She takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. “It’s a lovely thought, but you know you can’t change anything that happens.”
“I can’t change the past,” I agree. “But I can set a bomb with a very long fuse. Like 40 years.”
“What? You look like the cat that’s eaten the canary.” She sits down next to me.
“I’ve retyped the title page to Chambers’s dissertation – with your name on it. First thing in the morning, I’m going to rent a large safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank downtown, and pay the rent in advance. Sometime in 1995, there’ll be a miraculous discovery of a complete Sara Baxter Clarke manuscript. The bomb is that, after her tragic death, the esteemed Dr. Chambers appears to have published it under his own name – and won the Nobel Prize for it.”
“No, you can’t. It’s not my work either, it’s Gil’s and—” she stops in mid-sentence, staring at me. “And he really is dead. I don’t suppose I dare give a fig about academic credit anymore, should I?”
“I hope not. Besides, Chambers can’t prove it’s not yours. What’s he going to say – Carol McCullough went back to the past and set me up? He’ll look like a total idiot. Without your formula, all he’s got is a time machine that won’t work. Remember, you never present your paper. Where I come from it may be okay to be queer, but time travel is still just science fiction.”
She laughs. “Well, given a choice, I suppose that’s preferable, isn’t it?”
I nod and pull the sheet of paper out of the typewriter.
“You’re quite a resourceful girl, aren’t you?” Sara says, smiling. “I could use an assistant like you.” Then her smile fades and she puts her hand over mine. “I don’t suppose you’d consider staying on for a few months and helping me set up the lab? I know we’ve only known each other for two days. But this – I – us – Oh, dammit, what I’m trying to say is I’m going to miss you.”
I squeeze her hand in return, and we sit silent for a few minutes. I don’t know what to say. Or to do. I don’t want to go back to my own time. There’s nothing for me in that life. A dissertation that I now know isn’t true. An office with a black and white photo of the only person I’ve ever really loved – who’s sitting next to me, holding my hand. I could sit like this forever. But could I stand to live the rest of my life in the closet, hiding who I am and who I love? I’m used to the 90s – I’ve never done research without a computer, or cooked much without a microwave. I’m afraid if I don’t go back tomorrow, I’ll be trapped in this reactionary past forever.
“Sara,” I ask finally, “are you sure your experiments will work?”
She looks at me, her eyes warm and gentle. “If you’re asking if I can promise you an escape back to your own time someday, the answer is no. I can’t promise you anything, love. But if you’re asking if I believe in my work, then yes. I do. Are you thinking of staying, then?”
I nod. “I want to. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Because of last night?” she asks softly.
“That’s part of it. I was raised in a world that’s so different. I don’t feel right here. I don’t belong.”
She kisses my cheek. “I know. But gypsies never belong to the places they travel. They only belong to other gypsies.”
My eyes are misty as she takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.
Monday, February 20, 1956. 11:30 a.m.
I put the battered leather briefcase on the floor of the supply closet in LeConte Hall and close the door behind me. At 11:37 exactly, I hear the humming start, and when it stops, my shoulders sag with relief. What’s done is done, and all the dies are cast. In Palo Alto an audience of restless physicists is waiting to hear a paper that will never be read. And in Berkeley, far in the future, an equally restless physicist is waiting for a messenger to finally deliver that paper.
But the messenger isn’t coming back. And that may be the least of Chambers’s worries.
This morning I taped the key to the safe deposit box – and a little note about the dissertation inside – into the 1945 bound volume of The Astrophysical Journal. My officemate Ted was outraged that no one had checked it out of the physics library since 1955. I’m hoping he’ll be even more outraged when he discovers the secret that’s hidden inside it.
I walk out of LeConte and across campus to the coffee shop where Sara is waiting for me. I don’t like the political climate here, but at least I know that it will change, slowly but surely. Besides, we don’t have to stay in the 50s all the time – in a few months, Sara and I plan to do a lot of traveling. Maybe one day some graduate student will want to study the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Carol McCullough. Stranger things have happened.
