The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (67 page)

The next day I returned home. Too preoccupied by my current work, I put the books away in my library, where they remained for some long months.

As for Mr Marvel, I learned later that he well and truly left for the New World. There, the ex-vagabond and ex-landlord of the inn made a name for himself in the state of Kansas, where he became a travelling fortune-teller under the name of Professor Marvel.

There remains to explain how, to my great unhappiness and that of so many others, I came to encounter Otto Storitz.

If the events related by my biographer make me appear a greater hero than I ever was, they do remain at least generally accurate. Upon my return I was devastated, depressed by the loss of Weena, universally disgusted by the world and by humanity. I decided to occupy myself from then on with myself alone, and wished to change my environment as a symbol of this new existence. However, when I left, this was not intended to be a new voyage into a distant future, but a simple journey of several weeks, designed to exhaust the patience of my friends and to ensure that there would be no further risk of their presenting themselves at my door. This done, I organised my departure discreetly. I took only what was strictly necessary; a few personal effects, my machine, and the contents of my library. Trusting my new place of residence to chance, I put on a blindfold and threw a dart at a planisphere. It landed in the very heart of Germany, and it was thus for Germany that I departed.

Once there, I realized that I was hardly content, no more so than I had been in England, and doubtless no more so than I would have been in any other European country, where a strained political situation produced the incessant threat of war. I had known enough violence; I only hoped for peace.

Then an idea came to me. I suspected that nowhere in the world would have brought me what I desired during my time, but, of all men, I was the sole one not constrained by the immutable course of time.

Suppressing my scruples, thanks to my machine I had no difficulty in gaining fabulous riches on the horse tracks. After having changed my winnings for gold, the only currency I presumed eternal, I began the long process which would end in the discovery of the peaceful era in which I live at the present time of writing, an era which I have no intention of identifying here, except to say that it can be found in a future not too far distant from that which I had left.

While I was hesitating between remaining in Germany, where fate had led me, and returning to England (two nations that however no longer existed as such), my attention was caught by the auction sale of a superb medieval château in old Spremberg. I had, I admit, always dreamed of owning one, and the temptation was too strong. Money being no problem, I carried off the auction with a high hand and went to install myself in my new domain, after having had part of it restored in order to make it habitable. I left the rest as it was for the pleasure of the sight.

This new existence brought me all the happiness of which I had dreamed. Several months later I fell in love with a young woman of the region, married her, and undertook the task of begetting children. We now have three, two boys and a girl, who are our pride and joy.

My unhappiness was brought about by a mixture of curiosity and idleness. One evening, when my wife and our then only child had gone to visit her parents for a week, I was bored to death and, after several glasses, the idea came to me to make use of my machine again. I had never, after all, explored the past. What harm could be done by a rapid foray into the memories held by these old stones which surrounded me? Perhaps I could even visit my own château at different periods, from the time of its construction, and on my return write a dissertation on its history using firsthand information . . .

Decisions taken quickly, after one has drunk a little, are often foolish, and this was no exception to the rule: my machine held pride of place in the large room which was formerly a dining-room, but which now served as my laboratory, so I was able to depart that very evening. I had no fear that my absence would be noticed, having the firm intention of returning the instant following my departure. Since I had, however, no idea how long I might be spending in the past, I decided to take some reading matter. It was upon exploring my library that I came upon the three notebooks bought from Mr Marvel, the existence of which I had almost forgotten. I stowed them into my bag thinking they would provide a welcome source of intellectual stimulation.

The rest can be imagined. Following two or three visits to past times where I wisely avoided being noticed, I arrived in 1753. Finding the château deserted, I was preparing to explore when Otto Storitz surprised me. I then committed the error of desiring to speak with him, rather than throwing myself on to my machine and departing. It is well-known what this cost me.

Upon my return, older by more than a year and still having no idea of the wrongs caused to innocent people by my thoughtlessness, I did not dismantle my machine: I purely and simply destroyed it.

Since I discovered the misfortunes of the Vidal family, I have come to regret this gesture, and to believe that on returning to the time just before these events took place I could influence their course. The desire to construct another machine, however, leaves me as quickly as it arrives: it is too dangerous to wish to change history, and I have already brought about too many catastrophes. Who knows if the remedy would not be worse than the disease? For as much as this weighs upon me, I must continue to live with my guilt, hoping that on Judgment Day God will see fit to pardon he whose incomplete and inexact, but unique biography names only —

— The Time Traveller.

Translated from the French by Finn Sinclair

THE SHOAL by Liz Williams

In 1978 the City of Nantes, where Verne was born, opened a Jules Verne Museum in celebration of Verne’s achievements. There is no doubt that Verne was a major influence in popularising science and causing men of science to look to the future. The following story was inspired by a visit to the Museum and, in its vision and outlook, is a fitting conclusion to our own celebration of the works of Jules Verne.

He knew that something was wrong as soon as he looked into the mirror. His own face, dark and secret-filled, seemed curiously transparent, as though the light of the meagre room was shining through it. He knew what it meant and a great elation, coupled with fear, raced through him, filling his veins with ice and fire. The past snapped at his heels, ready to tear him back, and he was ready to go. But leaving meant that he would have to make it back to the rift, and he did not know yet how he was going to accomplish this without the vessel.

