'Noble John. Nature's aristocrat!'
They were silent. He started toward the camp again but stopped after a few steps.
'I swore I wouldn't ever say anything about this until we returned. But I feel I must tell you now. Only you will have to promise me you won't tell Robert or Gribardsun.'
'How can I do that if it turns out that what you're going to tell me may hurt John if I keep silent?'
He shrugged and said, 'Unless you promise not to tell anyone, I won't tell you.'
Rachel looked steadily at him as if she were trying to tunnel straight into his mind, into the chamber where the secret hid. Then she said, 'All right. I promise.'
'You mean it?'
'Have I ever lied to you?'
'I don't think so,' he said.
He licked his lips.
'Well, here goes. The day before our quarantine, de Long-nors called me and asked if he could talk to me in private. You were gone, so I said yes. He was at our apartment in ten minutes, and after making sure the place wasn't bugged, and with me wondering what was going on, he told me everything he knew - and suspected - about Gribardsun.'
'Naturally he'd be angry with John.'
'There was more to it than that. You see, he'd talked with Moishe, not too long before Moishe died. Moishe was already sick by then, and he knew he was going to die. He called in de Longnors, who at that time was to be head of our expedition. He told de Longnors a strange tale, one which de Longnors found difficult to believe. Moishe said that thirty years before, in 2038, when he was still working on his theory of time mechanics, he was approached by Gribardsun. At that time almost no one knew what Moishe was working on and those who did thought he was a crackpot. In fact, Moishe almost lost his position as an instructor in physics at the University of Greater Europe because his superiors thought he was an imbecile or psychotic. Or both.
'But the pressure from them suddenly and inexplicably eased off. And Moishe was given the go-ahead. Not only that; he was granted leave from his teaching duties and given more computer facilities.
'Moishe said that this took place almost immediately after he had explained to Gribardsun what he was doing. Apparently Gribardsun had a grasp of Moishe's theory that no one else had at that time. Moishe said it wasn't because Gribardsun was such a great mathematician. But he seemed to have an almost intuitive comprehension. As if he spoke - or thought - in a language that had the same structure as Moishe's mathematics. Moishe couldn't explain what his impressions of Gribardsun were, but he felt a repressed force and something slightly unhuman - not inhuman - in him. As if the man had a somewhat non-Homo sapiens Weltanschauung.
'Whatever Gribardsun was, he wanted Moishe to go full jets ahead. And Moishe was given everything he asked for. At the time he did not connect the Englishman's visit with what followed. Gribardsun had not promised anything. But later, Moishe made a few investigations - after he became suspicious, that is; he could not prove it, but he suspected that Gribardsun had somehow pulled strings to get the project going. All of this was thirty years before construction on the vessel had started. Twenty-four years before the final project was approved.'
'Moishe was always a very busy man. But he got several men interested in Gribardsun, men in the International Criminal Agency who, in the event, took a long time to find out little. But their findings were significant, though improvable. Mostly, they concluded that something was rotten, not in Denmark, but in England and in Time. And in Africa.
'By using the facilities of the World Reference Bank, they learned that Gribardsun had been interested for a long tune in trying to analyze the structure of Time. Moreover, so had his father. Now, our John Gribardsun was born in Derbyshire in 2020, which makes him fifty years old - fifty-one by now. He looks as if he's thirty, which is no miracle in this day of rejuvenation drugs. His father, who looked exactly like him, was born in 1980, and disappeared while sailing off the coast of Kenya. Apparently not much was known about his father. Though an English duke, he spent most of his life in East Africa.'
'His father was born in vague circumstances in West Africa - exact location not known - raised in indeterminate circumstances in West Africa, and came into his ducal title only after some shenanigans on the part of a relative, who tried to bilk him out of it. This man lived most of his life in Africa and then disappeared in 1970, whereupon his grandson became Duke Gribardsun of Pemberley. But the grandfather was born in 1872.'
Rachel said, 'What about it? What about any of this stuff? What's the point?'
'To start with, from John Gribardsun born in 1872, every Duke of Gribardsun spent most of his life in Africa. And though they served their country in war, they took no other part in public life. Moreover, their source of income was very shadowy. They were suspected of having a gold mine somewhere in Central Africa, and the original duke and his descendants had much trouble - if rumors could be believed - with criminals determined to find that mine. And if you think that is a fairy tale, let me tell you that every once in a while an eruption of gold onto the black market could be traced back to Africa. But never directly to the doorstep of the Gribardsuns. Money was abandoned everywhere in the early twenties, if you'll remember. The economy of abundance was adopted worldwide. And at the same time the British peerage was abolished. So the Gribardsuns lost both title and their secret wealth at the same time. But our John went into the professions. He was a doctor and also an administrator of the World Reference Bank. He had access to the administrative records, and to the men who kept them, both as their doctor and as their supervisor. A strange double career, don't you think? Especially in these days, when no man has to work if he doesn't care to. Yet Gribardsun had two professions. And during his long and frequent vacations, he spent much time on the Inner Kenyan Sanctuary and the Ugandan Preserve. It was there he did his work for his MQA thesis on physical anthropology. And it was out of there, if you can believe the findings of the ICA, that some strange tales began coming - all about John Gribardsun: his great strength, his ability to live off the jungle, his singular ability to get along with animals. There were even rumors that he was ageless. The natives of the sanctuary and the preserve spoke of that. They claimed that he was several hundred years old and been given a magic potion when he was very young by a native witch doctor. These stories were discounted, of course. But then ICA came across some disquieting - or maybe just puzzling - things when they were checking out the World Reference Bank. There were indications - but nothing that could be proved - that the records had been tampered with.'
'What in the world are you driving at?' Rachel said. But her eyes were wide, her skin pale, and a pulse beat in the hollow of her neck.
'Well, the ICA men were thorough, and very well trained, but not what you might call imaginative. They put together a picture and then refused to believe it. They did, however, check out the fingerprints, photographs, and biographical data of the John Gribardsun born in 1872 against each of his descendants. They did so, they said, as a matter of routine, but they were looking for something which I don't think they expressed even to each other.
'However, his descendants, though they looked much like him, had different fingerprints. And though the original John never had retinal or ear or brainwave prints, his descendants did. And theirs were unique. But then, false records can be made. And the lives of the later Gribardsuns, which should have been much more thoroughly documented and detailed, were almost as shadowy as that of the man born in 1872. The Gribardsuns did not even go to public school; they all had private tutors.'