"Lord and Rodrigo, you will accompany Pacal Votan. It seems there is still one more place for you to visit today. We shall follow the river and wait for you where the boats are moored. Please, do not waste time. Who knows what new beasts will come fleeing over the hills. They appear to be more certain of their fates than we are of ours."
Chasca Quilla did not say a word. She had obviously left her son in charge. K'achita ran to Rodrigo for a long embrace, and it was clear to all that the two regarded any time spent apart as wasted, especially now.
"Come on, then. The sooner we get there, the sooner we get back," I said.
We left the party no later than four o'clock in the afternoon. Across the river, a stiff breeze nudged us along our easterly path. We descended a series of steep slopes, where the view was similar to that from the ziggurat balcony. A thin strand of trees lined the foot of the mountains. It swelled to almost meet the huge southern forest at a bottleneck pasture many miles ahead. A dense mist cloaked the entire eastern continent, and only a few solitary peaks breached its ceiling.
Rodrigo had never been more solemn. "I tell you right now, Baz, either we're taking K'achita back with us, or you're going back alone," he said.
I took the ultimatum on board but didn't reply. I figured he was too emotional to debate rationally. We could talk it over when he'd settled, though quite when that might be I hadn't the foggiest. The impending cataclysm would only doom his romance further as the hours bled by.
Instead of responding, I spoke to Pacal. "I think it is safe to tell us everything. You Apteronians are enigmatic at the best of times, but any further secrets will serve only one purpose, to annoy me. So either come clean or we leave right now. Is that understood?"
"Understood, Lord," he replied.
That was it. He was behaving as stubbornly as Rodrigo. I was going to have to play along for now.
The earth underfoot became a giant rip of devastation, soil and grass churned and re-churned by a thousand hooves. The wake of the stampede stretched into the eastern mist. Why was Pacal leading us here? What could possibly be more important than returning to warn the Kamachej?
He suddenly veered to the north, into a thin cluster of trees at the foot of the mountain. There we discovered a bizarre elliptical construction. It was sheltered by enormous fallen rocks. Made of wood and stone, it had been erected with a breathtaking symmetry. I saw only one window situated exactly at the apex of the roof, around fifteen feet from the ground. It did not shine like regular glass, though. It appeared to pulse, a crystalline lighthouse in broad daylight, with a blinding intensity.
The building itself resembled an acorn sliced in half, lengthwise, from cup to nut. Built of beautifully carved, treated wood, it was anchored to ground by stone ribs. To its right was a stable housing five large horses. Rodrigo and I glanced at one another. Pacal led us directly through a narrow door into the acorn itself.
A lively, high-pitched voice addressed us from inside, in the native tongue of Apterona. "Time-travelers! Time-travelers! Thieves, fools and time-travelers! Well, come in, come in, or stay outside and be fools there. It makes no difference to me. Ha! Alpaca, you bring me mudskippers, primitives. Mudskippers! Mud! Ha!"
Pacal cleared his throat, as if a little embarrassed by the man's nonsensical greeting. "Lord and Rodrigo, this is..."
"An old man," interrupted the stranger, "whose name he has no desire to share at this time. Alpaca, come and sit a while. Let us inspect these primitives. You've brought me some fruity beverage? What? You haven't? Why, that's not like you. Hmm... All right then, the primitives will have to do. Lord? Is there more to that name, or should I bow and hypothesize at the same time? Ha! Well?"
"My proper title is Lord Henry Basingstoke," I replied.
"I don't like you," he retorted. "You are too arrogant for a mudskipper, far too arrogant. I didn't like Alpaca's description of you weeks ago and I don't like you now. You're a thief and a fool. Time-traveler? Ha! Mud lizard, I say. Mud! Mud!"
I was ready to march over and knock the old fool's block off. Perched on a fur-laden chair, surrounded by piles of scrolls and wooden plates filled with half-eaten meals of god-knows-what, he looked around eighty years old. His long, unkempt hair shielded his hunched frame from the shaft of sunlight like a collapsed, silver parasol. Supercilious, his every word and chortle wound me up with venomous ease. It was as if he knew precisely which buttons to push.
