Something to keep in mind. I pointed to the threaded studs on the console. “You have the control levers?”
Banning pulled them from his leather case. “We know they thread on properly. However, they have not been used to actually operate the machine.” He handed them over, and I got into the saddle and screwed the handles onto the studs. The one on the right should take the traveler forward in time, the other into the past.
“The vaccine?” I said.
The major pulled the third and final item from his black bag: the little vaccine box. He handed it over to me, and I pushed it carefully into an inner jacket pocket. He checked his watch. “Five minutes after twelve. Remember, be back here at one A.M. tomorrow. Good luck, Wells.” We shook hands. There was no expression at all on his face.
It was time to go.
How had I let this happen to me?
I ground my teeth, grabbed the back-time lever… I think the major said something… as he saluted… and vanished.
I was falling, and whirling around and around in some sort of time-swept vortex. I screamed, but of course no one heard, and even if they had, they could have done nothing for me. I was certain that I was going to crash into something, that every bone in my body would be broken, that I would conclude my twenty-eight years as an unrecognizable bloody pulp. For the first time I had intimations that Isabel, my first wife, was right: I should not have tried to rise above my station. I should never have gone into science, and writing. I should have remained a draper’s assistant. But then I thought, no. Never. Death first.
I found myself gasping and sweating and still sitting in the saddle of the Machine, and still in the prince’s study in Windsor castle.
The room was well lighted. At least I had arrived in daylight. Shakily, I got out of the Machine and looked about the little room. It differed but little from the room I had just left. It seemed to have the same furniture, the same bookshelves, even the same books. She had left everything the way it was when he had died. The only functional difference seemed to be the lamp over the study desk. Here, in 1861, it was the new brilliant Welsbach gas-mantle. In 1894 it had been the new electric light bulb (which, in my humble opinion, gave somewhat less light). Progress.
The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the far side of the desk. I glanced at the dial. Ten fifteen, A.M., of course. Beside the clock lay a newspaper. I tiptoed over and looked at the date: November 1, 1861. So far so good.
It was time to get down to business. I unscrewed the two drive levers and put them in my jacket pocket next to the syringe case. I took a deep breath, gathered my courage, and peeked around the half-open study door and into the prince’s bedroom.
He was lying on his bed against a bulwark of pillows. His head was canted to one side and his eyes were closed.
I studied him for a moment. Could this be Prince Albert? His portraits showed him as tall, erect, chin lifted proudly, hand on sword pommel. What I saw here was as shrunken wreck, a near cadaver, a creature with hollow ivory-coloured cheeks. The nose, formerly merely aquiline, was now blade-like from emaciation. The wispy hair was in disarray. His once bountiful beard that looped under his chin was gone, presumably shaved off to facilitate bedside care. The room gave off a sickly sweet perfume: the odor of terminal illness, the smell of death.
My first thought was, the vaccine is too late.
I took a step forward. Even under the thick carpet the floor boards creaked.
The sick man opened his eyes and looked at me.
9. Albert
He rose shakily on an elbow and blinked in my general direction. “Who are you?” he croaked.
I approached and bowed with dignity. “Sire, my name is Wells. I’m your new medical orderly.”
“I don’t remember…” He peered over to the hall door. “When did you come in?”
“Just now, Highness. But I didn’t come in through the hall door. I entered via your study.”
He passed his hand over his brow. “Wells… The study…?” He gave me a suspicious look and fumbled for the bellpull just over his head.
I rushed forward. “Please, sire. Let me explain.”
“Oh?” He lay back in bed, but his eyes never left me.
I went on hurriedly. “Highness, what I am about to say, I know you will find quite incredible. Yet, if you will permit, I know I can prove it all to your satisfaction. To start, sire, I am from the year 1894. I came here in a Time Machine, which at the moment stands in your study.”
I let him think about that. Clearly, he didn’t believe me. Nor did I expect him to. Not yet, anyway.
“Go on,” he said. “Why did you come? To what end?”
“Sire, it now becomes difficult. For what I am about to reveal to you, I ask your forbearance in advance.”
“I forbear. So tell me.”
“Sire, you are presently in a very rundown condition, compounded by a case of influenza brought on by exposure to rain and cold during your recent visit to Cambridge.”[2]
He looked at me sharply. “So?”
“That’s not the worst of it, sire. In a day or so, indeed, perhaps even as we talk here, you will contract typhoid… and…” I gulped and coughed.
“And I will die?”
I nodded silently. He was taking it very well, perhaps in large part because he didn’t necessarily believe me.
“When?”
There was no gentle way to put it. “You will die the first of December, sire.”
He considered that. I think he almost smiled. “And in your world of 1894, is December first carved on my gravestone?”
“Yes, sire.”
It didn’t seem to bother him. When death is close, everything in life seems to shift focus. Many things once critically important become trivial, and vice versa. I think this was already happening to Albert.
“To survive a dozen assassination attempts,” he murmured, “only to be brought low by an invisible bug.”
The statement about the bug astonished me. But then, I should have recalled that he read all the new science journals. Pasteur had published his seminal papers on microorganisms only three years ago, by the prince’s calendar.
“Wells,” he said, “dying is not such a terrible thing.”
“Sire,” I admonished him, “after your death, her majesty went—or should I say, will go?—into a secluded mourning that was still going on when I left my world of 1894. She still wears black. For her, your death was—will be—a terrible thing.” I paused and took a deep breath. “It is time to state my mission.”
“Yes, Wells, please do.”
“I am here by the queen’s order and request. She thinks I can save your life.”
“She was always overly sentimental,” he muttered. “Do you know she still has all her dolls from childhood, catalogued and stored away?”
“No, sire, I didn’t. But surely you don’t want to die?”
“You’re blunt, Wells. And that’s good. Saves time. So let’s get to the facts. You claim the queen sent you?”
“Yes, sire.”
“That should be easy to verify. I’ll ring for her.”
“That won’t work, sire. Her majesty of 1894 sent me. The present queen never heard of me. She would send for the palace guard.”
“Oh. Hm.” He peered at me quizzically. “We’ll try something else. You claim you came here in some sort of vehicle?”
“Yes, sire. A Time Machine.”
“So you say. And it’s presently sitting in my study?”
“It is, sire.”
“Help me up, Wells.”
“Of course, sire.” I’m not a big man. The prince was not much taller, at five foot seven. He got an arm over my shoulder and we walked slowly, step by step, into the study. I could sense from the contact that he was running a high fever.
2
Ed. Note: Prince Albert apparently caught influenza during a recent visit to his son, Edward, at Cambridge University.