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She looked at him rather suspiciously, suspecting envy. ‘You get your kicks burrowing into the earth. I like to be way above it, with time and gravity in suspense.’
He pointed down the trail, where three figures on mules could be discerned in a cloud of dust.
‘Your husband’s on his way back. He was telling me he’s also got time in suspense, in his laboratories.’
‘Time isn’t immutable, as the science of chaos proves. Basically Joe’s inertial disposal system is a way of de-stabilizing time. Ten years ago, the principles behind it were scarcely glimpsed. I like that. Basically, I’m on Joe’s side, Bernard, so it’s no good trying to get round me.’
He laughed, but ignored the jibe.
‘If time isn’t immutable, what is it? Being up against millions of years, I should be told.’
‘Time’s like a fog with a wave structure. It’s all to do with strange attractors. I can send you a paper about it. Tamper with the input, who knows what output you’ll get.’
Clift laughed again.
‘Just like life, in fact.’
‘Also subject to chaos.’
They climbed down the hill path to meet Bodenland and his companions, covered in dust after the ride.
‘Oh, that was just wonderful,’ Kylie said, climbing off her mule and giving Mina a hug. ‘The desert is a marvellous place. Now I need a shower.’
‘A shower and a dozen cans of beer,’ supplemented Larry.
‘It was wonderful, but it achieved nothing,’ Bodenland said. ‘However, we have left a pretty trail of flags behind. All I hope is that the ghost train calls again tonight.’
‘What about Larry?’ she asked, when they were alone.
‘He’s off with Kylie tomorrow, whatever happens tonight.’
‘Don’t look so sour, Joe. They are supposed to be on honeymoon, poor kids. Where would you rather be – on a beach in Hawaii, or in this godforsaken stretch of Utah?’
He smiled at her, teasingly but with affection. ‘I’d rather be on that ghost train – and that is where I’m going to be tonight.’
But Bodenland was in for disappointment.
The night brought the stars, sharp as diamonds over the desert, but no ghost train. Bodenland and his group stayed by the mobile canteen, which remained open late to serve them. They drank coffee and talked, waiting, with the helicopter nearby, ever and again looking out into the darkness.
‘No Injuns,’ Kylie said. ‘No John Wayne stagecoach. The train made its appearance and that was it. Hey, Joe, a student was telling me she saw ghostly figures jumping – no, she said floating – off the train and landing somewhere by the dig, so she said. What do you think of that?’
‘Could be the first of later accretions to what will be a legend. Bernie, these students are going to want to bring in the media – or at least the local press. How’re you going to handle that?’
‘I rely on them,’ Clift said. ‘They know how things stand. All the same … Joe, if this thing shows up tonight, I want to be on that helicopter with you.’
‘My god, here it comes,’ Mina screamed, before Bodenland could reply.
And it was there in the darkness, like something boring in from outer space, a traveller, a voyager, an invader: full of speed and luminescence, which seemed to scatter behind it, swerving across the Escalante. Only when it burst through mesas did its lights fade. This time it was well away from the line of flags planted during the day, heading north, and some miles distant from the camp.
Bodenland led the rush for the helicopter. Larry followed and jumped into the pilot’s seat. The others were handed quickly up, Mina with her vidcam, Clift last, pulling himself aboard as the craft lifted.
Larry sent it scudding across ground, barely clearing the camper roofs as it sped up into the night air.
‘Steady,’ Kylie said. ‘This isn’t one of your models, Larry!’
‘Faster,’ yelled Mina. ‘Or we’ll lose it.’
But they didn’t. Fast though the ghost train sped, the chopper cut across ground to it. Before they were overhead, Joe was being winched down, swinging wild as they banked.
The strange luminous object – strangely dull when close, shaped like a phosphorescent slug – was just below them. Bodenland steadied himself, clasped the wire rope, made to stand on the roof as velocities matched – and his foot went through nothingness.
