The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(123)
“Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly. Are you telling me this is the only lead you have in this case, Inspector?” Chief Superintendent Arnold said, waving the advertisement for Murray’s Time Travel Garrett had given him. He jabbed his finger at the little illustration showing the brave Captain Shackleton shooting a hole in an automaton with a ray gun.
Garrett sighed. The fact that Chief Superintendent Arnold had not been on any of the expeditions to the future meant he was forced to fill him in on the subject, and so he wasted several minutes explaining in general terms what was happening in the year 2000 and how they had traveled there, until he reached the part that really interested him: the weaponry used by the human soldiers. Those guns were capable of cutting through metal, and so it was not impossible to imagine that used on a human the effect might be very similar to what he had seen on the body in the Marylebone morgue. As far as he was aware, no weapons in their own time could cause such a horrific wound, a fact he could see was borne out by Dr. Alcock in his autopsy report.At this point, Garrett presented his theory to Arnold: one of these men from the future, possibly the one named Shackleton, had stowed away on the Cronotilus when he and the others had traveled back to their time, and was now on the loose in the year 1896 armed with a lethal weapon. If he were right, they had two choices: they could search the whole of London for Shackleton, which might take several weeks, with no guarantee of success, or they could save themselves the trouble by arresting him where they knew he would be on May 20 in the year 2000. Garrett only had to go there with two police officers, and arrest him before he was able to travel back to their own day.
“What’s more,” he added, in a last-ditch attempt to convince his superior, who was shaking his head, visibly perplexed, “if you give me permission to arrest Captain Shackleton in the future, your department will be in line for all kinds of plaudits, because we will have achieved something truly groundbreaking: arresting a murderer before he is able to commit a crime, thus preventing it from happening.” Chief Superintendent Arnold gazed at him in disbelief.
“Are you telling me that if you travel to the year 2000 and arrest this murderer, his crime will be … rubbed out?” Garrett understood how difficult it was for a man like Chief Superintendent Arnold to grasp something like this. No one would find it easy to understand the implications of what he was saying, unless they stayed awake all night as he did, mulling over the paradoxes time travel might give rise to.
“I’m convinced of it, Chief Superintendent. If I arrest him before he commits the crime, it will inevitably change the present. Not only will we be arresting a murderer, we’ll be saving a life, because I assure you the tramp’s corpse will vanish from the morgue in a flash,” Garrett declared, unsure himself of exactly how this would happen.
Thomas Arnold pondered for a few moments the praise Scotland Yard would earn from such temporal acrobatics. Luckily, the chief superintendent’s limited imagination was unable to comprehend that once the murderer was arrested, not only would the corpse disappear, but so would everything relating to the crime, including the interview taking place at that very moment. There would be no murder to solve. In short: they would earn no plaudits because they would have done nothing. The consequences of arresting Shackleton in the future, before he traveled into the past to commit his crime, were so unpredictable that Garrett himself, as soon as he paused to analyze them for a moment, found them dizzying. What would they do with a murderer whose crime no one remembered because he had been arrested before he committed it? What the devil would they accuse him of? Or perhaps Garrett’s journey into the future would also be flushed away down the giant cosmic drain where everything that had been prevented from happening disappeared? He did not know, but he was certain he was the instrument to set everything in motion.
After two hours of discussion, the dazed Chief Superintendent Arnold had ended the interview with a promise to Garrett that he would meet the commissioner and the prime minister that very afternoon and explain the situation to them as best he could. Garrett thanked him. This meant the following day, if no problems arose, he would receive the warrant to arrest Shackleton in the year 2000. Then he would go to Murray’s Time Travel to see Gilliam and demand three seats on the next voyage of his Cronotilus.
As one might expect, while Garrett waited he mulled over the case. On this occasion, however, rather than attempt to solve it by analyzing the various elements, which was pointless as he had already found the murderer, he simply marveled at its extraordinary ramifications, as if he were examining a web spun by a new species of spider. And for once Garrett was not sitting in his office thinking these thoughts, but on a bench on the pavement opposite a luxurious house on Sloane Street. This was the abode of Nathan Ferguson, the pianola manufacturer, whom, unfortunately, owing to his friendship with his father, Garrett had known all his life. Garrett had his doubts whether this odious fellow was in fact largely responsible for the devastating war of the future as that foul-mouthed young Winslow had suggested in jest, but he had nothing against spending the evening enjoying a bunch of grapes while he watched his house to see whether anyone suspicious came prowling around. If they did, it would no doubt save him a trip to the future. But it was quite possible too that Ferguson’s only function in the vast scheme of the universe was as a manufacturer of those absurd pianolas, and that Captain Shackleton was at that very moment stalking someone else’s house. Why else would he have killed the tramp? What could that poor wretch’s life have meant to the captain? Had he been an unfortunate casualty, an accident, or was there more to the cadaver lying in the morgue than met the eye? Was it perhaps a key piece in the puzzle of the future? Garrett was absorbed in these thoughts but was forced to end them when he saw the door to the house open and Ferguson step out. The inspector rose from his bench and ducked behind a tree from where he had a clear view of what was happening on the pavement opposite. Ferguson paused to put on his top hat and survey the night with a triumphant expression. Garrett saw that he was elegantly turned out and assumed he must be on his way to some dinner or other. After pulling on his gloves, Ferguson closed the door behind him, descended the flight of steps, and began strolling down the street in a leisurely way. Apparently, wherever he was headed must be near enough for him not to summon his carriage. Garrett wondered whether to follow him or not.