"Aha! " said the woman, without irony, "You are English, then."
"Some of us are," said Inspector Springer heavily. "These little ones are Latvians."
"I am Mrs. Persson. May I introduce Captain Bastable." The man saluted; he raised his own goggles. His face was tanned and handsome; his blue eyes were pale.
"I am Mrs. Underwood. This is Mr. Carnelian, Inspector Springer, Captain Mubbers — I'm afraid I've no idea of the other names. They do not speak English. I believe they are space-travellers from the distant future. Are they not, Mr. Carnelian?"
"The Lat," he said. "We were never entirely clear about their origins. But they did come in a space-ship. To the End of Time."
"You are from the End of Time, sir?" Captain Bastable spoke in the light, clipped tones familiar to Jherek as being from the nineteenth century.
"I am."
"Jherek Carnelian, of course," said Mrs. Persson. "A friend of the Duke of Queens, are you not? And Lord Jagged?"
"You know them?" He was delighted.
"I know Lord Jagged slightly. Oh, I remember — you are in love with this lady, your — Amelia?"
"My Amelia!"
"I am not 'your Amelia', Mr. Carnelian," she said firmly. And she became suspicious of Mrs. Persson.
Mrs. Persson was apologetic. "You are from 1896. I was forgetting. You will forgive me, I hope, Mrs. Underwood. I have heard so much about you. Your story is one of the greatest of our legends. I assure you, we are honoured to meet you in the flesh."
Mrs. Underwood frowned, guessing sarcasm, but there was none.
"You have heard —?"
"We are only a few, we gossip. We exchange experiences and tales, as travellers will, on the rare occasions when we meet. And the Centre, of course, is where we all congregate."
The young man laughed. "I don't think they're following you, Una."
"I babble. You will be our guests?"
"You have a machine here?" said Mrs. Underwood, hope dawning.
"We have a base. You have not heard of it? You are not yet members of the Guild, then?"
"Guild?" Mrs. Underwood drew her eyebrows together. "No."
"The Guild of Temporal Adventurers," explained Captain Bastable. "The GTA?"
"I have never heard of it."
"Neither have I," said Jherek. "Why do you have an association?"
Mrs. Persson shrugged. "Mainly so that we can exchange information. Information is of considerable help to those of us whom you could call 'professional time-travellers'." She smiled self-deprecatingly. "It is such a risky business, at best."
"Indeed it is," he agreed. "We should love to accept your invitation. Should we not, Mrs. Underwood?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Persson." Mrs. Underwood was still not at ease, but she had control of her manners.
"We shall need to make two trips. I suggest, Oswald, that you take the Lat and Inspector Springer back with you and then return for us three."
Captain Bastable nodded. "Better check the hamper first. Just to be on the safe side."
"Of course. Would you like to look, Mrs. Underwood, and tell me if anything is missing?"
"It does not matter. I really think —"
"It is of utmost importance. If anything is lost from it, we shall search meticulously until it is found. We have instruments for detecting almost everything."
She peered in. She sorted. "Everything here, I think."
"Fine. Time merely tolerates us, you know. We must not offend."
Captain Bastable, the Lat and Inspector Springer, were already in their boat. The motor whined again. The water foamed. They were away.
Mrs. Persson watched it disappear before turning back to Jherek and Mrs. Underwood. "A lovely day. You have been here some while?"
"About a week, I would say," Mrs. Underwood smoothed at her ruined dress.
"So long as one avoids the water, it can be very beautiful. Many come to the Lower Devonian simply for the rest. If it were not for the eurypterids — the water scorpions — it would be perfect. Of all Palaeozoic periods, I find it the nicest. And, of course, it is a particularly friendly age, permitting more anachronism than most. This is your first visit?"
"The first," said Mrs. Underwood. Her expression betrayed what propriety restrained her from stating, that she hoped it would be the last.
"It can be dull." Mrs. Persson acknowledged the implication. "But if one wishes to relax, to re-plot one's course, take bearings — there are few better at this end of Time." She yawned. "Captain Bastable and I shall be glad to be on our way again, as soon as our caretaking duties are over and we are relieved. Another fortnight should see us back in some twentieth century or other."
"You seem to suggest that there are more than one?" said Jherek. "Do you mean that different methods of recording history apply, or —?"
"There are as many versions of history as there are dedicated time-travellers." Mrs. Persson smiled. "The difficulty lies in remaining in a consistent cycle. If one cannot do so, then all sorts of shocks are likely — environmental readjustment becomes almost impossible — madness results. How many fashions in insanity, do you think, have been set by mentally disturbed temporal adventures? We shall never know!" She laughed. "Captain Bastable, for instance, was an inadvertent traveller (it sometimes happens), and was on the borders of madness before we were able to rescue him. First one finds it is the future which does not correspond, and this is frightening enough, if you are not expecting it. But it is worse when you return — to discover that your past has changed. You two, I take it, are fixed to a single band. Count yourselves lucky, if you do not know what to expect of multiversal time-travelling."
Jherek could barely grasp the import of her words and Mrs. Underwood was lost completely, though she fumbled with the notion: "You mean that time-traveller we met, who referred to Waterloo Circus, was not from my time at all, but one which corresponded…?" She shook her head. "You cannot mean it. My time no longer exists, because…?"
"Your time exists. Nothing ever perishes, Mrs. Underwood. Forgive me for saying so, but you seem singularly ill-prepared for temporal adventuring. How did you come to choose the Lower Devonian, for instance?"
"We did not choose it," Jherek told her. "We set off for the End of Time. Our ship was in rather poor condition. It deposited us here — although we were convinced we went forward."
"Perhaps you did."
"How can that be?"
"If you followed the cycle round, you arrived at the end and continued on to the beginning."
"Time is cyclic, then?"
"It can be." She smiled. "There are spirals, too, as it were. None of us understands it very well, Mr. Carnelian. We pool what information we have. We have been able to create some basic methods of protecting ourselves. But few can hope to understand very much about the nature of Time, because that nature does not appear to be constant. The Chronon Theory, for instance, which was very popular in certain cultures, has been largely discredited — yet seems to apply in societies which accept the theory. Your own Morphail Theory has much to recommend it, although it does not allow for the permutations and complications. It suggests that Time has, as it were, only one dimension — as if Space had only one. You follow me, Mr. Carnelian?"
"To some extent."
She smiled. "And 'to some extent' is all I follow myself. One thing the Guild always tells new members — 'There are no experts where Time is concerned'. All we seek to do is to survive, to explore, to make occasional discoveries. Yet there is a particular theory which suggests that with every one discovery we make about Time, we create two new mysteries. Time can never be codified, as Space can be, because our very thoughts, our information about it, our actions based on that information, all contribute to extend the boundaries, to produce new anomalies, new aspects of Time's nature. Do I become too abstract? If so, it is because I discuss something which is numinous — unknowable — perhaps truly metaphysical. Time is a dream — or a nightmare — from which there is never any waking. We who travel in Time are dreamers who occasionally share a common experience. To retain one's identity, to retain some sense of meaning in one's own life, that is all the time-traveller can hope for — it is why the Guild exists. You are lucky that you are not adrift in the multiverse, as Captain Bastable was, for you can become like a drowning man who refuses to float, but flounders — and every wave which you set up in the Sea of Time has a habit of becoming a whole ocean in its own right."