by Brian Aldiss
This operation would take the ship two weeks. And then Melluish would be landed in Birmingham 1835, nine hours after the time Smith stepped out in London. So Smith and Bassy had one chance of getting back to their proper period: by being at Melluish’s point of arrival and catching his empty capsule back. All they had to do was race the ship to Birmingham. If they lost, it might well prove impossible to find Melluish and Joseph in the city or to establish contact with the future again.
Fortunately there was no problem about knowing exactly where to go in Birmingham. In a farewell drinking session, Smith, Melluish, Bassy and Joseph had exchanged all relevant details. Marsh Yard was Melluish’s place of arrival, and 1700 hours his time – on that very day.
‘And the stage is due in at quarter to five if we’re lucky? We’ll never make it!’ Bassy sighed. ‘Damn this confoundedly slow crate-on-wheels.’
By now they were out in the country and approaching the little hamlet of Ealing, the four horses trotting easily, and everyone easy except the two extemporates.
‘What can we do but hope?’ Smith exclaimed.
Falling to biting his lips, Bassy said, ‘It’s a damned pity the railway isn’t open yet.’
‘The London – Birmingham line won’t be finished for another three years,’ Smith said shortly. He was growing tired of Bassy’s company.
Sitting beside Birmingham Basil on the box was a stout gentleman in a bright green cut-away coat and three mufflers who had been addressed as Sir Worsthorne Paine. His attention had gradually been diverted from the road to Bassy’s complaints; turning, he seized the student by his coat.
‘See here, my young buck,’ he exclaimed. ‘Your ignorance is making a proper fool of you. I don’t know where you have sprung from, I’m sure, but evidently you haven’t been at liberty to find out that you have the privilege of travelling by one of the most amazingly revolutionary inventions ever invented.’
‘Let go of my lapel, you old meddler,’ Bassy said, tugging his coat away. ‘I probably know more about stagecoaches than you do. I’d rather travel by hearse.’
Sir Worsthorne’s rubicund cheeks trembled with wrath and the movement of the vehicle.
‘Why, you young pup, so you’re conceited as well as ignorant! Let me tell you this – that thanks to the egregious Mr McAdam and Mr Thomas Telford, the roads in this country are the wonder of the Continent. So is its unrivalled coaching system. You and progress, sir, evidently ain’t acquainted.’
‘The Romans made better roads,’ Bassy snapped, despite Smith’s efforts to silence him.
‘Oh? And I suppose you’ll tell me they made better railways too, sir?’ Sir Worsthorne exclaimed, blowing out his cheeks. ‘Perhaps it chances you’ve not heard of the Parliamentary train from London to the Scottish capital that takes under twenty four hours for the journey? Perhaps you can name me another nation boasting a similar progressive institution?’
‘Perhaps you can see why I grumble about this stage, then? The railways, primitive though they are, have already made these horse-drawn prisons virtually obsolete.’
The knight nearly exploded.
‘Obsolete! Obsolete! You young shaver, do you not mind what the coaches have done for this country? They have revolutionised everyday life, they’ve brought the nation together! In my father’s young day, London and Exeter were a fortnight’s travel apart – now they’re only seventeen hours apart. Gad, your sense of astonishment must be diminutive, unparalleled diminutive!’
Bassy’s reply was drowned by the notes of the key bugle. Rounding a bend, the coach rolled into a small town and halted in front of an inn. The two extemporates – and every other onlooker – were treated to the spectacle of how rapidly a team could be changed. Four fresh horses were waiting. Their blankets were pulled off them and they were harnessed up as soon as the other animals, tired now, were led away. The guard, the horse-keepers, and ostlers worked together, while the innkeeper sallied forth to provide Birmingham Basil with a piping hot brandy and water. In two minutes the operation was complete and the Tally-Ho was covering ground again.
The quarrel did not resume. There was, Smith reflected, exhilaration in the ride. They rattled along most gamely, the agile guard tying the back wheel without climbing off when they went down steep hills. Much of the country – though it improved further on – was neglected and tumbledown after the recent troubles. Twice they passed a gibbet. On one occasion they saw a fox hunt, with the pack in full cry against the skyline and many of the huntsmen in top hats. Only when they plunged into a dense wood did Bassy grow restless again.
