Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  ‘Eh?’ Appeltoft said. ‘Well, come on, let’s get it done.’

  File climbed into the seat built into the back of the chair. Camera lenses peered over his shoulders. ‘You know what to look for?’ Appeltoft asked finally.

  ‘As much as anybody. Besides—I want to go as much as you do.’

  ‘All right then. Capacity’s built up. Press the switch to Start. It will automatically revert to Stop at the end of the journey.’

  File obeyed. At first, nothing happened. Then he got the impression that the translucent rods, which he could see out of the corners of his eyes, were rotating clockwise, though they didn’t seem to change their positions. At the same time, the room appeared to spin in the opposite direction—again, it was movement without change of position.

  The effect was entirely like having drunk too much, and File felt dizzy. He pulled his eyes to the speed gauge. One minute per minute-marking time! One and a half, two …

  With a weird flickering effect the laboratory vanished. He was in a neutral grey fog, left only with sensation.

  The first sensation was that he was taking part in the rotating movement—being steadily canted to the left. As his angle to the vertical increased, the second sensation increased: a rushing momentum, a gathering speed towards a nameless destination.

  000001.146.15.0073—the numbers slipped into place, swiftly towards the right-hand side, slowly towards the left. 000002 … 3 … 4…5…6…7…

  Then the nausea returned, the feeling of being spun round—the other way, now. Light dazzled his eyes.

  000010.000.00.0000.

  When he grew used to it, the light was really dim. He was still in the laboratory, but it was deserted, illuminated by emergency lights glowing weakly in the ceiling. It was not in ruins, and there was no sign of violence, but the place had obviously been empty for some time.

  Climbing down from the chair, he went to the door, used the radio key which Appeltoft had given him, went through, and closed it behind him. He walked along the corridor and through the other departments.

  The whole complex shouldn’t be deserted after only ten years. Something drastic must have happened.

  He frowned, annoyed at himself. Of course it had. That was why he was here.

  The high-level streets of Geneva were equally deserted. He could see the tops of mountains in the distance, poking between metallic roadways. The drone of the city was missing. There was some noise to be heard, but it was muted and irregular.

  As he mounted an interlevel ramp he saw one or two figures, mostly alone. He had never seen so few people. Perhaps the quickest way to find out what was going on would be to locate the library and read up some recent history. It might give a clue, anyway.

  He reached the building which pushed up through several layers of deserted street. A huge black sign hung over the main entrance.

  It said: MEN ONLY.

  Puzzled, File entered the cool half-light and approached the wary young man at the inquiry desk.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and jumped as the man produced a squat gun from under the counter and levelled it at him.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to consult recent texts dealing with the development of Europe in the last ten years,’ File said.

  The young man grinned with his thin lips. The gun held steady, he said, ‘Development?’

  ‘I’m a serious student—all I want to do is look up some information.’

  The young man put away the gun and with one hand pressed the buttons of an index system. He took two cards out and handed them to File.

  ‘Fifth floor, room 543. Here’s the key. Lock the door behind you. Last week a gang of women broke through the barricades and tried to burn us down. They like their meat pre-cooked, eh?’

  File frowned at him but said nothing. He went to the elevator. The young man called, ‘For a student you don’t know much about this library. That elevator hasn’t worked for four years. The women control all the main power sources these days.’

  Still in a quandary, File walked up to the fifth floor, found the room he wanted, unlocked the door, entered, and locked it behind him.

  Seating himself before the viewer, he pressed the appropriate buttons on the panel before him, and the pages started to appear on the screen.

  Hmmm … Let’s see … Investigations of Dalmeny Foundation Members.

  Paper VII: partial results of the Bavarian Experiment…

  —Civil war imminent, the Council temporarily averted it by promising that thorough research would be made into every claim for a solution to the problems of over-compression. This, as we know now, was a stonewalling action since they later admitted they had been incapable of predicting the outcome of any trend. The faction, one of the most powerful headed by the late Stefan Untermeyer, demanded that they be allowed to conduct a controlled experiment.

  —Unable to stall any longer, the Council reluctantly agreed, and a large part of Bavaria was set aside so that the plans of the Untermeyer faction could be implemented. This plan necessitated sexual segregation. Men and women were separated and each given an intensive psycho conditioning to hate the opposite sex. Next, acts were passed making contact with the opposite sex punishable by death. This act had to be enforced frequently, although not as frequently as originally had been thought. Ironically, Untermeyer was one of the first to be punished under the act.

  —It is difficult these days, to make a clear assessment of the results of this experiment (which so quickly got out of hand and resulted in the literal war between the sexes, which now exists with cannibalism so prevalent, each sex regarding it as lawful to eat a member of the other) but it is obvious that measures for reassimilation have so far met with little success and that, since this creed has now spread through Germany, Scandinavia and elsewhere, an incredible depletion of life in Northern Europe is likely. In the long run, of course, repopulation will result as the roving hordes from France and Spain press northwards. Europe, having collapsed, is ready for conquest, and when the squabblings of America and the United East are ended, either by bloodshed or peaceful negotiation, Europe’s only salvation may be in coming under the sway of one of these powers. However, as we know, both these powers have similar problems to those of Europe in its last days of sanity.

