Time Tunnel Read online

  “That is nonsense,” said Pepe with decision, “and it is not even amusing nonsense. You don’t believe it any more than I do.”

  “Of course not,” said Harrison. But he added unhappily, “At least I hope not. But this de Bassompierre business does stretch the long arm of coincidence completely out of joint. It’s all in the library. I wish it weren’t.”

  They strolled together. Pigeons flew overhead, careened and came back, and coasted down to where two or three energetic flappings would land them lightly. They began to inspect a place where a tiny wind-devil had heaped fallen leaves into a little pile. They moved suspiciously aside when Harrison and Pepe walked by.

  “No,” said Pepe firmly. “It is all quite ridiculous! I shall take you to the shop I mentioned, which reminded me of Professor Carroll. It is foolish that anyone should pretend to be in the business of importing and exporting commercial articles between now and the year eighteen hundred and four! Yet if time-travel were possible, there would certainly be somebody to make a business of it! And I have a grandmother who adores snuffboxes. We will go to the shop. If the snuffboxes are not too bad, I will buy her one, and you will see if they still claim to import and export to 1804. But I will bet the snuffboxes are marked made in Japan!”

  Harrison shrugged. He’d been worried. He’d come very close to being frightened. In fact, he had been frightened. But anticipations of modern discoveries had been made before. There’d been a bronze, planetary-gear computer brought up by a scuba diver from a Greek ship wrecked in the year 100, B.C. It could compute sunrise and sunset times and even eclipses. There’d been objects discovered near Damascus which were at least seven centuries old, and which were definitely and inexplicably electroplated. A craftsman presented a crystal goblet to the Emperor Nero, and then dashed it to the ground. It dented, but did not break. He hammered out the dent and gave it to the Emperor, who had him executed because his discovery would ruin the glass blowers of Rome. The goblet was possibly a plastic one.[3]

  Yes. Anticipations of modern knowledge were not uncommon. But this was unusually disturbing.

  It was a relief to have told Pepe about it, though. It was even reassuring for Pepe to have made that peculiar error about the history of his country. Of course the consequences of changes in the present brought about by time-travellers to the past would be horrifying to think about, if time-travel were possible. But Harrison now saw that it was wholly foolish. The evidence that had disturbed him wasn’t explained away. But since he’d told about it he was able to be skeptical. Which was consoling.

  Very, very thin and straight, a white pencil-line of vapor moved across the sky. It was the contrail of a )et, flying so high that even its roaring did not reach the ground. It was probably a member of that precautionary patrol which most of the larger cities of the earth maintained overhead night and day. There was no particular diplomatic crisis in the world at the moment-there were only two small brush-fire wars smouldering in the Far East and one United Nations force sitting on a trouble-spot nearer, with the usual turbulences in Africa and South America. A jet patrol above Paris did not mean that an unwarned atomic attack was more likely than usual. But there was a jet patrol. There were also atomic submarines under the Arctic ice-pack, ready to send annihilation soaring toward predetermined targets in case of need, and there were NATO ships at sea prepared to launch other missiles, and there were cavernous missile bases in divers countries, ready to send intercontinental rockets beyond the atmosphere should the occasion require it.

  But Harrison was used to hair-trigger preparations for mutual suicide by the more modern countries of the world. Such things didn’t frighten him. They weren’t new. Yet the idea that history might be changed, so that a totally different now might come about without warning, and that in that substituted present he might not even happen to have been born… That was something to send cold tingles down his spine! He was consciously glad that he’d talked it over with Pepe. It was absurd! He was glad that he could see it as absurd!

  A second contrail, miles high, made another white streak across the sky. Harrison didn’t notice.

  “The shop I mentioned,” said Pepe, “is just around the next corner. I did not go into it, because I saw a woman inside and she was stout and formidable and looked like a shopkeeper. Truly practical shopkeepers should realize that even reproductions of antiques should be sold by personable girls. But we will go there. We will inquire if they do import from and export to another century. It will be interesting. They will think us insane.”

