The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales From Fantasy Adventures

by Philip Harbottle (ed. )

  “Not quite identical, however; life has taken a somewhat different path as you can see. In the past there must have been some leakage across the boundary from this other world to ours. It’s where our myths and legends stem from, so stop disbelieving and accept reality.

  “This other world exists, the people are real and trade goes on between us. The math boys came up with coordinates for a more permanent link, a computer takes care of the detail, and everything is under control. Now let’s get down to story ideas.” He turned to the nightmare figures round the table. “What’s been happening since our last meeting?’

  “On the night of the full moon, by the tower in the forest.…”

  One by one the figures from legend spoke, and Gentry scribbled notes, his mind automatically building raw material into story form. Stories? But these events had actually happened, they were real in the other world.…

  Perhaps two hours had passed when Nicholson said: “Enough. He’s new, remember—give him time to adjust to the situation. Let him get this stuff written up and we’ll meet again next week.”

  As in a dream, Gentry watched the strange figures pass through the gateway to their own world. (The werewolf seemed to have difficulty maintaining its shape.) The door closed silently behind them.

  Nicholson took his arm, led him back to the lift. They sped upwards. In his office, Nicholson poured two whiskies while Gentry stared from the window, down at the street, the humdrum traffic-jams, suburban shoppers.

  “I’m used to them,” Nicholson said, “but they get me sometimes.”

  Gentry tossed his drink down so quickly he choked. “I was dreaming, wasn’t I? They couldn’t have been real—”

  “Better forget that part of it. Just think of them as a perfect story source. It works out okay—there’s money in it.’

  A dark thought crossed Gentry’s mind, but he dismissed it. He was earning!

  He traveled home, clutching his briefcase full of notes, and started in on the first story. It went well, a natural, until he began thinking about the reality behind it. He put that firmly from his mind.

  He had difficulty sleeping that night, and took a sleeping pill. And then the nightmare started, a nightmare in which he stood alone before that second door and, slowly, it opened.…

  All week he worked doggedly, getting the outlines written up. He received prompt payment for his first job and that encouraged him to go on. Needn’t do this for long, he told himself, just get enough money in the bank and then back to the novel. But his nightmare continued, night after night.

  Nicholson okayed the series of stories and invited him out for another conference. Gentry thought twice about going: but the reality seemed too incredible to take seriously. He went.

  Nicholson looked pleased to see him. “You’ve got the hang of our stuff now—just remember to cool it a bit for the readers. Shall we go down?”

  It was after the second conference that Gentry started serious drinking. He was making money, but his nerves suffered. And the nightmare got worse…he had to drink to forget.

  There were other meetings, with Nicholson watching him anxiously. He was churning the stuff out now; it came easier all the time. But he couldn’t go on forever; too little sleep and too much drink wore him down. In the end, he phoned Nicholson:

  “I’m getting out. I’ve a novel—”

  “I understand, Gentry, I know it’s a strain. But don’t let me down before I get a new writer. Just one more time, okay?”

  “Okay.” he answered, hesitating.

  When Gentry arrived at the House of Horror for the last time, Nicholson seemed relieved. He handed him a glass of whisky before going down in the lift to that locked room. At the bottom, Nicholson unlocked the metal door and nodded for Gentry to go first.

  Jerome Gentry stepped from the lift cage into the conference room. He heard the door close behind him, realized the editor wasn’t with him. He turned, calling, “Nicholson—!”

  He was alone, the metal door locked. He beat on it, turned again as he heard shuffling steps behind him. The second door had opened.

  They were coming for him, and now he knew what form the other side of the bargain took. They caught him, dragged him the length of the room—screaming—and pushed him through into their own world.

  The second door slid shut behind them.

  Gentry licked dry lips, feeling faint.

  The hag mocked: “Shall I cast a love spell, Jerome?”

  And the werewolf snarled: “Run fool, run—I feel like hunting!”

