Time's Chariot

‘How kind.’ The Correspondent stood abruptly and chucked the apple to one side. ‘First, show me you brought it.’

‘Of course.’ Herbert reached into an inside pocket and produced a thin, hexagonal wafer of dark green crystal that filled his palm. The Correspondent took it reverently between thumb and forefinger, looked at it from both sides, held it up to the sky so that the light shone through it like a lantern at the bottom of a murky pond.

‘More crystals,’ he said. ‘Is everything in the Home Time crystal-based?’

‘Most of the technology is. It’s an organic, solid state world.’

‘How do I make it work?’

‘You don’t. Just keep it on you, and when the recall field comes on, it’ll pick you up as well.’

The Correspondent pocketed the tag. ‘I can’t believe I’m going home. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.’

Herbert gestured towards the alleyway entrance. ‘Shall we go?’

Berlin had well and truly come to life as the two men entered the city proper, walking up through Schoneberg and into town. Herbert was breathing heavily.

‘You’re not getting any fitter, are you?’ the Correspondent said.

Herbert glared at him. ‘It’s been fifty years for you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been making these trips in quick succession. I haven’t had time to get fit. It wasn’t meant to be like this.’

‘Oh, I was forgetting,’ said the Correspondent.

‘Of course. I was meant to be an innocent dupe, lied to and used by you so that you can do whatever you do to the people I interview. You should never have had to walk more than ten feet in any given direction. If this weren’t the last one, I’d be more considerate in future.’

They walked in silence for a couple more minutes.

‘So, where are we going?’ said Herbert. They both spoke fluent eighteenth-century German, though it occurred to the Correspondent that while he could easily pass for a native Prussian, Herbert sounded like what he was — a foreigner who had learned the language but not the accent.

‘To see Leibnitz, of course.’ The last one! the Correspondent thought with silent exultation. Seven centuries, seventeen seminal scientific thinkers, and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz is the last one!

‘I meant, where are we going to see Leibnitz? At his home?’

The Correspondent stopped in his tracks. ‘You’re joking!’

Herbert rolled his eyes. ‘About what?’

‘It’s July the seventeenth, 1700,’ the Correspondent said slowly. ‘We are going to see Leibnitz. Can’t you put the two facts together?’

‘His birthday?’ Herbert said with elaborate sarcasm.

The Correspondent started walking again, taking long strides that meant Herbert had to hurry to catch up.

‘Leibnitz founded the Academy of Science, and today is the day he’s sworn in as life president. There’s going to be a ceremony, and that is where we’ll meet him.’

‘Oh,’ said Herbert. The Correspondent looked at him askance and shook his head.

‘You didn’t know? You really didn’t know?’

‘I just follow orders,’ Herbert said. ‘I know the name of the person I’ve come to see and a few general details. Someone else decides on the itinerary.’

‘It doesn’t interest you that he worked out the principles of differential calculus at the same time as Isaac Newton?’

‘Since I’ve no idea what differential calculus is, no. But it sounds like something my associate would think is useful. What else did he do?’

The Correspondent shook his head. He was so primed with every useful detail there was to know about his interviewees that it had never occurred to him Herbert might be ignorant of it all. Didn’t the man even read his reports? Do some research? Apparently not: Herbert was just doing a job. So the Correspondent simply answered:

‘This and that.’

Herbert wasn’t even interested in the answer: he was looking curiously at the Correspondent, his expression thoughtful.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘when did you start caring?’

They arrived at the ceremony just as it was starting. It was a grand but crowded room full of men standing and jostling as people did on these occasions, chatting idly, catching up with each other, making new acquaintances. It was an era of grand clothes and wigs but the finery was only a visible distraction from the fact that the bygoners still hadn’t entirely got the hang of hygiene. Herbert was obviously trying not to pull a face.

Now the men were drifting to their seats and Leibnitz was taking the stage. The philosopher had a long, dark, curly wig, arched eyebrows and a face that was usually calm and placid but, on this occasion, could be excused for more than a hint of smugness.

The Correspondent had timed their arrival so that Herbert would not have to make casual conversation with bygoner German scientists and be revealed as the fraud he was. As they took their seats he mused that it had been a wise precaution; bearing in mind what he had just learned, Herbert wouldn’t have been able to bluff his way for a second. What kind of idiot, the Correspondent wondered, would come back however many centuries, knowing he would have to blend into the population, and not even try to learn something about the time?

But that question was only incidental to the main one bothering him as everyone applauded the man at the front. The main one was: when did you start caring?

When indeed? He thought back to his arrival at Isfahan. He hadn’t cared then. He had had a desire to get to the city and to meet Avicenna, and lurking at the back of his mind had been enough information about the man’s career to be able to make conversation and conduct an interview.

But now?

Now, it mattered to him that Leibnitz — mathematician, statesman and above all philosopher — had founded and presided over the Akademie der Wissenschaft. It was important that Leibnitz saw the universe as composed of what he called monads, centres of spiritual energy that together formed the harmonious and perfect conclusion of a divine plan. And above all — as the Correspondent could see, even if Herbert could not — both men owed everything to people like Leibnitz and all the other interviewees, because they were both the products of a highly advanced technological society, far removed from the on-going Iron Age that was currently all around them in eighteenth-century Berlin. The world would move from this bygoner age to the Home Time through scientific advance, and that scientific advance was made possible because of the theoretical groundwork laid by the men the Correspondent had interviewed.

So, yes, it mattered to the Correspondent. It mattered a great deal.

Leibnitz ended his speech with the hope that great things would come out of the new Academy of Science. The Correspondent applauded quite genuinely while Herbert’s applause seemed more out of relief that the speeches were over.

‘And now, let’s go and meet the man,’ the Correspondent said as the assembly rose from their seats.

‘I need to be alone with him,’ Herbert muttered. ‘How am I going to manage that here?’ They began to sidle along their row of chairs towards the aisle.

‘That thing of yours only works on contact, doesn’t it?’ The Correspondent had seen it work enough times. Herbert invariably touched a crystal sphere to the subject’s temple.

‘That’s right.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘What?’ Herbert exclaimed.

‘Give it to me, and watch.’

Herbert fumed but could see he had no choice, and a moment later the Correspondent felt the sphere press into his hand. It was the size, shape and feel of a golf ball (A golf ball? How long had he known what one of those was?) and a deep, translucent blue.

‘Herr Leibnitz!’ the Correspondent called. They had reached the aisle and Leibnitz was coming towards them. He was talking learnedly with the crowd of men around him but he looked up in polite expectation.