He wandered out into the warm Sri Lankan night, heavy with rainfall and the song of crickets.
No matter,
he thought, with a patience accrued over many, many years. An answer would present itself. The universe had started to align itself for him, as it always had, as if in compensation for all that had been taken away, and would now be returned.

A day after that, he read the newspaper article in the little bar along the street, and realized with dismay that his answer was waiting for him. And he could not let it happen.

The museum fascinated me as a child. It stood perched on its hill above the curve of the Loire, high over the silvery gleam of the river. In winter, my mother used to take me there after school, shaking her head, saying, “Jacques, wouldn’t you like to go to the cinema instead?” She was a practical woman, but science bored her, and I think she thought that the museum was little more than a folly, a legacy of the last century. Perhaps she was right. But I was enchanted with the diagrams and pictures, the dioramas, the mock-up of the submarine’s steering room with its plush red-velvet seats. I used to imagine that I was its captain, battling sea monsters from the deep and when we came out of the museum, I would stare down the estuary to the chilly line of the Atlantic and think:
one day, I will sail out there.

When I was eleven, however, my father was transferred to a plant on the outskirts of Paris and we went with him. I could no longer see the sea, and over the years I forgot about the museum. I followed in his footsteps, first intending to become an engineer, but rapidly becoming diverted into information technology. I found myself working for a dotcom in Germany, and then running one. It seemed as though nothing could go wrong, for a while, but I could see the crash coming, like a great wave towering above the horizon, and I sold out just in time. I made a fortune by the time I was twenty-five, and my luck held. By the time I was thirty-six, I was quite unspeakably wealthy, living partly in France but mainly in California.

I saw what a lot of people did with their money, and it didn’t disgust me, exactly, but I did wonder why they bothered. They seemed to be scrambling through the here and now, without any thought to the future beyond their kids’ inheritances. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have children that led me toward developing the Shoal.

I don’t think I consciously had Verne’s little museum in mind when I first started idly sketching the blueprints. My Breton past had receded to a kind of hazy childhood vista: rainy school-days, sunny summers on the beach. It had been happy enough and so I rarely thought about it: I’m not much of a one for introspection. But what I did know was that I wanted to leave something for the future, something tangible, and something big. As soon as I thought of it, I knew that it was going to happen: it was like a crackling in the air before a storm hits. Next morning, I called an architect friend of mine and got him to put me in touch with some of his contacts.

A year later, the Shoal was beginning to become a reality. I’d got the financial backing, and we’d been in talks with the Pakistani government for some months. Dealing with them proved to be a steep learning curve for me, but we made it. In early autumn, I took a boat out to the patch of sea that would one day become the building site of the Shoal.

It was located just off the mouth of the Indus, a calm stretch of rippling waves with the red bluffs visible in the distance. There wasn’t much there, obviously: only a few sand-spits rising above the shimmering water, but in my mind’s eye I could see the Shoal rising above the waves, its great shell gleaming. I envied those who would be its first guests, who would see it for the first time as they raced across the sea, who would not have been privy to the long, laborious planning process. Fascinating though I found it, I should have liked to have seen the Shoal in its entirety, feel its impact without prior knowledge.

Within months, construction had begun. I wanted to start in winter, as the climate was milder then, the heat less fierce. It went too smoothly: the rigging arching up from the dry-dock like a curling ammonite, growing day by day. The under-structure, as I termed it, grew more slowly. This section, the service part of the hotel — the malls and golf courses and restaurants and gardens — would be towed out first, and then the shell would be attached. I supervised the operation, and watched the Shoal grow day by day, until to my slightly incredulous wonder, it was almost complete.

And then, one night, I had a dream. I rose from the couch in my office in the Shoal, in which I had fallen asleep, and walked through the silent, half-finished corridors to the platform where my speedboat was docked. I knew that it had been night when I fell asleep, but this looked like noon: a high, burnished blue sky and blazing sun, glittering from the metallic hulls of the craft that surrounded the Shoal. I gazed in wonder at all kinds of ships: huge clippers with crimson sails, gleaming with bronze and gold; a spined iron vessel that churned the waves into a froth of milk, and on the horizon, something huge and hulking, a ship that must, from this distance, be close to a mile in length. I thought, with a burst of joy:
I am seeing the future.

I wanted to see more, but it was not to be: the dream ended, and I woke to find myself in the quiet office, with the dawn coming up over the waves. But the exhilaration at seeing that display of naval invention stayed with me throughout the day, and with it the knowledge that perhaps I was contributing to that future, with the building of the Shoal.

When the man first came to see me, I was not unduly surprised. Initially I thought he was a local — yet another of the clerics or politicians who had caused me no few difficulties to date. He wore a turban, like a Sikh, and he was dark, with a close-cropped beard and black eyes. To my surprise, however, he spoke excellent French. He gave his name as Rashid, said that he was a local businessman, but did not specify in what.

I had matters to see to, and so I was reluctant to make time for him, but I did not want to antagonise the community. We sat over coffee while he made small talk about the weather and France, with which he seemed familiar. Impatiently, I waited for him to get to the point of his visit, but then he asked me where I was from.