Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

by Brian Stableford

  “Everyone’s here,” Michael told her. “Hope, Escott, Lady Phythian, Marlstone, Jack and his father are all in the Keep.”

  “Are they all right?” the somniloquist asked. “When noon chimed and no catastrophe occurred, we assumed that Mr. Marlstone’s machine had failed again—but we did not know that so many people had ignored his Lordship’s prohibition and come to witness the experiment. Did you know that you have blood on your cheek? You seem to have grazed your ear.”

  Michael felt a stab of conscience as he remembered that he had not paused to ascertain whether the other people lying in the Keep were still alive, only being able to think about Cecilia. Before he could reply, though, he saw Jack Langstrade emerge unsteadily through the broken doorway of the Keep, at the head of a strange procession. Mr. Hope and Mr. Escott were supporting one another, trying in vain to walk in step as they made their way over the drawbridge, and then came Lord Langstrade and Lady Phythian, the aristocrat nobly assisting the limping widow. No one was supporting Mr. Marlstone—he was far too muddy to encourage the slightest touch—but his was the strongest physique of all, and he strode over the drawbridge with a firm gait that was almost swaggering.

  They were all groaning fearfully, wincing as the sun beamed its kindly light down upon their bare heads, and complaining loudly of having been poisoned. As soon as they saw Michael, Cecilia and the somniloquist waiting for them, they stopped complaining to one another and redirected their efforts, in quest of a better sympathy.

  Unsurprisingly, Escott was complaining loudest of all, proclaiming that he had already had one such headache the previous night, before going to bed, and that a second one was adding injury to injury, and insult to insult. Lady Phythian was incapable of saying anything, and Marlstone was dumbfounded by the sorry condition of his clothing. Jack contented himself with moaning softly. Mr. Hope declared that he must have eaten something that disagreed with him, but Escott immediately retorted that it felt more as if something with which he had disagreed had eaten him. Both men announced that they had hurt their fingers and shoulders too. Lord Langstrade took time out from his own misery to opine that the injuries in question looked like the kind of injuries that a novice sportsman might suffer from firing a shotgun awkwardly.”

  “Speaking of shotguns,” Cecilia said, “are those pellet-marks in the door of the Keep? And why has one of the battens been broken down?”

  “Don’t worry about it, my love,” Michael said. “Let’s go have lunch—your mother and grandmother will be annoyed with us if we delay any longer.” He noticed that Jeanne Evredon had blushed when he spoke the words my love, and then smiled, as if she had just been let in on a secret.

  “By the way,” Michael said to the somniloquist, as the trio moved into the Maze without waiting for the others to catch up with them, “I have a message for my former self, which I’d like you to relay, if you can.”

  “I already have,” the somniloquist reminded him. “I can still remember it, word for word. Are you the future self that sent the paradoxical message?”

  “Yes I am,” Michael confirmed. “Dr. Carp would be proud of me, I think, for I am no longer intimidated by logic.”

  “And I,” she replied, “am no longer intimidated by Dr. Carp—or, for that matter, the Maze. I was lying down in my room a little while ago when Signor Monticarlo began to practice, and I was afraid that the terror I had felt the previous night might return, but it did not. Quite the reverse, in fact. I have no idea what piece it was he played, but it was the most remarkably calming music I have ever heard I my life, and I feel quite renewed. Miss Langstrade, may I borrow Mr. Laurel’s spare arm, while he escorts us both to the rose-garden?”

  “You may,” said Cecilia, without the slightest hint of jealousy or resentment. She knew now, it seemed, that she no longer had any cause for anxiety in respect of the force and direction of Michael’s affections.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE COURSE OF HISTORY RESUMED

  Michael cleaned up his face easily enough, and was only a little late joining the other picnickers, but by the time Gregory Marlstone had changed out of his muddy clothes and washed his face, lunch was almost over. “I fear,” the inventor announced to the crowd sitting on the grass between the resplendent bushes, in a slightly peevish tone, “that my experiment has been a complete failure, for the third time—complicated, admittedly, by various unanticipated effects of a minor sort, but a failure nevertheless. I’m beginning to fear that I might never succeed. At any rate, there is no question of my attempting another demonstration in the near future. My entire theory is evidently in need of radical reconceptualization.”

