by Simon Hawke
"Science fiction," said Wells, pursing his lips thoughtfully. He smiled. "Something of a contradiction in terms, is it not?
You know, it's interesting that you should say that, because lately I have been giving a good deal of thought to writing some short fictional pieces with a sort of scientific slant. My editor, Harry Cush mentioned that Lewis Hind, the literary editor of the Gazette's supplement, the Budget. might be interested in just that sort of thing. Short
pieces that can be read in one sitting, you know. I had even given some thought to
resurrecting that old story you just mentioned. rewriting it perhaps, with an entirely different slant."
"How did you happen to come by it?" said Andre. "I mean, what suggested it to you?"
Wells frowned. “I honestly don't recall. Miss Cross. You see, for years, I had been seeking rare and precious topics, 'Rediscovery of the Unique!' 'The Universe Rigid!' The more I was rejected, the higher my shots had flown. All the time. as it turned out. I had been shooting over the target. All I had to do was lower my aim—and hit. To be quite honest. I found the secret only recently in a hook by J. M. Bathe, called When a Man's Single. One of the characters in Barrie's book spoke of a friend of his who managed to sell articles based upon the most insignificant and everyday occurrences—the repairing of a pipe, the selling of a pair of old flower pots to a hawker, that sort of thing—and I realized that here was the formula for my salvation. I had been quite ill, you see, and my incapacity forced me into giving up my teaching and looking elsewhere for my livelihood. Writing seemed to be the only recourse for a man in my condition. Thankfully, I am much improved now, but things have come to such a pass that I am presently earning more money with my articles than I ever did in my class teaching days. It all started with a simple little piece on staying at the seaside and I've been dashing them off ever since. Apparently, people like to read that sort of nonsense. Frankly, I am both amused and astonished that my work should have attracted sonic scholarly interest . . . but 'The Chronic Argonauts,' of all things! How on earth did you manage to stumble upon it?"
"Our library collects a wide variety of periodicals. Mr. Wells," Delaney said. "We were quite intrigued by what you might call some of the metaphysical implications in your story, unfinished though it was. We were anxious to discuss some of your ideas with you and. when circumstances brought us to England, we thought we would try to look you up."
Wells shook his head and chuckled. "Metaphysics? I am afraid that 1 cannot be of much help to you people in your ... uh. researches. I have sonic slight scientific training. true, but the idea of traveling through time is ludicrous, of course. Only a crank would take such a thing seriously."
He paused for a moment and cleared his throat uneasily. "Of course, I am not suggesting for a moment that you are cranks, you understand. Who is to say what strange courses will not lead to scientific knowledge? Science is a match that man has just got alight. And it is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary sputter is over and the flame burns up clear, for us to see only our hands illuminated and just a glimpse of ourselves and the patch we stand on visible, and all around us . . . darkness still." Wells smiled. "A slight paraphrase from my own 'Rediscovery of the Unique.' "
Has anyone else, that is, besides Mr. Cast at the Gazette, spoken to you of such matters?" said Andre. "Glimpses into the future of scientific endeavor such as traveling through time or biological experimentation?"
"What manner of biological experimentation?" Wells said, frowning faintly.
"Well, purely fictional, of course," said Andre. "The sort of thing one might make a story of. Examining the social implications of scientific discoveries, for example."
“Ah. I see. How very fascinating that a woman should be interested in such things. You arc, I perceive, one of these progressive women. Mind you, I entirely approve. Above all. I respect intelligence in women. Especially the intelligence to strive for social reform. I regard the idea of women in the work force. treated equally, as absolutely essential to our progress. But then I perceive that I am straying from your question. No. I do not recall discussing such ideas with anyone in particular. Such things as traveling through time I regard as useful fictional devices, tricks whereby one might pretend to look ahead and sec where our present course may lead. as you suggest. However, I must confess that I am still somewhat at a loss as to what your specific interest in all of this may be."
"Well, there is a . . . colleague of ours," said Steiger, "a Mr. NikolaiDrakov, who has been pursuing some rather, well. I
suppose you would think them farfetched experiments in the physical sciences. We thought perhaps you might have met him. "
"Drakov. A Russian gentleman?"
Delaney leaned forward intently. "You have met him?"
"No, no. I was merely commenting upon the name," said Wells. "No, it is entirely unfamiliar to me. Do you mean to tell me that Ihave inadvertently touched upon an actual topic of scientific research'? With a story such as 'The Chronic Argo- nauts"? It seems truly difficult to believe."
"Well, not specifically. Mr. Wells." said Delaney. "Let us say that you have strayed close to a somewhat peripheral field of study that our colleague is engaged in. However, it seems to have been purely coincidental."
"Indeed! How very odd! And how very intriguing. Tell me. is it possible that I might meet this Mr. Drakov?"
