Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  “All the world saw the films of what occurred. It was announced that the cinematographers had been allowed to return in order that we might see the simplicity with which transportation was effected and thereby lose any nervousness restraining us. The particular version I witnessed was taken at one of the American stations and was, I was told, typical of all.

  “Around a structure resembling an enormously enlarged ‘time traveller’ stood a cordon of police and guards. The space enclosed was about two hundred yards square. Reliable witnesses stated that a couple of hours earlier there had been no sign of the glittering framework with the result that among the majority—still incredulous of the idea of time traveling—there was a tendency to regard it as a magical piece of construction work rather than accept the fact that it had just made the journey across five hundred thousand years.

  “Beyond the cordon the sightseers parked their cars and got out to examine the machine with awe. Whatever they had expected in their inmost minds, it was not this huge silver cage; they were impressed in spite of themselves.

  “The murmur of the crowd as we heard it through the speakers seemed to betray a nervous tension, but curiosity backed by a sensation of safety in their numbers kept them waiting for the show to begin.

  “Without warning, parts of the enclosure on all four sides fell apart making entrances.

  “A gasp of surprise went up from the house as we saw that the guards whose duty it was to keep the public clear, had stood aside from the gaps. Some of them even motioned the crowd forward.

  “Not a sound now came from the speakers. As though in a dream the sighteers trailed slowly into the enclosure. Suggestion? Hypnotism? Heaven knows, but in they flocked solemn faced, vacant-eyed, old men, young men, women and girls alike, even the dogs joined the procession. It was as though some pied piper led the way. Then, when the last had entered, the police and the guards followed.

  “In the darkness of the theatre, Mary gripped my arm.

  “ ‘Now I begin to understand what you mean by their ‘power’,’ she whispered.

  “As the last guard entered, the entrances snapped shut. Simultaneously a few yards from the great ‘transporter’ a dwarf appeared on a one man ‘traveller’.

  “Mary grew tense and another gasp rustled through the audience—it was the first time any of them had looked upon one of those men of the far future. He jumped from his machine and ran towards the enclosed crowd whose apathetic eyes appeared not to notice him.

  “In a corner of the transporter we saw for the first time that a small cabin was divided off from the main bulk. We saw him enter it, we saw him turn the dials, we saw his hand upon the lever and—nothing. Nothing before us but the empty plain and a little one man traveller.

  “The picture continued; there was more to come. For five minutes the audience sat in silence or whispered speculation. Then, as suddenly as it had gone the machine was back again, but, save for the dwarf in his cabin, it was empty . . .

  A World Aroused

  “The world was roused at last. No type was heavy enough for the newspapers, no terms weighty enough for the radio announcers. The casualties (as they were determined to call them) at the sixty odd stations came well on towards the 200,000 mark. The old cry went up—something ought to be done. The prestige of governments was at stake. The vermin must be wiped out.

  “The members of the investigation committee were hastily summoned and this time received a better though no more profitable hearing. A stern-faced official faced me across a broad desk. His manner suspected me of complicity, his method savoured of third degree.

  “ ‘What we want to know first is, where’s this base of theirs?’

  “ ‘I’ve told you as near as I can. All I know is that we seemed to go south-southeast from the Algerian coast, as far as I could tell by the sun. We went that way for about three hours so if you know the speed of the ship, it ought to give you a rough idea of the district.’

  “ ‘You must’ve seen some landmarks, at the height you were.’

  “ ‘Precious lot of landmarks in that desert—and as we didn’t know beforehand where we were likely to be going, nobody happened to have a pocket map of the Sahara on him.’

  “ ‘No need to get fresh. We’ve got to get a line on this business somehow, and it’ll be better for you if you help us all you know how.’

  “ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you this. If you ever find that base, you’ll have to thank luck—not cross-questioning.’

  “ ‘What’re you gettin’ at?’

  “ ‘Just this. Not one of us has any idea where this place is, or what makes it different from any other place that has a lot of sand, but even if you get there it’s pretty good odds against you seeing the building. Do you seriously think that a gang who hypnotize a crowd of three or four thousand men and women into an overgrown birdcage can’t stop a few pilots from seeing them? ’

  “The man snorted.

  “ ‘When one of our pilots knows where they are—he began.

  “ ‘—then there’ll be one less pilot in the force,’ I finished for him.

  “Of course they got none of the information they wanted from us—we hadn’t it. Even then I had begun to realize that if we knew a whole lot we’d still be as helpless as sheep against men.

  “Italian, French, English and German scoured the desert, failed to find a trace and brought home their bombs. A report of the position of the base reached Tripoli. Through hurry, the Italian officers in charge omitted to verify the information. Their rocket shells destroyed a French desert fort. Feeling already ran high against France who was thought in some circles to be in league with the dwarfs. Undoubtedly they were on French territory. A French pilot made matters no better by announcing his destruction of the dwarfs’ cylindrical flyer at approximately the same moment that the Germans reported that one of their airships had been bombed by a French plane. Notes began to pass between countries and the threat of war added fuel to the excitement.