  “I wouldn’t say that it was a complete failure,” Lord Langstrade informed him, judiciously exercising his rights and duties as a host, “but I must admit that the machine’s operation left me feeling quite confused and rather nauseous. I rather wish that I hadn’t attended the demonstration, and I can’t quite remember why I did. You were right to forbid us it seems, and I, of one, wish that I had heeded your demand.”

  “I feel the same sensation of confusion and residual dyspepsia,” Marlstone admitted, “but I’m not convinced that it has anything to do with my machine. It might have been something we ate.”

  “It certainly was not!” the younger Lady Langstrade retorted. Signor Monticarlo and Carmela are perfectly well, and so is Mademoiselle Evredon. Indeed, we all feel quite remarkably healthy—inspired, as it were, by the soothing music that Signor Monticarlo was playing in his room.” She looked around for moral support, and the three guests she had named nodded vigorously. The elder Lady Langstrade also presented a personification of perfect health.

  “I certainly don’t think it was anything I ate,” said Lady Phythian, loyally. “I suspect that I must have slipped into some sort of quasi-somniloquistic trance. I had a perfectly horrible nightmare.”

  “Is that what happened?” Escott said. “Damn it, Carp, have you been playing tricks on us? Was it you who gave us all this terrible headache with some magnetic jiggery-pokery?”

  “Certainly not,” the Mesmerist replied. “I too feel remarkably well—better than I have for years, in fact, and if there was any magnetic influence at work in the Hall this morning, it was a curative one. I wish I could claim credit for it, but I cannot. What was that piece you were playing, Signor Monticarlo? Bach, perhaps, or Beethoven?”

  “I am flattered that you should think so,” the virtuoso replied. “I was—what is the English word?—improvising. To tell the truth, I cannot remember exactly what notes I played or even how the violin was tuned…I wish that I had written the piece down, but I did not. I am only sorry that Mr. Laurel missed it—I feel sure that he would have appreciated it.”

  Michael could not see any way to explain that he had heard it, and had appreciated it, so he contented himself with saying: “I’m sure that I would, maestro.”

  Carmela Monticarlo smiled at him—but Cecilia did not seem to mind at all.

  “Well, I think you’re playing games with us, Carp,” Escott insisted. “I think you decided to teach Hope and myself an unkind lesson, because we were less than reverent about your skills during your séance.”

  “Were you?” asked Carp, cheerfully feigning innocence. “I didn’t notice.” He no longer seemed in the least dispirited, and was darting occasional glances at Jeanne Evredon charged with the utmost benevolence.

  “That could not explain,” Lady Phythian put in, “why I feel as wretched as you do. Dr. Carp certainly has nothing against me.”

  “Nor me,” said Jack Langstrade. “I thought his séance was spiffing, and said so—didn’t I, Sis?”

  Cecilia confirmed that this was true, but entered no plea on her own behalf. Lord Langstrade also rallied to the Mesmerist’s support, insisting that their unfortunate malaise must have been a side-effect of the activation of Gregory Marlstone
’s machine.

  “It’s possible, of course, Mr. Marlstone,” the Mesmerist said, with sly good humor, “that what you have in the Keep isn’t really a time machine at all, but an unprecedentedly powerful generator of animal magnetism, which puts Anton Mesmer’s modest inventions to shame.”

  “It is most certainly not possible,” Marlstone informed Dr. Carp, frostily. “What I have in the Keep is most definitely a time machine, albeit one that has never quite contrived to work as it was intended to work, and perhaps never will.”

  “Amen to that,” muttered Lord Langstrade.

  “Do you really think that it might be possible to construct Mesmeric machines, Dr. Carp?” the younger Lady Langstrade asked. “Not merely somniloquistic machines, but machines that use the latent power of animal magnetism to cure injury and disease?”

