DAVID LAKE
When Ambrose Livermore designed his Time Machine, he bethought him of the advantages both of mobility and of camouflage, and therefore built his apparatus into the bodywork of a second-hand Volkswagen. Anyone looking in at the windows, such as an inquisitive traffic policeman, would have taken the thing for an ordinary ‘bug’ with a large metal trunk on the back seat. The large metal trunk contained the workings of the Time Machine; the front seat and the dashboard looked almost normal, and the car could still function as a car.
When all things were ready, one cold afternoon in 1984, Ambrose got into the front seat and drove from his little laboratory in Forminster to a deserted field on a South English hill. A white chalk track led him to the spot he had chosen; further along there was an ancient British hill fort, but not one that was ever visited by tourists. And this gloomy October day there was no one at all to be ruffled by his extraordinary departure. Applying the handbrake, he looked about him; and at last he smiled.
Ambrose did not often smile, for he was a convinced pessimist. He had seen the way the world was going for some time, and in his opinion it was not going well. Energy crisis was followed by energy crisis, and little war by little or not-so-little war, and always the great nations became further locked into their unending arms race. Sooner or later, the big bang was coming; and he wanted out. Luckily, he now had the means for getting out...
Briefly, he wished that general time travel were a real possibility. One could then go back to the Good Old Days - say, before 1914. One could keep hopping back, living 1913 over and over and over again ... Only of course the Good Old Days weren’t really all that good; one would miss all sorts of modern comforts; and besides, the thing was impossible anyway. Backward time travel was utterly illogical, you could shoot your grandfather and so on. No: his own work had opened up the escape route, the only escape route, the one that led into the future. There were no illogicalities involved in that, since everyone travels into the future at all times. The Livermore Accelerator merely speeded up a natural process - speeded it up amazingly, of course, but...
But there it was. He would hop forward a century or so, in the hope of evading imminent doom. Surely the crash must come well before that, and by 2100, say, they’d be recovering ...
Ambrose took a deep breath, and pressed the red lever that projected below the dashboard.
The sensation was bewildering. He had done it before, of course, behind locked doors in the laboratory, but only for a subjective second or two, little jumps of a couple of hours. Now years were flashing by ... Literally flashing! There was a blinding light, and the ghostly landscape seemed to tremble. Shaken, he looked at his dials. Not even the end of the century ... and yet, that must have been It. The Big Bang, the War. His forebodings had been entirely right...
He steadied himself, his fingers gripping the lever. The landscape seemed to be rippling and flowing, but there were no more explosive flashes. As he approached 2100, he eased the red lever towards him, slowing down, and now he saw things more clearly. The general outline of the hills and the plain below were not greatly altered, but at night there were very few lights showing. Forminster from up here used to be a bright electric blaze, but now it was no more than a faint flickering glimmer. He smiled grimly. Civilisation had been set back, all right! Probably they were short of power: you can’t get electricity from nothing. But, what luck! This countryside hadn’t been badly hit by bombs or lasers, and there were still small towns or at least villages dotted about. Yes, he would certainly emerge here and try his luck.
Now for immediate problems. As he slowed to a crawl, he saw that the surface of this hillside meadow had dropped by a few centimetres. No worry about that, it was better than a rise! And a hundred metres away a wood had sprung up, a sparse copse of beeches that were rapidly unleaving. It looked deserted, too. A perfect place to hide the car while he reconnoitered. As October 2100 ticked away, he pulled the lever firmly back, and stopped.
The car dropped as though it had just gone over a bump in a road. It fell those few centimetres, and shuddered to complete stillness. He had done it!
Almost, you might think, nothing had changed, apart from that wood. The same downs, the same cold cloudy autumn afternoon. Somewhere in the distance he heard the baa of a sheep. It was a comfortingly ordinary sound; even though, come to think of it, there had been no sheep in these parts in 1984.
Ambrose smiled (that was becoming a new habit). Then he drove the car deep into the wood.