  “It was then that someone at the Suez English base made an inventory with the startling result that five days of profitless searching showed twelve English airships and nearly a hundred planes unaccounted for.

  “The French, German, Italian and Egyptian authorities investigated and revealed a similar state of affairs in their own air forces. The fate of all those craft remained a mystery. Solo searching over the desert became less popular with the result that, instead of single machines disappearing, whole flights vanished together.

  “It fell to an Italian pilot to do the world the worst possible service with the best possible intentions.

  “He had become separated from his unit and was heading for home in accordance with the regulations that single planes must not be risked, when he saw almost below him the shining building for which all the world was searching. Whether his mind was not susceptible to their control (as was found to be the case with a few) or whether they were off their guard, never was known and did not really matter. What did matter was that his five great bombs flashed down together.

  “It must have been a rude shock to that pilot when, during his congratulations and celebrations, the voice spoke again.

  “ ‘People of the Twenty-Second Century,’ it began with usual formality, ‘we appealed to you first as reasoning creatures. You failed to reason. You even failed to understand that if we are not successful, man will count for nothing—he will have lived in vain. Then we treated you as children who must be led—you spoke of it as a tragedy. You described as ‘casualties’ men and women who are now living in the future, not one cell’s life the worse for the journey.

  “ ‘Now you have taught us to know you for savages. Your ridiculous bombs did no harm to our building, but you killed thirty of our men who were outside. Those thirty were worth a thousand of you and you killed them by an action no more reasoned than that of a frightened brute. We shall not kill you in revenge—the art of living is not killing, but we warn you that those who remain here three weeks
from now will start to kill one another. For the rest the transporters will be at their stations. Make good use of them.’

  “Hundreds of thousands laughed.

  “ ‘We’ve killed some of ’em—we’ll beat the lot,’ was their attitude.

  “But other thousands heeded the warning, surging in crowds to the machines.

  “Mary and I were of neither party. I suppose it was sentiment which held us. The road to safety was plain, for the dwarfs never lied, yet the call of familiar things was too strong. We were standing by the world we loved till the last. Going down with our civilization.

  Chapter VI

  Nearing the End

  “All governments published futile edicts forbidding approach to the transporters. Planes were headed off, trains stopped, roads blocked, but still the crowds swept forward on foot. Infantry and tanks sent to turn the stream, joined it. The authorities reached their wits’ end.

  “The English sent rocket shells against the Salisbury Plain station. Hundreds of their own people died. The transporter was scarcely scratched.

  “In California two men finding themselves immune from the dwarfs’ influence, attempted to steal a small time traveller—they were never seen again. Thereafter the dwarfs arrived in pairs, one to work the transporter while the other guarded their travellers.

  “For the full three weeks the huge machines made their two or three journeys a day, but the hundreds of thousands they carried were like a few spoonfuls from a full bucket.

  “And now, standing in my dark room, I knew that the end had come. Men and women had started to fight insanely in frenzy of fear. Soon they would become hungry. They would prowl like famished beasts, ready to eat even each other. The dwarfs had thrust our ultimatum upon us. It would not be long now before the multitudes were besieging the only means of escape from a maddened world—the transporters.

  “In my mind a plan was growing, a slender chance. First I must get out of this crazy city and find Mary.

  * * *

  “Together we lay in a clump of low bushes. Not far from our hiding place, a line of haggard men and women was struggling towards a transporter.

  “ ‘The evacuation of a world,’ I heard Mary murmur.

  “Some dragged barrows of possessions, some could barely drag themselves. There was no need now for suggestion to impel the crowds. They were striving their utmost towards those feared or despised machines which had become glittering symbols of rescue. Many staggered from fatigue to fall in their tracks.

  “ ‘If the dwarfs use suggestion, to help on the fallen ones—count,’ I said. ‘They won’t need much power and if you keep your mind full it can’t touch you. Fill it up with figures. Multiply and multiply so that there’s room for nothing else. It’s our only safeguard.’

  “Luckily there was no test of our concentration. Friends pulled the stragglers up and urged them along the last lap of the journey. At last the transporter was filled. The entrances clicked together. Those who were shut out retired to throw themselves on the ground. They would have to wait for the next load.

  “ ‘Get ready,’ I whispered to Mary as I drew a rocket pistol from my pocket.

  “The two small time travellers appeared. One dwarf ran to the transporter; the other sat on guard in his saddle. I reckoned that the big machine would be away in about twenty minutes since it would take that long for the weary crowd to file out. As the first dwarf vanished with the transporter, I drew my aim on the second.

  “It is a horrible thing to kill a man who is off his guard, but it was necessary. Merely wounded, he might bring his friends about us in a few seconds.

  “ ‘Now,’ I cried. Together we sprang for the travellers as the dead dwarf rolled from his seat.

  “ ‘Get on,’ I ordered, setting the dials. I put Mary’s hand on the lever.

  “ ‘Pull,’ I said. But, instead, she leaned out and pressed her lips to mine.

  “ ‘I love you,’ she said. She said it as though she knew the end had come. Then her hand flew back to the lever. I shouted to stop her, but it was too late—she had gone.”

