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

by Philip Harbottle (ed. )

  She opened her mouth. I think she knew what was coming.

  Last year, after a spate of violent robberies in the area, I had insisted that we purchase a pistol for the times when Fiona would be alone in the house.

  “Not ours?” she said in barely a whisper.

  I nodded. “Ours.”

  We went through all the possibilities over the course of the next hour or two. Did I kill Simon Cauldwell when I accepted the offered post and traveled back in time with him to the eleventh century? Why would I do such a thing? Granted, I didn’t like the man—but I would never dream of shooting him dead.

  And anyway, I had no intention of accepting his offer. Despite the amazing possibilities opened up by Sigma Research’s temporal breakthrough, I could not see myself as some kind of Wellsian time-traveller.

  But the fact remained—Cauldwell was shot dead, at some point in the eleventh century, with my pistol.

  We went to bed late that night, and Fiona held me and made me promise that I would not take the Sigma post.

  I promised…and tried to sleep, but my mind was full of temporal causality and paradox, and I passed a fitful night.

  * * * *

  Fiona was out at yoga the following evening when the doorbell chimed.

  I made my way from the study and pulled open the front door.

  Sally Reichs stood in the April shower, looking determined.

  “Sally, what on Earth—?”

  “I’m sorry. I had to see someone. It’s important. I thought of you—I knew you’d listen.” She stared at me, as if challenging me to deny her access.

  “Of course, come in.”

  Bemused, I led her through the house to my study and sat her in the leather chair behind my desk. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Something stronger?”

  “You don’t happen to have a brandy?”

  “On its way.”

  I fixed a double Remi Martin in the lounge, and one for myself, and ferried them back to the study.

  Sally was drying her face with a tissue. She took a breath, composing herself.

  I sat on the armchair beside the desk and said, “Now, how can I help?”

  “I can’t confide in friends. They’d hardly believe me if l told them about what’s going on at Sigma Research. Then I thought of you—Cauldwell’s trying to recruit you, right?”

  “He did ask if I’d like to join his team, yes.”

  “Don’t!” Her vehemence was surprising. “I mean, you don’t know what it’s like. Cauldwell isn’t sane—”

  “Sally, slow down. Take it easy. Now, what do you mean?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve been back with him on two sorties now, to 1050 and 1052. They were mainly reconnaissance, observation.”

  I nodded, amazed at my calm reaction to something so amazing as this casual talk of time travel.…

  “And?”

  “He wants to conduct an experiment. He has a theory—something to do with causality. Quantum physics. String theory. I don’t honestly understand, but he thinks that there’s more to existence than just this reality. He thinks that this world is one of an infinite number of similar worlds, and that every event in history somehow creates new, divergent time-lines—in effect, new realities, new worlds.”

  I vaguely recalled watching an episode of Horizon on TV about something similar, though it had gone way over my head at the time.

  “And Simon intends…?” I began.

  Sally nodded. “He wants to do something back there that would prove the theory one way or another. Maybe introduce an invention, something the Anglo Saxons didn’t have back then. I don’t know.… But you see, I’m afraid that if he does go through with it.…” She paused there, staring at me.

  “If he did this, and it changed things.… Christ, I can’t work it out. If he did change things, would that mean we’d be changed, this reality? Or would it mean that we’d simply go on as before, but that another reality would spring into existence, diverging from his intervention in the eleventh century?”

  l stared at her, my head spinning. “If his theory of multiple realities is correct, then his intervention would merely create just another reality. But if he’s wrong, if there’s only one reality.…” I pressed my temple, trying to work through the logic, “then wouldn’t that mean that if he did make a change, then things would change here, too?”

  Sally smiled. “But if his intervention back then changed the future, our present—then possibly Sigma Research might never come into being. But then how would he have been able to travel back to make the change!”

  “The irresolvable paradox,” I murmured.

  She nodded. “But do you see why he has to be stopped? If there is only one reality, and he changes it…then who knows what chaos he might wreak on our time!”

  I said, “Tell the high-ups at Sigma, okay? They won’t let him go through with it.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll do that. We’re activating the interface to 1054 tonight, at midnight. I’ll talk to someone before we go.”

  I fetched Sally another brandy, and we went through the mind-bending complexities of the situation once again. Towards ten o’clock, as she made to leave, I urged her again to confide in her superiors at Sigma.

  At the door she gave me a quick hug, and ran out into the rain.

  I watched her scarlet Renault speed into the night, then made my way back to the study. I fixed myself another brandy and sat for an hour, going over what Sally had said and trying to untangle the convoluted skein of paradox with which she had presented me.

  I should have made the connection earlier, of course, Perhaps the alcohol had dulled my senses.

  Belatedly, I stood and crossed to the bookshelf where, next to the skull, I had kept the pistol.

  It was not there, of course. In the time I had taken to fetch Sally a brandy, she had seen the pistol…the answer to her dilemma.

  I hurried from the house and drove away at speed, though I knew the pursuit was futile. Sally had more than an hour on me, and, anyway, wasn’t Simon Cauldwell’s death pre-ordained, a fact ineluctably woven into the tapestry of time?