  Gentry looked round, wild-eyed. The forest seemed reassuringly thick. If he could make it to the tree, hide, maybe sneak back to the door later…he started to run, heart pounding.…

  He was halfway to the trees when he guessed the outline his successor would get. Wings flapped overhead. A beast with an eagle’s head and a lion’s body swooped down from the sky. Fierce talons snatched him off his feet as the griffin bore him away to its aerie.

  THE TAPESTRY OF TIME, by Eric Brown

  That spring, with winter well past and summer on the way, I decided that the time had come to visit Simon Cauldwell.

  I had delayed our meeting for a number of reasons, some obvious but others hidden in the depths of my psyche: fear, of course, was dominant I didn’t want to confront Cauldwell with my findings for fear of what I might learn.

  I was forty-five, happily married with a ten-year-old daughter, and I held a secure post as a senior lecturer in medieval archaeology at Oxford. I had reached the stage in my life at which I was confident that the future would hold no surprises. Perhaps I was complacent.

  Fiona guessed that something was amiss. One evening in April she appeared at the door of my study. She must have been watching me for a while before I looked up and noticed her.

  I smiled, tired.

  “It’s that skull, isn’t it?”

  I massaged my eyes. “What is?” I said, not for the first time amazed at my wife’s perspicacity.

  “Dan, ever since you found the thing, you’ve been different. Morose withdrawn. If I believed in that kind of thing, I’d say it was cursed “

  I managed to smile. “It’s not cursed,” I said. “Just misplaced. The skeleton was found with artefacts that date from a hundred years later. “

  She pushed herself from the jamb of the door and kissed the top of my head.

  I said, “The paper I’m writing, trying to explain the anomaly, just isn’t working.…”

  “I’m sorry, Dan. Dinner in ten minutes, okay?” She kissed me again and left the room.

  Whenever I lied to Fiona, which wasn’t often, I always wondered if she’d seen through me.

  Misplaced artefacts, indeed.…

  The truth was far more perplexing, and worrying, than that.

  A few days later I e-mailed Cauldwell, telling him that I’d had second thoughts about his offer.

  He phoned later that afternoon. “Dan, so persistence pays off! You’ve seen sense at last. Good man. Look, when’s convenient for you?”

  “I’m free all this week.”

  “Excellent. Come over to the research station and I’ll show you around the place. It’s all hush-hush, of course. Top secret and all that.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Tomorrow at one suit? Excellent, see you then.”

  I replaced the phone, very aware of my thudding heartbeat. There was no turning back, now.

  The headquarters of Sigma Research Inc. was buried away in the Oxfordshire countryside, miles away from the prying eyes of bustling Oxford.

  I drove slowly through the tortuous, leafy lanes, considering my imminent meeting with Cauldwell and, despite myself, reviewing my dealings with the man. Despite the tone of bonhomie he had affected on the phone the day before, we had always been sworn rivals. Not to put too fine a point on if I detested him.

  He had been one of those old-fashioned academics ensconced in a sinecure at Oxford’s richest and most conservative college. His resista
nce to theory, his inability to see the worth of research ideologically opposed to his own narrow views, had won him many enemies. Much to the surprise and envy of his colleagues, last year he had been headhunted by Sigma Research, a big American outfit with a lot of dollars and a market-led excavation theory.

  A few months after Cauldwell left Oxford, I discovered the eleventh-century skull at a dig near the village of Sheppey, Herefordshire.

  And a couple of days after that, Cauldwell himself phoned to invite me to join his team at Sigma Research. More than a little suspicious, I had told him I was quite happy at Oxford, thanks all the same.

  Now I was following up his invitation—purely in the interests of research, of course.

  * * * *

  Cauldwell met me in a plush reception area resplendent with thick crimson carpet and a jungle of potted-palms. It looked more like the foyer of a multi-national bank than the reception area of a private archaeological company.

