“I’m exhausted. I’m knocking off for the night.”
Henry Stevens wiped his face with a handkerchief already blackened with soot.
“We can’t give up now!” said George Stevens. “We’re so close.”
“You’ve been saying that every day for the past two years and look where it’s got us.”
“One more try. The furnace is still hot enough. We’ve a good head of steam.”
“I’m about done in. We’ve been at this since five this morning and all we’ve eaten all day is a bit of bread and sausage. It’s enough, George.”
George rested his hands on the water intake pipe. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his forearms were even sootier than Henry’s handkerchief.
“All right. But we start again tomorrow, right? Five o’clock, sharp.”
“Champion.” said Henry.
When Henry left the cellar where they worked, George remained there, looking at the dynamo, the furnace and the coils of wire, thinking. Something wasn’t quite right. The resonant frequency of the coils was off, or the Ytterbium wasn’t pure enough, or something. He wiped his face with an old cloth that he kept in a bowl of water and began to unhook the Ytterbium rods. He would dissolve them in hydrochloric acid, recrystallise them and reduce them with coke. If he worked quickly he could get it done by 3 a.m. and still get two hours’ sleep.
Meanwhile, outside, Henry was walking home in the shadow of the steelworks when two men set on him with iron bars. They left him lying in the street, bruised and bleeding, with a fractured thigh.
“Mr. Kenworthy sends his regards.” one of the men snarled at him as they left.
“Next time we’ll do the other leg.” said the other man.
Henry Stevens hopped and dragged himself home, a distance of almost a mile.
George didn’t manage to complete the process of purifying the Ytterbium by 3 a.m. He finished it well after 5 a.m., and then he checked his pocket watch and found his brother, Henry, was late. There was no way he could get the furnace hot enough without Henry. Not when he had to manually adjust the coils at the same time.
He walked briskly to the house they shared and found Henry lying in bed.
“It’s nearly six o’clock you lazy so-and-so!” he shouted, then he noticed the bruises and cuts on Henry’s face. “Good Heavens, man, what’s happened to you?”
“What do you think?” said Henry bitterly. “Kenworthy’s thugs.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have borrowed money off him! What did I say?”
“I think my leg’s broken.”
George swore. “Can you stand on it? We’re so close. If we can get it working, we can pay him back, with all the interest he’s added on an’ all.”
Henry shook his head. “Help me strap it up. You’ll have to work the furnace. I can adjust the coils. But get me some laudanum first. I’m in quite a bit of pain.”
After George had fetched laudanum, Henry fell asleep.
“You rest yourself.” said George quietly, watching his brother with a frown. “Tomorrow’ll be soon enough.”
The following day George strapped Henry’s leg between two stout sticks and handed him a pair of crutches.
“How much did these cost?” said Henry, frowning.
“The hospital loaned them to me for a shilling.” said George. “Don’t worry. Do you think you can manage to work?”
Henry levered himself out of the bed and onto the crutches.
“I reckon so.” he said. “Only the coils, mind. Worst thing is going to be getting all the way to the cellar.”
“You’ll be all right.” said George. “I’ve borrowed an ‘andcart off Mrs. Wainwright. Deluxe taxi service.”
Back in the cellar, George stoked the furnace while Henry waited patiently on a chair, his strapped-up leg sticking out in front of him.
“George, even if we do get it working, it’s a whole other thing to turn it into money.”
“One thing at a time.” George shouted, above the roar of the furnace. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
“Sure but Mr. Kenworthy will be visiting a lot more evil on us quite soon if we don’t start making payments.”
Once he’d got the furnace going, George fired up the steam engine, and soon the engine was chuffing away, venting steam through a pipe that led up to the street.
“It’s ready.” he announced. “Can you do the dynamos?”
Henry swung himself off the chair and onto the crutches, grimacing.
“Another shot of laudanum and I’ll be all set.” he said.
