Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  FLUX

  Michael Moorcock

  Max File leaned forward, addressing an impatient question towards the driving compartment: ‘How long now before we get there?’

  Then he remembered that his car had no driver. Usually, as Marshal-in-Chief of the European Defensive Nuclear Striking Force, he allowed himself the luxury of a chauffeur; but today his destination was secret and known not even to himself.

  The plan of his route lay safely locked away in the computer of the car’s automatic controller.

  He settled back in his seat, deciding that it was useless to fret.

  The car left the Main Way about half a mile before it met up with the central traffic circuit which flung vehicles and goods into the surrounding urban system like a gigantic whirling wheel. The car was making for the older parts of the city, nearest the ground. For this, File was grateful, though he did not overtly admit it to himself. Above him, the horizon-wide drone and vibrating murmur of this engineer’s paradise still went on, but at least it was more diffuse. The noise was just as great, but more chaotic, and therefore more pleasing to File’s ear. Twice the car was forced to pause before dense streams of pedestrians issuing from public pressure-train stations, faces set and sweating as they battled their way to work.

  File sat impassively through the delay, though already he was late for the meeting. What did it mean, he wondered, this Gargantua which sat perpetually bellowing athwart the whole continent? It never slept; it never ceased proudly to roar out its own power. And however benevolent it was towards its hundreds of millions of inhabitants, there was no denying that they were, every one, its slaves.

  How had it arisen? What would become of it? It was already so overgrown internally that only with difficulty human beings found themselves room to live in it. If it were seen from out in space, he thought, no human beings would be visible; it would seem to be only a fast-moving machine of marvellous power but no purpose.

  Max File did not have much faith in the European Economic Community’s ability to prolong its life infinitely. It had grown swiftly, but it had grown by itself, without the benefit of proper human design. Already, he thought, he could detect the seeds of inevitable collapse.

  Patiently, the car eased forward through the crowd, found an unobstructed lane, and then continued on its complicated route. Eventually it made its way through a tangle of signs, directions and crossovers, before stopping in front of a small ten-storey building bearing a grim but solid stamp of authority.

  There were guards at the entrance, betokening the gravity of the emergency. File was escorted to a suite on the fifth floor. Here, he was ushered into a windowless chamber with panelled wood walls and a steady, quiet illumination. At the oval table, the government of the European Economic Community had already convened and was waiting silently for his arrival. The ministers looked up as he entered.

  They made an oddly serene and formal group, with their uniformly dark conservative dress and the white notepaper lying unmarked in neat squares before them. An air of careful constraint prevailed in the room. Most of the ministers gave File only distant nods as he entered and then cast their eyes primly downward as before. File returned the nods. He was acquainted with them all, but not closely. For some reason they always tended to keep their distance from him, in spite of the high position he held—and for which he seemed to have been destined since childhood.

  Only Prime Minister Strasser rose to welcome him.

  ‘Please be seated, File,’ he said. File shook the old man’s proffered hand, then made his way to his place. Strasser began to speak at once, clearly intending to make the meeting brief and to the point.

  ‘As we all know,’ he began, ‘the situation in Europe has reached the verge of civil war. However, most of us also know that we are not here today to discuss a course of action—I speak now for your benefit, File. We are here to understand our position, and to propose a mission.’

  Strasser sat down and nodded perfunctorily to the man on his left. Standon, pale and bony, inclined his head toward’s File and spoke:

  ‘When we first sat down to deal with this problem, we thought it differed from no other crisis in history—that we would first consider the aims and intentions of the quarrelling economic and political factions, decide which to back and which to fight. It was not long before we discovered our error.

  ‘First, we realised that Europe is only a political entity and not a national entity, obviating the most obvious basis for action. Then we tried to comprehend the entire system which we think of as Europe— and failed. As an industrial economy, Europe passes comprehension!’

  He paused, and a strange emotion seemed to well just beneath the surface of his face. He moved his body uneasily, then continued in a stronger tone:

  ‘We are the first government in history which is aware, and will admit, that it does not know how to control events. The continent in our charge has become the most massive, complex, high-pressured phenomenon ever to appear on the face of this planet. We no more know how to control it than we know how to control the mechanism governing the growth of an actual living organism. Some of us are of the opinion that European industry has in fact become a living organism—but one without the sanity and certainty of proper development that a natural organism has. It began haphazardly, and then followed its own laws. There is one of us’—he indicated stern Brown-Gothe across the table—‘who equates it with a cancer.’

  File mused on the similarity of the ministers’ conclusions to his own thoughts of only a few minutes before.

  ‘Europe suffers from compression,’ Standon continued. ‘Everything is so pressurised, energies and processes abut so solidly on one another, that the whole system has massed together in a solid plenum. Politically speaking, there just isn’t room to move around. Consequently, we are unable to apprehend the course of events either by computation or by common sense, and we are unable to say what will result from any given action. In short, we are in complete ignorance of the future, whether we participate in it or not.’

  File looked up and down the table. Most of the ministers still gazed passively at their notepads. One or two, with Strasser and Standon, were looking at him expectantly.

