Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (20 page)

It was a straightforward but tedious job
collecting the books that had been listed. They had been chosen, it seemed, for
their beauty as works of art as much as for their literary content. The
selection had been done by someone who knew his job. Had
they
done it
themselves, Ashton wondered, or had they bribed other experts as they were
bribing him? He wondered if he would ever glimpse the full ramifications of
their plot.

There was a considerable amount of
panel-smashing to be done, but Ashton was careful not to damage any books, even
the unwanted ones. Whenever he had collected enough volumes to make a comfortable
load, Steve carried them out into the courtyard and dumped them on the paving
stones until a small pyramid had accumulated.

It would not matter if they were left for
short periods outside the field of the accelerator. No one would notice their
momentary flicker of existence in the normal world.

They were in the library for two hours of
their time, and paused for another snack before passing to the next job. On the
way Ashton stopped for a little private business. There was a tinkle of glass
as the tiny case, standing in solitary splendour, yielded up its treasure: then
the manuscript of
Alice
was safely tucked into Ashton’s pocket.

Among the antiquities, he was not quite so
much at home. There were a few examples to be taken from every gallery, and
sometimes it was hard to see the reasons for the choice. It was as if – and
again he remembered Albenkian’s words – these works of art had been selected by
someone with totally alien standards. This time, with a few exceptions,
they
had obviously not been guided by the experts.

For the second time in history the case of
the Portland Vase was shattered. In five seconds, thought Ashton, the alarms
would be going all over the Museum and the whole building would be in an
uproar. And in five seconds he could be miles away. It was an intoxicating
thought, and as he worked swiftly to complete his contract he began to regret
the price he had asked. Even now, it was not too late.

He felt the quiet satisfaction of the good
workman as he watched Steve carry the great silver tray of the Mildenhall
Treasure out into the courtyard and place it beside the now impressive pile.
‘That’s the lot,’ he said. ‘I’ll settle up at my place this evening. Now let’s
get this gadget off you.’

They walked out into High Holborn and chose
a secluded side street that had no pedestrians near it. Ashton unfastened the
peculiar buckle and stepped back from his cohort, watching him freeze into
immobility as he did so. Steve was vulnerable again, moving once more with all
the other men in the stream of time. But before the alarm had gone out he would
have lost himself in the London crowds.

When he re-entered the Museum yard, the
treasure had already gone. Standing where it had been was his visitor of – how
long ago? She was still poised and graceful, but, Ashton thought, looking a
little tired. He approached until their fields merged and they were no longer
separated by an impassable gulf of silence. ‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ he said.
‘How did you move the stuff so quickly?’

She touched the bracelet around her own
wrist and gave a wan smile. ‘We have many other powers beside this.’

‘Then why did you need my help?’

‘There were technical reasons. It was
necessary to remove the objects we required from the presence of other matter.
In this way, we could gather only what we needed and not waste our limited –
what shall I call them? – transporting facilities. Now may I have the bracelet
back?’

Ashton slowly handed over the one he was
carrying, but made no effort to unfasten his own. There might be danger in what
he was doing, but he intended to retreat at the first sign of it.

‘I’m prepared to reduce my fee,’ he said.
‘In fact I’ll waive all payment – in exchange for this.’ He touched his wrist,
where the intricate metal band gleamed in the sunlight.

She was watching him with an expression as
fathomless as the Gioconda smile. (Had
that
, Ashton wondered, gone to
join the treasure he had gathered? How much had they taken from the Louvre?)

‘I would not call that reducing your fee.
All the money in the world could not purchase one of those bracelets.’

‘Or the things I have given you.’

‘You are greedy, Mr Ashton. You know that
with an accelerator the entire world would be yours.’

‘What of that? Do you have any further
interest in our planet, now you have taken what you need?’

There was a pause. Then, unexpectedly, she
smiled. ‘So you have guessed I do not belong to your world.’

‘Yes. And I know that you have other agents
besides myself. Do you come from Mars, or won’t you tell me?’

‘I am quite willing to tell you. But you may
not thank me if I do.’

Ashton looked at her warily. What did she
mean by that? Unconscious of his action, he put his wrist behind his back,
protecting the bracelet.

‘No, I am not from Mars, or any planet of
which you have ever heard. You would not understand
what
I am. Yet I
will tell you this. I am from the Future.’

‘The Future! That’s ridiculous!’

‘Indeed? I should be interested to know
why.’

‘If that sort of thing were possible, our
past history would be full of time travellers. Besides, it would involve a
reductio
ad absurdum
. Going into the past could change the present and produce all
sorts of paradoxes.’

‘Those are good points, though not perhaps
as original as you suppose. But they only refute the possibility of time travel
in general, not in the very special case which concerns us now.’

‘What is peculiar about it?’ he asked.

‘On very rare occasions, and by the release
of an enormous amount of energy, it is possible to produce a –
singularity
– in time. During the fraction of a second when that singularity occurs, the
past becomes accessible to the future, though only in a restricted way. We can
send our minds back to you, but not our bodies.’

‘You mean,’ said Ashton, ‘that you are
borrowing
the body I see?’

‘Oh, I have paid for it, as I am paying you.
The owner has agreed to the terms. We are very conscientious in these matters.’

Ashton was thinking swiftly. If this story
was true, it gave him a definite advantage.

‘You mean,’ he continued, ‘that you have no
direct control over matter, and must work through human agents?’