George poured the laudanum, diluting it with water, and Henry drank it gratefully.
“What are we trying today?” he said. “Going up to five kilohertz?”
George shook his head. “Same thing as the day before yesterday.” he said. “I’ve purified the Ytterbium.”
“You work too hard, George.”
“Says the man who’s at work with a broken leg.”
Henry pulled the lever that engaged the dynamo and began to flick switches and adjust dials, watching a series of gauges, meters and thermometers while George shovelled more coal into the furnace and monitored the steam engine.
“All set.” said Henry, finally.
“Engage the displacement engine.” said George.
Henry had his hand on the main lever and was about to pull it when George said suddenly, “Wait!”
“What?” said Henry.
“What’s the temperature on the vertical rod?”
“One hundred and eighty-two Fahrenheit.”
“What’s the frequency on solenoid at the back?”
“Just over six thousand.”
“It’s too much.” said George, shouting to make himself heard above the furnace, the steam engine, and the loud humming of the coils. “We could end up creating a spatial manifold.”
“I can swap out that carbon rod.” said Henry. “The current must be too high.”
“No.” said George. “Sit down. It’s my fault. We’ll wait quarter of an hour for the furnace to cool off a bit.”
While Henry sat and waited, and George strode about checking the apparatus, Henry said, “You’re overestimating the danger. We ought to just try it.”
George stopped what he was doing and turned to face him.
“This thing’s three feet wide.” he said, waving at the circular arrangement of coils inset into the cellar wall. “If we mess up, that’s fourteen tonnes going out through that wall. We’re not chancing it.”
“As you wish.” said Henry.
After quarter of an hour had passed, Henry said, looking at his watch, “Check it now.”
George inspected the dials and meters.
“It’s ready.” he said.
Henry got up and hobbled towards the lever.
“Keep a close eye on that furnace.” he said.
“Aye cap’n.” said George with a smile.
Henry put his hand on the lever.
“Ready?” he said.
“Ready.” said George, then at the last moment, he said, nervously “Wait! Check the voltage on the primary coil.”
“It’s fine, George, it’s fine.” said Henry.
“What is it?”
“Six thousand. Should give us a good margin.”
George exhaled shakily.
“Fine. Furnace is at fourteen hundred. Do it.”
Henry pulled on the enormous lever, and slowly it creaked backwards. After some initial resistance the lever suddenly snapped into position and steam began to pour out from behind the coils inset in the wall in a circle.
Henry limped and hopped hurriedly backwards, staring at it.
“If we’ve miscalculated, we’re both dead no matter where we stand.” said George wryly.
“We haven’t miscalculated.” said Henry.
The steam became suffused with a purple glow and gradually began to clear. A bright light shone into the cellar from the centre of the rapidly-dissipating mist, and an image of a woman sitting on a sofa appeared, as if sitting some ten or fifteen feet away on the other side of the cellar wall. She was around thirty-five years of age and seemed to be reading.
Neither George nor Henry were prone to great displays of emotion. Instead, Henry said, while leaning back against a workbench, “I think we’ve actually done it.”
George rose to his feet, staring in astonishment.
“Who do you think she is?” he said, in a hushed and awed tone.
“Must be a hospital patient.” said Henry. “Walls are all white. That’s probably some kind of special bed she’s sitting on.”
“It’s not an ‘ospital.” said George. “It’s a sitting room.”
“Why are the walls all white then?” said Henry. “They’d get filthy if it were a sitting room.”
“It’s the future, Henry. Machines do all the work. They make light from electricity, not lamps. There’s no filth. Look at her. She’s clean as a princess.”
“Check the date!” said Henry.
George pulled a slide rule from his pocket and began to make a series of calculations, running over to the meters to check them.
He announced the results in a hoarse whisper.
“2025 Anno Domini”.
“By ‘eck.” said Henry. “An ‘undred an forty years into t’ future.” Then he said. “What’s that thing in her hands?”
