Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate (6 page)

He was old, and frail and somewhere behind his eyes was a sadness, as infinitely deep as water falling off the edge of a flat world. When he saw me, he startled, far more than anyone should at merely seeing a stranger on board.
Was it my punk rock hair?
I thought, but that didn’t seem to answer his look. “Goodness, gracious!” he exclaimed. And then he chuckled. “Well, it would appear I
have
become Merlin. Welcome aboard, Wart!”

“Doctor, you shouldn’t be out of bed!” Tanner said, interrupting what we all thought was a burst of Alzheimer’s. It would be years before I knew what Dr. Calgori meant, but it was not Alzheimer’s.

“Yes, Mum,” Calgori said condescendingly. “I’ll get back to bed as soon as I’m convinced you lot know what you’re doing. We are rid of the captain, so in that way we are better off than when we started…” The crew was silent, no one made a sound but one or two sailors did exchange glances.

Calgori turned back to me. “We need to refuel. The first trip had a surprising effect on our fuel supply, and I’m afraid we can’t get back without refilling our tanks. Since Daniel and I were not sure how people of your time would react to us, we’ve been hiding in this miserable cloud until we had a better idea of where to find fuel, and how to procure it, since our money would be unlikely to still be in use now. Also, we need to make repairs, we have gaping holes in our underside, due to a mountain range we did not expect. Also, from what you are telling me it would appear I made a nearly catastrophic error in my calculations – either that, or the earth spins at an uneven rate.”

“what does the rate of the earth have to do with the fact that instead of going back in time, you went forward in time one hundred years?” Daniel asked.

“Oh,
that
was no miscalculation. I had no intention of going back in time, regardless of what your people were ordering. I needed some information that I
assume
is readily available at this time, and would make the rest of our navigation simpler. After procuring that, I planned to head back to our mission.”

Kristina spoke, for the first time this evening. “I don’t mean to spoil the fun, but isn’t time travel impossible? Didn’t I read that by showing how a single photon can not travel faster than the speed of light, scientists have proven time travel is impossible?” She had a bit of her defiant and infinitely skeptical look showing from behind her bedraggled hair.

“Thats nonsense,” Calgori said “All those scientists proved is that they do not understand how it could work, not that it is impossible. Time travel is certainly possible. In fact, its impossible
not
to time travel! Everything in existence is constantly moving forward in time. Varying the speed at which something moves through time is easy; and easily proven. If you can vary your speed enough, compared with everything else, you can go anywhen!”

“Anyway,” he continued, “we left 1906 off the coast of Wales, and emerged over a mountain range which leads me to believe the earth is spinning at an uneven rate, like the weighted wheels of a train.
Voomp Voomp Voomp
.” And he made an uneven spinning motion with his hand.

The room was silent. Obviously no one had any idea what he was talking about. He sighed “This vessel can change the time in which it exists. However, the universe is not still. Planets move, not only around the sun, but they spin as they move as well. My first efforts at time travel were effective, because I sent objects forward in time only a few minutes. They would disappear, and reappear at the time I expected, but always a few yards in the direction of the sunset. This is because the earth is constantly twisting toward the sunrise. The object would reappear exactly where it was when it had left, only the earth would be in a different position.”

“When I increased the duration of time I was transporting the object, it would be further away from where it started, and sometimes either very high in the air, or buried in the ground – depending on the time of day. This is because the earth is not only spinning, but rotating around the sun as well.”

Mongrel now looked a touch disgruntled. He was trying to picture this, but the thought was too big for him, and wouldn’t fit his brain. He glanced at Tanner, who was looking at the Doctor with sympathy, so he decided Dr. Calgori must be speaking nonsense. He mumbled a “Poor chap,” and made a pitying frown.

Calgori responded to this with a raised eyebrow, and continued slower, “It became apparent that if I was to send a vessel forward in time, or backward, it would be best to do it far away from
anything.
As high in the air as possible, to avoid the possibility of it reappearing inside in a solid object. And if it was traveling more than fifteen minutes or so, it was also
crucial
that the vessel arrived precisely at the same time of year as when it departed, or else the earth would be in a different position in its orbit around the sun, and could end up buried, or more likely, lost forever in the stars.”

Every face in the room but Calgori’s was now wide-eyed, open mouthed, and horrified. It would seem they finally understood what he was getting at. A tin cup fell from someone’s hand and rattled on the floor.

“Oh, buckup, you ninnies. You’re all still alive. I’ve got you here…now…and I will…” But at that point the doctor flushed and collapsed.

Tanner helped him to a chair and after a brief pause, Daniel continued, “Our mission is now threefold – obtain lumber, make repairs, and possibly make design changes, since it would appear that the last minute changes to the
Ophelia
are not as structurally sound as we had hoped. Then we need to acquire fuel, and we need food. We’ve been adrift up here for a couple weeks, and I don’t know how much longer before we can return to London, so we need to resupply soon.”.

At this point I recognized why I was here. I said, “I have a proposition to make you. I think we can help with all of these, since we know
this
time vastly better than any of you. It was smart to keep your presence a secret. Governments in our time don’t like anything unlicensed and free.”