He struggled in the dark, cursing. Nothing of substance was below his boots. Whatever it was, it was as untouchable as it was silent.
Bodenland dangled there, buffeted by the rotors overhead. The enigmatic object tunnelled into the night and disappeared.
The shots of the ghost train in close up were as striking as the experience had been. Figures were revealed – revealed and concealed – sitting like dummies inside what might have been carriages. They were grey, apparently immobile. Confusingly, they were momentarily replaced by glimpses of trees, perhaps of whole forests; but the green flickered by and was gone as soon as seen.
Mina switched the video off.
‘Any questions?’ she asked, flippantly.
Silence fell.
‘Maybe the trees were reflections of something – on the windows, I mean,’ Larry said. ‘Well, no … But trees …’
‘It was like a death train,’ Kylie said. ‘Were those people or corpses? Do you think it could be … No, I don’t know what we saw.’
‘Whatever it was, I have to get back to Dallas tomorrow,’ Joe said. ‘With phantom trains and antediluvian bones, you have a lot of explaining to do to someone, Bernie, my friend.’
Next morning came the parting of the ways at St George airport. Bodenland and Mina were going back to Dallas, Larry and his bride flying on to their Hawaii hotel. As they said their farewells in the reception lounge, Kylie took Bodenland’s hand.
‘Joe, I’ve been thinking about what happened at Old John. You’ve heard of near-death experiences, of course? I believe we underwent a near-death experience. There’s a connection between what we call the ghost train and that sixty-five-million-year-old grave of Bernard Clift’s. Otherwise it’s too much of a coincidence, right?’
‘Mm, that makes sense.’
‘Well, then. The shock of that discovery, the old grave, the feeling of death which prevailed over the whole camp – with vultures drifting around and everything – all that precipitated us into a corporate near-death experience. It took a fairly conventional form for such experiences. A tunnel-like effect, the sense of a journey. The corpses on the train, or whatever they were. Don’t you see, it all fits?’
‘No, I don’t see that anything fits, Kylie, but you’re a darling and interesting girl, and I just hope that Larry takes proper care of you.’
‘Like you take care of me, eh, Pop?’ Larry said. ‘I’ll take care of Kylie – and that’s my affair. You take care of your reputation, eh? Watch that this ancient grave of Bernie’s isn’t just a hoax.’
Bodenland clutched the silver bullet in his pocket and eyed his son coldly, saying nothing. They parted without shaking hands.
No word had come from Washington in Bodenland’s absence. Instead he received a phone call from the Washington Post wanting an angle on governmental procrastination. Summoning his Publicity Liaison Officer, Bodenland had another demonstration arranged.
When a distinguished group of political commentators was gathered in the laboratory, clustering round the inertial disposal cabinet, Bodenland addressed them informally.
‘The principle involved here is new. Novelty in itself takes a while for governmental departments to digest. But we want to get there first. Otherwise, our competitors in Japan and Europe will be there before us, and once more America will have lost out. We used to be the leaders where invention was concerned. My heroes since boyhood have been men like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison. I’m going to do an Edison now, just to prove how safe our new principle of waste disposal is.’
He glanced at Mina, giving her a smile of reassurance.
‘My wife’s anxious for my safety. I welcome that. Washington has different motivations for delay.’
This time, Bodenland was taking the place of the black plastic bag. He nodded to the technicians and stepped into the cabinet. Waldgrave closed the door on him.
Bodenland watched the two clocks, the one inside the cabinet with him and the one in the laboratory, as the energy field built up round him. The sweep hand of the inside clock slowed and stopped. The blue light intensified rapidly, and he witnessed all movement ceasing in the outside world. The expression on Mina’s face froze, her hand paused halfway to her mouth. Then everything disappeared. It whited out and went in a flash. He stood alone in the middle of a greyish something that had no substance.
Yet he was able to move. He turned round and saw a black plastic bag some way behind him, standing in a timeless limbo. He tried to reach it but could not. He felt the air grow thick.