“It looks like a metal tablet, but it’s glowing. That must be what they use instead of books.”
“Amazing.” said Henry.
“Look at that thing in t’ corner.” said George, pointing at a television. “Big glass thing. What do you reckon that is?”
“Maybe it’s for lighting the room at night.”
“‘ere,”, said George, “come and watch the furnace; it ought to run fine for ten minutes or more. I want to see if I can go outside.”
George ran to the controls and began to make fine adjustments. Abruptly the area inside the coil turned black.
“You’ve lost it.” said Henry.
“I just changed the condenser too much.” said George. “It’s very sensitive. I can get it back.”
“There’s stars, look. You’ve gone right off the planet.”
George made some more adjustments an an image appeared of a field, at the end of which a road was visible.
“Look at those.” said Henry, pointing at the passing cars. “Must be steam-powered. But there’s no steam.”
“They probably use electricity,” said George, “or gas.”
“Go closer.”
George made further adjustments and the viewport moved towards the road, jerking wildly from side to side.
“We need to make some of these sliders a lot less sensitive. I’ve an idea about how to do it.”
“I reckon I know where this is.” said Henry. “It’s up near Tollerton.”
Soon the view through the coils was poised above the road and they watched the cars passing underneath with enormous fascination.
With some fine adjustments, George was able to move the viewport slowly along the road. The two brothers stared, transfixed, marvelling at the speed of the cars.
“Where are they all going?” said Henry.
“P’raps they’re traders, taking goods from one place to another.”
“So many of them?”
Suddenly there was an ominous thump and a gust of fresh air blew against their faces.
“The furnace!” shouted George. “You’re not watching it.”
“Shut the coils down!” shouted Henry, and he opened a valve that let out an enormous hissing jet of steam.
George hurled himself against the big lever and the image of the road faded to purple and dimmed. Before it disappeared, they were briefly treated to an image of starry heavens again, as the viewport abruptly flicked up off the surface of the Earth, uncontrollably.
“We were nearly past mendin’ then.” said George.
“It were my fault.” said Henry.
George shook his head.
“It’s in the nature of the beast.” he said. “We’ve got to be careful.”
“That’s not the only thing we’ve got to worry about either.” said Henry.
“Mr. Kenworthy.” said George.
“I’ll tell you something, George old chap. At this moment I find it somewhat difficult to envisage exactly how this is going to help us repay him, unless we can set it to next week and have a gander at the winning horses at Knavesmire. And if we can’t repay him …”
He looked down at his splinted leg, and left the thought hanging in the air.
They fired up the portal three more times that week alone. Every time it opened first upon the living room in a house somewhere near Tollerton. They managed to move the viewport all the way to York, and were astonished at its busyness, the cars and traffic lights, and the quantity of people they assumed from their complexion to be foreigners.
The portal always opened at the same place and the same time, with the woman sitting on the sofa, looking at something she held in her hands.
“Let’s watch her for a bit, see what she does.” said George.
“We can’t be watching people in their own homes.” said Henry. “‘Specially not ladies. T’i’nt right.”
“Gi o’er.” said George. “She looks familiar somehow. It’s not like she’s undressed.”
“All the same ---”
“She seems sad.”
“I’m telling you, it’s a hospital.”
“It’s not a hospital. I want to see what that thing is she’s reading. I’m going to see if I can angle it round a bit.”
“You’ll never manage that.”
“I reckon I can. I’m getting a knack for it.”
With impressive dexterity, George skilfully manoeuvred the portal around until they were looking directly at the iPad that the woman was holding.
“It’s a kitten.” said George.
“How do you suppose that thing works?” said Henry. “Where is the actual kitten?”
“I reckon it’s a recording. Like a phonograph, but for pictures.”
“Incredible.” said Henry.
George adjusted the portal so they could see her face.
“Is she crying? Look at her.” he said.
“Maybe the kitten died.”
