second launch into time! Finding some sort of theoretical structure to explain things was as important to me as finding solid ground beneath his feet might be to a drowning man; though what practical application we might make of all this I could not yet imagine.
And — it occurred to me — if Nebogipfel was right, perhaps I was
Now the smoking-room door clattered open, and in bustled Filby. It was not yet nine in the morning; Filby was unwashed and unshaven, and a battered dressing gown clung to his frame. He said to me: “There’s a visitor for you. That scientist chap from the Air Ministry Bond mentioned…”
I pushed back my chair and stood. Nebogipfel returned to his studies, and Moses looked up at me, his hair still tousled. I regarded him with some concern; I was beginning to realize that he was taking all this dislocation in time quite hard. “Look,” I said to him, “it seems I have to go to work. Why don’t you come with me? I’d appreciate your insights.”
He smiled without humor. “
“But I’d like your company… After all, this may be your future. Don’t you think you’ll be better off if you stir yourself a bit?
His eyes were deep, and I thought I recognized that longing for home which was so strong in me. “Not today. There will be time… perhaps tomorrow.” He nodded to me. “Be careful.”
I could think of no more to say — not then.
I let Filby lead me to the hall. The man waiting for me at the open front door was tall and ungainly, with a shock of rough, graying hair. A trooper stood in the street behind him.
When the tall chap saw me, he stepped forward with a boyish clumsiness incongruous in such a big man. He addressed me by name, and pumped my hand; he had strong, rather battered hands, and I realized that this was a practical experimenter — perhaps a man after my own heart! “I’m glad to meet you so glad,” he said. “I work on assignment to the DChronW that’s the Directorate of Chronic-Displacement Warfare, of the Air Ministry.” His nose was straight, his features thin, and his gaze, behind wire-rimmed spectacles, was frank. He was clearly a civilian, for, beneath the universal epaulets and gas-mask cache, he wore a plain, rather dowdy suit, with a striped tie and yellowing shirt beneath. He had a numbered badge on his lapel. He was perhaps fifty years old.
“I’m pleased,” I said. “Although I fear your face isn’t familiar…”
“Why on earth should it be? I was just eight years old when your prototype CDV departed for the future… I apologize! — that’s ’Chronic Displacement Vehicle.’ You may get the hang of all these acronyms of ours — or perhaps not! I never have; and they say Lord Beaverbrook himself struggles to remember all the Directorates under his Ministry.
“I’m not well-known — not nearly so famous as you! Until a while ago, I worked as nothing more grand than Assistant Chief Designer for the Vickers-Armstrong Company, in the Weybridge Bunker. When my proposals on Time Warfare began to get some notice, I was seconded to the headquarters of the DChronW, here at Imperial. Look,” he said seriously, “I really am so glad you’re here — it’s a remarkable chance that brought you. I believe that we — you and I — could forge a partnership that might change History — that might resolve this damned War forever!”
I could not help but shudder, for I had had my fill of changing History already. And this talk of Time Warfare — the thought of my machine, which had already done so much damage, deployed deliberately for destruction! The idea filled me with a deep dread, and I was unsure how to proceed.
“Now — where shall we talk?” he asked. “Would you like to retire to my room at Imperial? I have some papers which—”
“Later,” I said. “Look — this may seem odd to you — but I’m still newly arrived here, and I’d appreciate seeing a little more of your world. Is that possible?”
He brightened. “Of course! We can have our talk on the way.” He glanced over his shoulder at the soldier, who nodded his permission.
“Thank you,” I said, “Mr.—”
“Actually, it’s Dr. Wallis,” he said. “Barnes Wallis.”
[6]
Hyde Park
Imperial College, it turned out, was situated in South Kensington — it was a few minutes’ walk from Queen’s Gate Terrace. The College had been founded a little after my time, in 1907, from three principal constituent colleges, with which I was familiar: they were the Royal College of Chemistry, the Royal School of Mines and the City and Guilds College. As it happened, in my younger days I had done a little teaching at the Normal School of Science, which had also been absorbed into Imperial; and, emerging now into South Kensington, I was reminded of how I had made the most of my time in London, with many visits to the delights of such establishments as the Empire, Leicester Square. At any rate, I had got to know the area well — but what a transformation I found now!
We walked out through Queen’s Gate Terrace towards the College, and then turned up Queen’s Gate to Kensington Gore, at the southern edge of Hyde Park. We were escorted by a half-dozen soldiers — quite discreet, for they moved about us in a rough circle — but I wondered at the size of the force that might be brought down on us if anything went awry. It did not take long before the sticky heat started to sap my strength — it was like being in a large, hot building — and I took off my jacket and loosened my tie. On Wallis’s advice, I clipped my heavy epaulets to my shirt, and reattached my gas-mask bag to my trouser-belt.
