spoken to them through the medium of Augustus Carp’s somniloquist.

  “All the same, though,” Lord Langstrade said, “if she was trying to get back at Carp by chucking his prepared script out of the window, she certainly put a lot of rubbish in its place.”

  “She gave you credit for killing Emund Snurlson in Harold Longstride’s stead,” Hope reminded him. “You might be grateful for that.”

  “And we’ve been assured that the dread empire of eternity, or the so-called Era of Change, might still be averted, if we’re heroic enough,” Escott added, raising a quizzical eyebrow in Michael’s direction. “I suppose we might be grateful for that news too, eh, Mr. Laurel? Your future self was doubtless trying to do us a good turn by letting us know. The world as we know it can still be saved from catastrophe, in order that it might go to Hell in its own sluggish way.”

  “Or gain the Earthly paradise by more laborious means,” Hope countered, automatically.

  “But for the time being,” Michael said, quietly, “we’re still in the Maze—and I’m not sure any more that even I can find my way out.”

  “But we’re not in the Maze, are we?” said Lord Langstrade.

  “No,” said Escott, “but we jolly well ought to be, if we’re supposed to be playing a heroic role. Indeed, we have to be, if we’re to inject any meaning at all into the messages we’ve just received from the World Beyond.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the Earl.

  “I mean that the ghosts are scheduled to walk tonight—and we’re supposed to be among them. If images of us, refracted through time, really are among the many ghostly lights that Lady Phythian has seen over the years, then we really need to get out there, in order to project the images in question And we have good reason to do so, don’t we? Even if we can’t believe for a moment that the ghosts of Dedalus, Harold Longstride, Pietro Locatelli and Edward Kelley will be walking the maze in search of us, we can hardly resist the temptation to make certain, can we?”

  “Ah!” said Langstrade, pensively.

  “Signor Monticarlo seems to have gone to bed a trifle prematurely,” Hope observed. “He’s the one who would have wanted to see Locatelli. That’s a pity.”

  “Not at all,” said Escott, “since Lady Phythian’s testimony has already told us that the eight lights she saw most distinctly consisted of two groups of four, one tracking the other. That’s four real ghosts and the four of us, isn’t it?”

  “Actually…,” Michael began, remembering that the mysterious voice had also named Lady Phythian, Lady Langstrade, Carmela and Cecilia among the ghosts in the maze—but Hope gave him no opportunity to finish.

  “That’s right!” the optimist said. “Lord Langstrade will certainly want to meet Dedalus and Harold Longstride, while Laurel and I seem to have a meeting scheduled with Kelley. We’ll have to leave Locatelli to you, Escott—how’s your Italian?”

  “Better than Langstrade’s ancient Greek and Celtic, I suspect,” Escott retorted. “Are we on, then?”

  “Absolutely!” said Hope. “As you say—no matter how absurd it all is, how could we possibly resist the temptation? And we do have a duty to the continuity of history to cast the shadows in time that Lady Phythian’s been looking out for ever since she was Ariadne Potts. It’s the least we can do, as gentlemen.”

  “You really want to go out to the Maze?” Lord Langstrade said, uncertainly. “In the dark?”

  “We’ll have to take lanterns with us, obviously,” Escott said. “Lady Phythian was quite clear about the lanterns. If Mr. Laurel will deign to accompany us, we’ll be in no danger of getting stuck. He got in and out all right today, twice over, thanks to his artistic sensibility. If he’s nervy, though, you’ll have to ask Heatherington to make up the party. There has to be four of us.”

  But we’re already in the maze, Michael objected, silently, and it’s obviously much bigger and far more complicated than I thought. While it just consisted of hedges, however thorny, I knew my way around it, but now it’s comprised of time and music, I’m not so sure. Aloud, all he said was: “I wouldn’t dream of staying behind.”

  That seemed to make Lord Langstrade’s mind up. “All right,” he said, “let’s do it. I’ll go tell Heatherington to find us some lanterns.”

  “What about guns?” Escott asked. “I know they’re not supposed to be much use against ghosts, but given that we’re solid enough.…”

  “No guns,” said Hope, decisively. “Stumbling around the Maze in the dark, we’re far more likely to shoot one another than anyone else, and I certainly don’t want to be walking in front of Escott if he’s got a loaded shotgun under his arm.”

  “I agree,” Michael said, hastily. “No weapons. We’re not looking for a fight.”

  “No guns, then,” Lord Langstrade concluded.

  “Are you going to change out of your dinner-jacket?” Escott asked the Earl

  “It’s not worth the bother,” Langstrade opined. “It’s probably getting cool outside by now—do you chaps want to put jackets on?”

  Michael was as quick to reject this suggestion as Hope and Escott were.

  “Fine,” said Lord Langstrade, and rang the bell to summon Heatherington. “We need four lanterns,” he instructed the butler. “I’ll need my hat and my walking-stick, too—we’re going out for a stroll.”

  Heatherington nodded his head, as meekly and emotionlessly as a well-disciplined somniloquist, and withdrew.

  “We’re not going to see anything, though,” the Earl added, addressing his companions. He sounded less than completely convinced—unsurprisingly, in Michael’s opinion, given that he had previously taken so much pleasure in the idea that his mock-ancestral manor might have a mock-ancestral ghost to go along with its mock-Medieval Keep and its mock-Medieval labyrinth.

  “Well, that will be indicative too,” Hope declared. “If I understand Francis Bacon’s much-vaunted scientific method correctly—which, as an Eton and Balliol man, I surely do—then experiments that produce negative results are just as significant, in their way, as those which produce positive ones. If no ghosts walk, except for us, it will prove that Mademoiselle Evredon’s entire performance was just so much hot air. We’ll keep it to ourselves, though—I think we’ve done old Carp enough damage for one night.”

  “More than enough,” Escott agreed. “We did have help, though—we couldn’t have done quite as much without Mademoiselle Evredon’s gnomic sup
port.”

  “I never realized that the secret college had a somniloquist as well as all those pioneers of science and invention,” Michael said, reflectively. “It puts a slightly different twist on England’s Academic glory, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely not,” Escott was quick to say. “Enthusiasts for science and technology like Hope inevitably like to think of Dee’s gang as hard-headed theorists and inventors, but they never saw themselves that way. They were seekers after occult wisdom, and had no idea, in advance, where they might find it. Their experiments in supernatural communication, like Carp’s experiments in psychognosis, were just as sincere as their ventures in mathematics and physics. Dee was an assiduous student of astrology and alchemy as well as astronomy and mathematics, as was every other Renaissance sage from Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus onwards. He had no idea, to begin with, whether Kelley’s skrying or Francis Bacon’s chicken-stuffing was likely to produce the more interesting and valuable results—and we don’t actually know for sure that it didn’t. It’s not impossible that all their triumphs were based on information dictated by Kelley’s angels.”

  “Yes it is,” Hope contradicted. “Utterly impossible—although I shall certainly be able to tell the college a thing or two, if I do happen to meet Kelley in the Maze tonight. I can’t imagine why my name was coupled with Laurel’s in that regard, though. What can he possibly have to teach the secret college? Its members already knew about oil-paints and perspective.”

  Michael did not rise to this bait.

  Heatherington returned then. He silently handed a lantern to each of the four men, and then handed a broad-brimmed hat to Lord Langstrade, along with his stout ivory-handled walking-stick. When all these objects had been distributed, Heatherington bowed rather brusquely and withdrew. Michael took the inference that the servant disapproved strongly of the nocturnal expedition, but that wild horses could not have dragged a word of criticism from his taut lips.