Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

by Brian Stableford

  Dedalus was an artist as well as an engineer. Michael had every confidence that the other would look at the ghostly map with an artist’s gaze, akin to his own, and that it would be engraved on his memory within a matter of seconds.

  “Can you hear the music?” Michael asked, although he knew perfectly well that Dedalus could not understand what he was saying. “Of course you can. Like Pietro Locatelli, you’ve always been on the brink of hearing it, waiting patiently for it to begin. You won’t be able to build this one, I fear—not in Cretan stone, at any rate—but you’ll be able to take the image in your head when you fly away. Not literally, alas—I’m presuming that the Greeks were no more scrupulous in their myth-making than any other Romanticists—but figuratively. You will escape; I’m sure of that.”

  Dedalus had memorized the plan of the maze, and was now looking up at the face of his ghostly visitor, with dark eyes that seemed even darker in the moon-shadow of the yew. He seemed to be intent on listening, even though he could not understand the words that Michael was speaking.

  “If I were you,” Michael said, as he folded up the piece of paper and returned it to his waistcoat pocket. “I’d be careful to take a souvenir with me when I finally obtained my release—a few seeds from the yew-tree, perhaps. I’d plant them when I finally reached the terminus of my flight. That way, there might be descendants of this very yew-tree growing in some distant corner of the world, retaining a symbol of your escape through the generations, for thousands of years.”

  Dedalus smiled, with simple pleasure rather than understanding. He set his head slightly to one side, as if to listen to distant strains of music.

  “Me too,” Michael said. “We’re not the beginning and the end, though—we’re just different aspects of the beginning. I can only hope that my beginning is as fruitful as yours, and I’m not at all sure that I can trust the Mistress of the Labyrinth, but what choice do I have? Give my regards to Theseus, if you ever get to meet him. I’ve got to go now—I’d like to get home before midnight chimes in Cribden church, because I have to make an early start tomorrow, on my painting of personified Folly. Unlike you, I can simply step through the wall of your prison.”

  That was what he did, hoping to find grasping, hawthorn hedges on the other side of the stone wall—and that was what he found. Indeed, he found himself inside a stout hedge, completely entombed in densely-packed and thorny branches. He had stepped through such hedges before, but always without pausing. Now he was suspended within one, and it was impossible not to feel trapped. He knew that it was absurd, but he felt panic rising within him, vertiginously. He was suddenly very conscious of the thorns projecting at every angle within his ghostly form, penetrating his sense of himself, if not his actual self, like so many daggers. He was conscious, too, of the fact that the hedge was alive.

  This hedge, he realized, was different from the others. There was a sense in which this hedge was just as much a phantom as he was: a dream-hedge, capable of hurting him—if it so desired.

  Emund Snurlson, he remembered, had been killed by a phantom blade. Immaterial as he was, the consciousness of matter could still harm him, if he allowed himself to give way to fear. If he allowed himself to become convinced that he was trapped, he would be trapped. What was worse, if the Mistress of the Labyrinth wanted to convince him of that fact, then he would not have the strength to resist her desire.

  He was, however, still under orders to be brave. Emund Snurlson the Viking had only been forbidden to run away by his status as a chieftain; Michael Laurel the lover had been instructed by the object of his adoration to be brave.

  In any case, was he not a hero now? Was he not a Theseus, who had discharged not one but three missions in the Maze, even if Hope had actually taken on the burden of informing the secret college and Lord Langstrade had slain Emund Snurlson. He had been their guide, a surrogate for the Mistress of the Maze—and he had given the Maze to Dedalus without requiring Escott to explain to the sage what he was doing. The Mistress of the Labyrinth could not possibly want to harm him—and had, indeed, made a formal promise to protect him, to the best of her ability. Real or virtual, this maze had no intention of hurting him.

