Time's Chariot

Utrecht, 1646

Cornelius van Crink’s heart leaped when he saw the gentleman come into the foundry. The man peered in through the door, then stepped into the main workshop, an island of calm amid the noise and heat of Utrecht’s finest gunsmiths going about their work. Van Crink’s practised eyes reviewed the newcomer — embroidered cloak, polished sword, velvet hat, general air of prosperity and well-to-do — and he stepped smartly forward before any of his underlings could reach the gentleman first. Such a prospective customer deserved nothing but the best.

The man saw him approaching. ‘Are you the master gunsmith?’ he called over the racket.

‘Cornelius van Crink, at your service, sir,’ van Crink acknowledged with a bow. ‘How may I help you, sir?’

A master merchant, perhaps? he thought with glee. He looked rich enough. It was fifty years since the Dutch had thrown off their Spanish masters, back in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Now the Dutch trading empire was wrapping itself around the world and the merchant class had come into its own. If he was looking to fit out a ship for a trip to the Indies… van Crink’s heart sang.

‘I’m looking for a brace of pistols,’ the man said. Van Crink carefully refused to let his disappointment show.

‘And will that be all, sir?’ He had to strain his ears to catch the man’s reply, delivered with a smile:

‘I choose to start small, Mr van Crink, but if I am happy with them — who knows?’

Who indeed? Van Crink’s spirits were quite restored. ‘Then let us go somewhere more conducive to polite conversation, sir,’ he said.

Van Crink personally escorted the gentleman to the warehouse where an underling opened the door for them. He stood for a moment in quiet reverence before entering. It was better even than entering a house of worship: rows and rows of shiny steel and hand-worked wood, the sublime smell of wrought metal and polish.

‘My warehouse, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘I know we will have something to suit you. I have to ask, what does sir have in mind for these pistols? Are they for a duel? For hunting? For display?’

‘I want something that is accurate at a range of no more than fifteen feet. More likely ten.’ The man’s eyes were also ranging along the rows of weapons and van Crink couldn’t but notice that there seemed to be a certain casual familiarity there.

‘I understand, sir.’ Van Crink didn’t, but he got the gist of what the man was after. Fifteen feet?

More likely ten? Obviously a duel. Unless, of course, it wasn’t intended that the other man should be armed at all… But van Crink simply sold the weapons.

He turned to a nearby shelf. ‘I have here something that might be of interest.’ He held up a single example and lovingly presented it to his customer, grip first. An elegant, slim barrel two feet long resting in a beautiful walnut stock. Magnificent carvings in both metal and wood; ornate but not fussy. A weapon of quality.

The customer took it in, and dismissed it, at a glance.

‘No wheel-locks,’ he said. ‘Too unreliable.’

‘Unreliable?’ van Crink exclaimed. He was too stung for a moment even to remember that the customer’s wishes were sacrosanct. His gaze caressed the weapon’s priming mechanism, and silently he apologized to it. To fire the gun after it had been loaded with ball and powder, the gun’s owner would use a key to wind up a steel wheel connected to a strong spring. Pressing the trigger caused the wheel to spin rapidly, which made it emit sparks, which ignited the powder. A graceful, elegant and above all modern device.

‘I’ll take a pair of match-locks,’ said the customer. ‘These, perhaps.’ He picked up one of the pistols to have caught his eye and held it up, squinting along the barrel.

‘Then sir will also want some slow-match?’ van Crink said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

‘It would help.’ A length of permanently burning slow-match was fixed to the gun’s spring mechanism. When the trigger was pressed, it sprang forward and ignited the powder. An assured spark and hence a reliable weapon — on a sunny day.

Van Crink made one last try. ‘My father fought the Spanish, sir. The tales he told me of how his guns were made unserviceable by the rain! 'If only I had had a decent wheel-lock in those days, Cornelius,' he would say…’

He came to realize that the customer was looking speculatively down the barrel of the match-lock, directly at him. For all that he knew the weapon wasn’t primed, and had no match attached to it, lit or otherwise, the look in the customer’s eyes meant he suddenly felt very nervous.

‘I’m sure your father fought nobly for the Netherlands,’ the customer said calmly, ‘but I also expect he fought outdoors.’ Abruptly he brought the gun up to his face, barrel pointing to the ceiling. ‘Now, about that match…’

The Correspondent checked the brace of pistols for the tenth time. Both were charged and primed, both were ready. He had owned them from new and he had practised with them for months. He could hit anything he chose at up to thirty feet. It was an accuracy that would have astonished that van Crink man, but then, the Correspondent had access to thought processes and powers of mental computation that would also have astonished the fat gunsmith. And in the very unlikely event of his missing with one barrel, he doubted his target could move fast enough to avoid the other.

The sounds of busy Utrecht — horses, street cries, the constant murmur of a large population — drifted in through the window. He ignored them. He had planned for this for so long, and the visitor would appear if his plan worked.

It was obvious that the visitor, the man who had appeared at every interview the Correspondent had given in his career, was taking the co-ordinates for his trips from the Correspondent’s reports. Well, tonight, if all went well, the Correspondent would file a report with the lunar station to the effect that he had interviewed Rene Descartes — father of modern science; first mathematician to classify curves according to the equations that produced them; significant contributor to the theory of equations; devisor of the use of indices to express the powers of numbers; formulator of the rule of signs for finding the numbers of positive and negative roots for any algebraic equation — at 10 o’clock in the morning on 30 June, 1646, here in an upper room in this modest house of timber in Utrecht. Descartes lived in a house, bought with his own money, and so it was in a house that the Correspondent had had to set his trap. Any other location might have aroused suspicion in their minds. He had bought the place he was in now twenty years ago, back in 1626; time enough for a steady succession of tenants, time enough for any connection that the Home Time might have been able to make with him to blur. Then he had carefully left Utrecht. He had made no mention in his reports of the house purchase and given the impression he had just been passing through. He had continued on his travels around Europe.

To return a month ago. To evict the current tenants. To wait.

And there he was. With that strange sense of no transition, as if he had always been there and it was only the Correspondent’s memory at fault, there stood the man, dressed like a prosperous Dutch merchant, raising his right hand.

As did the Correspondent, much more quickly, bringing one of the match-locks to bear on a direct line between the Correspondent’s eyes and the man’s forehead. ‘Don’t,’ he said, in the language of the Home Time. The pistol was pointing exactly between the visitor’s eyes. ‘I’ve seen what these can do to a man’s head, which I doubt you have.’

Realization and horror flashed across the visitor’s face. ‘My god, you remembered me,’ he said, and his hand twitched upwards.

The Correspondent fired, moving his hand slightly before he did. The crash of the gun was deafening and smoke filled the room. When it had cleared, the visitor was doubled over, moaning and clutching his ear, and the Correspondent’s other gun was raised.

‘I’ve just nicked your left ear exactly an inch above the lowest point of the lobe,’ said the Correspondent. His one main worry was unfounded: the man’s pain showed that he wasn’t another correspondent. ‘So don’t doubt that I can hit any part of you that I choose. Now, stand up and drop the thing in your right hand.’

The visitor did so, slowly, and the small crystal sphere that the Correspondent had glimpsed so often in the past dropped onto the wooden floor with a clatter. The Correspondent stooped to pick it up.

‘Now strip,’ he said. The visitor’s eyes widened. ‘Strip completely.’

Five minutes later they were in another room, the visitor wrapped in a robe that the Correspondent had supplied. If he had had any further Home Time gadgets about him that could have helped him, they were lying in the abandoned pile of clothing in the upper front room.

‘I don’t know your name,’ the Correspondent said. The visitor glared at him but said nothing. ‘Herbert, I