  He came smiling towards me, hand outstretched. “Dan, so pleased.…”

  Everything about him was big. He had a big, square head on big, wide shoulders. Even at college his dress had been eccentric: now he wore a loud shirt with a pattern a la Pollock, a pair of those ridiculous knee-length khaki shorts, and sandals from which his big, bare toes protruded obscenely.

  He passed me a small plastic identity card. Next to an entwined SR was my name, and above it a small photograph he’d obviously downloaded from the college website.

  “Follow me. I’ll give you the tour. You’re privileged, of course. Not every Tom, Dick or Harry gets this. Just prospective employees.”

  I followed, not a little disgruntled at his assumption that I would be impressed.

  He showed me into his office, a spacious area with few books but the latest computer technology.

  What took my attention, however, was the plate glass window at the back of the room. It looked out over a big sunken chamber in which a dozen white-coated scientists were working at terminals.

  He was saying, “I didn’t know what research was till I began working for Sigma, Dan. I take it you read my last paper in Historical Review?”

  I nodded, I had been impressed, despite myself.

  Cauldwell smiled. “Ground-breaking, even if I do say so myself. Less to do with me than with the work of my team.” He gestured through the glass at his ‘team’.

  I glanced at him. Such modesty was not usually his forte.

  “Come, I’ll show you the working end of the business.”

  He led me through a door and down a flight of steps into the sunken chamber.

  Even at this stage, of course, I had my suspicions.

  The chamber looked like the futuristic set of some sci-fi blockbuster: ranked computer terminals and banks of silver devices like lasers. At the far end of the room, however, and seeming out of place, was a tall, arched aperture that resembled nothing so much as a stained glass window.

  I stared, surprised, for that was what I had assumed it to be: a stained glass window, however inappropriate that might be in this secular setting.

  Closer inspection revealed a rectangle of polychromatic tesserae, constantly shifting.

  A woman in a white lab-coat came up to Cauldwell and passed him a small com-screen.

  She smiled at me.

  “Sally,” I said. Would the surprises never end?

  “Dan, fancy meeting you here.£

  “I was about to say the same!”

  Sally Reichs had been one of the finest post-grad students to come out of Oxford in years. By her mid-thirties, she’d written a couple of far-sighted books on her subject, the metallurgy of Anglo-Saxon Britain—and then disappeared from the scene.

  Now I knew why. Headhunted.

  The odd thing was, she had professed an intense dislike of Simon Cauldwell while they were both working in the archaeology department at Oxford. More than once she had confided to me that she found his views, both professional and personal, detestable.

  She must have seen my confusion. She gave me a look—a lop-sided, almost resigned smile—which signalled that she would tell me all at some point.

  “Sal’s quite brilliant,” Cauldwell said as she returned to her terminal. “But of course you know that.”

  I ignored him, and gestured at the multi-coloured screen at the far end of the chamber. A low hum, almost on the threshold of audibility, filled the air—along with what felt like a static charge.

  I guessed, of course, but even then never really believed that my guess was correct.

  Cauldwell gestured, and we walked along an aisle between ranked terminals.

  We paused beneath the aperture—it was perhaps three metres high—like supplicants.

  Cauldwell said, “Did you wonder how I came to write such a revolutionary paper?”

  I looked at him. “It wasn’t quite what I’ve come to expect from you,” I said.

  He smiled at that. “Ah, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  A question caught in my throat. i was suddenly aware that I was sweating. “Tell me what’s going on here,” I almost pleaded.

  Cauldwell nodded, not looking at me but staring at the shifting patterns on the surface of the screen. Seen closer to, the colours had about them the slick sheen sometimes seen on petroleum.

  “What do you know about quantum physics, Dan?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I admitted.

  “Planck theory? Gupta’s updating of Einstein?” He waved away mv admission of ignorance. “No matter. Theory isn’t required—merely the appreciation of the end result.”

  “Which is?”