  “It’s certainly possible, Milady,” Carp opined, “but we have no way of knowing when it might become practicable. I’m sorry to hear Mr. Marlstone dismiss the possibility that his machine might have generated Mesmeric force, for that would surely have helped to explain all the strange dreams that so many of us seem to have experienced last night and this morning.”

  “So your future Mesmeric machinery will be able to generate and shape dreams, too?” Cecilia remarked. “How wonderful! Now that really is a Euchronian prospect—don’t you agree, Mr. Hope?”

  Hope, who seemed unusually subdued, perhaps because of his lingering headache, said: “I’m unconvinced. Such machines might, I suppose, have some curative value, if not oracular merit, but I would advise any would-be inventor to bear in mind the sad fate of Dr. Graham’s Temples of Health and Hygiene. There’s a thin line between scientific Mesmerism and quackery, which tempts the most scrupulous of us.”

  “Did you know, Mr. Hope,” said Augustus Carp, responding promptly to the deliberate cue, “that I worked in one of Graham’s so-called Temples in my youth. I once met the Duchess of Devonshire there.…”

  It was, Michael thought, time to tune out of the conversation and concentrate on matters of more immediate interest: Cecilia and the last fugitive remnants of the lunch. He had already eaten his fair share, but the indisposition of so many of his fellow diners had ensured that there was food in abundance still available, and he still felt ravenous. He continued to satisfy that particular appetite, while making quite certain that he paid due attention to the love of his life as he did so, at least with his gaze.

  They don’t even know that I’m a hero, he thought. They haven’t the slightest idea. To most of them, I’m still just the fool who’s painting the Folly. Except that they won’t think me quite as much of a fool as I seemed before, once they know that I’m going to marry Cecilia. What wiser step could any man take?

  He waited until the picnic was over, however, before he and Cecilia sought and found an opportunity to catch Lord Langstrade apart from the crowd. “My lord,” he said, without beating about the bush, “might I have the honor of asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage?”

  Lord Langstrade still seemed a trifle confused by his experience of being stored in a phantom bronze head while displaced from his body. “You’re the third person to ask me that today, sir,” he replied, a trifle gruffly, “and it’s not yet two o’clock. Best get the business over and done with for good, I suppose, if Cecilia’s agreeable. Are you, my dear?”

  “I wish you would allow me to accept Mr. Laurel’s proposal, Father,” Cecilia said, with all due delicacy.

  “I suppose I ought to ask Emily first,” the Earl said, glancing in the direction of his wife, who was chatting with the Monticarlos and the rejuvenated Dr. Carp. “She’ll want to know what your prospects are, I dare say.”

  “I’m not rich, as you know, Milord,” Michael said, “but I have some ability in my vocation. What’s more—and I think Mr Hope would agree with me on this point—I now have the utmost confidence in the future, and the prospects of progress.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Langstrade proclaimed. “Cecilia and I will square Emily, between us—but you’d better make yourself scarce while we do that.”

  “I have to get back to my painting, in any case,” Michael said.

  “I didn’t, by any chance, leave my walking-stick by your easel when I came to see you this morning, did I?” Langstrade asked. “I seem to have mislaid it, today of all days.” He shot Michael an enquiring glance, as if to make sure that Michael still knew why he had said today of all days.

  Michael nodded. “It’s safe, Milord,” he said, “and I’m fully aware of how much the instrument means to you. If you care to come and pick it up later this afternoon, I’ll have it ready for you.”

  “Excellent,” said the Earl. “In that case, I think all’s well with the world.” There was just a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

  “So do I, Milord,” Michael said, without the slightest suggestion of unsteadiness. “So do I.”

  As Michael began to walk away in the direction of the Keep, however, Quentin Hope hurried to intercept him, and to fall into step with him.

  “Forgive me if I’m being indiscreet, Laurel,” he said, “but did you just ask Lord Langstrade if you might marry his daughter?”

  “I did,” Michael confirmed.