"Is this why you asked to see me: to hurl abuse?" I demanded, barely in control of my temper.
"Oh no. I don't abuse. I don't insult. I am simply unable to lie. If you are insulted by honesty, then you have been raised a liar. Nay, I don't insult, I speak what is on my mind. You would be well advised to do the same, time-traveler."
"In that case, I don't like you either," I replied. "Your philosophy is unconscionable, and you appear to be nothing more than a pompous old jackass."
"Agreed," said Rodrigo. "Now tell us, old man, who are you and what do you want?"
"Ha! Rodrigo, a Spanish time-traveler. I like you. Perhaps Alpaca should have brought you alone, and not on the shoulder of Lord Blah-blah. Ah well, too late for that now. Hmm...sit yourselves down, there on the floor will do, while I set aside my vast intelligence to tell my story at your humble level."
"Just play along, friends," Pacal said to us with a sigh. "He takes some getting used to, and even then he tries one's patience."
The room was warm and smelled of rancid meat. At the far end, a rudimentary bed lay buried beneath the old man's supplies. These included three or four spears, animal skins fashioned as garments, a few metallic devices similar to those in Pacal's home, and a number of strange, stone artifacts in various states of decrepitude. He leaned forward in his chair, un-creasing the fur beneath his backside with long, wrinkled fingers. To my astonishment, his hands appeared to be webbed--the adjoining skin between fingers had grown above the knuckle--and he was without fingernails. I stared with renewed curiosity.
"Before I begin, which precise period of the future are you from?" he said.
Rodrigo answered first, "The latter half of the twentieth century, if that chronology is familiar to you. We were unable to figure out exactly how far back in time we had to travel."
"Rightly, rightly, you are neighbors of Mr. Einstein and Mr. Sagan, then, chronologically speaking. Not so unfortunate, I say. But how versed are you in the science of these primitives? Well?"
"We are not scientists as such," the Cuban continued. "I am something of an amateur diver, whereas Baz here is an explorer, an adventurer."
"Ha! Say no more. Two nothings, and arrogant to boot. Fools and thieves, I said. Rich fools and poor thieves, round trip travelers to nowhere. Hmm... For your information, you skipped across eleven thousand years. What say you to that? A pity you emerged as mudskippers still. A pitiable pity."
"Enough!" I shouted. "Kindly point that honesty at yourself for a moment and tell us, simply, what's on your mind. Please."
Pacal smirked as he looked away, clearly embarrassed by me as well. Typically, he remained silent when his input might actually have served a purpose. He seemed fascinated by this meeting, however. I could tell his concentration hung on each and every word.
The old man, for reasons alien to all but him, hurled a small chunk of meat at me. I had cocked my arm to toss it back when Rodrigo restrained me, whispering, "Let him be, Baz. His mind's taken a walk. Let's hear him out and then get the hell out, OK?"
I nodded reluctantly.
The old man adjusted his fur seat once more. "First things first, Englishman. You might be Einsteins, born in tumult and the early days of real science, but you are mudskippers to me.
"Primitive, primitive! Mud, I say! In that chronology, I exceed your future by some three million years, and your intellect by an unfathomable margin. I am both scientist and historian; you are neither, so whatever I say you will have to accept as fact. Ha! Not so arrogant now!
"Your twentieth century world was, is, shal
l be terraqueous. You dwell on land, much as we do here, and fear the enormity of the sea. In my time, the sea is our kingdom, and we dwell in its depths, in cities your primitive intellects could scarcely comprehend. What a pity!
"We fear the land like you fear the sea. Hmm...but our air has toxins that forbid us the land. The beautiful sky you see here is almost black above the waves in my own time. What a shame! You Imperialists carried the torch that finally put the terror in terraqueous. What a shame!
"Centuries later, many centuries, mind. But you Spanish and your trees, what a waste! What creature cuts the lungs from its own grandchildren and profits from it? Mudskippers, I say! Mud is what mankind is left with. Ha! But it is all mud to you: back in time, forward in time, there is no time--only mud!"