"Regrettably," said Delaney. "we have no idea of his current whereabouts. You
see, Mr. Wells, it is a somewhat delicate matter and, well, if we may speak quite
confidentially . ."
"By all means," said Wells. puzzled.
"Professor Drakov has been pursuing research that is quite esoteric and frankly, more than a little dangerous. Ithas not been very well received and it has caused him some difficulties that resulted in his disappearance. He had been working very hard, you see, and we have some reason to suspect that he has suffered some distress, a lapse, if you will, which caused him to feel persecuted and well— " -
"You are concerned about your missing colleague. about his health, and you are seeking information as to his whereabouts," said Wells. "And something in what I have written led you to believe that I may have discussed certain ideas with him'?"
"Apparently, we were wrong," said Steiger. "We're sorry to have taken up so much of your time. Mr. Wells."
“Think nothing of it," Wells said. "I regret that I could not be of assistance to you. but I have never met the gentleman and this is the first time that I have ever heard his name. You have reason to believe that he may seek me out?"
"We think it's possible that he may come here," said Andre. "And we are quite concerned for him. I suppose it is an unlikely possibility, but if by chance he should contact you, Mr. Wells, he may seem quite lucid, but if you were to humor him, andperhaps inform us confidentially—
"Without letting him know that I have spoken with you?" Wells said.
"We merely wish to sec that he receives the proper attention," Steiger said. "Or to satisfy ourselves that he has fully recovered from his collapse."
"I see. Well. I suppose there is no harm in it. How long will you remain in London?"
"Until wehave completed our inquiries," said Steiger. "In any event, we will leave word where we can be reached at the Hotel Metropole. where we are staying."
"Well, if I should hear from your friend. I will certainly let you know." said Wells.
"Thank you," said Andre. "And now we really should leave you to your work."
Wells escorted them out.
"What was that about?" said Jane, after they had left.
"Most peculiar," he said. "Something about a crank professor involved in some sort of mysterious research and disappearing after suffering a breakdown. They thought I might have knowledge of him because of something they had read in one of my stories. Something which apparently by coincidence touched upon the nature of his research. I can't imagine what that might be: they were quite reticent about it. Very s
trange, indeed." He shook his head. "It seems that one of the hazards of the writing profession is that one attracts all manner of disquieting individuals. I must be sure to speak to Cust and instruct him not to give out my address."
"Well, that wasa waste of time," said Steiger as they rode in their coach back to the hotel. It would be another year before Frederick Lanchester produced the first English four-wheeled car and Herbert Austin began to build his design in Birming- ham. The traffic in London was still predominantly horse- driven, although there were quite a few bicycles and many chose to travel by rail in the underground. The Industrial Resolution was still relatively young.
Finn Delaney took off his top hat, loosened his tic and unbuttoned the bottom of his waistcoat. He looked at Steiger with amazement. "You call having an opportunity to meet H. G. Wells a waste of time?"
"I'm not as overwhelmed by literary celebrities as you seem to be," said Steiger wryly, "especially when they're teatime socialists. Besides, I was referring to the fact that we're no closer to finding Drakov than we were when we started this wild goose chase. If you ask me, we're really reaching this time."
"You didn't seem to think so when General Forrester suggested the idea," said Andre. Of the three, she was clearly the most uncomfortable. She did not appreciate the tightly constricted waists of late Victorian female fashions, so necessary to the highly desired "hourglass look." She preferred clothes that provided greater freedom of movement and she found the fashions of the Victorian era too tight in some places and too long and loose in others. She also did not care for the style which called for her to wear her hair up and she absolutely loathed the hats.
"Okay," said Steiger. "I'll admit I thought it was an interesting coincidence that he wrote about time travel in The Time Machine and biological experimentation that sounded a bit like genetic engineering in The Island of Dr. Moreau, but that doesn't mean Wells had contact with people from the future."
"It's a rather uncomfortable coincidence that the scientist Drakov abducted from the Special Operations Group's genetics project is also named Moreau," said Delaney. "And that the beast-men Wells wrote about happen to resemble some of Moreau's genetically engineered creations. The point is that Wells hasn't yet rewritten 'The Chronic Argonauts.' The Time Machine will not be published for another year and The Island of Dr. Moreau did not appear until 1896. I think the Old Man was right. We need
to satisfy ourselves that there was no temporal contamination involved in Wells' writing
those stories."
"And by doing that, temporal contamination is exactly what we risk," said Steiger. He sighed. "Look, don't get me wrong, I respect Forrester and I thought this was a good idea at first, but I think Drakov has become an obsession with him. He once had a chance to kill him and he didn't do it, because he couldn't kill his own son. I'm not blaming him for that he couldn't have known what it would lead to, but the trouble is he's blaming himself and he won't let up. Something like that has to affect a man's judgment. I don't think contacting Wells was very smart. For all we know, Wells had forgotten all about that story. How do we know he didn't start thinking about it again as a result of our having brought it up? Okay, if that's the case, then no real harm's been done. After all. The Time Machine was written and WC didn't actually change anything. Maybe all we did was provide some reinforcement. But unnecessary contact with people who are influential in their time periods is risky. Wry risky. Ithink its better just to have him watched discreetly."