  Michael calmed his panic, and banished his impending dizziness. He swam through the broad hedge, and emerged into an alleyway in what felt like the Langstrade Maze. It could not actually be an alleyway in the Langstrade Maze, however, because no alleyway in the Langstrade Maze had been blocked in 1822 by a huge figure of a human head, seemingly forged in some coppery alloy akin to bronze or brass.

  Michael did not need a map to discover where in the Maze he was, and how to find the exits; the music told him all that he needed to know. He knew perfectly well, simply by means of thinking rationally, that the giant head could not imprison him, because logic dictated that if it blocked the way to the external exit, then it could not possibly block the way to the internal one—and in any case, he could step through the hedges if he wanted to, for he was still a ghost and he had no fear of being trapped in a Maze that did not intend to hurt him.

  Even so, Michael felt that the brazen head was blocking his progress: that it posed a sphinxian riddle that he needed to solve, if he were to succeed in returning to the actual Maze and the moment he had left behind: the moment he still thought of as the present.

  The brazen head was the head of a man: a rather thin and fleshless man, to judge by its proportions and jutting contours. It was not until it raised its brazen eyelids, however that Michael realized whose head it was, at least in effigy.

  The brazen eyes that looked at him were blank and uniform, but Michael did not doubt that the mind behind them could see him, and would understand him if he spoke. “Mr. Escott?” he said, sounding the syllables as a question rather than a statement more out of politeness than uncertainty.

  “Laurel,” the head replied, moving its brazen lips with difficulty. “I’m having the most frightful nightmare. Have you ever become conscious within the course of a dream, and felt that you absolutely had to move, in peril of your life, but could not find the strength in your limbs to lift a finger?”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “Everyone has dreams of that sort, I believe.”

  “Not quite like this one,” Escott’s effigy assured him. “When I have had such dreams before, it has always been a simple matter of physical movement, but this nightmare is lying upon me with far greater mass and ingenuity than that. I feel that I am stuck in time, Laurel, not only unable to move my limbs, but also unable to rejoin the fleeting moment. I have been left behind, Laurel. I am stuck in the past. I cannot get back in time. If you cannot help me, Laurel, than I shall die here. I shall be lost forever, and no one will ever know what became of me. I shall be a mystery.”

  “Then I must try to help you, Mr. Escott,” Michael said, firmly. “Do you, perchance, have any idea as to how I might do that?”

  “Alas, no,” said Escott. “That is but one more facet of the nightmare: I know that I am direly in need of help, but I have no idea how that help might be rendered. It is an allegory of life, is it not? We go through life nursing yearnings that will not let us rest, but which we know not how to fulfill?”

  “Do we?” Michael queried. He did not add: But I have fulfilled mine—or will, if fate does not intervene to raise immovable obstacles between myself and Cecilia.

  “Yes we do,” said the pessimist, with gloomy conviction. “It is the human condition, in a nutshell—a Shakespearean nutshell, where we might be able to imagine ourselves kings of infinite space, but in which bad dreams continually remind us of our narrow limitations. I have wasted my time, Laurel. For forty years and more, I have wasted my time and my luck. Had opportunity knocked, I would not have heard it. I have lived a life of idleness, if not of luxury, playing the scholarly amateur, perennially posing as an envious and sarcastic commentator on the endeavors of others. I have taken delight in mi
sery, Laurel—including my own—and now I am condemned to this eternal punishment because of it. I have been captured by the Mistress of the Labyrinth, who is indeed more closely akin to Circe than to Athene, and she has turned me into a brazen dragon. I am gripped by a nightmare, and it will not let me go. I do not claim to deserve your help, Laurel, but I need it, and would be grateful for it. Can you help me?”

  Michael felt sure that he could, if only he could figure out a way—but nothing came to mind. The capriccio was still playing in the depths of his consciousness, but it offered no clue. “You must help me to help you, if you can, Mr. Escott,” he said. “You are, after all, a scholar. You know far more about the world’s mysteries than I do, or ever shall. You must help me to figure out your own.”