  Jon paused in his tale. We did not interrupt; the grief in his face held us silent.

  “Where is she now, I wonder?” he said slowly.

  “When she drew back her hands it brushed one of the dials. I had been so careful—worked out the position of each to a hair so that there might be no delay in our coming here. So that we might travel together far away from our world of chaos, far away, too, from the threat of a dying world. One hasty move she made which may have carried her further than the earth’s death or beyond its birth. She is a castaway somewhere in the jumble of time and space.”

  “But you?” asked Lestrange. “How—?”

  “Oh, I jumped on the other machine. The crowd had seen us. A hundred or more of them were pelting across the field. It was as though I had the one lifebelt on a sinking ship. They jumped at me. The traveller rocked as they hit it. It was falling as I pulled the lever—it fell in your laboratory.

  “But what’s the good of it all? I’m alone. Better to have gone on to the end with the people of my time. Why did I come here when I knew she couldn’t be here? If I’d kept the machine, I might have searched—I’d have searched all time to find her.”

  A bell on the wall shrilled suddenly.

  “Quick, Wright,” said Lestrange, jumping from his chair. “The laboratory alarm. Somebody’s spying—take this.”

  He handed me a pistol and held one himself. Silently we raced to the laboratory wing and flung back the door.

  A familiar silver framework glittered at us. Beside it stood a figure clad like our visitor.

  “Mary, by heaven,” said Jon’s voice behind us.

  “Jon, Jon,” the figure cried and ran towards us.

  A few moments later Jon Lestrange walked over to the traveller and examined its controls curiously. He looked up with a smile.

  “Obviously, Mary,” he said, “some patron saint guides your hand. You might have altered the setting by six hundred years or six thousand, but you did only alter it by six hours.”

  He turned towards Professor Lestrange.

  “If you please, great-great-great-grand-father,” he said, “I should like another piece of string.”

  WRITTEN BY THE WINNERS

  Matthew Johnson

  Dabe glanced over his shoulder, leaned in close so that his body blocked the screen. He had been sifting through old TV comedies for weeks now, screening every episode frame by frame for inconsistencies, but today he had made a real find—a few lines of dialogue on Family Ties that referred to Richard Nixon.

  There was no predicting where remnants like this would appear. The device that had changed time was more like a shotgun than a scalpel: it had established the present its makers wanted through hundreds of different changes to the timeline, some contradicting others. The result was a porous, makeshift new history that made little sense, but the old one had been thoroughly smashed to bits. It was those bits that remained that he and his whole department were tasked by the new history’s makers with finding and erasing.

  Most of what he found was much more innocuous, references to things that had little ideological power but simply had not existed in the new history. This one, though, had meaning, a direct reference to a political event in the old history. He looked around again, drew a tape from the bottom drawer of his desk, slipped it into the second recorder and hit COPY. He could feel his heart beating more quickly as the seconds ticked by, felt the pressure of seen and unseen eyes on his back. Finally the inconsistency was over, ending as abruptly as it began, and he was able to breathe.

  The danger past, he felt a rush of exhilaration. It had been more than a month since he had had anything to present to the group, but this would more than make up for the dry spell. Barely able to sit still, he decided it was no use trying to work for a while. He logged and erased the original clip, got up out of his chair and went to the kitchen.

  Maura was there, bit
ing open a bulb of milk and squeezing it into her coffee, a few strands of her long red hair loose and stuck to her mug. She looked up as he came in and smiled, and for a second he thought about reaching out and brushing her hair off the cup. Instead he simply gestured to it. She smiled again, her cheeks coloring a bit, and freed it with a toss of her head.

  “Working hard?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No harder than directed,” he said.

  She laughed, threw him what he thought was a conspiratorial look. Maura was one of the few people in the office he could talk to at all: most of the others were either Party members striving to be noticed or else had been ground down to gray dullness by the endless frame-by-frame searches that filled their days. “Big plans for the weekend?” she asked.

  “Nothing too exciting. I might have to buy new shoes.”

  “There’s a sale at Ogilvy’s, I think,” Maura said. “You should try there.” She blew on her coffee, took a sip. “I might go there this weekend myself.”

  Dave nodded. Could he bring himself to suggest that they go together, maybe out for lunch or a drink afterward? Was she fishing for that? When he opened his mouth, though, his earlier confidence had left him, and he felt the moment pass in silence. “Maybe I’ll see you there,” he said at last.

  “Sure,” she said, moved to step past him. “I’d better get back to work, before Chadwick sees I’m away from my station.”

  “Me too.”

  Maura frowned. “Shouldn’t you get your coffee first?”

  “Oh—right,” Dave said, laughed. “Well, see you later.”

  “Bye.”

  He watched her go, trying not to be too obvious about it, then turned to the coffee machine. Stupid, he thought—but had he been wrong in seeing something there, hearing an invitation? If only he hadn’t lost his nerve . . . after tonight’s meeting, he thought, and the reception his find would get, he would have confidence to spare. Tomorrow he would try again, and this time he would push the conversation as far as it would go.