  I reached the Sigma Research station at twenty minutes after midnight.

  I flashed the ID Cauldwell had given me at the bored security guard on reception and made my way into the chamber.

  The scene through the interface stopped me in my tracks.

  The portal framed a vivid sunrise over rolling hills, with a wattle-and-daub village in the middle-ground. As I watched, transfixed, the scene shimmered like a heat haze.

  “They should be back by now!” a technician called.

  I walked forward, unnoticed by the white-coated staff who had their attention on more pressing matters. We gazed up at the shimmering scene as if in awe.

  “Communication’s down!” someone called. “We’ve lost contact. If they don’t get back.…” She left the sentence unfinished.

  “I can’t hold it any longer! It’s going!”

  “They knew how long they had out there!” someone cried in despair.

  The scene flickered, then. It stuttered like the image on a silent movie. It stabilized for a few seconds, showing the pristine, bucolic scene. Then the image winked out, to be replaced by the stained-glass effect of the interface in its deactivated phase.

  The scene returned again—and I saw two small figures in the distance. They were standing face to face on a hillside perhaps a hundred metres away, and I judged that if they had moved themselves to sprint towards the interface they might have reached safety before the final shutdown.

  But it appeared that they had other concerns. They faced each other in obvious confrontation, gesticulating: one figure moved forward, attempted to grab the other. Sally backed away, gesturing.

  She reached for something in her jacket—

  And the interface closed for the very last time.

  The aperture could not be opened to exactly the same period, of course: no miraculous rescue of the time-travelers could
be affected, for now.

  A technician tried to calm his colleagues. He said that in the morning they would attempt to open the portal to the closest time possible to 1054, which would be 1056.

  He was confident that Cauldwell and Reichs would be awaiting salvation.…

  Only I knew that only Reichs would be waiting.

  * * * *

  I was wrong, as it happened.

  Sally Reichs never returned to the twenty-first century. The disappearance of Cauldwell and Reichs was reported in the Oxford papers, briefly picked up by the national dailies, and then quietly forgotten.

  Later that year I read that Sigma Research was closing its British base and relocating to the States, and I assumed that that would be the end of the affair.

  A year after their disappearance, I received a call from my deputy at the dig near Sheppey.

  They had, she said, made a truly astounding discovery.

  I drove out to the site in record time, and beheld with wonder the shallow pit which cradled the skeleton of a woman judged to be in her seventies—old for the Middle Ages. And the truly astounding discovery?

  In a clay amphora wedged beside the corpse was a crude paper scroll, covered in minute handwriting.

  The script, of course, was in contemporary English.

  * * * *

  The following night I sat with Fiona in the conservatory, drank a glass of red wine and read a copy of Sally Reichs’ eleventh-century journal.

  I have had a long and happy life, she wrote. I did what I had to do, I believe, and then found people I came to trust and love. I could have returned to the hillside, perhaps, and ventured home…but after two years in this age I had discovered something…someone…important to me.

  But let me begin at the beginning, in a time far away from this one.…

  I stared through the conservatory window and considered Sally Reichs. I tried to decide if she was a fool or a hero, whether she had unjustifiably killed Simon Cauldwell on irrational grounds, or if her premeditated murder had indeed saved the future from some unknowable chronic catastrophe.…

  Outside, the sun went down in a blaze of crimson glory.

  UNCERTAIN WORLD, by Eric Brown

  Marshall sat on the balcony overlooking the bay, waiting as he’d waited patiently for the past two days. The sun set, and the stars came out above this strange new Earth. In the distance, along the coast, he made out the whitewashed adobe dwellings rising up the hillside. In the night sky, between Lupus and Scorpius, in low orbit, was the Christmas bauble brightness of his ship.

  He stood and strode to the edge of the patio, as he’d done half a dozen times during the past forty-eight hours. A pair of Africans in kaftans smiled benignly up at him. Two other guards were stationed at the back of the villa, enforcing his house arrest.

  He was on the coast of what had been Africa. Down below, on the sea-front wall, families promenaded, couples walked arm in arm. The sight of them created an ache in his chest. He had never felt so alone in his life, not even in deep space, in the photon sleet of the supernova where he’d lost his crew—all but his diminutive Thai deputy commander, Ki.

  Where was she now?

  They had separated him from Ki as soon as they had come down in the shuttle close to what had been Freetown, and he hadn’t seen her since. He had been debriefed—though they hadn’t called it that—by a woman as tall, attenuated and ebon as a Masai warrior. She had called herself Tem, and had asked him about his mission: How long ago had they set off from Earth? What had been their aim?

  Incredulous at her ignorance, he had told her.

  “And you say that your ship carried five thousand frozen colonists?” She spoke English, but heavily accented, so that Marshall was forced to concentrate to make out each word.

  “Suspended would be a better description. They consume no food, nor use amenities when suspended. At journey’s end, when we found a suitable colony world, they’d be awoken. At least, that was the plan.”

  The woman had asked how it was that he had set off from Earth two hundred years ago, and yet he seemed no older now than forty?