I began to see this poorly old man in a different light. While he was outrageously eccentric, everything he said rang true. Sometimes, I suppose, we prefer only the brighter side of truth. We construe anything too close to the bone as an attack. Were Rodrigo and I to blame for making the future uninhabitable? Not directly, but no one who refrains from condemning a crime can hold his head high either. I felt guilty in the presence of our impolite host.
"And now to the business of time travel. Dear, oh dear. How low my brain will have to stoop. Suffice to say, you will not be able to grasp the theoretical dimensions of crossing time. Ha!
"I remember now, your early writers were most entertaining. Wells and his Eloi! Very good. Those first moving pictures with historical recreations: a crazy-haired scientist sends his dog back through time in a silver car, and a boy meets his parents before they themselves ever met. Ha! Very good."
I had read Wells' The Time Machine, but hadn't a clue what film he was referring to.
"Right, right, let me see. How can I explain time simply," he continued. "Hmm...well first of all, those mechanics are false. Try not to think of it in terms of forward being the future or backward being the past; think of it more in terms of your imagination.
"Yes, yes! You can lasso a memory of any moment from your past at will, close your eyes and make it your reality. In essence, you don't visit that time, you bring that past to the present. Now suppose those memories are tactile and the time machine is your mind. You could access any time without ever moving, by lassoing it. The same applies with creative thoughts and dreams, but that is another tale. Ha! You would be astounded. For now, though, think of time as an infinite selection of thoughts, only these thoughts have real substance if you can lasso them from outside time.
"Hmm...how else to explain it. Twentieth century? Ha! Think of it as peeling away the crude hubcap of a car, to reveal the spokes holding the wheel together. Right, right! The hubcap is solid, the flat time line of reality. You can't see the mechanics underneath. When it is removed, each spoke is a tangent from the center. The tangents spin so quickly you can see only the blur. That, too, appears solid until you know better.
"For a time-traveler, history and the future exist within that same spin, each time within the same reach. Think of a time machine as being at the center, able to speed or slow the spin at will. Of course, it is not that simple, but in the crudest sense a time-traveler lassos his spoke and reels it in. Ha! Remember, though, time is brought to the traveler, not he to it.
"Hmm...in that sense we are not time-travelers at all.
"There are mechanics underpinning the universe a thousand times greater than you realize. For instance, the gaps in your logic and mathematics--any encounters with the infinite--are the vital laws of opposition. Creation destroys and destruction creates. One day your scientists will put these oxymorons into formulas hundreds of symbols long. What a long way you have to go. What a slow and troubled way. Ha! But how wondrous the journey will be.
"Right, right, the time machine. I was among the last to linger in our cities beneath the sea. The rest had moved on to explore the universe. Oh, there is no telling how far they will reach. Those explorers! Those scientists! Those intellects! But I digress. I was a historian and did not wish to leave my home. Oh, my family stayed with me, of course, but the cities were no longer able to support human life. Therefore, we had a single choice--to escape through time.
"Now, the time machines had been in service for many thousands of years, for scientific purposes. How excited we were! I wanted to spend my final days above the waves, in a land plentiful with life and possibilities.
"Apterona! O, flightless Apterona! The place where knowledge began. That is what we called this land in my time. The word apterous means 'without wings'. What more fulfilling prospect than to see out its final days, and watch its great fleet sail the crest of history. Ah, what dreams I had before the forest took them. What fabulous dreams."
Abrasive at first, the old fellow's honesty had become oddly beguiling. There was something pitiable in his lonely reminiscences. For one so superior to lose his family to such a primitive forest I found quite moving. I wanted to tell him the whole story of our adventure, in the hope that he might have a solution to our riddle. His eyes turned to mine, as though he knew precisely how and when to engage me. Exactly how advanced his intellect was I could only guess.
"Now tell me, Englishman," he said, "what fluke landed you at my door? A time machine is capable of visiting any eon of the universe, yet your shadow sullies not only Apterona, but another time-traveler's final days here. Hmm...the probability is ridiculous, unless my time machine is the common link. Oh, I can deduce, Englishman, but I would rather you explain it to me. Well?"