The village of Ethanton still lay at the foot of the hill. He had driven through it several times in the old days, looking for a safe site for his great evasion; it had then been a crumbling old place, half deserted, its population of course drifting away to Forminster or London, half its cottages converted into desperate would-be tourist-trap tearooms. There had been a railway station a couple of miles off until the economic crisis of 1981; when that had gone, the last flickering vitality had seemed to forsake the place. But now -
Now, to his surprise, Ethanton seemed to be flourishing. There were new cottages along the road. At least, they were new in the sense that they had not been here in the 1980s; otherwise he’d have said they were old. Certainly they were old in style, being mostly of dull red brick with slate roofs, and one even displayed black oak beams and thatch. That one, certainly, had the raw look of recent construction: he peered at it, expecting a sign saying TEAS - but it wasn’t there, and indeed the whole front of the house had that shut-in appearance of a genuine cottage. For that matter, there was nothing on this road to suggest tourism; not a single parked car, nor a motorcycle. And the road itself, which led after a dozen kilometres to Forminster - it had deteriorated. It was no longer smooth tarmac: it was paved through the village with some lumpy stuff that suggested cobblestones.
He moved cautiously on into the High Street, and came opposite the Green Dragon Inn. And here he was struck motionless with surprise.
It was not much after four o’clock, and yet there was a small crowd of men milling about the inn, some nursing tankards as they sat on the benches outside. The whole dusky scene was feebly brightened by an oil lamp swinging over the main inn doorway; there was a lamppost on the pavement nearby, but that was not functioning, and indeed three or four workmen seemed to be doing something to it while the village policeman looked on. The clothes of all these people struck Ambrose as curiously antiquated; one drinker in particular boasted a high collar that might have been in the height of fashion in the 1900s. There were no motor cars anywhere along the street, though there was one odd-looking bicycle leaning against the inn wall, and beyond the lamppost stood a parked horse carriage complete with coachman and harnessed horse.
As Ambrose gazed at the scene, so the scene began to gaze at him. In particular the policeman stiffened, left the workmen at the lamppost, and strode over towards him.
Ambrose braced himself. He had anticipated some difficulties, and now he fingered the gun in his trouser pocket. But that was the last resort. He had done his best to make himself inconspicuous: in a pair of nondescript old trousers and a dark grey jersey he thought he might not be too unsuitably dressed for England in 2100. And he had to make contact somehow.
The policeman halted directly before him, surveying Ambrose through the half-gloom. Then he touched his fingers to his tall blue helmet.
‘Beg pardon, zur,’ he said, in the broadest of broad bumpkin accents, ‘but would yew be a stranger in these parts, zur?’ The dialect was more or less appropriate to this country, but almost stagily exaggerated, and in details stagily uncertain, as though the policeman had worked hard to study his role, but still hadn’t got it quite right. ‘Be you a stranger gen’leman, zur?’ he repeated.
‘Well - yes,’ stammered Ambrose. ‘As a matter of fact, I am. I - I was strolling up the hill up there when I had a bit of an accident. Branch of a tree fell on me - nothing serious, but it dazed me, and I don’t remember very well -’
Suddenly the policeman’s hand shot forward and he seized Ambrose by the shirt collar. Normally when this sort of thing happens, the piece of garment in question is used only for leverage; but strangely now the hand of authority began holding the shirt collar up to the light, and feeling its texture between its large fingers.
‘What, what - ‘ spluttered Ambrose.
‘Ar, I thought as much!’ exclaimed the policeman grimly. ‘One o’ them Anaky fellers, you be. Well, m’lad, you’ll come along o’ me.’
Ambrose clawed for his gun, but the policeman saw the move and grabbed his wrist. By now the workmen had come up, and they joined in the fun, too. Ambrose was seized by half a dozen heavy hands, he was pulled off his feet, and the next moment the policeman had the gun and was flourishing it, to exclamations of ‘Ho, yes! One o’ them, he be! ‘Old ‘im, me lads - ‘e’s a bleeding Anaky, ‘e is!’
Suddenly there was a new voice. ‘Now, now, constable: what exactly is going on here?’
Higher Authority had arrived.
Ambrose was marched into a small back room of the Green Dragon, where he was guarded by the policeman, and interrogated by the gentleman who had taken charge of the proceedings.
