Herbert George Wells was not a patient man. He had just scored a minor success in Britain with his first novel and had decided to treat himself to a vacation in Austria. He came to that decision under my influence, of course, but he did not yet realize that. At age twenty-nine, he had a lean, hungry look to him that would mellow only gradually with the coming years of prestige and prosperity.
Albert was round-faced and plumpish; still had his baby fat on him, although he had started a moustache as most teenaged boys did in those days. It was a thin, scraggly, black wisp, nowhere near the full white brush it would become. If all went well with my mission.
It had taken me an enormous amount of maneuvering to get Wells and this teenager to the same place at the same time. The effort had nearly exhausted all my energies. Young Albert had come to see Professor Thomson with his own eyes, of course. Wells had been more difficult; he had wanted to see Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. I had taken him instead to Linz, with a thousand assurances that he would find the trip worthwhile.
He complained endlessly about Linz, the city’s lack of beauty, the sour smell of its narrow streets, the discomfort of our hotel, the dearth of restaurants where one could get decent food—by which he meant burnt mutton. Not even the city’s justly famous Linzertorte pleased him.
“Not as good as a decent trifle,” he groused. “Not as good by half.”
I, of course, knew several versions of Linz that were even less pleasing, including one in which the city was nothing more than charred, radioactive rubble and the Danube so contaminated that it glowed at night all the way down to the Black Sea. I shuddered at that vision and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
It had almost required physical force to get Wells to take a walk across the Danube on the ancient stone bridge and up the Postlingberg to this little sidewalk café. He had huffed with anger when we had started out from our hotel at the city’s central square, then soon was puffing with exertion as we toiled up the steep hill. I was breathless from the climb also. In later years a tram would make the ascent, but on this particular afternoon, we had been obliged to walk.
He had been mildly surprised to see the teenager trudging up the precipitous street just a few steps ahead of us. Recognizing that unruly crop of dark hair from the audience at Thomson’s lecture that morning, Wells had graciously invited Albert to join us for a drink.
“We deserve a beer or two after this blasted climb,” he said, eying me unhappily.
Panting from the climb, I translated to Albert, “Mr. Wells . . . invites you . . . to have a refreshment with us.”
The youngster was pitifully grateful, although he would order nothing stronger than tea. It was obvious that Thomson’s lecture had shattered him badly. So now we sat on uncomfortable cast-iron chairs and waited—they for the drinks they had ordered, me for the inevitable. I let the warm sunshine soak into me and hoped it would rebuild at least some of my strength.
The view was little short of breathtaking: the brooding castle across the river, the Danube itself streaming smoothly and actually blue as it glittered in the sunlight, the lakes beyond the city and the blue-white snow peaks of the Austrian Alps hovering in the distance like ghostly petals of some immense, unworldly flower.
But Wells complained, “That has to be the ugliest castle I have ever seen.”
“What did the gentleman say?” Albert asked.
“He is stricken by the sight of the Emperor Fried-rich’s castle,” I answered sweetly.
“Ah. Yes, it has a certain grandeur to it, doesn’t it?”
Wells had all the impatience of a frustrated journalist. “Where is that damnable waitress? Where is our beer?”
“I’ll find the waitress,” I said, rising uncertainly from my iron-hard chair. As his ostensible tour guide, I had to remain in character for a while longer, no matter how tired I felt. But then I saw what I had been waiting for.
“Look!” I pointed down the steep street. “Here comes the professor himself!”
William Thomson, First Baron Kelvin of Largs, was striding up the pavement with much more bounce and energy than any of us had shown. He was seventy-one, his silver-gray hair thinner than his impressive gray beard, lean almost to the point of looking frail. Yet he climbed the ascent that had made my heart thunder in my ears as if he were strolling amiably across some campus quadrangle.
Wells shot to his feet and leaned across the iron rail of the café. “Good afternoon, your Lordship.” For a moment I thought he was going to tug at his forelock.
Kelvin squinted at him. “You were in my audience this morning, were you not?”
“Yes, m’lud. Permit me to introduce myself: I am H.G. Wells.”
“Ah. You’re a physicist?”
“A writer, sir.”
“Journalist?”
“Formerly. Now I am a novelist.”
“Really? How keen.”
Young Albert and I had also risen to our feet. Wells introduced us properly and invited Kelvin to join us.
“Although I must say,” Wells murmured as Kelvin came ’round the railing and took the empty chair at our table, “that the service here leaves quite a bit to be desired.”
“Oh, you have to know how to deal with the Teutonic temperament,” said Kelvin jovially as we all sat down. He banged the flat of his hand on the table so hard it made us all jump. “Service!” he bellowed. “Service here!”
Miraculously, the waitress appeared from the doorway and trod stubbornly to our table. She looked very unhappy; sullen, in fact. Sallow, pouting face with brooding brown eyes and downturned mouth. She pushed back a lock of hair that had strayed across her forehead.
“We’ve been waiting for our beer,” Wells said to her. “And now this gentleman has joined us—”
“Permit me, sir,” I said. It was my job, after all. In German I asked her to