The stationary clock started to move again. Its rate accelerated. Through the grey fog, outlines of the laboratory with its frozen audience appeared. As the clock in the cabinet caught up with the one outside, everything returned to normal. Waldgrave released him from the cabinet.
The audience clapped, and there were murmurs of relief.
Bodenland wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
‘I became stuck in time, just for five minutes. I represented a container of nuclear waste. Only difference, we would not bring the waste back as Max Waldgrave just brought me back. It would remain at that certain time at which it was disposed of, drifting even further back into the past, like a grave.
‘This cabinet is just a prototype. Given the Department of the Environment’s approval, Bodenland Enterprises will build immense hangars to cope with waste, stow it away in the past by the truckload, and become world monopolists in the new trade.’
‘Could we get the stuff back if we ever wanted to?’ someone asked. ‘I mean, if future ages found what we consider waste to be valuable, worth reclamation.’
‘Sure. Just as I have been brought back to the present time. The point to remember is that at the moment the technology requires enormous amounts of energy. It’s expensive, but security costs. You know we at Bodenland Enterprises are presently tapping solar energy, beamed down from our own satellite by microwave. If and when we get the okay from the DoE, we can afford to research still more efficient methods of beaming in power from space.’
The two men from the Post had been conferring. The senior man said, ‘We certainly appreciate the Edison imitation, Mr Bodenland. But aren’t you being unduly modest – haven’t you just invented the world’s first time machine? Aren’t you applying to the wrong department? Shouldn’t you be approaching the Defence top brass in the Pentagon?’
Laughter followed the question, but Bodenland looked annoyed. ‘I’m against nuclear weapons and, for that matter, I’m enough of a confirmed Green to dislike nuclear power plants. Hence our research into PBSs – power-beam sats. Solar energy, after many decades, is coming into its own at last. It will replace nuclear power in another quarter century, if I have anything to do with it.
‘However, to answer your question – as I have often answered it before – no, I emphatically reject the idea that the inertial principle has anything to do with time travel, at least as we understand time travel since the days of H. G. Wells.
‘What we have here is a form of time-stoppage. Anything – obviously not just toxic wastes – can be processed to stay right where it is, bang on today’s time and date, for ever, while the rest of us continue subject to the clock. That applies even to the DoE.’
As the last media man scooped up a handful of salted almonds and left, Mina turned to Bodenland.
‘You are out of your mind, Joe. Taking unnecessary risks again. You might have been killed.’
‘Come on, it worked on mice.’
‘You should have tried rats.’
He laughed.
‘Birdie, I had an idea while I was in limbo. Something Kylie said stuck in my mind – that the ghost train and the discovery of Bernie Clift’s grave were somehow connected. Suppose it’s a time connection … That train, or whatever it is, must have physical substance. It’s not a ghost. It must obey physical laws, like everything else in the universe. Maybe the connection is a time connection. If we used the inertial principle in a portable form – rigged it up so that it would work from a helicopter —’
‘Oh, shucks!’ she cried, seeing what was in his mind. ‘No, no more funnies, please. You wouldn’t want to be aboard that thing even if you could get in. It’s packed with zombies going God knows where. Joe, I won’t let you.’
He put his hands soothingly on her shoulders. ‘Mina, listen —’
‘How many years have I listened? To what effect? To more stress and strain, to more of your bullshit?’
‘I have to get on that train. I’m sure it could be done. It’s no worse than your sky-diving. Leap into the unknown – that’s what we’re all about, darling.’
‘Oh, shit,’ she said.
3 (#ulink_6835c119-e234-59f2-8db4-1e36cf3e5027)
At some time in the past, the cell had been whitewashed in the interests of cleanliness. It was now filthy. Straw, dust, pages of old newspaper, a lump of human ordure, littered the stone-paved floor.
A mouse ran full tilt along one of the walls. Its coat was grey, with longer russet hair over the shoulders. It moved with perfect grace, its small beady eyes fixed on the madman ahead, and more particularly on his open mouth.