Dr Leathey had a trim brown beard, intelligent blue eyes, and a kindly expression; like Ambrose, he seemed in his early thirties. He was dressed very neatly in a dark suit, high collar and tie of pre-World-War-I vintage. The room where he conducted his investigation was dimly lit by candles and an oil lamp, and boasted in one corner a grandfather clock. There was something about that clock that specially bothered Ambrose, but at present naturally he couldn’t give his mind to that.
‘So, Mr Livermore,’ said Leathey, ‘you claim loss of memory. That is droll! Loss of memory is no crime whatever, on the contrary, it is extremely virtuous. But I am afraid amnesia will not explain the semi-synthetic texture of your clothing, nor the forbidden make of your automatic pistol. Now really, Mr Livermore, you had better come clean. If I were to hand you on to the County authorities it might go hard with you, but here in Ethanton I am the authorities: I am the JP, the doctor, and the specialist in these matters, and I have certain discretionary powers ... Come, let us get one thing clear, at least: where do you come from?’
‘From - from Forminster,’ stammered Ambrose.
Leathey and the policeman exchanged glances. Leathey sighed and nodded. ‘Mr Livermore, that is practically an admission of guilt, you know.’
‘Eh?’ said Ambrose.
‘Come, why pretend? You must know that for the past sixty years that town has been officially re-christened Backminster - for obvious reasons. A shibboleth, Mr Livermore, a shibboleth! Forminster, indeed! I put it to you, Mr Livermore - you are a BA.’
‘Ph.D, actually,’ murmured Ambrose. ‘In Physics.’
‘Ph.D?’ muttered Leathey dubiously. ‘Oh, well, I suppose that’s still permitted; I must look up my annals, but I believe those letters of yours are still within the letter of the law. So - Dr Livermore, I presume? Quite an intellectual. But really, this is surprising! Do you really come from Backminster?’
‘Yes,’ said Ambrose, sulkily. He glanced past Leathey at the grandfather clock, and hated it. ‘Yes, I did come from - er - Backminster; but that was some time ago.’
‘Many years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Leathey, with a little laugh. Then he seemed to turn serious. ‘Dr Livermore, I rather like you. You are an intelligent man, I think, and certainly a gentleman, and that counts for something these days - and of course will count for even more by and by. If you will confess and submit to purgation, you might well become a useful citizen again. You might indeed become a power for good in the land - a perditor, or a chronic healer like myself. Will you submit, Dr Livermore, and let me help you?’
A disarmed prisoner has very little choice when faced with such a proposition. Ambrose thought for about half a second, and then said Yes.
Leathey rose. ‘Good. I knew you would see reason. But let us continue these conversations in more agreeable surroundings. Simkins,’ he said, addressing the constable, ‘I shall take Dr Livermore to my own house, and I will be answerable for his security till tomorrow.’
Then they were escorting him from the inn to the horse carriage, which turned out to be Leathey’s private conveyance. As they passed, Ambrose noticed that the workmen, by the light of swinging oil lanterns, were carrying off the lamppost which they had uprooted from the pavement. It wouldn’t be much loss, he thought: it was a very old-fashioned looking lamppost.
Suddenly, with a kind of horror, it came to him what had been wrong with that grandfather clock in the inn parlour. Its hands had been pointing to somewhere around seven o’clock - several hours wrong; and they had been moving anticlockwise.
In other words - backwards.
As the brougham gathered speed and rattled over the cobblestones, Ambrose leant towards Leathey, who sat opposite. ‘What year is this?’ he breathed.
‘1900,’ said Leathey calmly. ‘What year did you think it was?’
Ambrose was too overcome to reply. He slumped back with a groan.
Dr Leathey was evidently a well-to-do bachelor; his house was large, stone-built and ivy-covered, and was staffed by several men and maidservants. These people found Ambrose a bedroom, laid him out a nightshirt, and in general saw to his comforts. A valet explained that in the morning, if he wished, he would shave him - ‘You being, I understand sir, not quite up to handling a razor yourself.’ Ambrose soon got the point: safety razors did not exist, so he, as a prisoner, could not be trusted with such a lethal weapon as an old cut-throat blade.
