could make babies any time they chose, including the oldest one, this Daiho. He’s even more interesting. He shows no real signs of age, yet I gather from overheard conversation that he must be at least in his seventies. No physical or mental deterioration, no wrinkling, no wear and tear on the joints.
‘Now, in any one individual, all this would be odd but not unknown. In a group of four, it’s statistically very unusual. So, to answer your original question, sir, they’re as human as we are but they’re not necessarily just the same as us. They’ve all been well looked after. Their technology can do wonderful things.’
‘I think I’d deduced that from the fact that they can time travel,’ Carradine said. He looked back at the pictures. ‘And there’s no way of telling how far in the future they’re from?’
‘They never say, Matthew.’ Now Alan looked at his notes. ‘Scott and Daiho only ever refer to the Home Time. We’ve no idea if this is a period of history, or a specific date, or a place, or what. They don’t give dates and they don’t give a timescale. I don’t think they’re being perverse — I think it’s just their way, where, whenever they come from. As for the kids, they don’t even mention the Home Time. Between themselves, they speak about 'home', 'the plantation', 'the College', 'Appalachia'…’
‘Well, I know where that is.’
‘Likewise, though their accent isn’t recognizably American. But even so, we’re learning a great deal just from the few facts we know about them.’
‘Like?’
‘Well, like the social set-up in the Home Time. The kids are journeymen, which suggests a fairly rigid social structure, like a medieval guild of some kind. They’re more than mere apprentices, they’re qualified in whatever they do, but they’re way down the scale from the other two. Scott and Daiho are very reticent about what they say in our presence, whereas Romeo and Juliet can babble away without a word of rebuke from their superiors. I really don’t think it’s occurred to the men that the kids would be able to say anything of interest to us. They’re not stupid, it’s just something outside their mindsets. And that alone says interesting things about their world. The lower orders don’t think for themselves, or are not perceived to do so by the higher ones.’
‘Yes…’ Carradine said. He shook his head in wonder. ‘Those journeymen are at the bottom of their ladder and yet I’ll bet they have more proficiency in their subjects than our scientists ever will.’
‘That’s another point, Matthew. They’re clearly good at their job — Scott isn’t the kind to tolerate shoddy work — but apart from that their education is abysmal. They can read, write, as far as we know do simple arithmetic but… do you know, they still have no idea where they are? The boy thinks this may be the Middle Ages and he doesn’t hide his opinion that we’re all barbarians. The girl is closer — she knows the steam engine was invented in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, so she thinks that’s where we are.’
Gerard spoke again. ‘Given that some children born this century have never heard of Adolf Hitler, it could mean they’re from no distance in the future at all,’ she said.
‘Believe me,’ Carradine said with feeling, ‘they’re from far enough ahead for our most guarded secrets to be in their museums.’ He recoiled inwardly from the memory of Scott blithely identifying a top secret document. That had been a calculated demonstration of power, and Carradine appreciated it. ‘From all this, I take it we don’t have difficulty understanding them?’
‘In a way,’ Alan said. He looked at Visconti, the linguistic specialist, who coughed.
‘Scott and Daiho speak English perfectly,’ the man said, ‘but their natural language — the only one the two youngsters speak — is very different. A layman that they spoke to would have extreme difficulty understanding them. They speak something very like English, but it’s as close to modern English as modern English is to Chaucer’s version. It’s peppered with non-English words and constructs, some of which I just can’t decipher, some of which seem to come from other languages. Mandarin and Spanish are the two main ones. There’s scatterings of Latin, Greek…’
‘So there’s linguistic drift,’ Carradine said. ‘Could that tell us when this Home Time is?’
‘No, sir. If the Chaucer analogy holds then we could be talking another thousand years, give or take. But then, they obviously come from a very technologically automated time. If the world’s one global village, everyone could be picking up everyone else’s language and incorporating it into the lingua franca, and that could be, oh, just a century ahead of us. Or, and this is where my head begins to hurt –’ he paused and the others looked at him in expectation — ‘perhaps they speak a version of English which has been distorted by time travellers from their own far future, speaking an even more distorted form of English—’
‘Stop there, please,’ said Carradine. He shook his head to clear it. ‘Alan, I want you to learn their language to a passable degree.’
‘Already working on it, Matthew,’ Alan said simply.
‘Of course you are. Carry on.’
Alan smiled and Carradine was happy. Alan only smiled that smile when he was pleased with himself, and in Carradine’s experience that only happened when he had pulled off a coup on behalf of BioCarr.
‘I’ve been saving the best till last,’ Alan said. ‘The aim of all of this, ultimately, has been to see what they could give us that they haven’t already. First of all, please look at this recording of the boy getting dressed in the morning.’
Carradine pulled a face. ‘Watching young men in states of undress isn’t my idea of fun, you know.’
‘It’s in the interests of science, Matthew. Watch.’
An image appeared of a sleepy Jontan Baiget stumbling from his bathroom. He was wearing what looked like a vest and shorts. He stretched, yawned, then reached out and pulled on his overalls.
‘Keep watching,’ said Alan, and the image slowed down. With his overalls hanging loosely off his gangly frame, Baiget appeared to walk like an astronaut towards the door. Carradine frowned, blinked and looked closer. His overalls were
The image froze.
‘They brought no changes of clothes with them,’ Alan said, ‘and yet, when we checked their clothes after knocking them out, they were as clean and fresh as if they were just back from the cleaners. Both journeymen have these shifting overalls. Scott and Daiho must have the next generation of gear because they appear in a different outfit each morning, even though it appears they also brought this one overall item. Ladies and gentlemen, these clothes are intelligent. No power source, nothing that looks like a central processing unit or any kind of electronics. I think the intelligence, the programming, is in the molecular structure of the fabric.’
‘I want one,’ Carradine murmured.
‘And it gets better.’ Alan had obviously been saving the very best until the very last. He beamed at them all before continuing. ‘Now, all four of them have, at least once, walked into a dark room and said 'lights on'. Then they look foolish and fumble for the light switch… it took the journeymen longer to grasp this concept than the other two. They all had difficulty with hot and cold taps, too — they kept talking to them. We took this at first as evidence of living in a very automated society.’
‘Voice recognition?’ said Carradine.
‘Precisely. Nothing special there. And Daiho occasionally asks something called Register to record something, or to provide information, then remembers that Register isn’t there. The other day, Scott was on his own and he suddenly said –’ he scrolled through his notes quickly — ‘ 'journeyman Baiget, could you… oh, damn.' Then he stood up and walked out of the room to deliver his message to Baiget verbally.’
‘A constantly monitoring artificial intelligence?’ said Carradine.
‘Accessible mentally,’ said Alan. Carradine’s eyes widened and he continued. ‘Our recordings of the kids at work are eerie. They hardly say a word but they work together like a machine. One wants a tool, the other hands it over, just like that. They have to be communicating — it’s more than just good teamwork. But — and this is the big one — it’s only in the hotel lounge, where all the equipment is. Outside the lounge, they speak out loud.’
‘They’re telepathic?’ said someone. Alan’s glance withered him.
‘No, or they’d be able to communicate anywhere,’ he said.
‘You conclude?’ Carradine said quietly.
‘There’s clearly some kind of universally available mechanism in the Home Time,’ said Alan, ‘and a local example is in their equipment, though I don’t know which of the many bits and pieces it is. But it seemed reasonable to assume there’s something in their own heads that makes the connection. And so, I asked Dr Gerard to X-ray their skulls.’