My only regret is not being able to see Chambers’s face when he opens that briefcase and there’s no manuscript. Sara and I decided that even sending back an incomplete version of her paper was dangerous. It would give Chambers enough proof that his tempokinetic experiment worked for him to get more funding and try again. So the only thing in the case is an anonymous, undated postcard of the St. Francis Hotel that says:
“Having a wonderful time. Thanks for the ride.”
ON THE WATCHTOWER AT PLATAEA
Garry Kilworth
Garry Kilworth is a critically acclaimed British writer with over eighty novels and short-story collections somewhere out there in the ether, mainly fantasy and science fiction, but a few other genres too. He’s currently writing a science fiction novel with the working title of Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses. This story was first published in Other Edens II in 1988.
There was the chilling possibility, despite Miriam’s assurance that she would dissuade the government from physical confrontation, that I might receive the order to go out and kill my adversary in the temple. They might use the argument that our future existence depended on an answer to be dredged up from the past. I wondered if I could do such a thing: and if so, how? Would I sneak from the watchtower in the night, like an assassin, and murder him in his bed? Or challenge him to single combat, like a true noble warrior is supposed to? The whole idea of such a confrontation made me feel ill and I prayed that if it should come to such a pass, they would send someone else to do the bloody job. I have no stomach for such things.
It was a shock to find that the expedition could go no further back than 429 BC: though for some of us, it was not an unwelcome one. Miriam was perhaps the only one amongst us who was annoyed that we couldn’t get to Pericles. He had died earlier, in the part of the year we couldn’t reach. So near – but we had hit a barrier, as solid as a rockface on the path of linear time, in the year that the Peloponnesian War was gaining momentum. It was the night that Sparta and its allies were to take positive action against the Athenians by attacking a little walled city-state called Plataea. Plataea, with its present garrison of 400 local hoplites and some eighty seconded Athenians, was virtually the only mainland supporter of Athens in the war amongst the Greeks. It was a tiny city-state, even by ancient world standards – perhaps a mile in circumference – and it was heavily outnumbered by the besieging troops led by the Spartan king, Archidamus. It didn’t stand a chance, but by God it put up resistance which rivalled The Alamo for stubbornness, and surpassed it for inventiveness.
Miriam suggested we set up the recording equipment in an old abandoned watchtower on a hill outside the city. From there we could see the main gates, and could record both the Spartan attempts at breaching the walls and the defenders as they battled to keep the invaders at bay. The stonework of the watchtower was unstable, the timber rotting, and it was probably only used to shelter goats. We did not, therefore, expect to be interrupted while we settled in. In any case, while we were “travelling”, we appeared as insubstantial beings and were seldom confronted. The tower was ideal. It gave us the height we needed to command a good view, and had aged enough to be a respectable establishment for spectral forms.
There were three of us in the team. Miriam was the expedition’s leader; John was responsible for the recording
equipment; and I was the official communicator, in contact with base camp, AD 2017. By 429, we were not at our harmonious best, having been away from home for a very long time: long enough for all our habits and individual ways to get on each other’s nerves to the point of screaming. I suppose we were all missing home to a certain extent, though why we should want to go back to a world where four-fifths of the population was on the streets, starving, and kept precariously at bay by the private military armies of privileged groups, was never raised. We ourselves, of course, belonged to one of those groups, but we were aware of the instability of the situation and the depressingly obvious fact that we could do nothing to influence it. The haves were no longer in a position to help the have nots, even given the desire to do such. One of the reasons for coming on the expedition was to escape my guilt – and the constant wars between the groups. It was, as always, a mess.
“What do base say?” asked Miriam.
I could see the watch fires on the nearby city walls through her ghostly form, as she moved restlessly around the walkway of the tower. John was doing something below.
“They believe the vortex must have an outer limit,” I said. “It would appear that we’ve reached it.”
This didn’t satisfy her, and I didn’t expect it to. Miriam did not operate on beliefs. She liked people to know.
“But why here? Why now? What’s so special about the year 429? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You expect it to make sense?”