The manservant made him change his clothes completely. Luckily, Ambrose was about Leathey’s height and build, so an old suit of the master’s fitted him quite well. The high starched collar was damnably uncomfortable; but at least he was presentable, and was ushered in to dinner.
He was Leathey’s sole guest. ‘Let’s not talk now,’ said his host, smiling. ‘Afterwards, sir, afterwards ...’
It was a very good dinner, of a somewhat old-fashioned English kind. The vegetables and the beef were fresh and succulent, and there was a very good 1904 Burgundy. Leathey made a joke about that.
‘Glad the URN don’t object to wines of the future, within reason. I suppose you might say four years isn’t Blatant. But I like my stuff just a little mellow.’
Ambrose gazed at him and at the bottle in a sort of stupor. Then suddenly he saw the point, and nearly choked on his roast beef.
‘Drink some water,’ said Leathey kindly. ‘That’s better. You know, Dr Livermore, you are the strangest Anachronic criminal it has been my lot ever to run across. Mostly they’re hardened, bitter, knowing - you’re not. And therefore I have good hopes of you. But before we get to the heart of the matter, let me get you to admit one thing. We live well, don’t we, we of the Acceptance? Do you see anything wrong with this village, or this house, or this dinner, anything sordid or unwholesome?’
‘No -’ began Ambrose, ‘but -’
‘There you are, my dear feller. The whole world is coming round to seeing how comfortably one can live this way. As that great old reactionary Talleyrand once said, it’s only the ancien régime that really understands the douceur de vie. You BAs are only a tiny minority. The proof of the pudding - ah, talk of the devil! Here it comes now, the pudding. I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s a genuine old English suet, carefully researched -’
‘But it’s all insane!’ cried Ambrose. Forgetting his manners, he pointed with his fork. ‘That clock on the sideboard - why is it showing four o’clock and going backwards?’
‘My goodness,’ said Leathey, looking astonished. ‘You really must have amnesia. Protest is one thing, stark ignorance another. You really don’t know?’
‘No!’
After the meal, Leathey took him to his study, which was fitted with half-empty bookshelves and a huge black wall-safe. Over the safe was hung a painting in a rather academic eighteenth-century style, showing some sort of goddess enfolded in clouds; between that and the safe an oaken scroll bore the florid inscription: ‘She comes! she comes!’ Leathey waved Ambrose to a comfortable armchair, and offered him a cigar.
‘No? Cigars will still be all right for quite some time, you know, and separate smoking-rooms for gentlemen’s houses are not yet compulsory. I do my best to get these things right, you know. All right, now: let’s begin ...’
Ambrose leant forward. ‘Tell me, please: are we really in the year 1900?’
‘Of course,’ smiled Leathey.
‘But - but we can’t be. Reverse time travel is a stark impossibility-!’
‘Time travel?’ Leathey’s eyebrows shot up; then he laughed. ‘Ah, I see you’re well read, Dr Livermore.’ He got up, and took from a shelf near the safe a slim hard-covered volume. ‘The Time Machine,’ he murmured. ‘Dear Mr Wells! We’ll only have him for another five years, alas, and then - into the big safe with him! Freud went this year, and he was no loss, but one will miss dear old science fiction. Well, officially.’ He brought his head close to Ambrose, and gave him a confiding chuckle. ‘We are acting for the best, you know; but if you join us, there are - compensations. Behind closed doors, with blinds drawn, I can assure you, Dr Livermore, there’s no harm in us occasionally reading cancelled books. And you can’t lick us, you know, so why don’t you - pardon me; you get my meaning, but I believe that’s a cancelled phrase in this country. I must learn to avoid it.’
Ambrose gulped. ‘I am going mad -’
‘No, you are mad. I am here to make you sane.’
‘You are not really living backwards,’ said Ambrose. ‘Dammit, you don’t take food out of your mouths, your carriages don’t move in reverse, and yet - hey, what was last year?’