  “We travelled at the speed of light,” he began. “You mean, you haven’t heard of Einstein?”

  She had shaken her head, the simple gesture speaking volumes, and blandly asked, “And did you discover life out there, habitable planets?”

  He had answered truthfully: no, and no…and asked questions of his own: What had happened to the Luna receiving station, to the United Space Corporation? And what had they done with Ki?

  She had merely smiled and said, “In time, Mr. Marshall. In time,” and left him alone in the villa, angry and curious and not a little frightened.

  What place for him in a world without the USC? It had been bad enough returning home having discovered neither alien life forms, nor colonizable worlds. But to return to an Earth that was ignorant of the original mission…!

  What had happened in the two centuries they had been away?

  He hit the balcony rail and almost wept.

  * * * *

  That night he dreamed of the supernova again. He heard the scream of the ruptured solar magnetosphere, the transmitted cries of his team as they realized they were doomed.

  The primary had blown while his team were investigating a planet that had shown evidence of life. The world and his team—twelve good men and women—had perished in the merciless radiation blast-front, and he had had no option but to light out of the system with his deputy, Ki Pandaung, and head for Earth, defeated.

  He came awake weeping with grief, then remembered where he was.

  * * * *

  In the morning he awoke to the intense dazzle of sunlight, and reached out. His hand encountered the coolness of a bed empty but for himself: no Ki.

  They had come together during the homeward flight. They had always been close, but duty had filled their time and thoughts with other matters. Now, with no duty, and time on their hands, they had sought solace in each other, and the solace had been lifesaving.

  He showered and moved to the kitchen. While he slept, the table had been laid with cereal and fruit. Last night he had stepped into the kitchen to find that a cold meal had been prepared for him, brought in, presumably, while he brooded on the balcony. Tonight he would remain in the kitchen, to catch his keeper in the act and demand some explanations.

  He ate, and the food tasted wrong. As ever it was too sweet, with a chemical tang, and he wondered if his diet of shipboard nutrients for the past ten years had left him with an intolerance of real food. After the meal he felt nauseous.

  He moved to the patio and stood staring down at the paved sea-walk, where citizens strolled in the bright sunlight. Loneliness swept over him in a wave.

  The first thing he would demand, when the woman returned, was that he be reunited with Ki. It was bad enough to be denied freedom on an Earth he little understood—and which, presumably, did not understand him—but to be alone in this ordeal was intolerable, quite apart from the fact that he was worried for his lover’s welfare.

  He wanted to cry out to the people down below, “What kind of world have you made in my absence? What kind of world, ignorant of Einstein and starships and science?”

  He smiled. They would stare up at him, uncomprehending.

  A noise, from the villa at his back, startled him. The woman, come to resume her ignorant questioning?

  He hurried from the patio.

  He found the intruder in the kitchen, and automatically assumed that he had caught the person who replenished his table.

  She was short, black, shaven-headed. She dropped into a defensive crouch when he entered the room.

  “Don’t move!” he called out. He pointed to a chair. “Sit down right there and tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  Instead of obeying, she straightened and smiled at him. She approached and held out her hand. “Commander Marshall. You don’t know how privileged I feel to make your acquaintance at last. I have come to get you out
of here.” She spoke with the same thick accent as the first woman.

  Bemused, he shook the proffered hand. “You have?”

  “Explanations later,” the women said. “Follow me.”

  She slipped from the kitchen. He followed. A veranda at the back of the villa looked out over rising scrubland, with a margin of jungle in the distance. She tapped down the steps, paused at the bottom, and gestured for him to follow. There was no sign of the guards.

  He hurried after the woman, up the incline and into the jungle. A worn path led through the undergrowth, leaves overhead blocking out the sun and creating an aqueous twilight.

  * * * *

  He caught up with her and panted, “How did you…? The guards?”

  “They are our people,” she said quickly over her shoulder.

  It felt wonderful to be moving again, though a small voice at the back of his mind did question the wisdom of trusting this woman over the one who had imprisoned him. In a situation of total ignorance, which devil to trust?

  The climb eased off. They came to a crest and began dropping. Within minutes, the woman parted leaves to reveal the broad, sluggish width of a chocolate-brown river.

  A small wooden boat was moored to a tree stump. The woman drew it to the bank and clambered in, offering a hand to assist Marshall. After a fractional hesitation, he took it and seated himself opposite her.

  At the bow, she lowered an amazingly ancient two-stroke engine, its battered prop beating the water as ineffectively as an egg whisk. To his surprise, the boat moved slowly upstream, the woman at the tiller keeping it in the shadow of the overhanging vegetation.

  Marshall said, “Now will you explain yourself?”

  The woman smiled in the half-light. “Where would you like me to begin?”

  “For a start.… Do you know the whereabouts of my colleague, Ki Pandaung? They parted us as soon as we landed.”

  She stared back at him with big, black eyes, and nodded fractionally. “We’re attempting to free your deputy commander,” she said.

  “Who are you? Where are you taking me? What’s happened to the world while I’ve been away?” He thought about how the woman had greeted him. “And presumably you’ve heard of me? So you aren’t as ignorant as my jailers?”