  They turned the corner, and there was the shop. It was not a large one, and the sign, “Carroll, Dubois et Cie” was not conspicuous. The smaller lettering, saying that the firm were importers and exporters to the year 1804, looked strictly matter-of-fact. The shop seemed the most commonplace of all possible places of business.

  Harrison looked in the window. There were flint-lock pistols of various sizes. No two were alike, except a pair of duelling-pistols of incredibly fine workmanship. There were sporting guns, flint-locks. There was a Jaeger, also a flint-lock. But more than that, there was a spread-open copy of the Moniteur for April 7th, 1804, announcing the suicide of someone named Pichegru in his prison cell. He bad strangled himself with a silk handkerchief. It was an amazingly perfect replica of the official Napoleonic newspaper. But the paper itself was perfectly new and fresh. It simply could not be more than weeks old. At that, it would be a considerable publishing enterprise to find the type and the paper and make a convincing replica of any newspaper nearly two hundred years old. And there were Moniteurs of other dates in the window. Harrison suddenly realized that there was seemingly a file for a month or more. And that was unreasonable!

  He found himself reluctantly slipping back into the condition of mental stress and self-doubt that confiding in Pepe had seemed to end. There had been a man named de Bassompierre back in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had given important people important, exact, and detailed information about various things that nobody knew until fifty and a hundred and a hundred and fifty years later. So Harrison felt acutely uncomfortable.

  When Pepe opened the shop door and a bell tinkled he followed dismally inside. Then a girl, a very pretty girl, came out of the back of the shop and said politely:

  “Messieurs?”

  And Harrison’s eyes popped wide. Against all reason and all likelihood, he knew this girl. Against all common sense, she was somebody he recognized immediately. The fact was, again, one of those that one evaluates according to whether he believes the cosmos makes sense, or that it does not. There were so many other things that could have happened instead of this, that it was almost unbelievable that at this exact moment he should meet and know this girl.

  He said, startled:

  “Valerie!”

  She stared. She was astounded. Then she laughed in pure pleasure and held out both hands to him.

  And all this was improbable in the extreme, but it was the sort of thing that does happen. The combination of improbability with commonplaceness seems to have been characteristic of the whole affair of the time-tunnels. It appears that inevitability was a part of the pattern, too.

  2

  When Harrison woke next morning, before he opened his eyes he was aware of violently conflicting emotional states. On the one hand, be wished bitterly that he had never essayed to write a doctoral thesis that called for research in the Bibliothèque Nationale. On the other, he felt a pleasant glow in recalling that through that research he’d sat down to brood where Pepe would find him, and because of the research Pepe had carried him to the shop of Carroll, Dubois et Cie, where he’d seen Valerie, and that she remembered him with pleasure approaching affection.

  Neither of the feelings could be justified. The only possible explanation of his discoveries required either the acceptance of an idea that was plainly insane, or that he abandon his belief that the cosmos made sense. In the matter of Valerie… But there is never a rational reason for a man to rejoice that a certai
n pretty girl exists and that he has found her. The experience, however, is universal.

  When he was clothed, it was still hard to be sure that he was in his right mind. Still, when he had his morning coffee he felt a definite exhilaration because Valerie had remembered him. They had lived in the same building when they were children. They both knew people lone gone to a better world. Valerie remembered the small black dog he’d owned more than a dozen years before, and he remembered a kitten she’d forgotten, they recalled fêtes, they recalled a Twelfth Night celebration of which Valerie became queen at the age of eleven by virtue of having the slice of cake with the bean in it, and they remembered the eccentricities of the concierge whom they had occasionally outwitted. In general, they’d reminisced with a fine enthusiasm. But it was not likely they’d have felt such really great pleasure if, say, Harrison had married somebody else in the years between or if Valerie had been less satisfactory to look at.

  Now, today, Harrison finished his morning coffee and was pleased to remember that they would meet presently, secretly, because Valerie’s aunt, Madame Carroll, did not approve of her knowing young men. The prospect made Harrison feel fully capable of facing a new day.