‘1901. And next year will by 1899, of course. Today is the 1st of March, and tomorrow will be 28th February, since 1900 is not a leap year.’
‘Of course!’ echoed Ambrose hysterically. ‘And yet the yellow leaves on the trees show that it’s autumn, and - How did this insanity happen? I really do have complete amnesia, you know. In my day time was added, not subtracted -’
‘In your day?’ said Leathey, frowning. ‘What are you, Rip Van Winkle? Well, it may help you to emerge from your delusion if I give you a sketch of what has happened since the Treaty -’
‘What treaty?’
‘There you go again ... Well, to start with, after the Last War and the Time of Confusion, it became obvious to the surviving civilised peoples of the world that the game was up: the game of Progress, I mean. The earth was in ruins, its minerals exhausted, most of the great cities devastated. If we were to try to go that way again, it would be madness. Besides, we couldn’t do it even if we wanted to: there was so little left, almost no fossil fuels, no minerals, no uranium even. We couldn’t even keep going at the rate we’d become accustomed to. There was only one thing for it - to return to a simpler way of life. Well, we could do that in one of two ways: by a controlled descent, or by struggle, resistance, and collapse. Luckily, all the leading nations chose control. It was in 2016, by the old Forward Count, that the Treaty was signed by the United Regressive Nations. And forthwith that year was renamed 1984, Backward Count; and the next year 1983, and so on.’
‘So we really are in 2100,’ said Ambrose, breathing a sigh of relief.
Leathey fixed him with a severe look. ‘No, we really are in 1900, Backward Count,’ he said. ‘It is only you Blatant Anachronics who call it 2100. And, by God, we are making it be 1900! We are removing all the extravagant anachronic wasters of energy - this very day you saw my men getting rid of the last gas-lamp in the village - and so it will go on. It is all very carefully programmed, all over the world. One thing makes our plans very easy, of course - we know exactly when to forbid each piece of technology, and when to replace it with its functional predecessor. Our Ten Thousand Year Plan will make all Progressive planning of the bad old days look very silly indeed.’
‘Ten Thou - ‘ began Ambrose, staring. ‘You’re mad! Stark, raving mad! You don’t really intend to revert all the way - to the Stone Age!’
‘But we do,’ said Leathey gently. ‘Metals won’t last for ever. And agriculture has to go too, in the end - even with the best of care, at last it destroys the soil. But not to worry. Polished stone is very useful stuff, believe me, and one can learn to hunt ... By then of course the population should be down to very reasonable limits. Oh, I know there are some heretics even among our Regressive establishment who think we’ll be able to call a halt well before that, but they are simply over-optimistic fools. A halt would only renew the fatal temptation. No, there is no stable resting-place halfway down this hill: we must retrace the whole enterprise of hopeful Man.’
‘There must be a way out,’ said Ambrose, ‘there has to be -’
‘There is no way out.’ Leathey laughed bitterly now. ‘Believe me, I know how you feel. I, too - we all have our moments of rebellion. If only, one thinks, if only the Progressives had handled things differently! When the earth was theirs, and the fullness thereof, and the planets were within their grasp! You know, you can pinpoint their fatal error, you can place their ultimate pusillanimity within a few years of the Old Count. It was during the Forward 1970s, when they had reached the Moon, and then - decided that space travel was ‘utter bilge’, as one leading light of an earlier time put it. If they had gone on, if they had only gone on then - why, we would now have all the metals and minerals of the asteroids, all the wealth of the heavens. Perhaps by now we would have reached the stars ... and then we could have laughed at the decline of one little planet called Earth. But no: they saw no immediate profit in space travel. So they went back, and turned their rockets - not into ploughshares, but into nuclear missiles. Now we haven’t the resources to get back into space even if you Anachronics were to take over the world tomorrow. We are tied to Earth for ever - and to the earth, therefore, we must return. Dust to dust.’
‘But - the books,’ cried Ambrose, waving at the half-empty shelves. ‘Why are you destroying knowledge?’
‘Because it’s too painful. Why keep reminders of what might have been? It is far, far better to make do with the dwindling literature suitable to our way of life, and not aspire to things that are for ever beyond our reach. We ate of that apple once - now, steadily, we are spitting it out. And in the end we shall return to Paradise.’