‘Supposing we’re held up by highwaymen?’ he muttered to his companion. ‘I don’t see the coachman has any weapons with him.’
This remark was overheard by Sir Worsthorne, who had been ostentatiously maintaining a sulky silence.
‘Highwaymen? Not a one’s been seen on this territory since Regency days. We’ve no more need here for blunderbusses than we have for fiddles. What sort of wild country do you take yourself to be in? Russia? America? Come to think of it, you speak in an outlandish sort of voice. Not a Yankee, are you?’
‘I’m as English as you are, you interfering old fool. Now mind your own business.’
This was too much for Sir Worsthorne. He turned dramatically to Birmingham Basil.
‘Stop the coach, dragsman. Rein ’em in and let’s have this settled once and for all.’
The coachman looked rebellious; but he knew he could rely on a generous tip from the knight, and drivers were ill paid, for all their responsibilities. As the team slowed and stopped, the occupants of the cab jumped down to see what was going on, while the other outsiders climbed over the luggage, the better to hear the altercation.
‘Now,’ roared Sir Worsthorne, standing up to face Bassy pugnaciously. ‘I’ve travelled this ground many a time, yes, and driven the Tally-Ho myself when Basil allowed me, and never before have I met anybody like you for containing so much ignorance, spite and treasonableness under so nondescript an exterior. I, sir, am a knight and a justice of the peace and the owner of Gaydon Hill Hall in Warwickshire. I fought under the Iron Duke at Waterloo; I have shaken hands with Wilberforce; I backed the Reform Bill all along; and I’ve ridden a thousand-guinea hunter to hounds at Melton in my better days. Now sir, tell me what justification you have for your existence?’
‘My friend is none too well,’ Smith said quickly. ‘He’s had a bad shock.’
‘Shock or not, he apologises to me here and now or he gets off and walks.’
‘Since I’ve only stated facts, I see no reason to apologise,’ Bassy said, standing up and looking stubborn. ‘You’re just a backward lot of bums, and that’s the truth of it.’
That did it. A tremendous row developed, the other passengers joining in on Sir Worsthorne’s side. Bassy had gone too far now to back down if he had wanted to. A minute more, and two of the other outsiders had grabbed him and hauled him bodily from the coach.
‘Sorry, sir, but that’s the way it must be,’ Birmingham Basil said, cracking his whip and shaking the reins.
As they moved off, Smith stood up and called back, ‘Don’t forget – the south end of Marsh Yard at five o’clock! I’ll do my best to hold the ship for you!’
With a lurch the coach was off. The figure of Bassy dwindled down the road until it was obscured by trees.
They made good time to Banbury, where the old knight left them. His own wap-john awaited him deferentially in his own drag, and he drove off in style as the other travellers hurried to make a quick but excellent meal of lamb pie at the inn. Twenty-five minutes later, they were starting off on the second half of the journey.
Although two more passengers had been taken on at Banbury, the box seat was half enpty, and Basil invited Smith to share it with him.
Smith had been sitting hunched in melancholy. In his head, clear as a diagram, he saw the Time Capsule and the stage coach racing each other – a race known only to him and the hors de combat Bassy, but neverthele
ss as much a race as if the ship were visible actually streaking through the sky overhead. Only grudgingly did he move next to Basil.
But Basil had a lively, enquiring mind, and was altogether a different type of man from the previous generations of coachman who had worked those routes in less enlightened days. He spoke philosophically of speed and its benefits, of politics and the state of the country, of his opinion of the King and even of Louis-Philippe, of the hazards of coaching and the boisterous charms of a certain Miss Hetty Hedges, a chambermaid at the Spread Eagle.
They bowled along, pausing only at tolls and stages. Relaxing, Smith began to respond to the conversation. He told how he was in England only for six months, how he hoped to meet the extraordinary de Quincey; and Landor, who should now be in the country; and have a chat about Shelley with Thomas Love Peacock; and perhaps even clear up some of that nasty business about Lord Byron and his half-sister; and above all interview that promising young parliamentary reporter of the Morning Chronicle, Charles Dickens.
