Helen said, “Ultimately, that’s related to spin. And it’s down to the mass of the neutrino that we can tunnel between sectors. But I’ll need to draw you some diagrams and equations to explain it all properly.”
Robert didn’t press her for more; he had no choice but to trust that she wouldn’t desert him. He staggered on in silence, a wonderful ache of anticipation building in his chest. If someone had put this situation to him hypothetically, he would have piously insisted that he’d prefer to toil on at his own pace.
But despite the satisfaction it had given him on the few occasions when he’d made genuine discoveries himself, what mattered in the end was understanding as much as you could,however you could. Better to ransack the past and the future than go through life in a state of willful ignorance.
“You said you’ve come to change things?”
She nodded. “I can’t predict the future here, of course, but there are pitfalls in my own past that I can help you avoid. In my twentieth century, people discovered things too slowly. Everything changed much too slowly. Between us, I think we can speed things up.”
Robert was silent for a while, contemplating the magnitude of what she was proposing. Then he said, “It’s a pity you didn’t come sooner. In this branch, about twenty years ago-”
Helen cut him off. “I know. We had the same war. The same Holocaust, the same Soviet death toll. But we’ve yet to be able to avert that, anywhere. You can never do anything in just one history-even the most focused intervention happens across a broad ‘ribbon’ of strands. When we try to reach back to the thirties and forties, the ribbon overlaps with its own past to such a degree that all the worst horrors arefaits accompli. We can’t shootany version of Adolf Hitler, because we can’t shrink the ribbon to the point where none of us would be shooting ourselves in the back. All we’ve ever managed are minor interventions, like sending projectiles back to the Blitz, saving a few lives by deflecting bombs.”
“What, knocking them into the Thames?”
“No, that would have been too risky. We did some modeling, and the safest thing turned out to be diverting them onto big, empty buildings: Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral.”
The station came into view ahead of them. Helen said, “What do you think? Do you want to head back to Manchester?”
Robert hadn’t given the question much thought. Quint could track him down anywhere, but the more people he had around him, the less vulnerable he’d be. In his house in Wilmslow he’d be there for the taking.
“I still have rooms at Cambridge,” he said tentatively.
“Good idea.”
“What are your own plans?”
Helen turned to him. “I thought I’d stay with you.” She smiled at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you plenty of privacy. And if people want to make assumptions, let them. You already have a scandalous reputation; you might as well see it branch out in new directions.”
Robert said wryly, “I’m afraid it doesn’t quite work that way. They’d throw us out immediately.”
Helen snorted. “They could try.”
“You may have defeated MI6, but you haven’t dealt with Cambridge porters.” The reality of the situation washed over him anew at the thought of her in his study, writing out the equations for time travel on the blackboard. “Why me?I can appreciate that you’d want to make contact with someone who could understand how you came here-but why not Everett, or Yang, or Feynman? Compared to Feynman, I’m a dilettante.”
Helen said, “Maybe. But you have an equally practical bent, and you’ll learn fast enough.”
There had to be more to it than that: thousands of people would have been capable of absorbing her lessons just as rapidly. “The physics you’ve hinted at-in your past, did I discover all that?”
“No. YourPhysical Review paper helped me track you down here, but in my own history that was never published.” There was a flicker of disquiet in her eyes, as if she had far greater disappointments in store on that subject.
Robert didn’t care much either way; if anything, the less his alter ego had achieved, the less he’d be troubled by jealousy.
“Then what was it, that made you choose me?”
“You really haven’t guessed?” Helen took his free hand and held the fingers to her face; it was a tender gesture, but much more like a daughter’s than a lover’s. “It’s a warm night. No one’s skin should be this cold.”
Robert gazed into her dark eyes, as playful as any human’s, as serious, as proud. Given the chance, perhaps any decent person would have plucked him from Quint’s grasp. But only one kind would feel a special obligation, as if they were repaying an ancient debt.
He said, “You’re a machine.”
John Hamilton, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, read the last letter in the morning’s pile of fan mail with a growing sense of satisfaction.
The letter was from a young American, a twelve-year-old girl in Boston. It opened in the usual way, declaring how much pleasure his books had given her, before going onto list her favorite scenes and characters. As ever, Jack was delighted that the stories had touched someone deeply enough to prompt them to respond this way. But it was the final paragraph that was by far the most gratifying:
However much other children might tease me, or grown-ups too when I’m older, I will NEVER, EVER stop believing in the Kingdom of Nescia. Sarah stopped believing, and she was locked out of the Kingdom forever. At first that made me cry, and I couldn’t sleep all night because I was afraid I might stop believing myself one day. But I understand now that it’s good to be afraid, because it will help me keep people from changing my mind. And if you’re not willing to believe in magic lands, of course you can’t enter them. There’s nothing even Belvedere himself can do to save you, then.
Jack refilled and lit his pipe, then reread the letter. This was his vindication: the proof that through his books he could touch a young mind, and plant the seed of faith in fertile ground. It made all the scorn of his jealous, stuck up colleagues fade into insignificance. Children understood the power of stories, the reality of myth, the need to believe in something beyond the dismal gray farce of the material world.
It wasn’t a truth that could be revealed the “adult” way: through scholarship, or reason. Least of all through philosophy, as Elizabeth Anscombe had shown him on that awful night at the Socratic Club. A devout Christian herself, Anscombe had nonetheless taken all the arguments against materialism from his popular book,Signs and Wonders, and trampled them into the ground. It had been an unfair match from the start: Anscombe was a professional philosopher, steeped in the work of everyone from Aquinas to Wittgenstein; Jack knew the history of ideas in medieval Europe intimately, but he’d lost interest in modern philosophy once it had been invaded by fashionable positivists. AndSigns and Wonders had never been intended as a scholarly work; it had been good enough to pass muster with a sympathetic lay readership, but trying to defend his admittedly rough-and-ready mixture of common sense and useful shortcuts to faith against Anscombe’s merciless analysis had made him feel like a country yokel stammering in front of a bishop.
Ten years later, he still burned with resentment at the humiliation she’d put him through, but he was grateful for the lesson she’d taught him. His earlier books, and his radio talks, had not been a complete waste of time-but the harpy’s triumph had shown him just how pitiful human reason was when it came to the great questions. He’d begun working on the stories of Nescia years before, but it was only when the dust had settled on his most painful defeat that he’d finally recognized his true calling.
He removed his pipe, stood, and turned to face Oxford. “Kiss my arse, Elizabeth!” he growled happily, waving the letter at her. This was a wonderful omen. It was going to be a very good day.
There was a knock at the door of his study.
“Come.”
It was his brother, William. Jack was puzzled-he hadn’t even realized Willie was in town-but he nodded a greeting and motioned at the couch opposite his desk.
Willie sat, his face flushed from the stairs, frowning. After a moment he said, “This chap Stoney.”
“Hmm?” Jack was only half listening as he sorted papers on his desk. He knew from long experience that Willie would take forever to get to the point.
“Did some kind of hush-hush work during the war, apparently.”
