· 6 June 1939 ·
HAWKE CASTLE
Let’s open the thing up, shall we?” Lord Hawke said. By the time Hawke had returned via the lift with the laboratory equipment, Gunner and Hobbes had moved the sea chest to a curved table next to the westernmost window. The dying rays of the sun caught the gleaming surface of the wooden lid. Nick was amazed to see how the old chest and its brass lock looked, even in this fading light. It looked, well, almost brand-new!
“The lock works will be left intact, of course, Hobbes?” Lord Hawke said. He was watching Hobbes’s every move. Nick was surprised to see Hobbes’s deft movements with the small precision tools as he proceeded to pick and pry at the shiny lock; it was like watching a master craftsman.
“Of course, sir,” Hobbes said. “I assume we’ll want to preserve its current chronology for time-dating in the laboratory this evening.”
“Precisely, Hobbes. A step ahead of me, as usual,” Hawke said, and took another deep puff on his pungent cigar. “I’m sure we’ll find the lock works keeping track with the laboratory chronograph. The lock is attached to the chest, so it is traveling at the same speed, don’t you think?”
“No question, sir. They’ll be traveling together,” Hobbes said through his clenched teeth. He was chewing on the tortoise-shell amulet that hung from around his neck, lost in concentration.
“Should we put the spectral chronometer on it, Hobbes—before we open the box, I mean?” Hawke asked, peering more closely at the lock. “Just in case?”
“Wouldn’t hurt, m’lord,” Hobbes said. He opened a mahogany case Hawke had brought from the laboratory and pulled out an odd-looking contraption. It appeared to be a sophisticated naval chronometer, but featured a number of strange dials, and had many-colored wires dangling from it. These wires were attached to two large brass clock housings with plain white faces and a red sweep second hand. In red type on the left face were the letters GMT. On the right, was the word FLUX. Nick stared at the contraption as Hobbes attached its wires by little clips to both the lock and the sea chest itself.
“GMT? That’s Greenwich Mean Time, right?” Nick asked, feeling foolish as soon as the question was out of his mouth.
“Right-ho,” Hobbes said, not even looking up from his work. “The exact time everywhere on earth as measured precisely up in Greenwich. A constant, as it were.”
“And flux?” Nick asked. He noticed that the sweep second hand on the FLUX face began spinning wildly, too fast to see, the instant Hobbes attached its clip to the sea chest.
“A bit more complicated,” said Lord Hawke. “Flux is simply movement in time. Backward. Forward. Either direction, actually.”
“Considerably more complicated, I’d say, m’lord,” said Hobbes with a little laugh, inserting another copper wire into the keyhole of the lock.
“Excuse me, please, but what in the world is going on here?” Nick said, getting to his feet. The things he was hearing were making him doubt his own sanity. Nothing was making any sense, and it was a bit frightening.
“The chest has moved forward, Nick. But you just can’t see it,” Lord Hawke said, putting a calming hand on Nick’s shoulder in an attempt to soothe him.
“It’s moving in another dimension, lad,” Hobbes said.
“It’s moved forward in time, son,” said Hawke.
“With respect, sir, it has not moved forward in time!” Nick said, his face reddening. “Because that is not even remotely, with all due respect to you both, not even remotely possible!”
“Sit down, Nick,” Lord Hawke said kindly. “Sit down for a moment, and Hobbes and I will try to explain it to you.”
“Do you know what the word ‘flux’ actually means, Nick?” asked Hobbes, gently placing the instrument on the table before Nick. The thin red needle was a spinning blur.
“I—I think so, sir,” said Nick, taking a deep breath. “Change. Isn’t that it, change?”
“Exactly,” said Hobbes. “Change. It means change, and also, continuous movement. A constant state of movement. Along a sort of track, for want of a better word, called the fourth dimension, or, non-Euclidean space-time. Does that make sense?”
“That’s what time is, Nick, flux. A constant state of movement,” Hawke said, pointing at the spinning FLUX dial. “Where is the needle now? When you say ‘now,’ what does that really mean, Nick?”
Nick looked at him, then at the red blur of the spinning second hand.
“It means now,” Nick said, “It means right now, doesn’t it? I think all this is—is just too—I don’t know what to think. I’m sorry.” The boy rested his chin in both hands and stared sullenly at the spinning dial.
“I know how you feel, Nicholas,” Lord Hawke said kindly. “I had precisely the same reaction the first time Hobbes explained the notion to me. Perfectly natural reaction. It is difficult to grasp.”
“Thank you, sir,” Nick said, straining to get his emotions under control. “I am terribly sorry. Hobbes, won’t you continue?”
“Now is just a point in time, isn’t it?” said Hobbes, hardly missing a beat. “And, as soon as you’ve said it, it’s gone, laddie. It’s long gone, boy. It’s moved. It’s somewhere else on the track. And the track has no end. Only points back there, here, and up ahead. And you can only see the point where you are, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t exist, does it? They’re there, laddie, but you can only see them if you move! Here, let me try and show you—”
Hobbes pulled a scrap of paper from the drawer and extracted a black fountain pen from his pocket. He drew a line from left to right across the page and marked each end.
“Time is that line, Nick,” Hobbes said. “From ‘D’ the ‘dawn of time’ to ‘E,’ not the end, but ‘eternity.’ And ‘x’ is now. You can put an ‘x’ anywhere on the line, but the line stays constant. Each moment reaches backward and forward to all other moments. You can’t see the time line, but everybody knows it’s there. For centuries, men have known this, but it took Leonardo da Vinci’s genius to enable man to move along the line, backward or forward. Do you begin to see that, Nick?”
“Or allow the objects to move to you,” Hawke added, “like this chest you found on the beach, lad, like this chest sitting right here. It has moved along the track to you. That’s how you came to find it there on the beach. Even as you so rightly said, it could not have washed ashore. It didn’t, lad. It moved along the track. That’s why we call it a ‘traveler.’ It’s traveling through time. This traveler is a wooden box. But human beings can travel, too.”
“But, that’s not possible, is it? That’s just not p-possible, is it?” Nick stammered, but he really didn’t know what to believe anymore. He buried his face in his hands. He had the bewildering feeling he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t anymore.
Hawke sat down and took Nick’s hand in his, looking into his eyes with a depth of feeling Nick had not seen in them before. Even when the name Billy Blood had hung in the air above the table like a dreadful curse.
“Oh, it’s possible, my boy,” Hawke said. “Believe me, it is more than possible. It is real. Hobbes and I have been delving into the notion of time travel for years. But, until today, we simply didn’t have the proper equipment. There is an entire laboratory in my cellar, filled with our complex and utterly failed experiments. But, don’t worry, lad. It’s all right. After a while, this notion of traveling in time will become as real to you as sailing your boat around the island.”
“How?” Nick cried, feeling the frustration welling up inside. “How can that be? Please tell me how that can be!” Time travel? It was unthinkable. Wasn’t it?
The two men looked at each other and back at Nick.
“The answer is inside the chest, laddie,” Hobbes said, gently, with real compassion for Nick’s confusion and frustration. It was a frustration he and Lord Hawke had been living with for five long years. They could hardly expect the boy to just accept what they were saying at face value. Hawke put a consoling hand on Nick’s troubled head. Nick lifted his head and looked into Hawke’s eyes, which were clear and blue like a child’s, and with a child’s large, unblinking gaze.
“Why, you’ve found a time engine, you have, Nicholas McIver!” Lord Hawke said, in a jubilant whisper. “You’ve brought me Leonardo da Vinci’s miracle time machine.”