Strapped within a straitjacket, the lunatic lay horizontal on the floor. The straitjacket was of canvas, with leather straps securing it, imprisoning the arms of the madman.
He had kicked his semen-stained grey mattress into a corner, to lie stretched out on the stones, his head wedged in another corner.
He was motionless. His eyes gleamed as he kept his gaze on the mouse, never blinking. His chops gaped wide, his tongue curled back. Saliva dripped slowly to the ground.
The mouse had been foraging in one of the holes in the old mattress when the madman fixed it with his gaze. The mouse had remained still, staring back, as if undergoing some internal struggle. Then its limbs had started to twitch and move. It had slewed round, squealing pitifully. Then it began its run towards the open jaws.
There was no holding back. It was committed. Scuttling along with one flank close to the wall, it ran towards the waiting face. With a final leap, it was in the mouth. The madman’s jaws snapped shut.
His eyes bulged. He lay still, body without movement. Only his jaws moved as he chewed. A little blood leaked from his lips to the floor.
With much cracking of tiny bones, he finished his mouthful. Then he licked the pool of blood from the stained stones.
Outside the cell stretched a long corridor, a model of cleanliness compared with the cell in which the madman was imprisoned. At the other end of the corridor, Doctor Kindness had his office, which connected with a small operating room.
The office was furnished with phrenological and anatomical charts. On one of the wood-panelled walls hung a day-to-day calendar for the current year, 1896, with quotations from Carlyle, Martin Tupper, Samuel Smiles, and other notables.
The furniture was heavy. Two armchairs were built like small fortresses, their soiled green leather bulging with horsehair, their mahogany shod with brass studs.
A general air of heaviness, of a place where, in the interests of medicine, oxygen was not allowed to enter, hung about the room. In the black lead grate, a coal fire had died, in despair at the retreat of the last of the oxygen. Only the black meerschaum pipe of the doctor glowed, sucking oxygen from the lungs of this pillar of the asylum. Clouds of smoke ascended from the bowl of the pipe to the ceiling, to hang about the gas brackets looking for release.
In order to make the room less inviting, a row of death masks stood on the heavy marble mantelshelf above the dead fire. The masks depicted various degrees of agony, and were of men and women who, judging by this plaster evidence involuntarily left behind, had found life with all its terrors preferable to what was imminently to come.
The doctor was perfectly at home in this environment. As he sauntered through, smoking, from the operating room, he set a blood-stained bone-saw down among the papers of his desk before turning to his visitor.
Dr Kindness was pale and furrowed, and enveloped almost entirely in a blood-stained white coat. In his prevailing greyness, his only vigorous signs of life were exhibited through his pipe.
His visitor was altogether of a different stamp. His most conspicuous characteristic was a bushy red beard, which flowed low enough over the lapels of a suit of heavy green tweed to make it impossible to tell if he was wearing a tie. He was of outdoor appearance, solid, and with a normally pleasant expression on his broad face. At this moment, what with the smoke and the bone-saw and the oppressive atmosphere of the asylum, he looked more apprehensive than anything else.
‘Well, it’s done,’ said Dr Kindness, removing the pipe for a moment. ‘If you’d like to come and have a look. It’s not a pretty sight.’
‘Sure, sure, I’d be glad …’ But the ginger man rose from his armchair by the dead fire with reluctance, and was aided into the operating room only by Dr Kindness’s pressure behind him.
The reason for Dr Kindness’s heavy generation of smoke-screen was now apparent. The stench in the operating room was pervasive. To breathe it caused an agitation in the heart.
On a large wooden table much like a butcher’s slab lay a naked male body streaked with dirt. The genitals were scabbed, and whole areas of stomach and chest were so mottled with rashes and ulcers they resembled areas of the Moon’s surface.
The doctor had sawn off the top of the skull, revealing the brain. Blood still seeped from the cavity into a sink.