  Escott’s effigy tried to smile, but failed. “Alas,” he said, “my knowledge of legendary brazen heads in somewhat limited. Apart from the fact that there was a giant man of bronze named Talos, the last survivor of an ancient race, who was charged with guiding the island of Crete, I know of only one other. Even Talos might not have existed, for some subversive antiquarians claim that he was merely a bronze bull cast for King Minos, who had an unusual fondness for such creatures until his wife was stricken by her unfortunate obsession. Hope and I have been to Crete, you know, and explored the remains of the Labyrinth that Dedalus built, and where he was imprisoned.”

  “I was in Crete myself just a little while ago,” Michael said, pensively, “if only in spirit. What is the other legend?”

  “One of the great scholars of the Middle Ages—some say Roger Bacon, others Albertus Magnus—is reputed to have forged a brazen head by alchemical means, to serve him as a oracle. He waited for a long time to hear it speak, and grew weary, so he went to bed, commanding a servant to wake him if the head should speak. The boy waited, and eventually the head said: ‘Time is’, but then fell silent again. After a moment’s hesitation, the servant decided that it was not worth waking his master for the sake of such a small pronouncement. After a long interval, the head spoke again, saying: ‘Time was’, but then fell silent once again. After a moment’s hesitation, the boy reached the same decision as before. After another long interval, the head said: ‘Time is past.’ This time, the servant ran to wake his master, but it was too late—when they returned, the head had exploded, and shattered into tiny pieces. I would not like to think that such a fate awaits me, but I fear it, Laurel. I fear that I might shatter into a million shards.”

  “Time is; time was; time is past,” Michael repeated. “I knew I’d heard that somewhere before when the somniloquist pronounced the words. The Mistress of the Labyrinth said it, when she volunteered her apology. The legend is, I suppose, a parable of inevitability—but that cannot have been what she meant, for her entire raison d’être is to play fast and loose with supposed inevitability. She has sent me back through the maze to show its plan to Dedalus, to witness the slaying of Emund Snurlson and to introduce Hope to Edward Kelley, just as she had earlier sent Signor Monticarlo’s music spiraling through the maze into the dreaming minds of Pietro Locatelli and Dedalus. All these things had already happened, but still she had to make them happen, else the world as it is would not be the world as we know it. Perhaps, Mr. Escott, we have unmade a world tonight—a world in which Gregory Marlstone’s time machine could never have been invented—in order to preserve the world as we know it.”

  “You promised that the world as we know it might be saved,” Escott reminded him, “while you were not yet your present self, or its ghost. You asked us for heroism. It seems that I have been unable to provide it, and perhaps I must pay the price. I congratulate you, though, on your achievements. At least it was you that the Mistress of the Labyrinth sent to inform me, not Hope. He’s a fine fellow, and the best friend I have in the world, but he does take an unholy delight in gloating whenever he obtains the slightest advantage over me. How delighted he will be to have made his contribution to the tide of progress!”

  “So he will,” murmured Michael. “I dare say that he will ask for Miss Cecilia’s hand in marriage while the wave of exultation bears him aloft, if we ever get back to 1822.”

  “Why should he not?” Escott asked, innocently. “Miss Cecilia is a lovely woman, and will make a fine wife for some lucky fellow.”

  “I know that,” said Michael. He did not want to reveal the reason why he did not want Quentin Hope to do any such thing, even though he was more than half-convinced that no such proposal could ever be accepted. “The point is, Mr. Escott, to extract you from your nightmare, if it can be done, and we have wasted too much time already. Time is, was, and is past, and we do not want to miss the moment that we call the present, if we still have a chance of catching it. I think I know what needs to be done, but we shall have to work together, since neither of us can achieve it alone.”

  “What do you propose?” Escott’s effigy asked.

  “I propose to step through the brazen head,” Michael told him. “As I do so, I shall attempt to gather you up and carry you out of it with me—but you must hold on to me tightly, Mr. Escott, and not let go, however dizzy or sick you might feel, just as I must hold on to you.”