“I had hoped... oh, I don’t know. An answer which wasn’t still a question I suppose. Doesn’t it worry you? That suddenly we come up against a wall, without any apparent reason?”
I shrugged. “Surely natural limitations are a good enough reason. Human endeavour has often come up against such things – the sound barrier, for example. They believed that was impassable at the time, but they got through it in the end. Maybe this is a comparable problem?”
“It’s a bitch, I know that much,” she replied in a bitter tone. “I really wanted Pericles – and the earlier battles. Marathon. Thermopylae. Damn it, there’s so much we’ll have to leave. Mycenae and Agamemnon. We could have confirmed all that. If we can’t go back any further, Troy will remain covered in mist...”
Which was not altogether a bad thing as far as I was concerned. Already too many illusions had been wiped away. Why destroy all myth and legend, simply for the sake of facts? It’s a pretty boring world, once the magic has been stripped off.
“Well, perhaps we shouldn’t do it all at once,” I suggested. “I feel as if I’m drowning as it is... let someone else destroy Homer.”
She said, “We’re not destroying anything. We’re merely recording...”
“The truth,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my tone.
She glared at me, a silvery frown marring her handsome features. We had clashed in the same way several times recently and I think she was getting tired of my outbursts.
“You have an attitude problem, Stan – don’t make it my problem, too.”
“I won’t,” I said, turning away.
In the distance, I could hear the jingle of brass: the Spartan army tramping through the night, their torches clearly visible. These sounds and sights were the cause of some consternation and excitement amongst the Plataeans on the walls of the city. The enemy had arrived. Little figures ran to and fro, between the watch fires. They had known for a few hours that Archidamus was coming: Theban traitors, spies and double agents had been busy during the day, earning a crust. The warnings had come too late for flight, however, and it was now a case of defying the vastly superior force or surrendering the city. Some of the defenders were relying on the fact that Plataea was sacred ground – it had been consecrated after a successful battle with the Persians earlier in the century – but Archidamus was not a man to take much notice of that. There were ways of appealing to the gods for a suspension of holy rights, if the need was there.
I wondered how the Spartans would react if they knew they were being recorded, visually. They were already pretty good at strutting around in grand macho style, cuffing slaves and flaunting their long hair. We had been told that historical recordings such as this would be studied for possible answers to the problems of our own time. I couldn’t help but feel cynical about this idea, though I did not have the whole picture. The future, beyond my own time, had been investigated by another team and the result was a secret known only to that expedition and our illustrious government, but I couldn’t help feeling it was a very bleak picture.
Besides Spartans, the invading army consisted of slave auxiliaries, a few mercenaries and volunteer forces from the cities allied with Sparta: Corinth, Megara, Elis, Thebes and many others. These cities looked to their big cousin to lead them against the upstart Athens, a city-state of little significance until the early part of the century, when it had thrashed a hugely superior force of Persians at the Battle of Marathon, and had since become too big for its sandals. If there was one thing the ancient Greeks could not stand, it was someone thinking they were better than everyone else.
Except for Plataea. Athens stood virtually alone in mainland Greece, though its maritime empire encompassed almost all the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor. One of the reasons why the war would last so long was because a stalemate was inevitable. Athens was a strongly walled city, which included its harbour, and could not be penetrated by a land force. Its formidable bronze-toothed fleet of ramming triremes discouraged any idea of a naval blockade. On the other hand, Sparta had no ships to speak of, was an inland unwalled city, but positively encouraged an invasion of their territory since they relished battles and their hoplites were considered almost invincible. Certainly no Spartan would leave a field alive unless victory had been assured. Direct confrontations with such warriors, cool and unafraid of death, were not courted at all keenly, even by brave Athenians.
So, a military might and a naval power, and rarely the twain met. Stalemate. Little Plataea was in fact nothing more than a whipping boy on which Sparta could vent some of its frustration and spleen.
Miriam was looking through night viewers, at the advancing hordes. She said, “This may be the last historical battle we’re able to record.”