Suddenly the woman looked startled, and scared.
“She’s heard sommat.” said George.
“Someone at the door, maybe.”
George wrestled with the portal but the woman stood up and vanished out of sight.
The portal was focused on the sofa and George was wrestling with the apparatus, trying to change the point of view, when the woman fell backwards onto the sofa as if thrown there.
A vicious-looking man appeared, flanked by two others who resembled bodyguards. The man seemed to be shouting at her. As they watched, he struck her face violently.
“He’s attacking her.” said Henry. “We’ve got to do something.”
“What?” said George. “What can we do? Nowt.”
They watched, horrified, as the man continued to shout at the woman and pummel her with his fists.
“What if I ramp up the power a bit, just enough so we can pick up some of the sound?” said Henry.
“You know as well as I do that we’ll probably both die if you do that. We can’t control it well enough. The only thing we can safely bring through is light, and even then we’re taking a chance.”
“This is unbearable.” said Henry.
Eventually the man appeared to leave, and after returning from the direction of the door, the woman sat crying hysterically.
“Poor girl.” said Henry. “Who do you suppose they were?”
“I don’t know.” said George.
George was covering his mouth with his hand, his eyes wide with shock.
As if in answer to their question, the woman got up and fetched a piece of paper and a pen, and sat down at a table. She began to write something, still crying.
“Point it at the paper.” said Henry.
“I’m trying.” said George.
For a while the portal went dark.
“I think we’ve gone underground.” said George, frantically wrestling with the controls. “I don’t know if I can get her back.”
Henry began to shovel more coal into the furnace, managing surprisingly well with his damaged leg.
By the time he’d finished with the furnace, George had managed to get the portal to look directly down at the paper, which the woman had covered in writing. They read it eagerly, transfixed, and watched as she signed her name at the end.
To Whom It May Concern,
The worst mistake of my life was marrying my late husband. For the first year of our marriage he pretended to be nice, then I began to see his true colours. He took to drink, and gambling. He became violent and abusive.
When a Russian gangster named Kaganovich murdered him, no-one grieved for him, least of all me. I thought I was free from him at last.
Then I discovered he had accumulated large gambling debts to this man. Kaganovich came after me to pay the debt. I paid him what I could, but now I have no money left, and he tells me he will kill me if I cannot repay my late husband’s debt by next month.
I daren’t go to the police. I have no confidence that they can protect me from him. He says that if I try to flee, he will find me and he will kill me like he killed my husband.
I have no joy left in life. I have only fear and worry. I have decided to end my life. I’m sorry.
Helen Yates
23rd March, 2025
“She’s going to top herself!” said Henry.
“I can see that.” said George.
“She’s a Yates, like us.”
“It’s a common name.”
“Do something, George.”
“What do you suggest?” said George, desperately.
They watched in horror as Helen Yates fetched a bottle of pills and swallowed all of them, washing them down with half a bottle of red wine.
“I can’t bear to look.” said Henry.
“Keep the furnace going.” said George.
In spite of their efforts, after a few minutes, as Helen lay back on the sofa and closed her eyes, the image flickered upwards at an incredible speed and they found themselves looking at the stars again.
“I can’t get it back.” said George.
“Try, man!” said Henry.
George shook his head.
“The Ytterbium’s too hot.” he said. “I think the primary’s bust. We’ll not get it back till tomorrow. Not even if we work all night.”
Henry fell onto a chair exhausted.
“By gum.” he said. “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some horrible things. That poor woman.”
“She’s cursed with her very own Mr. Kenworthy and it’s not even her fault.” said George glumly.
“And we couldn’t do anything to help her.”
“Not now, we couldn’t.” said George.
“She’ll be dead in about an hour, likely as not.” said Henry.
“Henry, it’s the future. It hasn’t happened yet.”
Henry’s eyes widened.
“You reckon what we’re seeing is some kind of hypothetical future? Something we could change?”