  File pursed his lips, consulted the other card and pressed a fresh series of buttons.

  Nobody could have predicted this. But by the look of it there’s more to come. Let’s see what this is…FINDINGS OF THE VINER COMMITTEE FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION IN SOUTHERN EUROPE …

  —The terms of reference of the Committee were as follows; to investigate the disintegration of the pre-experimental European society in Southern Europe and to suggest measures for reorganising the society into an operating whole.

  —Briefly, as is generally known, the European Council gave permission for the Population Phasing Group to conduct an experiment in Greece. This Group, using the principles of suspended animation discovered a few years earlier by Batchovski, instituted total birth control and placed three-quarters of the population of Greece into suspended animation, the other quarter being thought sufficient to run public and social services and so on, reasoning, quite rationally it seemed, that in this way further population explosion would be averted, less overcrowding would result and the pace of our society could be relaxed. After a given time, the first quarter would go into suspended animation and be replaced by the next quarter and so on. This phasing process did seem to be the most reasonable solution to the Problem of Europe, as it was called.

  —However, in ridding the population of claustrophobia, the system produced an effect of extreme agoraphobia. The people, being used to living close together, became restless, and the tension which had preceded the introduction of the PPG Experiment was turned into new channels. Mobs, exhibiting signs of extreme neurosis, completely insensate and deaf to all reason, attacked what was called the SA Vaults and demanded the release of their rel
atives and friends. The authorities attempted to argue with them but, in the turmoil which followed, were either killed or forced to flee. Unable to operate the machines keeping the rest of the population in suspended animation, the mobs destroyed them, killing the people they had intended to reawaken.

  —When the Committee reached Southern Europe, they found a declining society. Little attempt had been made to retrieve the situation, people were living in the vast depopulated conurbations in little groups, fighting off the influx of roaming bands from France, Spain and Italy, where earlier a religious fanatic had, quite unexpectedly, started a jihad against the automated, but workable, society. This ‘back to nature’ movement snowballed. Power installations were destroyed, and millions of tons of earth were imported from Africa to spread over the ruins. In the chaos which ensued, people fought and squabbled over what little food could be grown in the unproductive earth where it had been imported and in the Holiday Spaces. Britain, already suffering from the effects of this breakdown and unable to obtain sufficient supplies to feed its own population properly, had begun sending aid but had been forced to give up this measure and look to its own problems—the sudden spread of an unknown disease, similar to typhus, which was found to have come from Yugoslavia refugees who had themselves suffered badly from the introduction of a synthetic food product which contained the germs. By the time we reached Southern Europe, the social services all over the continent had disintegrated and only the Dalmeny Foundation (which had commissioned us) and half a dozen less well organised groups were managing to maintain any kind of academic activity…

  As File read on through the depressing texts, he felt the blood leave his face. At length he had checked and rechecked the documents; he sat back and contemplated.

  The blundering nature of the experiments appalled him. Nothing could be a better confirmation of what he had been told at the Cabinet Meeting, and it made him doubt, now, that anything at all could be done to avert the calamity. If men were so blind and foolish, could even Appeltoft’s incisive mind save them? Even supposing he succeeded in making a clear, workable analysis of the science of events from the information File had obtained …

  That part of it was out of his hands, he realised, and perhaps Appeltoft’s confidence stood for something. Impatiently he rushed back to the laboratory, mounted the chair of the time machine, and pressed the switch to Start. 000009.000.00.0003 …

  Soon there was a grey mist surrounding him as before. Rotation and momentum began to impress themselves on his senses.

  Then his gauges jigged and danced, clicked and tumbled insanely.

  009000.100.02.0000 000175.000.03-0800

  630946.020.44.1125 …

  Something had gone wrong. Desperately he tried to stop the machine and inspect the controls. Every dial registered noughts now.

  But the laboratory was gone. He was surrounded by darkness.

  He was in limbo.

  000000.000.00.0000.

  File did not know how long he sped through the emptiness. Gradually, the mistiness began to return, then, after what seemed an interminable time, a flurry of impressions spun round his eyes.

  At last, the time machine came to a halt, but he did not pause to see what was around him. He pressed the Start switch again.

  Nothing happened. File inspected all the dials in turn, casting a long look at one which, as Appeltoft had told him, registered the machine’s ‘time-potential’ —that is, its capacity to travel through time.

  The hand was at zero. He was stranded.

  Thirty-three per cent of our test animals don’t return. Appeltoft’s remark slipped sardonically into his memory.

  The cameras behind his shoulders were humming almost imperceptibly as they recorded the screen on microtape. Bleakly, File lifted his head and took stock of his surroundings.

  The sight was beautiful but alien. The landscape consisted of sullen orange dust, over which roamed what looked like clouds—purple masses rolling and drifting over the surface of the desert. On the horizon of this barren scene, the outlines of grotesque architecture were visible. Or were they just natural formations?