  Then Pope arrived, fuming.

  “The French,” he said bitterly, “they are a noble race! I’ve been asking about this Carroll, Dubois et Cie, and it’s a monstrous thing! You saw me buy a snuffbox yesterday. I intended to send it to my grandmother. It would be just the thing for her handbag, to hold her hay-fever pills. But I examined it. And it is an outrage!”

  Harrison blinked at him.

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “It is a work of art!” said Pepe indignantly. “It was made by an artist! A craftsman! If it were an antique, it would be priceless! But it was one of a drawer-full of similar snuffboxes, some inferior, to be sure, but others equally good. And I bought it for peanuts!”

  Harrison blinked again. “I don’t quite see…”

  “Somebody made it!” said Pepe. “By hand! He is capable of magnificent work! This is magnificent! But he is turning out things to be sold by Carroll, Dubois et Cie as curios! Which is a crime! He should be found and told the facts of life! Your Valerie says that her uncle, M. Dubois, is off on a trip to secure more stock for the shop. She does not know where he went. You may remember that I was enthusiastic and asked where such things were manufactured. She does not know that, either! Don’t you see what has happened?”

  Harrison shook his head. He was unreasonably pleased at having rediscovered Valerie. It was something so unlikely that he wouldn’t have dreamed of it occurring.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he admitted.

  “I’ve made inquiries,” said Pepe. “I’m told that workmanship like that snuffbox would entitle a craftsman to plenty of money! If he made things of modern usefulness and iii the modern taste, he’d grow rich! But do you know what I paid for that snuffbox? Sixty-five hundred francs! Practically twenty dollars! Don’t you see?”

  “No,” admitted Harrison again, “I don’t.”

  “This Madame Carroll and this Monsieur Dubois have found a gifted craftsman,” said Pepe angrily, “he is capable of masterpieces, and they have him making curios! Think of the skill and labor that went into this snuffbox! Think what they must have paid him for it, to offer it for sale as a curio for twenty dollars!”

  Harrison blinked yet again.

  “But…”

  “The stupidity of it!” insisted Pepe, hotly. “The idiocy of it! As shopkeepers, this Madame Carroll and this M’sieur Dubois think only of how much they can get from miniature works of art they don’t even recognize as works of art! They think only of a shopkeeper’s profit! They keep a craftsman of the highest order turning out gems of skill and artistry so they can sell them to ignorant tourists! Like me!”

  Harrison felt a very familiar depression creeping over him.

  “Naturally Dubois would not let out where he gets his stock!” said Pepe scornfully. “Someone might find his workman and let him know what his skill is really worth! It isn’t illegal to buy an artist’s work for peanuts and sell it again at any price one can get. But it is an outrage!”

  “The workmanship is that good?” asked Harrison forlornly.

  “I spoke to an expert in such things,” fumed Pepe, “and he said it could not be duplicated for ten times what I paid for it! But, he also said there is no large market for snuffboxes. I’ll make a bet that these shopkeepers are too stupid to realize that work like this is different from any other curio product!”

  Harrison swallowed. He felt a suspicion. But it was totally unrealistic to think that because there had been wildly unlikely coincidences in the immediate past, that there would be more wildly unlikely ones turning up in orderly succession. Yet…

  “Pepe,” he said unhappily, “you say it would take weeks to create that snuffbox. How many did you see, and how much time would be required to make them, by hand? And you saw the guns. They are not machine-made. They are strictly hand-craft products. How many man-years of labor do they represent? And there were some books in the shop, set in type of the Napoleonic period and printed on paper that simply is not made any more. How long to make the paper and set the type and print and bind those books? And how much investment in printing replicas of even one issue of the Moniteur? There are weeks of the Moniteur in the window, if not months! Do you think small shopkeepers could finance all this? And do you think that people who could finance such an enterprise would pick out Carroll, Dubois et Cie for their only outlet?”

  Pepe swore. Then he admitted:

  “I didn’t think of those angles. But what is the answer?”