  He paused, then said, “Sigma Research has managed to break down the barriers that have hitherto prevented our access to other times.”

  He stopped there and looked at me, smiling. The word smug might have been coined to describe his self-satisfied expression.

  “They do it with super-conducted tachyons and hyper-charged baryonic particles—I know, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either. The result, at any rate, is a passage into the past, though never into the future. Once a month—as the expenditure of energy is prohibitively high—very briefly the portal is opened: three months ago onto 1050, last month 1052. We’re going for 1054 in a few days from now.”

  I had known all along, of course. At least I told myself as much. How else to explain the anomaly of the skull?

  I considered telling Cauldwell about my discovery, but something stopped me.

  He was saying, “The only real problem, Dan, is that we can’t open the portal onto any time more than once. For the period of a year, the tachyon vectors specific to that time are seriously weakened and won’t support passage. I mean, it would be wonderful to revisit specific times, but alas that’s impossible.”

  I stared at him. “You mean, you actually visit, physically visit, these times?”

  He nodded, smug again. “We do, though only for strictly allotted periods of up to thirty minutes. The power-drain, you see.…”

  I nodded, as if he had been explaining the cost of running an expensive car.

  “At any rate, it would be superfluous to explain quite what a benefit to historical understanding this breakthrough has been.…” Nevertheless, unable to pass up the opportunity for a lecture, Cauldwell proceeded to tell me all about his latest discoveries.

  He conducted me around the chamber, interleaving his historical lecture with complex scientific explanations.

  One hour later I found myself back in his office.

  Over a coffee, Cauldwell said, “So, Dan, let me at last get to purpose of showing you around. Despite our differences, I respect your work. I think you could be a great asset to my team here at Sigma Research.”

  He passed a folder across the desk. “A contract. I think you’ll find it more than a little enticing. Of course, I don’t want an immediate answer. Go away and think about it for a few days. You have my e-mail if you have any questions.”

  A little later, he rose and shook my han
d.

  I made to return the ID he had given me.

  “Keep if Dan,” he said. “You’ll need it, if you do decide to join the team.”

  I emerged into the bright summer sunlight not a little dazed—a few questions answered, of course, but others remaining tantalizingly opaque.

  I drove slowly home, and decided that I would tell Fiona everything when I returned. It would help to talk, and her insight might shed light on aspects of the situation I was too blind to perceive.

  That evening, over dinner, I told Fiona about my discovery of the skull and my subsequent investigations, then Cauldwell’s offering me a job and showing me around the Sigma Research station.

  She pushed her glass of wine aside and stared at me. “But…I mean, are you sure the bullet—”

  I interrupted, “Of course I’m sure. The bullet passed through the left orbit and scoured a groove around the back of the skull. Death would have been instantaneous. The groove had aged over the centuries—it hadn’t been made recently.”

  “But how would that be possible in the eleventh century? Perhaps it wasn’t a bullet.”

  “It was. I found it lodged in the nasal cavity, eroded but recognizably a modern .02 bullet.”

  Fiona shook her head. “So this time-travel device at Sigma research.… It must be connected, right? Someone goes back to that time—to, when was it, the 1070s?—and shoots dead some poor bloody innocent Anglo-Saxon.…”

  I massaged my eyes, wearily “Fiona, there’s more.” I ordered my thoughts. “Although the skull dated from that time, circa 1070, it was the skull of a modern man.”

  “You aren’t making sense, Dan!”

  “Its upper jaw showed signs of contemporary dental work. A couple of fillings.…”

  Fiona nodded. “So it was someone from the research team who travelled back in time and was shot dead?”

  “That’s what happened. I made enquiries, accessed dental records. I found out who the skull belonged to.”

  She stared at me. “Whose, Dan?”

  “Simon Cauldwell’s.” I said. “That isn’t all.” I swept on. “I consulted a ballistics expert, and from the bullet I found in the skull we identified the weapon used to kill Cauldwell.”