The streets were much transformed, and it struck me that not all the changes between my day and this had been for ill. The banishment of the insanitary horse, the smoke of domestic fires and the fumes of the motorcar — all for reasons of the quality of the air under the Dome — had resulted in a certain freshness about the place. In the major avenues, the roadway was surfaced over by a new, more resilient, glassy material, kept clean by a chain of workmen who pushed about trolley-carts fixed with brushes and sprinklers. The roads were crowded with bicycles, rickshaws and electrical trams, guided by wires which hissed and sparked blue flashes in the gloom; but there were new ways for pedestrians, called the Rows, which ran along the front of the houses at the height of the first storey — and on the second or even third storeys in some places. Bridges, light and airy, ran across the roads to join up these Rows at frequent intervals, giving London — even in this Stygian darkness — something of an Italian look.
Moses later saw a little more of the life of the city than I did, and he reported bustling shops in the West End — despite the privations of the War — and new theaters around Leicester Square, with frontages of reinforced porcelain, and the whole glowing with reflections and illuminated advertisements. But the plays performed were of a dull, educational or improving variety, Moses complained, with two theaters given over to nothing but a perpetual cycle of Shakespeare’s plays.
Wallis and I came past the Royal Albert Hall, which I have always regarded as a monstrosity — a pink hatbox! In the obscurity of the Dome, this pile was picked out by a row of brilliant light beams (projected by
Wallis kept up a descriptive chatter as we walked. He was good enough company, and I began to realize that he was indeed the sort of man who — in a different History — I might have called a friend.
I remembered Hyde Park as a civilized place: attractive and calm, with its wide walkways and its scattering of trees. Some of the features I had known were still there — I recognized the copper-green cupola of the Bandstand, where I could hear a choir of Welsh miners singing hymns in gusty unison — but this version of the Park was a place of shadows, broken by islands of illumination around lamp-standards. The grass was gone — dead, no doubt, as soon as the sun was occluded — and much of the bare earth had been covered with sheets of timber. I asked Wallis why the Park had not simply been given over to concrete; he gave me to understand that Londoners liked to believe that one day the ugly Dome over their city could safely be demolished, and their home restored to the beauty it had once known — Parks and all.
One part of the Park, near the Bandstand, had been given over to a sort of shanty-town. There were tents, hundreds of them, clustered around crude concrete buildings which turned out to be communal kitchens and bath-houses. Adults, children and dogs picked across the dry, hard-trodden ground between the tents, making their way through the endless, dull processes of living.
“Poor old London has soaked up a lot of refugees in recent years,” Wallis explained. “The population density is so much higher than it was… and yet there’s useful work for them all. They do suffer in those tents, though — and yet there’s nowhere else to keep them.”
Now we cut off Lancaster Walk and approached the Round Pond at the heart of the Park. This had once been an attractive, uncluttered feature, offering a fine view of Kensington Palace. The Pond was still there, but fenced off; Wallis told me it served as a reservoir to serve the needs of the increased populace. And of the Palace there was only a shell, evidently bombed-out and abandoned.
We stopped at a stand, and were served rather warm lemonade. The crowds milled about, some on bicycles. There was a game of football going on in one corner, with gas-masks piled up to serve as posts; I even heard speckles of laughter. Wallis told me that people would still turn out to the Speakers’ Corner, to hear the Salvation Army, the National Secular Society, the Catholic Evidence Guild, the Anti-Fifth Column League (who waged a campaign against spies, traitors and anyone who might give comfort to the enemy), and so forth.
This was the happiest I had seen people in this benighted time; save for the universal epaulets and masks — and the deadness of the ground beneath, and that awful, looming Roof over all our heads — this might have been a Bank Holiday crowd from any age, and I was struck again by the resilience of the human spirit.
[7]
The Babble Machine
To the north of the Round Pond rows of dingy canvas deck-chairs had been set out, for the use of those wishing to view the news projected on the roof above us. The chairs were mostly occupied; Wallis paid an attendant — the coins were metal tokens, much smaller than the currency of my day — and we settled in two seats with our heads tipped back.
Our silent soldier-attendants moved into place around us, watching us and the crowd.
Dusty fingers of light reached up from Aldis lamps situated (Wallis said) in Portland Place, and splashed gray and white tones across the roof. Amplified voices and music washed down over the passive crowd. The Roof had been white-washed hereabouts and so the kinematographic images were quite sharp. The first sequence showed a thin, rather wild-looking man shaking hands with another, and then posing beside what looked like a pile of bricks; the voices were not quite lined up with the movements of the mouths, but the music was stirring, and the general effect was easy to follow.
Wallis leaned over to me. “We’re in luck! — it is a feature on Imperial College. That’s Kurt Godel — a young scientist from Austria. You may meet him. We managed to retrieve Godel recently from the Reich; apparently he wished to defect because he has some crazy notion that the Kaiser is dead, and has been replaced by an impostor… Rather an odd chap, between you and me, but a great mind.”
“Why, yes.” He looked at me curiously. “How do you know about that? — It’s after your time. Well,” he said, “it’s not his achievements in mathematical philosophy we want him for. We’ve put him in touch with
“And the brick construction beside him? What’s that?”
“Oh, an experiment.” He glanced around with caution. “I shouldn’t say too much — it’s only on the Babble for a bit of show. It’s all to do with