‘A paradise of hunter-gatherers?’ said Ambrose sarcastically.
‘Why not? That is the natural human condition. Hunter-gatherers can be very happy folks, you know - much happier than agricultural labourers. Hard work is wildly unnatural for humans.’ Leathey stood up, yawned, and smiled. ‘Well, so it will be. Back to the womb of the great mindless Mother. In our end is our beginning (I hope that’s not a cancelled phrase). I’m glad, of course, that the beginning won’t come in my time - I would miss all these creature and mental comforts.’ And he waved at his books. ‘Now, Dr Livermore, it’s been a hard day, and the little oblivion calls - I suggest you should sleep on what I’ve been telling you.’
The next morning after breakfast Dr Leathey gave Ambrose a medical examination, paying particular attention to his head. After several minutes, he shrugged.
‘Not a trace of the slightest contusion. And yet you still have this complete amnesia?’
‘Yes,’ said Ambrose.
‘I am afraid I find it hard to accept your story. Don’t try to shield your associates, Dr Livermore: I know there must be a cell of yours, probably in London. If you confess, I can promise lenient treatment -’
At that moment came an interruption. The maid brought the message that Simkins the policeman was at the door.
‘And, sir,’ she said, her eyes goggling, ‘he’s got a Thing with him sir! I never saw -’
‘What sort of Thing, Alice?’ said Leathey, getting up.
‘A thing on wheels, sir. A sort of an ‘orseless carriage ...’
‘Let’s go and see it,’ said Leathey, smiling gently.
‘May - may I come too?’ stammered Ambrose. He had a frightful presentiment...
‘I’d rather you did. Perhaps you can throw some light on this Thing.’
And so, on the drive before the doctor’s house, Ambrose beheld it. It was his rather special Volkswagen all right, with the policeman and several yokels standing by it - and, horror of horrors, one yokel in it, in the driver’s seat!
Constable Simkins was explaining. ‘We found this ‘ere motor-brougham, sir, up t’wards the Old Camp, in Half-Acre Wood. Jemmy ‘ere knew summat about the things ...’
Jemmy, from the driver’s seat, leaned out and grinned. ‘Used ter be a chauffeur back in old 1910, sir, an’ I soon worked the workin’s out. Nice little bus she is, too, but mighty queer in some ways. Wot’s this little red lever, I want ter know - ‘
Ambrose screamed, and instantly was clutching the man by the shoulders and upper arms.
‘Ah, so it is yours,’ said Leathey, shaking his head. ‘Naughty, naughty, Dr Livermore! A Blatant Anachronism is ever there was one, I’m afraid. That model’s been forbidden for all of my lifetime, I think.’
Ambrose was sweating. ‘Get - get him out of here!’ he choked. ‘He could do terrible damage ...’
‘All right Jemmy,’ said Leathey easily, ‘don’t touch anything else. You’ve done very well up to now. Now, just get out.’
As Jemmy emerged, Ambrose leapt. Before anyone could stop him, he was into the front seat of the car, and jamming down the red lever.
The world grew dim.
For quite some (subjective) time, Ambrose was shaking with the remains of his fright, his hand jammed down hard on the red lever. Then as he recovered control of himself, he realised that he was soaring into the future at maximum speed. At this rate, he’d be going on for thousands of years ... Well, that might not be too bad. Leave that insane Regressive ‘civilisation’ well behind.
He eased up on the lever. Where was he now, nearly two thousand years on? It must be quite safe now. Regression would surely have broken down long ago of its own insanity, and the world must be back on the path of moderate progress; chastened no doubt, wisely cautious, climbing slowly but surely ... That might be a very good world to live in. Now, what did it look like?
Rural: very rural. The village had disappeared. Below him was a flat green, and around that clumps of great trees, broken in one place by a path; along that way in the distance he glimpsed a neat-roofed building, low pitched like a classical villa. Over the trees rose the bare green downs, apparently unchanged except at the old British camp. There the skyline was broken by wooden frameworks. Skeletons of huts? Perhaps they were excavating. Ah, archaeology! That, and villas, certainly indicated civilised values. And right below the car’s wheels - it was half a metre down, but that wouldn’t matter - that green was flat as a lawn. Doubtless this was parkland. A good, safe spot to emerge ...