I was glad of that. Expeditions like ours tend to start out fortified by enthusiasms and good nature, only to end in disillusionment and bitter emotions, as any geographical explorer will tell you. Discoveries exact a high price from the finders, who have to pay for them with pieces of their souls.
There was a terrible scream from down below, sending lizards racing up my back. I stared at Miriam. A few moments later, John came up the makeshift ladder, looking disgusted.
“Goatboy,” he explained. “Wandered in looking for a place to hide from the troops, I suppose, now that they’ve closed the city gates. He saw me and ran. That earth floor already stinks to high heaven with goat droppings. They must have been using it for decades.”
Miriam said, “Pull up the ladder, John. We may as well settle for the night. Nothing’s going to happen until morning.”
Below us, the weary Allies began to arrive and put up tents, out of range of any archers who might be on the walls of the city. Trumpets were sounded, informing the Plataeans that a bloody business was about to begin, as if they didn’t know that already. They were pretty noisy in unloading their gear, clattering pots and clanking bits of armour; bawling to one another as new groups arrived, in the hearty fashion of the soldier before the killing starts. We required rest, though we did not sleep while we were travelling, any more than we needed to eat or drink.
“Noisy bastards,” I grumbled. “I wish they’d shut up.” John, saying his prayers as he always did at that time of night, looked up sharply from his kneeling position and frowned. He did not like interruptions during such a time, and I found myself apologizing.
Here we were, making sure these squabbles amongst humankind reached a pitch of historical accuracy nobody needed. What the hell was it all abo
ut? And were our recordings doing even that useless job? I doubted it. Going back into history, you tend to get caught in the confusion of one small corner of an issue, just as if you lived in the times. One needs God’s eyes to see the whole, and weigh the reasons.
It might be that God dwells beyond some far ripple of the time vortex. If you think of the vortex as an old-fashioned, long-playing record and the groove as linear time, you will have some idea how travellers are able to skip through the ages, as a too light arm of a record deck skates over a disc. It is a mental process, requiring no vehicle. Somewhere beyond those grooves, dwells the Almighty. Who wants to meet God and see absolute truth in all its blinding whiteness? Not me. Not me, my friend. Eyes I dare not meet in dreams, as the poet Eliot said.
By the next morning the Spartans had surrounded Plataea and were intent on encircling it with a palisade of sharpened stakes, leaning inwards. Archidamus wanted to be sure that no one could escape from the city. He wanted to teach the inhabitants a lesson: that siding with those nasty imperialists and free-thinkers, the Athenians, was a dangerous thing to do.
It was true that Athens had created a confederacy, mostly consisting of island states, which she subsequently milked of funds, using the money to build the Parthenon, generally beautify the city, and increase the number of ships in her fleet. It was true that anyone who requested to leave the confederacy found the equivalent of several British gunboats in their harbour within a few days. But it was equally true that the Spartans, with their two kings (one to stay at home, while the other was at war), really could not give a damn about anyone but themselves. Athens was full of woolly-minded intellectuals who not only indulged in progressive thinking and innovations, but were carefree and undisciplined with it. Sparta had long since fossilized. They had put a stop to progress some time ago. In Sparta it was forbidden to write new songs, poetry or plays, or introduce anything into society with a flavour of change about it, let alone the avant-garde stuff allowed in Athens. Why, the northern city was positively licentious in its attitudes towards art and science. Nothing which would disturb the perfection of the lifestyle Spartans had achieved at an earlier time was permitted in Lacedaemonia. Asceticism, the nobility of war, plain food and state-raised children destined for the army: these were the ideals to be upheld. Give a Spartan a coarse hair shirt, a plate of salty porridge, a lusty 300-year-old song to sing and send him out on to the battlefield, and he’ll die thanking you. To the Athenians, who loved good food, new mathematics, eccentric old men asking interminable questions, incomprehensible philosophies, weird inventions, plays making fun of the gods, love, life and the pursuit of happiness – to these people the Spartans were homicidal lunatics.
The Time Traveller's Almanac Page 60