“I reckon so.” said George. “Otherwise we’d have no free will, would we, if we couldn’t change the future? And sure as sixpence, we have got free will. Least I have, any road.”
“By ‘eck, you’re right.” said Henry. “We could still save her. But how?”
George sat down heavily on a second chair, facing him.
“We can’t create a spatial manifold. Ten to one it’d kill us. We’ve only to open it far under the ground or out into space for a moment and that’d be the end of us.”
“We need to do something now that’ll alter the future so she doesn’t get into such a mess.”
“I don’t know how we can do that. but there must be a way.” said George.
“If we alter the future too much she won’t even exist.”
“We’d have to make the most minimal change we can, as near to her death as possible. But we can’t open the portal at any other time or place than where we’ve already been opening it. We were lucky to get this to work.”
“We’re going to have to try. Otherwise I’ll not be able to sleep with a good conscience ever again. Even if we can do that though, all we can do is look at it.”
“If we could see a bit more of what happened before she topped ‘erself, p’raps it’d help us find some way of reckoning how to alter the chain of events. That’s the best I can come up with.”
“Meanwhile we’ve got our own problems.”
“He’s broken your leg, hasn’t he? I’d think that’d satisfy ‘im for a few more weeks at least.”
For two weeks they laboured to try to make the portal open before that fateful day in 2025, with little success. They watched Helen take her own life six times over, and they could do nothing to stop it.
Henry assured Mr. Kenworthy they’d return at least some of his money in a month, thinking that after they’d saved Helen, they could set their minds to the task of figuring out how to use the machine to spin a profit, but the days passed by without even Task A being achieved, never mind Task B.
Then, on the seventh attempt, they finally succeeded in opening the portal to a time they judged to be a little bit earlier, on the same day.
“She’s not on the divan.” said Henry, who was trying to keep a close watch on the furnace while also casting anxious glances at the portal.
“I’ll see if I can find her.” said George, and he carefully manoeuvred the portal around the house.
Eventually they found her, making coffee in the kitchen.
“What on earth is that?” said George, staring curiously at the coffee machine.
“There’s tea coming out of it.” said Henry. “It’s a tea machine.”
“It’s a funny colour for tea.”
“They must drink it very strong in the future.”
“Look at the clock.” said George. “It’s two in the afternoon. I reckon we’ve about an hour before that bloke comes round. I’m going to try to find ‘im.”
“Most likely he’ll come from York in one of them electric carriages. We’d better have a look at the road.”
For half an hour they moved the portal slowly along the road in the direction of York, scrutinising the faces of the people in the cars that passed, following the roads that seemed to have the heaviest traffic, but when three o’clock came around, they had drawn a blank.
“We’ve made a mistake.” said George.
“The day must be wrong.” said Henry.
“No. We’ve both done the calculations three times over. The day’s right. We’ve just picked the wrong road.”
“Well she’s dead now. What if we reset it it and try again?”
“Ytterbium’s too hot. No way to cool it down faster without ruining the microstructure. It’ll have to be tomorrow.”
The next day they tried again, and this time they succeeded in locating Kaganovich, driving down from the north in a BMW.
“That’s ‘im!” said Henry excitedly. “Follow him, George. Turn around and catch up with him.”
George turned the portal around but he couldn’t seem to make the portal move fast enough to catch Kaganovich’s car.
“At least we know what direction he comes from.” he said.
“We’re running out of time though.” said Henry. “Two or three weeks and we’re supposed to have a big pile of money for Kenworthy.”
“We’ll figure it out.” said George. “We’ll have to try again tomorrow. Find out where he comes from.”
“That could take weeks at this rate.” groaned Henry. “Why don’t we at least have a look around while we’re there and see if we can spot anything that might help us make some brass?”
George was about to follow his suggestion when suddenly they came upon Kaganovich’s car, parked at the side of a little lane off the main road.
“There he is, look!” said George, in surprise.
