‘I beg your pardon?’
Actually quite a handsome fellow; it’s amazing what technology can accomplish. He must have been older than I was.
‘What this facility does is low-grade garbage, except for my work; one of Oldmanter’s acolytes wouldn’t cross the street for any of it. If you have travelled five hundred miles to a boggy island in the north-west of Scotland, then it is because of my machine. Don’t deny it. Nothing else could attract the attention of that crook.’
‘I will not have Mr Oldmanter referred to in that way.’
Toady, I thought.
‘Nor is it appropriate for me to discuss such matters with staff.’
Staff? Me? What was Hanslip saying about me behind my back? What role was he claiming for himself? That he had done all the work? That it was his idea? It wouldn’t have surprised me.
I decided to pile on the pressure and burst into tears. Naturally, that sent him into a panic. I had learned over the past fifty years that uncontrolled displays of emotion were capable of inducing a sense of terror when released in a confined space. I was used to them; my work depended on their judicious deployment. Most people would run a mile to avoid even being in close vicinity and Grange was now obviously feeling disoriented.
‘Oh, Lucien!’ I sobbed. ‘After all these years! You do not even remember me!’ Odd; I was most certainly putting it on, but a part of me was feeling genuine distress, although I did not understand why.
I could almost see him running through the options for how to fend me off. ‘Good God! I mean, ah...’
I collapsed on the settee and sobbed into my sleeve, taking the occasional peek to see if this was having the desired effect. Eventually, he tentatively approached. ‘Of course I remember you,’ he said. ‘But that was a long time ago and best forgotten. Besides, I am under strict instructions. Complete the deal, then leave. There is no time for personal sentiment. Much as I would have liked...’
‘How long are you staying?’
‘I plan to wrap up tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’ I shrieked, standing up abruptly and rounding on him. ‘You are going to do a deal for my project by tomorrow? You don’t even know what you’re buying.’
‘Of course we do. We’ve been studying the proposals for months.’
I must have seemed shocked, or perhaps he thought I had a slightly murderous air, and he went all official on me again. ‘This is not appropriate. You must talk to your employer; you are not authorised to talk directly to me.’
It didn’t matter. He had told me enough already. I swept out in tearful triumph. An hour later, I got the letter of suspension. Hanslip was one step ahead of me.
It goes without saying that I never had the slightest intention of turning up to his ridiculous disciplinary committee. It was pretty obvious, after all, that it was going to be filled with his creatures. He would pronounce, anything I said would be ignored, and then I would be bundled aside to clear the way for his nasty little plot. The stuffed toys he surrounded himself with would nod and agree to anything he wanted, and I would be locked out of my own work as he handed it over to Oldmanter and his team of overpaid half-wits.
So I had two priorities. The most important was to hang on to my property; the second was to prevent the entire universe being reshaped in the image of a bunch of thugs and reduced to ruin. I was on the verge of a major breakthrough in understanding. I wasn’t there yet, but if I was right, then a fascinating experiment could well metamorphose into the most dangerous discovery in the history of humanity. It would be better, in my opinion, to be sure before letting other people play around with it too much. Oldmanter’s lot would not be so cautious. Already I had seen alarmingly covetous looks in Hanslip’s eyes as he contemplated the possibilities.
I was not thinking quite as clearly as I should have been; I’d been working long and hard in the previous few days and my brain was still befuddled with the effects of the stimulants. As they cleared out of my system, though, I began to see a way through the problem. I had no confidence that I could persuade anyone to take my doubts seriously unless I could complete the work and prove my case. For that I needed more time. So I decided the best thing would be to get hold of some. In the meantime, I had to make sure no one else fiddled around with the machine in my absence.
Going into hiding was not an option, of course. I could, perhaps, have evaded detection for a day or so, but not for much longer than that. In fact, there was only one possibility, which was to use the machine myself. I knew it worked, but it was hard to get everything ready on my own and with no one noticing.
I managed, though; I rerouted the power supply from a few generators to ensure that all trace of my destination would be erased and the data hopelessly jumbled when I left. I had built that possibility in years ago, as I had seen enough of scientific integrity by then not to trust my colleagues further than I could throw them. If Hanslip and Oldmanter wanted to experiment, then let them. They’d have to do all the work themselves from scratch. I doubted they’d get very far.
It took a long time to prepare, but at one in the morning I was ready to go. As I heard the hum in the final moments before the power engaged, I felt very pleased with myself. I was prepared to bet Hanslip hadn’t anticipated my move. He worked purely in the realm of calculated rationality; I did not. In a world of chemically induced sanity, a little lunacy confers immense advantages.
Perhaps I should explain what this is about? There is a risk, I am sure, that I am giving the impression that I was petulant and egotistical, that my only concern was to bathe in the light of glory that was my due.
Very well; I admit that was a reason. But only one. There were other issues at stake, and my desire that the whole of humanity should not be wiped out played a small part in my decision also.
It began with my unofficial experiments, which demonstrated that the fundamental assumptions underlying the entire project were wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, I stuffed one of the cleaning staff into the machine to see what happened. He was a somewhat nervous fellow called Gunter, who needed a lot of tranquillisers to make him cooperate. Admittedly, I should not have done this, especially as I did not ask official permission first, but — there we are. I couldn’t use an animal, or an inanimate object, as the chances of finding it again were non-existent. Only a human being could possibly be tracked.
He was. Alex Chang, one of the most junior people in the department and thus too insecure to snitch on me, was given the job and spotted the unfortunate cleaner in 1895. Three hundred and twenty-seven years back. It was a good piece of work on Chang’s part, as he had to learn a lot of new techniques to analyse the evidence. Gunter had gone mad when he arrived and, not surprisingly, had eventually entered the priesthood. Without going into the details — what I had done was not really ethical and I knew it would be used against me — I tried to tell Hanslip that we had a problem, but he couldn’t see what I was on about.
‘Don’t you understand?’ I told him one evening. ‘This whole project is based on the assumption that what we are doing is not time travel. Laws of physics. Accepted and proven for two centuries or more. All we can possibly do is transit to a parallel universe. Right?’
He nodded, looking around him to see if there was anyone he could summon for protection in case I got too vehement.
‘Wrong,’ I went on. ‘Wrong, wrong. It’s all wrong. I know it is. Think. In theory, we should be able to access any number of universes. So why can we only seem to access one, eh? No one has thought about the implications of that. I think the whole alternative universe theory is complete nonsense. We would be moving in this universe. The only one there is. Time travel, to put it bluntly. If that is the case, we have to stop now. We need to start again. From the beginning. Immediately.’