‘Yes. Even those bracelets were made here,
under our mental control.’

She was explaining too much too readily,
revealing all her weaknesses. A warning signal was flashing in the back of
Ashton’s mind, but he had committed himself too deeply to retreat.

‘Then it seems to me,’ he said slowly, ‘that
you cannot force me to hand this bracelet back.’

‘That is perfectly true.’

‘That’s all I want to know.’

She was smiling at him now, and there was
something in that smile that chilled him to the marrow.

‘We are not vindictive or unkind, Mr
Ashton,’ she said quietly. ‘What I am going to do now appeals to my sense of
justice. You have asked for that bracelet; you can keep it. Now I shall tell
you just how useful it will be.’

For a moment Ashton had a wild impulse to
hand back the accelerator. She must have guessed his thoughts.

‘No, it’s too late. I insist that you keep
it. And I can reassure you on one point. It won’t wear out. It will last you’ –
again that enigmatic smile – ‘the rest of your life.

‘Do you mind if we go for a walk, Mr Ashton?
I have done my work here, and would like to have a last glimpse of your world
before I leave it forever.’

She turned toward the iron gates, and did
not wait for a reply. Consumed by curiosity, Ashton followed.

They walked in silence until they were
standing among the frozen traffic of Tottenham Court Road. For a while she
stood staring at the busy yet motionless crowds; then she sighed.

‘I cannot help feeling sorry for them, and
for you. I wonder what you would have made of yourselves.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Just now, Mr Ashton, you implied that the
future cannot reach back into the past, because that would alter history. A
shrewd remark, but, I am afraid, irrelevant. You see,
your
world has no
more history to alter.’

She pointed across the road, and Ashton
turned swiftly on his heels. There was nothing there except a newsboy crouching
over his pile of papers. A placard formed an impossible curve in the breeze
that was blowing through this motionless world. Ashton read the crudely
lettered words with difficulty:

SUPER-BOMB TEST TODAY

The voice in his ears seemed to come from a
very long way off.

‘I told you that time travel, even in this
restricted form, requires an enormous release of energy – far more than a
single bomb can liberate, Mr Ashton. But that bomb is only a trigger—’

She pointed to the solid ground beneath
their feet. ‘Do you know anything about your own planet? Probably not; your
race has learned so little. But even your scientists have discovered that, two
thousand miles down, the Earth has a dense, liquid core. That core is made of
compressed matter, and it can exist in either of two stable states. Given a
certain stimulus, it can change from one of those states to another, just as a seesaw
can tip over at the touch of a finger. But that change, Mr Ashton, will
liberate as much energy as all the earthquakes since the beginning of your
world. The oceans and continents will fly into space; the sun will have a
second asteroid belt.

‘That cataclysm will send its echoes down
the ages, and will open up to us a fraction of a second in your time. During
that instant, we are trying to save what we can of your world’s treasures. It
is all that we can do; even if your motives were purely selfish and completely
dishonest, you have done your race a service you never intended.

‘And now I must return to our ship, where it
waits by the ruins of Earth almost a hundred thousand years from now. You can
keep the bracelet.’

The withdrawal was instantaneous. The woman
suddenly froze and became one with the other statues in the silent street. He
was alone.

Alone! Ashton held the gleaming bracelet
before his eyes, hypnotised by its intricate workmanship and by the powers it
concealed. He had made a bargain, and he must keep it. He could live out the
full span of his life – at the cost of an isolation no other man had ever
known. If he switched off the field, the last seconds of history would tick
inexorably away.

Seconds?
Indeed, there was less time than that. For he knew that the bomb must
already have exploded.

He sat down on the edge of the pavement and
began to think. There was no need to panic; he must take things calmly, without
hysteria. After all, he had plenty of time.

All the time in the world.

First published in
Venture
, May 1958

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

This time I was five weeks out from Base
Planet before the symptoms became acute. On the last trip it had taken only a
month; I was not certain whether the difference was due to advancing age or to
something the dietitians had put into my food capsules. Or it could merely have
been that I was busier; the arm of the galaxy I was scouting was heavily
populated, with stars only a couple of light-years apart, so I had little time
to brood over the girls I’d left behind me. As soon as one star had been
classified, and the automatic search for planets had been completed, it was
time to head for the next sun. And when, as happened in about one case out of
ten, planets
did
turn up, I’d be furiously busy for several days seeing
that Max, the ship’s electronic computer, got all the information down on his
tapes.

Now, however, I was through this densely
packed region of space, and it sometimes took as much as three days to get from
sun to sun. That was time enough for Sex to come tiptoeing aboard the ship, and
for the memories of my last leave to make the months ahead look very empty
indeed.

Perhaps I had overdone it, back on Diadne V,
while my ship was being reprovisioned and I was supposed to be resting between
missions. But a survey scout spends eighty per cent of his time alone in space,
and human nature being what it is, he must be expected to make up for lost
time. I had not merely done that; I’d built up considerable credit for the
future – though not, it seemed, enough to last me through this trip.

First, I recalled wistfully, there had been
Helene. She was blonde, cuddly, and compliant, though rather unimaginative. We
had a fine time together until her husband came back from
his
mission;
he was extremely decent about it but pointed out, reasonably enough, that
Helene would now have very little time for other engagements. Fortunately, I
had already made contact with Iris, so the hiatus was negligible.