“Is there a time when they do?” Calgori mumbled, glowering.

“You won’t be free for long,” I added “If they catch you. So you need to operate completely undetected as long as we are in this time. I can direct your acquisitions of food, fuel, and what… spare parts? In exchange for my helping you, I want to return with you back in time. We’ll have to figure out when and how we do this, but at some point I’d like to try to do something that prevents our friends from dying today.” I spent the hours since the crash in a mix of emotions. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the ongoing argument -
Did I cause the death of my friends by ignoring Kristina’s fears? Did I kill my friends in my own need for a less mundane life? What would I do differently, if I could do it all again?
Here I stood being told that I could in fact go back and do it all again. At least, I stuck with this ship, and if the stars all lined up correctly.

Also, I have to admit this was no less the motivation; somehow now my life had become an adventure. Scary, cold, wet and confusing, but isn’t that how so many adventures begin?

Doctor Calgory wrinkled his brow at my proposal. “That’s a noble cause, trying to retroactively save the lives of your friends. One we possibly can’t grant. How can you, as a result of meeting us, alter time so you never crashed into us to begin with? That’s an unpredictable paradox. I know quite a few Belgian Hares who would agree that ‘unpredictable’ is a bad thing, when it comes to moving through time.” (This last comment didn’t make sense until we later learned of his time travel experiments with rabbits. The Belgian Hares didn’t all survive).

“It’ll take some thinking,” I said “I’d rather stick with you now and hope to eventually find a way to undo their deaths rather than just walk away having known I caused their deaths and did nothing.”

“Before we accept your offer, I’d like to hear how you plan to acquire these things for us,” Daniel said, bringing us back to task.

“The food part is easy. All we need is money. I don’t actually have any, but Kristina and I have a job…a gig…tomorrow night. We’re professional musicians, and assuming we can find a way to still perform the show, we’ll be owed about $500 for it.”

“Krimny! That’s a bloody fortune!”

“No, it’s really not. Not anymore, but it should get us a fair share of groceries, if we keep things simple. For a crew this size I think that’ll only feed us for a week or two on canned foods, and that’s if we’re careful. However, that’s not going to be enough to get all the supplies needed to repair and fuel this ship. The problem is, most of our band is dead.”

“I play a few instruments, if it would help. So does Jean-Paul,” offered Tanner.

“Actually, that’d be great! We’re supposed to be a five-person band. The audience, and the concert promoters are expecting fives people, and very specific songs and arrangements. We’ve only got two of our five musicians left! We need to give them what they are expecting, or we won’t get paid.”

Tanner was getting excited. “I’m sure we could follow along with your music!”

“All right, you can sort out your
quintet
later. Many of these sailors play music, maybe not the way you are used to, but I’m sure we can work something out for your recital tomorrow night. For now, let’s lay some plans for fuel and repairs. We need wood and metal, in large quantities” said Daniel.

“…and some sort of flammable oil for the burners,” Dr. Calgory interjected. “I kept the fuel specifications simple, so that we could still find something suitable if we went quite a ways backward in time”, Calgori said, now slumped over in a chair, sipping black tea from a copper mug.

“Flammable oil? Would vegetable oil do?” Kristina asked. “The kind you deep-fry in? If so, I know where we might get some of that around here.”

“For spare parts I’m thinking wrecking yards and lumber yards – they should be pretty easy to spot from the air, and they keep most of their stuff outside,” I offered .“We should be able to fly in at night, and just pick stuff up. Without entering a building, we won’t have to worry about security systems or video cameras.”

At this the rest of the crew looked blank. They had no idea what I was talking about. I had them! Without me, they were lost, and they knew it.

SCAVENGER HUNT

Somewhere in the middle of a vast deserted highway southeast of Boise, Idaho, there is an odd diametric contrast. On one side of the road was a massive home and garden store. Wealthy people (or their contractors and gardeners) drive from all over the state to buy the lumber stacked outside, the swimming pools, garden statues that looked as if they were from an Italian villa, or even a Victorian-style greenhouse with real leaded-glass and wrought-iron framework.

On the other side of the road was a vast field of four hundred eighteen rotting cars, thirtyfour abandoned boats, six grounded airplanes and one long dead submarine, the latter of which was mounted on a huge sign over the front gate, which read “Dave’s Wrecking – used parts for anything”.

At 1:18 a.m., nobody saw our sails on the horizon. At 1:26 a.m. nobody heard our propellers overhead. At 1:43 a.m. nobody saw the rope with a massive hook, and two gloved and be-goggled men being lowered from the ship. One of those two men was me, the other was Daniel.

They reeled us right into the heart of the rusting graveyard. Our boots touched earth, crunching on the mix of gravel and old washers, bolts, bottle caps, spark plugs, and flattened beer cans that made up the path between stacked vehicles. Daniel had a list of oddly described parts. It was my job to help translate the list into modern parts. For example:

Item 6: a device to generate electricity from the motion of a turning axis.

Item 17: A device that creates varying degrees of forward thrust by converting electricity into the spinning of wheels.