But of none of these gentlemen had Birmingham Basil heard so that Smith was obliged to pursue other topics. Incautiously, he chatted about the future, and thus about electricity, atomic power, gravitics, and even extemporate travel. In fact he grew quite detailed about the wonders available to people living a few centuries ahead. With the exciting motion of the carriage – and above all with the excellent brandy that Basil pressed on him – he talked freely until interrupted by the notes of the guard’s bugle sounding lustily across the countryside.
‘All very interesting,’ Basil said. ‘You make me feel that working a four-in-hand may not after all be the best possible existence.’
Smith was too busy looking about him to answer.
Dark was falling as they clattered into Birmingham, a darkness in which the elements were aided by black and heavy smoke, belching from the chimneys of the industrial citadel. The glow of distant furnace fires, the ponderous waggons which toiled along the road, laden with iron or loaded with goods, the workers in the narrow thoroughfares – all these had their counterparts in noise; in the din of hammers, the rushing of steam, the dead heavy clanking of engines. All the air about them seemed laden with night and misery and cinders.
Both regret and fear settled in Smith’s heart as they clattered through the dreary streets – then they were trotting past well- lighted shops and smart houses, and swinging into the yard of the Old Royal Hotel.
The time was five minutes to five.
Smith jumped down to the ground. His race was not yet run. He still had to reach Marsh Yard before the Capsule left; and how to get there he had no idea. Basil, seeing the bafflement on his face, pushed through the melee towards him
‘You’ll be wanting Marsh Yard,’ he said. ‘I heard what you called to that companion of yours we had to leave behind. It’s only a couple of minutes from here. I’ll show you the way. Somehow I feel quite an interest in your future.’
Grabbing up his portmanteau, Smith followed the coachman. They struggled through a knot of people out of the court, and then along a couple of ill-paved streets, through an alleyway, down a stinking lane, and into another dimlit street, into which Marsh Yard opened. All the time, Smith’s twenty-fifth century heart went hammer, hammer, hammer, under his nineteenth century costume, while he lost sense of direction and time.
In Marsh Yard, a row of back-to-back houses were under construction. The place was deserted now, except for three people arguing in one corner. Behind them stood the Time Capsule; they were Melluish, Joseph and Bassy.
Smith ran towards them with a cry, forgetting all about Birmingham Basil.
‘How did you get here so soon?’ he demanded of Bassy.
‘I had a lift from a wagoner to Banbury, and there I hired a fast post-chaise. I’ve been hanging about here for half-an-hour.’
‘A fine mess you both made of things,’ Melluish said angrily.
‘It was Smith’s fault.’
‘Oh no, not at all! If you’d remembered –’
‘If you’d remembered –’
‘Stop arguing, both of you,’ Melluish said, for he had just caught sight of the coachman. ‘Smith, who’s this fellow you brought with you, who is now covering us with a brace of pistols?’
The long grey under-librarian paused in his story for dramatic effect, whereupon the research student, who had listened all the while with reluctant interest, burst into laughter.
‘Oh, wonderful!’ he exclaimed. ‘So that’s how you got here to the present! I see it now. I had assumed that you were Mr Smith. But obviously you are someone even more remarkable! You are he who had his appetite wetted about the future and resolved to try it for himself; you are he who drew pistols on the extemporates; you, sir, are Birmingham Basil himself!’
The under-librarian looked baffled and vexed.
‘Indeed, sir, I’m not. What gives you that absurd idea?’
It was the turn of the student to look baffled.
‘I thought the point of your story lay that way. Then you are Smith?’
‘That indiscreet fool? No, I am not, nor likely to be.’
‘My mistake; I apologise. You prefaced the tale by saying this was an incident in your personal history. I presume then, sir, that you are none other than the unfortunate Bassy?’
The under-librarian ground his teeth.
‘That ill-disciplined, ill-natured cur? No, damn you, I am not he, nor is he me.’