“He’s stopped.” said Henry. “What’s he stopped for?”
They didn’t have to wait long to find out. Kaganovich waded into some trees by the side of the lane, turned his back to them and proceeded to urinate against the side of an enormous oak tree.
“That answers that question, then.” said George. “Hey, he’s got a gun strapped to his hip.”
“Maybe they all carry guns in the future.”
“Doubt it. He’s clearly a blackguard of some sort. Otherwise he wouldn’t be running around murderin’ people an’ ‘itting women in the face. Probably shoots people when he’s bored.”
Kaganovich zipped himself up and went back to his car, where the two thugs were waiting patiently.
They were about to follow the men down the road when there was a sudden bang and a shower of sparks flew out of the apparatus.
“Dash it, the primary’s gone again.” said George.
“That’s us done till tomorrow, then.” said Henry.
“I’ve got an idea.” said George. “Can you replace the coil without me?”
“I can that. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to see if that lane and those trees already exist.”
“It’s probably close on fifteen miles.”
“I’ll borrow a safety bicycle off Kenworthy’s stepdaughter.”
“You can’t be messing with Kenworthy’s stepdaughter, you lummox!” said Henry, horrified.
“Why not? She’s very nice. I think she likes me. Since her mother died that brute has made her life a misery.”
“He’ll kill you if he finds out you’ve been anywhere near her.”
“He’s killing us in two weeks anyway.”
George ran up the steps to the road.
“George, confound it!” shouted Henry at his retreating back.
That evening they sat together at the table in the scullery of the little house they shared together, looking at a diagram that George had drawn on a piece of paper.
“Go over it again.” said Henry. “I need to think about this.”
“All right.” said George. “When a salty liquid —”
“Such as urine.”
“—such as urine, closes the circuit between these wires here, that activates this relay which drops these two rods, activating the galvanic cell here. That powers up this big coil here. The big coil sets up a vibrating magnetic field which charges up these two smaller coils. When something metallic —”
“Like a gun.”
“—like a gun, distorts the magnetic field, suddenly like, that closes this relay here, which closes the circuit with the condenser, which discharges a good two or three amps at ten thousand volts.”
“I don’t know, George, I’ve got some reservations about this.”
“It’s not murder. He drives her to do herself in. He’s already killed her ‘usband. The way I see it, it’s more like defence.”
“Aye, but I’m wondering if you can really keep the charge in that condenser for a hundred and forty years.”
“‘Course I can’t, that’s why it’s trickle charging from this dry cell here. Anyway, what’s the worst that happens? It doesn’t work and we’ll have to try again.”
Henry gazed at the diagram sceptically.
“We’d need weeks of experiments to get this right.”
“Four weeks, I reckon. And I’ve already put in two weeks of effort on the basic mechanism in case we needed it, so we just need the bit that senses the gun really.”
“You’ve put in two weeks? When?”
“In my spare time.”
“You’ve haven’t got any spare time.”
“I had enough.”
“Are you sure this isn’t going to electrocute some child or some dog or sommat?”
“Not unless a child or a dog pees on it while carrying a gun.”
“In two weeks Kenworthy’s going come for us in an awful foul mood.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now we’ve got to sort out this Kaganovich bloke.”
For almost two weeks they worked on George’s device, additionally incorporating an ingenious timing mechanism that, in theory, would only activate the device after at least one hundred and twenty years. When it was finished, they buried it by the tree where Kaganovich had stopped on his way to Helen’s house.
Once it was safely installed, they fired up the portal so they could check whether their plan had worked.
Again they found Kaganovich driving down the road with his two henchmen, and they watched him as he approached the tree.
When he stood in front of the tree to urinate, for some moments nothing appeared to be happening, and Henry said, “I bet it’s the timer. We’ve made it too safe. Or else the cell’s deteriorated too much.”
