“I… er…”
“Stop it, John,” said Neville. “You’re frightening him.”
“I’m not scared,” said Pooley.
“I would be,” said Neville.
“Me too,” said Old Pete, shuffling up to the bar. “What are we talking about?”
“Jim’s book,” said John.
“Jim’s written a book?”
“No, he’s been given one.”
“Well, let me have a look at it when he’s finished colouring it in.”
“Most amusing,” said Jim. “You are as ever the wit.”
“Large dark rum please, Neville,” said Old Pete. “And give Jim whatever he wants.”
“He wants a bodyguard,” said Omally, “or possibly a change of identity.”
“Stop it, John.” Pooley held out the book. “Go on, you take it then. I’ve quite lost interest in the thing.”
“Not me,” said Omally.
“You, Neville?” Jim asked.
“No thank you.” Neville shook his head.
“Cor blimey,” said Old Pete, “reminds me of that joke about the ten commandments.”
“What joke’s that?” Jim asked.
“Well, you see, this is back in biblical times, right, and God goes to the Arabs and he says, ‘Would you like a commandment?’ and the head Arab says, ‘What is it?’ and God says, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and the head Arab says, ‘No thanks, we do that all the time, we enjoy it.’
“So God goes to the Egyptians and he says to the Pharaoh, ‘Would you like a commandment?’ and the Pharaoh says, ‘What is it?’ and God says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, or his ass or whatever,’ and the Pharaoh says, ‘No thanks, coveting’s what we do best, we thrive on it.’
“So finally God goes to the Jews and he says to Moses, ‘Would you like a commandment?’ and Moses says, ‘How much do they cost?’ and God says, ‘They’re free.’ So Moses says… ‘I’ll take ten.’” Old Pete collapsed in laughter.
“Surely that is anti-Semitic,” said Jim.
“Not when it’s told by a Jew. Especially one who’s just bought you a drink. But I’ll take that free book if it’s still going.”
“That’s all right,” said Omally. “I’ll take it.”
When Neville called time for the lunchtime session, Pooley and Omally parted company. John returned to his rooms in Mafeking Avenue and Jim took himself to his favourite bench before the Memorial Library. It was here, on this almost sacred spot, that, Jim did most of his really heavyweight thinking. Here where he dreamed his dreams and made his plans. Here too where he sat and smoked and soaked up sunshine.
Jim placed his bum upon the bench and stretched his legs before him. He’d been shafted again. Omally would root out whatever sensational disclosures the book held and profit therefrom and Jim would wind up empty-handed. But surely John wouldn’t grab the lot? He was Jim’s best friend, after all. There’d be something in it for Jim. But probably not a very substantial something.
Jim sighed and stretched and wriggled himself into comfort. Stuff the silly book. What did he care about that? He was destined for far higher things, financially speaking.
Jim rooted about in his jacket pockets and pulled out a crumpled pamphlet. This was his passport to fortune. He uncrumpled the pamphlet and smoothed out its edges.
Time Travel for Fun and Profit by Hugo Rune
This was the kiddie. Jim had come across it quite by chance – if there really was such a thing as chance, which Mr Rune seemed to doubt. Jim had purchased a large cod and chips and Archie Karachi of the Star of Bombay Curry Garden (and Tasty-chip Patio) had wrapped them up in this very pamphlet.
Jim had studied the pamphlet with interest. It wasn’t one of those build-your-own-time-machine science fiction jobbies, more one of your esoteric-new-age-power-of-the-mind sort of bodies. Astral bodies, probably.
Mr Rune explained, in words which the layman could understand, that time really didn’t exist at all. His premise was that the universe had always been here. It had never begun and would never end. So there was an infinite amount of “time” in the past and an equally infinite amount of “time” to come in the future. He drew the famous analogy of the infinitely long piece of string. If you had a piece of string that stretched endlessly from infinity to infinity, then any point you chose on that string must be its middle. You couldn’t have more infinity on one side of it than on the other. And so it was with time. Wherever you were in it, you were right at its centre. No more time behind you than in front. It made perfect sense. Time, said Mr Rune, was a purely human concept. There was no past and no future, just an infinite number of presents.
So how could a human being travel into either the past or the future? The answer was, of course, that he couldn’t. Not physically, anyway. For physical travel he’d have to travel faster than light and nothing can travel faster than light. Well, nothing except THOUGHT. It got capital letters in the pamphlet, which meant that it was important.
You can think about the sun instantly, but its light takes eight minutes to reach you. So, mentally, you can outrun light.
Rune argued (convincingly) that many people had already mastered the technique of mental time travel. These folk were, of course, the prophets. Those lucky few blessed with the powers of precognition. The Nostradamus types who could see into the future. And there had been loads of them.
Mother Shipton, Edgar Cayce. Rune offered a list. These folk had travelled into the future by the power of their minds. But the trouble was that the future, which consisted of an infinite number of presents yet to come, was simply too big for the average prophet to get his head round. There was too much of it. So he got overloaded and confused and made a lot of inaccurate predictions. Rune claimed to have formulated a set of mental exercises which concentrated the mind on one tiny little bit of the future – maybe the bit that was only half an hour away.
And this was the bit that had Jim hooked. Just half an hour away. What, if you knew it half an hour before it happened, would benefit you very much indeed?
It hadn’t taken Jim half an hour to figure it out.
The result of the National Lottery.
And so Jim sat in the sun, his eyes closed and his face contorted by the anguish of his concentration.
It was a pity that the last page of the pamphlet, the page with the actual instructions for the mental exercises, had been torn off. Somebody else had got that round their cod and chips, but Jim had been unable to find out who. Still, he gritted his teeth none the less and thought forward.
Had Jim been able to foresee the eventual outcome of these mental exercises, he would have abandoned them there and then. In fact, he would probably have abandoned gambling there and then, along with drinking and all other things that he held dear, and retired at once to a monastery.
Because Jim’s time travelling, added to John’s imminent discovery of a certain sensational disclosure and multiplied by the abominable doings of Dr Steven Malone, would equal an apocalyptic total.
And it would all begin with A Most Exciting Tale.
5
Prelude to the Most Eventful Day
Jack was scraping at his face with a razor, which, like his wit, had lost its edge a good many years before.
“It was a close shave getting out of that little scrape,” said Jack, as he all but finished the messy chore. “As smooth as a baby’s bum-tiddly-um-bum-bum,” he continued, as he applied shreds of Kleenex to the profusion of nicks and cuts that now speckled the shaven area beneath his nose. “Pretty sharp,” he went on, as he examined his sagging features in the bathroom mirror. “And You’ll knock ’em dead,” he concluded, straightening his tie.
Jack’s wife, a beauty in her late forties, sliced bread in the kitchenette and worried quietly to herself. Worrying was good for her; it kept her mind off her problems.