  “I haven’t the least idea,” said Harrison unhappily. “It’s ridiculous to believe in the only explanation that would explain it.”

  “That someone travels from now to then?” Pepe snorted. “My dear fellow, that is nonsense! You know it is nonsense!”

  “I agree with you,” said Harrison regretfully. “But I’ve never noticed that being nonsensical keeps things from happening. Don’t you ever read about politics?”

  “I admit,” Pepe conceded with dignity, “that foolish things are done by governments and great men, but I cannot do anything about them! But if there is a genuine artist working for a pittance so that a French shopkeeper can make a shrewd profit out of his commercial innocence… That I can do something about!”

  “Such as what?” asked Harrison. Internally, he struggled against an appalling tendency to think in terms of the preposterous.

  “I am going to the shop again,” said Pepe sternly. “I won’t talk to your Valerie, because you saw her first. But I shall say that I want a special bit of work done, only it will be necessary for me to discuss it with the workman. These shopkeepers will see the chance to make an inordinate profit. I will pay part of it in advance. They will gloat. And I will tell this workman what an idiot he is to work for what they pay him! I will advance him money to do such work for modern millionaires! If necessary, I’ll send people to him who will pay him something adequate! Because he is an artist!”

  Harrison stared at him in alarm.

  “But look here!” he protested. “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Why, Valerie! We were children together! And I knew this Madame Carroll when she was a skinny virgin, trying desperately to get herself a suitable husband! She’s Valerie’s aunt and she was a tartar then and she’s worse now! Valerie lives with her! She doesn’t want Valerie to know anybody because if she married, her aunt would have to pay a decent wage for somebody to help in the shop!”

  Pepe snorted.

  “You talked to her for fifteen minutes and you have a complete picture of the difficulties to romance with her! One doesn’t learn such things unless there’s some thought of evading them!”

  Harris said indignantly:

  “But she’s a nice kid! I liked her when we were children! And dammit, I’ve been lonesome! I’m
not interested in romance in the abstract, Pepe. You have to be a Frenchman or a Mexican to do that! But Valerie’s a nice kid! And I don’t want to make trouble for her!”

  “She is not allowed to know young men,” said Pepe in a detached tone. “Have you arranged to meet her, ah, privately?”

  “Well… yes,” Harrison admitted.

  “And you do not want to make trouble for her!” said Pepe sardonically. “Ah, you rascal! In fifteen minutes you made her remember you, you learned about her tragic and unhappy life, and you made a date! You’re a fast worker, my friend!”

  Harrison said angrily:

  “Look here, Pepe! I won’t have that! I…”

  Pepe waved his hand.

  “Oh, I am helpless! I admit it! I’ve taken upon myself to rescue a skilled craftsman from peonage to French shopkeepers, than which there could be no worse slavery. But you can spoil things for me. You could tell Valerie of my noble purpose, and she could tell her aunt, which would spoil my altruistic scheme. So I’ll make a deal with you.”

  Harrison glared at him. Pepe grinned.

  “We go to the shop together. Again. Maybe Madame Carroll won’t be there. In that case you can talk to Valerie. A bribe, eh? All I’ll do is plant the idea of a specially-made article. If she or Dubois are there, I’ll set up the idea of a fine swindle of which I’m to be the victim. Then they’ll be amiable to you because you are my friend. They may even try to enlist you to help them swindle me! They…”

  “It won’t work,” said Harrison.

  “But I shall try it,” said Pepe, still grinning. “You can’t keep me from trying. But I’ll let you come along if you like.”

  Very grudgingly, Harrison stood up. He was very far from happy. He was again unable to dismiss the completely foolish ideas stemming from dusty, elaborately shaded hand-written documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale. They were too fantastic to be credited, but he needed badly to find some excuse for dismissing them. He needed the excuse more than ever today, because he’d been trying not to think of the possibility that if the past could be visited, it could be changed, and if it were changed the present might follow and he, in person, could vanish like a puff of smoke. And Valerie could vanish too!