  “Will that work?” asked the pessimist, dubiously.

  “I hope so.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that you might become trapped in my nightmare as well—gorgonized in time?”

  “I wasn’t quite as afraid of that,” Michel said, a trifle waspishly, “as I am now that you’ve explicitly raised the possibility.”

  “I’m sorry,” Escott said, contritely.

  “Apology accepted,” Michael said. So saying, he set down his ghost-lantern, rubbed his hands together, braced himself and hurled himself forward, setting off like a sprinter in a race.

  It was like diving into an ice-cold pool of dark water, although that was obviously a reaction of his own mind rather than any physical property of the metal from which the effigy was forged. There was no human figure within the head, imprisoned there like Dedalus in his stone cage; Escott’s consciousness had been dissolved and dissipated. It had not exploded and shattered, but it had certainly robbed of its fundamental integrity. The rescue was not a matter, for either of them, of grabbing on to one another with their arms, or catching hold of one another’s clothing. In order to “gather Escott up” and “carry him out”, Michael had to take possession of him in quite a different way—or, perhaps more accurately, to allow the other to take possession of him.

  For one brief moment, Michael and Escott were not two phantoms but one; not two intellects, but one; not two wellsprings of emotion but one—and that, in itself, was a source of such panic and nausea as Michael had never known possible.

  Michael had felt his mind crowded before, but only by other versions of himself—thoughts he had already entertained, or would entertain in a very short lapse of time. Even that had made him feel dizzy and sick—but sharing his mind with a different person entirely, a man with thoughts and feelings and ideas very different from his own, was a much more painful and dangerous experience, which threatened to blow his sense of identity to smithereens.

  Had Escott been correct in his fear, and Michael had been trapped inside the head too, it would have been unbearable. The fusion would have destroyed them both—but Michael had made a decisive leap, and he was not about to stumble. As soon as the initial bound reached its terminus he launched himself into one more gigantic stride and burst out of the brazen head—like Athene from the head of Zeus, one of them could not help thinking—but with another soul contained within himself, which lost no time at all in wriggling out of him, desperate to be free.

  Escott’s reconstituted phantom collapsed, and lay supine on the grassy path between two tall hedges. Michael remained standing, though slightly annoyed that he could not lean on the hedge for support, and took a deep breath of whatever phantoms thrived on instead of air.

 
The lantern he had set down before jumping was still on the ground, five yards away. The obstacle had vanished. The maze was clear.

  But how did there come to be an obstacle at all? Michael wondered. It surely could not have been the Mistress of the Labyrinth who planted it, for it’s entirely in her interests to let us move freely. Perhaps there is a Minotaur in the maze, after all—a monster intent on undoing her work. This business is not finished yet. Indeed, it will not even begin, in earnest, until noon tomorrow. All of this night’s bold endeavors were mere groundwork—preparation for the challenge to come.

  Escott opened his phantom eyes, and sat up, still apparently marveling at the fact that he was free. He had lost his own lantern, though, and the blue satin of his waistcoat was ripped so badly that its solid equivalent, if it inherited the damage, would probably defy any attempt at repair.

  “Are we home?” Escott asked. “Is this 1822?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael told him. “If I’m not mistaken, I can see a distant glimmer lantern-light filtering through the hedges, which indicates that someone is moving along one of the parallel pathways—but I cannot tell how many lanterns there might be, or whether their light is real or phantom. Perhaps we have only to step through the hedges in order to rejoin our flesh and blood and permit the present moment to reaffirm its grip on our consciousness—but I’m a novice in this business, and I don’t know anything for sure.”

  “But if we can rejoin our flesh and blood, it will all be over?” Escott said, with an altogether uncharacteristic surge of optimism.

  “No,” Michael told him, with doleful certainty. “The real catastrophe, I fear, is yet to arrive.”