"We can do that," said Delaney, "but I think it's also important to establish contact. We need to be in a position of maximum effectiveness if Drakov shows up and causes a temporal disruption. Wells is going to become a pivotal figure in this time period. He's going to have contact with people like Einstein, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin--"
"As Irecall, he found a lot to admire in Stalin," Steiger said dryly."Only one of history's greatest butchers."
"We know that," Delaney said, "hut Wells didn't. Don't forget, Roosevelt also found a lot to admire in Stalin at first. At the time, a lot of people thought he represented real hope for Russia. Dismissing Wells as a 'teatime socialist' is doing the man a real injustice. Creed. He was against Fascism and he was the first to Warn the world of the dangers of atomic warfare. And he also had the nerve to warn Stalin. to his face, that stifling dissent and instituting class warfare would do Russia a great deal of harm. He realized that the United States and the Soviet Union would become the superpowers of the 20th century and he was concerned about the effect of Stalin's policies not only on his own people, but also on world opinion. As Wells saw it. the United States and the Soviet Union had the same long-term goals—social progress— and their means of reaching those goals were also the same—industrialization. It made sense to him that the two nations should work together, only he saw that what Stalin was doing was pushing them further and further apart."
"He was hopelessly naïve” said Steiger patiently. "He was one of those socialists who had this great dream of a world state, a utopia where everybody pulled together in the name of the common good. It always worries me when people start talking about 'the common good.' Once they start talking about it, they haven't got very
far to go before they start passing laws for 'the common good.' Unfortunately, no one
ever seems to agree on what 'the common good' is. The Council of Nations is a perfect example. A thousand years later and they're still trying to figure it out. That's how the Time Wars came about, remember? Present the present, fight your battles in the past; it's for 'the common good.' Notice how well that worked out? Seems to me somebody else in the 20th century had a great idea for a 'world state.' It was what Hitler called the Third Reich, wasn't it?"
"Oh, come on," Delaney said. "Wells wasn't talking about that kind of world state. He dreamed about a race of supermen, a sort of modern Samurai, but he wasn't talking about anything like Hitler's master race. His modern Samurai was an analogy for the type of people we are, educated and technologically sophisticated citizens of a democratic society. He foresaw a great deal of what actually did happen, a shrinking world, growing interdependence based on technology. He wrote about it in When the Sleeper Awakes, imagining a world in which everything was bigger and more crowded,
there was more air transportation, more diversified and bigger economic speculation. He wrote about the future in A Story of Days to Come and A Dream of Armageddon and Anticipations. That 'teatime socialist,' as you call him, that young man who seems so
happy right now to have found the secret of writing hack journalism successfully. later saw the future almost as clearly as if he had traveled there himself. Doesn't that make you wonder?"
"Maybe it would if he was a bit more accurate in his predictions," Steiger said. "That socialist 'world state' he was dreaming of, for example. It never did happen."
"Didn't it?" Delaney said. "To someone from this time period, our society might look a great deal like a socialist world state. In his autobiography, Wells wrote that one of the things he wanted most was to see a new form of education, particularly new ways of teaching old subjects. He was the first to envision something he called the subject of Human Ecology, where history wasn't taught from a perspective of memorizing useless facts and dates. but from an analytical standpoint, making it relevant to social movement. As he put it, "the end of all intelligent analysis is to clear the way for synthesis." He felt that only a sound analysis of history could bring it into context with current affairs and enable the forecasting of probable developments. As he put it; looking at life not as a system of consequences, but as a system of constructive effort. He was talking about Futurism, Creed, a field that didn't even begin to come into its own until the late 20th century! He was one of the first writers to recognize that there would be a change brought about in human relationships and human endeavors by increased facilities of communication. When McLuhan said the same thing in the 1960s, everybody thought it was an incredibly original insight, Because he called himse
lf a socialist, Wells has been misjudged by history, criticized as being naive. In fact, he was among the first of the so-called socialists to attack Marxism, because he believed that it was based on a medieval approach, ignoring the use of scientific
imagination.
"Look at the world he came from," Delaney said, gesturing outside the coach window. "A society built around a rigid class structure, the beginnings of industrialization in a world where illiteracy was the rule rather than the exception. People in this society were criticized when they tried to rise above their class, their 'station' in life. Wells realized that an industrial society built on a class system would have to wind up exploiting an uneducated working class. In this time period, the only visible alternative to that was socialism Phis was a time of labor demonstrations and riots. Wells was responding to the temper of the times. He didn't sec how the system of weekly wages employment could change into a method of salary and pension without some son of national plan of social development. Socialism seemed to offer an answer."