Then Kaganovich seemed to stiffen, and he fell over backwards without moving another muscle. Soon his colleagues got out of the car to see what had happened to him.
“They’re going to be awfully angry when they find out he’s died.” said George.
But instead, after taking his pulse, the two men began to dance around, and one held his palm in the air so the other could clap it. Then they took turns to spit on Kaganovich’s corpse, and proceeded to drive back the way they had come.
“That went better than I expected.” said George.
They were contemplating their success when there was a loud knocking at the cellar door, and George and Henry exchanged frightened glances.
“It’s him.” said Henry in a feverish whisper. “It’s Mr. Kenworthy. You’d better go. It takes me five minutes just to get up the steps.”
The door of the cellar opened out directly onto the street, and as soon as George opened it, Kenworthy grabbed him by the collar and practically dragged him down the steps. Accompanying him were the two men who had broken Henry’s leg.
“So! What’ve your got to say for yourself?” said Kenworthy when they all reached the bottom of the steps.
He hurled George against the cellar wall.
Before they could reply, Kenworthy spotted the portal.
“What this ‘ere?” he said, peering at it.
“It’s our invention, Mr. Kenworthy, sir.” said George.
“We’ll make all your money and more besides.” said Henry. “It’s going to make a fortune. We’ll gladly repay you even an extra fifty percent.”
Kenworthy walked right up to the portal and pressed his face against it.
“It’s a magic mirror.” he said.
Then he noticed that the world he could see through the portal wasn’t quite as it should be.
“What in ‘eaven’s name are those?” he said, looking at the cars.
One of the men kicked Henry’s broken leg and shouted, “Speak up, lad.”
“I-It’s a p-portal.” said Henry, stuttering.
“It shows us the future.” said George, picking himself up from where he’d fallen against the wall. “One hundred and forty years into the future.”
“A portal, you say?” said Kenworthy. “Are you boys saying I can use this to visit the future?”
“N-no.” said Henry. “That would be too dangerous. You can only look at the future.”
“But I want to visit the ruddy future!” said Kenworthy. “What use is it to only see the future? And in a ‘undred and forty years an’ all. I can’t even get next week’s winner at Knavesmire.”
Henry cast an anxious glance at the furnace and started to struggle to his feet with the aid of the crutches, but Kenworthy pushed him roughly back into his chair.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said Kenworthy.
“The furnance is getting overheated. If the portal gets too much power, we could get … well, we could get …”
“We could be sucked into the future.” said George, finishing his sentence.
“Now you listen ‘ere.” said Kenworthy, placing his face close to Henry’s. “You took my money to build this contraption and you ‘aven’t repaid me when you were supposed to, so this contraption now belongs to me, and I’m minded to go and ‘ave a look at the future as it ‘appens.”
“That would be highly inadvisable.” said Henry. “If I could just —”
“That would be ‘ighly inadvisable.” said Kenworthy, mockingly. Then he roared at them, “I say what is and isn’t advisable.”
At that moment there was a sudden popping sound, and a gust of fresh air blew against their faces.
“Looks like it’s opened up, Mr. Kenworthy.” said one of Kenworthy’s henchmen.
“Right.” said Kenworthy. “You can go first.”
He grabbed Henry, marched him up to the portal and pushed him through it.
Henry fell over onto the grass visible on the other side of the portal and began to look wildly around himself.
Kenworthy stood looking into the portal.
“Can’t he see us now?” he said.
For a split second the portal seemed to flicker, and a black sky speckled with bright stars appeared. Then suddenly there was an enormous bang.
When George came to his senses again, Kenworthy and his henchmen had vanished, as had nearly everything else in the cellar, including the portal and most of the apparatus that had created it.
George found himself lying next to the wall where the portal had stood. Next to him was part of a chair, and a severed foot.
Henry pulled himself upright on the crutches and looked around. He was in the middle of a field, at the edge of which was a road, busy with cars.
He hopped slowly towards the road, let himself out through a gate, and began to make his way down the road in the direction of York.