I gave a brief account of the finding of the time machine, excluding only the identity of its occupant. A clever tactic. I felt it would be wiser to tell that to the old man in private, away from Pacal Votan. After all, my very existence here depended on the native's timely escape and death.
Naturally, the old man assumed it was he who would meet a fiery end and thus precipitate the whole affair in 1979, as he was the only one who knew where his time machine was hidden.
My plan was for him to solve my quandary with his own fate in mind. In truth, I didn't have a clue what would happen to him. He might indeed meet a fiery end. "Now that I've told you our story, and you can change the events, have I not put my existence in jeopardy?"
"Wicked presumption to carry around, that is. Wicked, but not necessary," he replied.
"What do you mean?" interrupted Pacal, intrigued by the paradox.
"Ha! Well, we're still here, aren't we? What better answer is there than that. Hmm... You're still clinging to that silly idea of a single time line. Ah, well, I gave you too much credit. Never mind. Born a mudskipper, die a mudskipper. Hmm... Alpaca, have I not explained this to you before? Obviously not.
"You will not cease to exist just because your future from this point is not the same future you left. Time is made up as we go. It forms around us and the choices we make. We each shape the universe. Nothing depends on another spoke in the wheel. You can change whatever you like now, on this spoke, and not affect the future you left behind. That time has been imprinted already. The time machine can lasso it exactly as you left it. Infinite, I say!
"You are not aware of time because its spokes are a blur beneath the hubcap, remember? Good, good, now we are up to speed. But you must not forget that all past and future moments co-exist side by side, like the spokes spinning from a centrifuge. Indeed, the universe ran its course an incalculable time ago; we are simply living in its past.
"Think carefully on that, primitives. The time machine operates outside of time. A million years ago is as a second ago with that perception. In basic terms, that is the secret of time travel. Now, how well do you ride a horse?"
Rodrigo and I glanced at one another then at Pacal Votan, whose fascination with science now made perfect sense. He had quite a teacher.
In trying to unravel these theories, my mind spun like the old man's car wheel. I realized my pretentious theory on board the Moncado was indeed the extent of a primitive brain. Even so, I still had a choice to make, a choice that
might at least shape the future of everyone in the room.
Whether or not to save Pacal Votan.
"I can ride," said Rodrigo.
"Me too," I affirmed.
"And you know I can," agreed Pacal.
The old time-traveler leapt out of his chair and scurried by us, one webbed hand clutching a telescope, the other ruffling my hair as he passed.
"Well, then, come along," he said. "Come along or be fools here, it makes no difference to me. Ha! Not you, Alpaca. You have a fleet to prepare. These two will not be far behind. Go now, but be careful, and remember this. You will not be able to save everyone, and not everyone will want to be saved. A pity."
The old man scurried out through the door in such a hurry that Pacal had no time to respond. Rodrigo and I bade our young friend farewell. We then followed our eccentric host to the stables. The three of us were soon galloping toward the eastern mist, away from Pacal Votan and the looming tumult in the west, on the tallest, swiftest mares I have ever encountered.
Chapter 17
Neither Rodrigo or I knew how much time we had left before the cataclysm. We should have been fleeing Apterona, not delving further into her secrets. But my curiosity took the reins. This was why we had traveled through time. The grassy isthmus between flanking forests slowly narrowed.
The old man broke ahead and slowed his horse to a canter on the edge of the mist. He was an excellent rider, if a little unsightly as a derby jockey. I wished I had worn something more suitable than a t-shirt, as the fog was both cold and damp. The temperature of western Apterona, though, had rarely fallen below that of a cool breeze; I was simply caught off guard.
"Stay alert," said the old man.
"Where exactly are you leading us?" asked Rodrigo.
"Why, into the mist. I thought that was painfully obvious. Be ready to bolt at a moment's notice. There's something of a migration afoot, in case you hadn't realized. East leaves for west, just like the sun, so be ready to do likewise."
The Basingstoke Chronicles Page 13