He jerked over the red lever, and was falling. The car struck the green surface -
But it struck with a splat. There was a bubbling, a sliding ...
Suddenly, with horror, he knew it. That greenness was not a lawn, but a weed-covered mere. And he and his Time-car were rapidly sinking into it.
He tore open a door, and the stinking water embraced him.
He got out of the pond somehow, and when at last he stood on dry land, people had appeared from the direction of the house, which was not after all a stone-built villa but an erection of wood and thatch, rather sketchily painted. The people were half a dozen barefoot folk dressed in skins, and they jabbered at him in some utterly foreign tongue. Some of the men were fingering long spears. And, as he looked back over the green slime, he saw that his Time Machine had sunk without trace into that weedy womb.
The savage men were in process of taking him prisoner, and he was submitting in listless despair, when a newcomer appeared on the scene. This was an elderly man of a certain presence, escorted by a couple of swordsmen, and dressed in a clean white woollen robe. He stared at Ambrose, then interrogated him in that strange tongue.
Ambrose jabbered helplessly.
‘Hospes,’ said the man suddenly, ‘profuge aut naufrage squalide, loqueris-ne linguam Latinam ...?’
And so Ambrose discovered that Latin was spoken in this age, by some of the people at least. Luckily, he himself had a reading knowledge of Latin, and now he began to make himself brokenly understood. He was also even better able to follow what the wool-draped gentleman was saying. His name was Obliorix, and he was the local magistrate of the tribe, its guide, philosopher, delegate to some federation or other - and protector of the Druids.
‘I see that you have met with some accident, stranger,’ said Obliorix, wrinkling his nose, ‘and yet, beneath your mire and slime, what extraordinary garments! Bracae might pass, but that is no sort of authorised mantle, and those boots on your feet ...’ He looked grim. ‘Could it be that you are a Resister of the Will of Chronos? A belated Christian?’
A madness came upon Ambrose then. ‘Domine,’ he cried, laughing hysterically, ‘what year is this?’
‘Unus ante Christum,’ said Obliorix seriously. ‘1 BC. And therefore, since last year it is decreed by the United Tribes that all Christians shall be put to death, not as misbelievers but as anachronisms. The Druids on the Hill keep their wickerwork cages constantly supplied with logs and oil - you may see them from here - so I fear me, stranger, if you are a Christian, I cannot save you. To the pyre you must go.’
‘I - I am not a Christian,’ said Ambrose truthfully but weakly. He was doubled up with helpless laughter. ‘1 BC,’ he repeated, ‘1 BC!’
‘And next year will be 2,’ said Obliorix. ‘What is so funny about that? Truly, it will be a relief in future to number the years by addition.’ He began to smile. ‘I like you, absurd stranger. Since you are not a Christian, I think I will make you my jester, for laughter begets laughter. What, will you never stop braying?’
And so Ambrose became at first Chief Jester to Obliorix, magistrate of the tribe of the Oblivisces in southern Britannia; but later he went on to greater things. As Ambrosius Aeternus, he grew to be a respected member of the tribe, and on the death of Obliorix he succeeded to the magistracy and the United Tribes delegateship. In 20 BC he went as envoy to the Roman Governor of Gaul, who, of course, was gradually unbuilding Roman towns for the great withdrawal that would take place in the ‘50s. And throughout his long and restful lifetime, Ambrose would from time to time break out into helpless laughter, so that he became known in Britannia as Ambrosius the Merry.
It was an added joke that, when he was able to persuade the Oblivisces to drag a certain weedy pond, the Time Machine proved to be rusted beyond repair, and only good to be beaten into spear-points. But for that Ambrose cared nothing; for in any case, what use was a Time Machine which only progressed backwards into history?
And besides, he told himself, he knew what lay in that direction; and he didn’t want to get there any faster.
First published 1978.