  ‘I had been coming to the same conclusion myself,’ he said. ‘But you must have decided upon something.’

  ‘No,’ said Standon forcefully. ‘This is the essence of the matter. If things were that clear-cut there would not be this problem—we should simply choose a side. But there are not two factions—there are three or four, with others in the background. The very idea of what is best loses meaning when we do not know what is going to happen. Logically, destruction of the community is the only criterion of what is undesirable, but even then, who knows? Perhaps we have grown so monstrous that there is no possibility of our further existence. There are no ideals to guide us. And in any case, there is no longer deliberate direction as far as Europe is concerned.’

  Standon took his eyes off File and seemed to withdraw for a moment. ‘I might add,’ he said, ‘that after having had several weeks to think about it, we are of the opinion that this has always been the case in political affairs: only the fact that there was space to move around in gave the statesmen of the past the illusion that they were free to determine events. Now there is no empty space, the illusion has vanished, and we are aware of our helplessness. At the same time, everything is much more frightening.’

  He shrugged. ‘For instance, Europe, because of its massiveness, could absorb a large number of nuclear fusion explosions and still keep functioning. I need hardly add that at the present time such weapons are available to any large-scale corporation. We even think there are some small-yield bombs in the hands of minority groups.’

  File reflected as calmly as he could. Suddenly the crisis had slid over the edge of practical considerations into the realm of philosophy. It sounded absurd, but there was no denying the fact.

  He appreciated the caution of these very self-composed men. L
ike them, he had a fear of tyranny, but history provided many warnings against hasty preventive measures. It was to avert tyranny that the conspirators murdered Caesar, yet within hours the consequences of their foolish deed had plunged the state into a reign of terror even worse than anything they had imagined. The ministers were right; there was no such thing as free will, and a state was manageable only if it was uncomplicated enough not to go off the rails in any case.

  He said, ‘I presume everything has been done to try to analyse events? Cybernetics …?’

  Standon gave him a tolerant smile. ‘Everything has been done.’

  As if this were a cue, a third man spoke. Appeltoft, whose special province was science and technology, was younger than the others and somewhat more emotional. He looked up to address File:

  ‘Our only hope lies in discovering how events are organised in time— this might sound highly speculative for such a serious and practical matter, but this is what things have come to. In order to take effective action in the present, we must first know the future. This is the mission we have in mind for you. The Research Complex at Geneva has found a way to deposit a man some years in the future and bring him back. You will be sent ten years forward to find out what will happen and how it will come about. You will then return, report your findings to us, and we will use this information to guide our actions, and also— scientifically—to analyse the laws governing the sequence of time. This is how we hope to formulate a method of human government for use by future ages, and, perhaps, remove the random element from human affairs.’

  File was impressed by the striking, unconventional method the Cabinet had adopted to resolve its dilemma.

  ‘You leave immediately,’ Appeltoft told him, breaking in on his thoughts. ‘After this conference, you and I will fly to Geneva where the technicians have the apparatus in readiness.’ A hint of bitterness came into his voice. ‘I had wished to go myself, but…’ He shrugged and made a vague, disgusted gesture which took in the rest of the Cabinet.

  ‘That’s a point,’ File said. ‘Why have you chosen me?’

  The ministers looked at one another shiftily. Strasser spoke up.

  ‘The reason lies in your education, Max,’ he said diffidently. ‘The difficulties facing us now were beginning to show themselves over a generation ago. The government of the time decided to bring up a small number of children according to a new system of education. The idea was to develop people capable of comprehending in detail the massiveness of modern civilisation, by means of forced learning in every subject. The experiment failed. All your schoolfellows lost their sanity. You survived, but did not turn into the product we had hoped for. To prevent any later derangement of your mind, a large part of the information which had been pressured into it was removed by hypnotic means. The result is yourself as you are—a super-dilettante, with an intense curiosity and a gift for management. We gave you the post you now hold and forgot about you. Now you are ideal for our purpose.’

  Inwardly, File underwent a jolt—even more so because the account agreed well with his own suspicions concerning his origins. He pulled himself together before he could become introspective.

  ‘I was the only one to make it, eh? I wonder why.’

  Standon regarded File steadily in the dim light. Once again that strange layer of emotion seemed to stir in him, lying somewhere below his features but not affecting the muscles or skin.

  ‘Because of your determination, Mr. File. Because whatever happens, somehow, you have the capacity to find a way out.’

  File left the building even more aware of his speculations than before. Appeltoft came with him, and the car whined smoothly towards the nearest air centre.

  He had a peg to hang his thoughts on now. The sequence of time … Yes, there was no doubt that the explanation of the titanic phenomena through which he was being driven lay in the sequence of time.

  Looking around him, he saw how literally true were the statements just given him by the ministers.

  After the formation of the Economic Community, into which all the European countries were finally joined, the continent’s capacity had accelerated fantastically. Economic development had soared so high that eventually it became necessary to buttress up the whole structure from underneath. Stage by stage, the buttresses had become more massive, until the Community was tied to the ground, a rigid unchangeable monster, humming and roaring with energy.