  Hope swallowed hard before saying: “And what was his answer?”

  “He said that he would have to consult his wife, but that he foresaw no difficulty, in view of the fact that the request was in accordance with Cecilia’s wishes.”

  “Oh,” said Hope. “Right. You know, I suppose, that I made a similar request earlier this morning?”

  “Yes,” Michael confirmed.

  “Escott got in even before me, the treacherous swine,” Hope commented, resentfully, but was quick to add: “That’s not the point, though. I wanted to congratulate you, and assure you that there are no hard feelings—on my part, at least. I hate clichés, so I won’t say that the best man won, but I wish you every happiness, quite sincerely.”

  “That’s very gentlemanly of you,” Michael said, “and I thank you kindly. I’ve learned a lot this weekend, Mr. Hope, and a lot of the credit for that is due to you. I like your philosophy.”

  “And why should you not, since it has elegance and intelligence, as well as optimism?” said Hope, beaming broadly—but the smile quivered slightly as he seemed to remember another reason why he had taken the trouble to run after the artist. “By the by, Laurel, I had a very strange dream last night. You were in it, briefly, although I’m not sure why, as you had no actual contribution to make to it.”

  “Did I not, Mr. Hope?” said Michael, blithely. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “I dreamed that I went back in time to some strangely distant past, and that I was able to speak to Edward Kelley through the medium of the notorious black stone. He took me for an angel, and was so avid for guidance that I was able to give him a long lecture on the substance of the revolution that his master’s secret college was fated to bring about. I even threw in the elements of Marlstone’s theory of time, with a few addenda of my own. It was foolishly narcissistic, I admit, to imagine myself the maker of the scientific revolution rather than merely its beneficiary, but I have to confess that it was not the first time I had imagined making such a speech. I had it, so to speak, already prepared. Indeed, while I was in the dream, I was haunted by the notion that the entire purpose of my life had been to compose, prepare and deliver that missive. I usually forget my dreams almost as soon as I wake, but this one lingered.”

  “I believe that we all had strange dreams last night, Mr. Hope,” Michael told him. “Signor Monticarlo’s concert had excited us more than we supposed, and Dr. Carp’s séance had disturbed us more than we pretended. When we set off into the Maze, not so much in quest of ghosts as in the determination to play the role of ghosts ourselves, were we not setting ourselves up to experience stra
nge dreams?”

  “I suppose we were,” Hope said, tentatively. “I suffered further today—I’ve lost nearly two hours from the continuity of my consciousness, and had a frightful nightmare: the same one that Escott insisted on relating to me full before we finally went to bed last night. That man has been such a blight on my life…but I believe that his malice rebounded this time, for he suffered a recurrence himself.”

  “So it seems,” Michael admitted.

  “I was sitting next to Lady Phythian at lunch,” Hope continued, “and she told me that she did see a ghost in the Maze last night—and that you would confirm that she was telling the truth.”

  “That’s true,” Michael said. “Lady Phythian did see a ghost in the Maze last night, and I can confirm that she is telling the truth. If ever she has difficulty, in future, in persuading anyone of her sincerity when she tells the story of the Langstrade ghosts, I shall be ready and willing to endorse her account. She is an authentic ghost-seer.”

  “Right,” said Hope. Then, seemingly tiring of beating around the bush, he bit the bullet, and said: “It was a dream, wasn’t it. You and I didn’t really go back in time together, to change history by educating the secret college? It really was just an idle narcissistic fancy?”

  Michael barely hesitated before replying: “You should not underestimate the significance of dreams, Mr. Hope. Narcissistic your fancy might have been, but it was certainly not idle. You really were prepared to make that speech, to change history. No one else could have done it—no one, at least, who was a guest at the Hall last night. There is a sense in which your whole life has been a preparation for the substance of that dream, just as you will live the remainder of your years working tirelessly, both imaginatively and intellectually, for the cause of future progress. It was and is a very fine dream, Mr. Hope, and I beg you to maintain it, for all our sakes.”