  He glanced upwards. There were no clouds in the sky; evidently they were too dense to float in free air. A small sun hung low, red in a deep-blue sky where stars were faintly visible.

  His heart was beating rapidly; as he noticed this, he realised that he was breathing more deeply than usual, every third breath almost a gasp. Was he so far removed from his own time that even the atmosphere was different?

  Skrrak! The sound came with a brittle, frail quality over the thin air. File turned his head, startled.

  A group of bipeds was advancing; straggling on bony, delicate limbs through knee-deep strata of purple clouds which rolled in masses a few hundred yards away. They were humanoid, but skeletal, ugly, and clearly not human. The leader, who was over seven feet tall, was shouting and pointing at File and the machine.

  Another waved his hands: ‘Sa Skrrak—dek svala yaal! ‘

  The group, about ten in number, carried long slim spears, and their torsos and legs were covered with scrubby hair. Their triangular heads had huge ridges of bone over and under the eyes so that they seemed to be wearing helmets. Thin hair swirled around their heads as they came closer, proceeding cautiously as if in slow motion.

  As they approached, File saw that some of them carried curious rifle-like weapons, and the leader bore a box-shaped instrument with a lens structure on one side, which he was pointing in his direction.

  File felt the warmth of a pale-green beam and tried to dodge it. But the alien creature skilfully kept it trained on him.

  After a second or two, a buzzing set up in his brain; fantastic colours engulfed his mind, separating out into waves of white and gold. Then geometric patterns flared behind his eyes. Then words—at first in his brain and then in his ears.

  ‘Strange one, what is your tribe?’

  He was hearing the guttural language of the alien— and understanding it. The creature touched a switch on the top of the box, and the beam flicked off.

  ‘I am from another time,’ File said without emphasis.

  The warriors shifted their weapons uneasily. The leader nodded, a stiff gesture, as if his bone structure did not permit easy movement. ‘That would be an explanation.’

  ‘Explanation?’

  ‘I am conversant with all the tribes, and you do not correspond to any of them.’ The warrior shifted his great head to give the horizon a quick scrutiny. ‘We are the Yulk. Unless you intend to depart immediately, you had best come with us.’

  ‘But my machine …’

  ‘That also we will take. You will not wish it to be destroyed by the Raxa, who do not permit the existence of any creature or artifact save themselves.’

  File debated for some moments. The chair and its three rods were easily portable, but was it wise to move them?

  Idly, he moved the useless Start switch again. Damn! Since the machine no longer worked, what difference did it make if he moved it to the Moon? And yet to go off with these alien creatures when his only objective was to return to the Geneva Complex seemed the most obvious absurdity.

  A sick feeling of failure came over him. He was beginning to realise that he was never going to get back to Geneva. The scientists had known that there was some fault in their time-transmission methods; now, he knew, the chair with its three rods had lost all touch with the equipment in the laboratory. It was, in fact, no longer a time machine, and that meant he was doomed to stay here for the rest of his life.

  Helplessly he gave his consent. A quartet of warriors picked up the chair, and the party set off across the ochre desert, glancing warily about it as they travelled.

  They skirted round the moving clouds wherever they could, but sometimes the banks of purple vapor swept over them, borne by the wide movements of the travelling breeze, and they stumbled through a vermilion fog. File noticed that the alien beings kept a tight hold on their weapons when this happened. What
was it they feared? Even in this desolated and near-empty world, strife and dramas played themselves out.

  An hour’s journey brought them to a settlement of tents clustered on a low hillside. A carefully cultivated plot of some wretched vegetation grew over about half the hill, as though only just managing to maintain itself in the sterile desert. Tethered over the camp were five floating vessels, each about a hundred feet long, graceful machines with stubby, oblate sterns and tapered bows. A short open deck projected aft atop each vessel and the forward parts were laced with windows.

  File’s gaze lingered on these craft. They contrasted oddly with the plainly nomadic living quarters below, cured animal hides with weak fires flickering among them.

  A meal had just been prepared. File’s time machine was taken to an empty tent, and he was invited to eat with the chief. As he entered the largest tent of the settlement and saw the nobility of this small tribe gathered round a vegetable stewpot with their weapons beside them, he knew what it was they reminded him of.

  Lizards.

  They began to eat from glass bowls. It seemed these people knew how to work the silicates of the desert as well as build flying ships— if they had not stolen them from some more advanced people.

  In the course of the meal, File also discovered that the machine the warrior had trained on him in the desert was 100 per cent efficient. He had been completely re-educated to talk and think in another language, even though he could, if he chose, detach himself slightly, hear the strangeness of the sounds which came from both his mouth and those of the Yulk.

  The chief’s name was Gzerhtcak, an almost impossible sound to European ears. As they ate, he answered File’s questions in unemotional tones.

  From what he was told, he imagined that this was an Earth in old age, an Earth millions, perhaps billions of years ahead of his own time, and it was nearly all desert. There were about eight tribes living within a radius of a few hundred miles, and when they were not squabbling among themselves they were fighting a never-ending struggle for existence both with the ailing conditions of a dying world, and with the