After ten minutes he stopped in a lay-by, exhausted.
A car pulled into the lay-by and the driver rolled down the passenger-side window and shouted to him through it.
“Eh up mate, do you want a lift?” he said.
“A lift?” said Henry, puzzled.
“Get in, I’ll drive you into town. You’ll never get there at the rate you’re going.”
The driver opened the car door. Henry got in and sat down.
“Pull the door to, mate.” said the driver.
Henry pulled the door and after several attempts, with the driver advising him to “give it a good slam”, he managed to shut it.
“Are you going past Tollerton?” said Henry.
“I am that. You want dropping off?”
“I’d be much obliged.”
“No problem, mate. Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you dressed like that?”
Henry looked down at his suit.
“It’s a long story.” he said.
In Tollerton, Henry got out and hopped his way towards Helen’s house. When he got there, he looked in at the window and saw a whole family, watching TV. For a minute he thought the TV was a portal, then he realised it was only showing theatrical performances.
He sat on the wall outside the house, dispirited.
“She’s gone.” he said to himself. “The future’s changed somehow. She doesn’t exist. What’ve we done? Come on, George, get me back again.”
He was sitting there muttering to himself when another car pulled up and a woman got out.
“Henry Yates?” she said.
“Aye.” said Henry.
“So it’s all true.” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognise me?”
He inspected her face curiously. She looked a lot like Helen, but somehow different.
“You’re not Helen, are you?” he said.
“The very same.” she said. “You’re Henry Yates, aren’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“Let’s get in my car and I’ll explain while I drive.”
“I need to wait here. I’m expecting someone.”
“No-one’s coming, Henry.” she said, gently. “Just me. I’ll explain everything.”
As Helen was driving them south, she told him she lived in Oxford, and had come to find him, not knowing if he would really be there or not. She handed him an old book.
“It’s the diary of your brother, George.” she said. “My great-great-grandfather.”
“You’re George’s great-great-grandaughter?” said Henry.
“That’s right. Read it.”
He opened the diary and began to read.
In the diary, George described how Kenworthy had been sucked into the vacuum of outer space, never to be seen again, immediately after pushing Henry through the portal, and the portal had been destroyed. The year after, he had married Kenworthy’s step-daughter and they had moved to Oxford.
He had tried endlessly to reconstruct the portal and bring Henry back, but George had eventually passed away, aged 82, without succeeding, and the diary came to a stop at that point. Without Henry’s help, he was never able to hit upon the precise arrangement of the apparatus necessary to make it work.
By George moving to Oxford, a step only possible because Mr. Kenworthy had died, Helen’s future life had been irrevocably changed, and she had married a perfectly pleasant Oxford don instead of the man she had met in York, and now worked as a professor of history. As for Kaganovich, she had never encountered him.
With the help of the diary and Helen, Henry was able to piece all of this together as they drove towards Oxford.
“You can stay with us till you find your feet, Henry.” said Helen. “After all, you’re family, and we owe you everything.”
Henry passed a happy life eventually teaching mathematics at the university, and died surrounded by his grandchildren, at the age of 75. During his time at Oxford, he was sometimes compared to a professor who had also taught there, at the end of the 19th century, who shared his surname; a man by the name of George.
He never ceased to marvel at the incredible technological changes that had taken place since the 19th century, although he missed the endless green fields of his life in the distant past.
Sometimes, when he felt nostalgia tinged with melancholy growing in himself, he liked to reread the final entry in the diary, which was written directly to him. It said:
I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you back, Henry. I’ve missed you greatly. I hope the future has been kind to you. I’ve kept this diary in the hope that, by some miracle, it should one day fall into your hands. Sometimes I wonder, you know, if that woman Helen wasn’t a distant descendant of ours. Take care of yourself, old chap, and I hope that leg healed well.
With Greatest Respect and Affection,
your brother, George.
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