‘Then I suppose you must be Melluish?’ hazarded the student.
‘Indeed I am not Melluish; the fellow has been dead these last ten years,’ said the under-librarian angrily.
The student bit a carefully selected finger.
‘Well, you can’t possibly be the knight, Sir Worsthorne Who’s-it …’
‘How right you are. I am Joseph, Melluish’s companion. Not liking the look either of the nineteenth century in general nor of Basil’s pistols in particular, I hopped back into the ship just before the doors closed and came straight back to the present. I spent ten minutes in the past all told.’
Uttering a cry of irritation and knocking the old science fiction magazines to the floor, the student demanded to know what became of the other extemporates.
‘Why, Birmingham Basil had them arrested as Chartists and Dissenters. I got a rescue party sent back which had to atomise the prison to get them out. It all throws an interesting sidelight on the difficulties of time travel, doesn’t it?’
Under an English Heaven
George Hutchinson phoned his brother Herbert at 12.15 on the first of July 1961.
‘Herbert? That you? George here. I’m phoning from the Mail. We’ve just had a phone call from a bod out Newbury way. Guess what?’
‘You tell me, laddie!’
‘They’ve made it at last! An alien spaceship has landed just outside Newbury. I’m off to have a look at it as soon as possible. Get Helen and the kids rounded up and I’ll collect you in ten minutes in the car. We’ll be among the first to see the little green men.’
‘Now look, George –’
‘This is pukka, Herb, no kidding. History starts anew today. This is the most epoch-making day ever. Get your togs and I’ll be round.’
He hung up. On his way out of the office, he barged into the News Editor.
‘Keep this story under your hat, George,’ Ralph Head advised. ‘We’ll have to confirm it before we do anything. It sounds like a lot of eyewash to me.’
‘Okay,’ George said abstractedly. ‘But Gillwood phoned it in. He’s always reliable, isn’t he?’
Ralph took his pipe out of his mouth.
‘Don’t tell me you believe the Martians are here?!’
‘Everyone knew they’d turn up sometime.’
‘Well here’s one provincial newspaper doesn’t want ’em. I’ve got trouble enough with this shipyard business on my hands.’
George drove fast to the outskirts of town, turned up the drive of his brother’s house and braked outside the front door. H
e entered the house clapping his hands and calling, ‘Let’s be having you.’
Helen met him in the passage, her apron on.
‘What is all this nonsense you’ve been telling Herbert over the phone?’
‘No nonsense, honey. A real big spaceship landed only thirty miles away. I’m going to take you all to see it. Isn’t it the biggest thing you can imagine?’
‘We can’t possibly come, George. I’m just in the middle of getting the lunch!’
He levelled an imaginary pistol at his head and pulled the trigger.
‘Lunch! You need to eat the day the world ends? Switch the gas off and let’s go. Where’s Herbert?’
‘He’s gone to get Frances from school.’
‘Fine. Shed your apron and we’ll drive along the road to meet them.’
‘But Eric –’
‘Look, Helen, Eric’s at school all day. You needn’t worry about him.’
‘He’ll be back at 4.15.’
‘Well leave him a note in case we’re late and tell him to watch the telly till we get back.’
She backed away, shaking her head.
‘I’ve never seen you like this, George!’
‘My God, I’ve never been like this! Now gather your traps like a good girl and let’s get cracking.’
‘And what do you suppose is going to happen to the baby?’
‘Use your nous, pet! Shove it in the carry-cot and it can go in the back of the car.’
‘Susan has to have a bottle at 2.15.’
‘Helen … Helen … Where’s your imagination, for heaven’s sake? Go and get a bottle ready now.’
‘It isn’t so easy –’
The front door opened. Herbert came in, looking harassed. Frances, aged six, was with him, crying loudly. She let out renewed howls as she rushed into her mother’s arms.
‘Come on, Herbert,’ George said, turning to his brother imploringly. ‘Get these two girls into the car and let’s be off.’
‘Yes, let’s move, love,’ Herbert said. ‘Into Uncle George’s nice car, Francey.’
‘You know I’ve got the fish on,’ Helen said.