  Even the airy architectural promise of the previous century had not materialised. The constructions wheeling past the car had an appearance of Wagnerian heaviness, blocking out the sunlight.

  He turned to Appeltoft. ‘So in an hour I’ll be ten years in the future. Ridiculous statement!’

  Appeltoft laughed, as though to show he appreciated the paradox.

  ‘But tell me,’ File continued, ‘are you really so ignorant about time’s nature, and yet you can effect travel in it?’

  ‘We are not so ignorant about its nature, as about its structure and organisation,’ Appeltoft told him. ‘The equations which enable us to transmit through time give no clue to that—in fact they say that time has no sequence at all, which can hardly be possible.’

  Appeltoft paused. His manner towards File gave the latter cause to think that the scientist still resented not being allowed to be the first time traveller, though he was trying to hide it. File didn’t blame him. When a man has worked fanatically for something, it must be a blow to see a complete stranger take over the fruits of it.

  ‘There are two theories extant,’ Appeltoft eventually went on. ‘The first, and the one I favour, is the common-sense view—past, present, future, proceeding in an unending line and each even having a definite position on the line. Unfortunately the idea has not lent itself to any mathematical formulation.

  ‘The other idea, which some of my co-workers hold, goes like this: that time isn’t really a forward-moving flow at all. It exists as a constant: all things are actually happening at once, but human beings haven’t got the built-in perceptions to see it as such. Imagine a circular stage with a sequence of events going on round it, representing, say, periods in one man’s life. In that case they would be played by different actors, but in the actuality of time the same man plays all parts. According to this, an alteration in one scene has an effect on all subsequent scenes all the way round back to the beginning.’

  ‘So that time is cyclic—what you do in the future may influence your future past, as it were?’

  ‘If the theory is correct. Some formulations have been derived, but they don’t work very well. All we really know, is that we can deposit you into the future and probably bring you back.’

  ‘Probably! You’ve had failures?’

  ‘Thirty-three per cent of our test animals don’t return,’ Appeltoft said blithely.

  Once they were at the air centre, it took them less than an hour to reach the Geneva Research Complex. From the air receptor on the roof, Appeltoft conducted him nearly half a mile down to the underground laboratories. Finally, he pulled an old-fashioned key chain from the pocket, attached to which was a little radio key. As he pressed the stud a door swung open a few yards ahead.

  They entered a blue-painted chamber whose walls were lined with what looked like computer-program inlets. A number of white-robed technicians sat about, waiting.

  Occupying the centre of the room was a chair, mounted on a pedestal. A swivel arm held a small box with instrument dials on the external surfaces; but the most notable feature was the three translucent rods which seemed to ray out from just behind the chair, one going straight up and the other two at right angles, one on either side.

  The floor was covered with trestles supporting a network of helices and semiconductor electron channels, radiating out from the chair like a spider’s web. File found himself trying to interpret the set-up in the pseudoscientific jargon which was his way of understanding contemporary technology. Electrons … indeterminacy … what would the three rods be for?

  ‘T
his is the time-transmission apparatus,’ Appeltoft told him without preamble. ‘The actual apparatus itself will remain here in the present time. Only that chair, with you sitting in it, will make the time transference itself.’

  ‘So you will control everything from here?’

  ‘Not exactly. It will be a “powered flight”, so to speak, and you will carry the controls. But the power unit will remain here. We might be able to do something if the mission goes wrong—perhaps not. We probably won’t even know.

  ‘The three rods accompanying the chair represent the three spatial dimensions. As these rotate out of true space, time-motion will begin.’

  Stepping carefully across the trestles, they walked nearer to the chair. Appeltoft explained the controls and instruments. ‘This is your speed gauge—you’ve no way of controlling that, it’s all automatic. This switch here is Stop and Start—it’s marked, you’ll notice. And this one gives the point in time you occupy, in years, days, hours and seconds. Everything else is programmed for you. As you see, it reads Nil now. When you arrive, it will read Ten Years.’

  ‘Point in time, eh?’ File mused. ‘That could have two meanings according to what you’ve just told me.’

  Appeltoft nodded. ‘You’re astute. Pragmatically, my own view of straight-line time is closest to the operation of the time transmitter. It’s the easiest to grasp, anyway.’

  File studied the apparatus for nearly a minute without speaking. The silence dragged on. Though he wasn’t aware of it, strain was growing.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ Appeltoft snapped with sudden ferocity. ‘Get on the damned thing! We haven’t got all day!’

  File gave him a look of surprised reproof.

  Appeltoft sagged. ‘Sorry. If you know—how jealous I am of you. To be the first man with a chance to discover the secret of time! It’s the secret to the universe itself!’

  Well, File thought to himself, as he watched the young minister’s lean, intense face, if I had his determination I might have been a scientist and made discoveries for myself, instead of being a jacked-up dilettante. ‘A dilettante,’ he muttered aloud.