A Book in Time

I was browsing in Albert's, down Cecil Court, when I saw another customer slipping books under his coat. Indignation high, I made a grab at him, but he had seen my glance and was out of the shop before you could say 'Limited signed edition'.

I followed hot-foot (crepes always do that to me). Luckily, he did not run far. He had something that looked to my wild glance like a car, hidden behind a pile of crates in a hotel yard. As I jumped on to the running board, I realised it was a queer make. It had no steering wheel and no driving wheels. A publisher? - The wild thought flashed through my head, and then my quarry at the dashboard flipped a lever ...

London was gone! At least, the old one had disappeared. It simply blurred and vanished, and a new one of smooth stone and metal took its place. We seemed not to have moved. I was bowled over; indeed, when the fugitive opened his door, I was knocked over.



'Never impede a passing time machine,' he said, helping me up.

'Time machine?' I queried. Could that really be the hideous explanation of the strangeness round about me?

'What year is this?' I asked.

'2054', he said.

'You're sure your watch isn't fast?'

'Look friend, I've got no time for jokes. I've got just an hour off duty to snatch some lunch, and then I must be back into the past again. Good-bye.'

By the time I had come out of the nearest thing a non-yogi gets to a trance, he had gone. I was stranded a century into the future! To think that a love of law and order should result in this, when I had only meant to pop out of the bank for five minutes. And what would they say there if I did not return? 'He said he'd be back in no time.' How right they were!

Abruptly my misery vanished. My time traveller had said he was coming back in an hour! Then I was saved - I had an hour, just an hour, to look round in. Immediately I was filled with a thousand curiosities, but I knew there was time to gratify only one.

What to do? Go to the bank and check up if I ever got on to the board? Slip into the nearest library and look up racing records, so that I could be sure of winning the 1954-64 Derbys? Have a peep into the Tate and see if anyone ever got round to enjoying Picasso? Or just stand and talk to someone, anyone, in the street, and see what changes, if any, human nature had undergone?

I stood there blankly, uncertain of my strange surroundings. Perhaps the bank, the library, the Tate had all long since gone. I tried to think of somewhere that would beyond doubt still be in existence.

I hailed a passer-by in blue nylon.

'Foyles?', I prompted.

He pointed up the street. 'Ruddy bookworm', he muttered. Evidently human nature was much the same.

So was Foyles. My heart beat excitedly as I passed the robot doorman searching outgoing customers. Eagerly, I ran from counter to counter.

Book fashions had altered surprisingly little. Although novels were mainly royal octavo and technical books demy 16mo in two volumes, they were still printed on nothing more exotic than paper.

Good paper, too (there was no war on, obviously!) Even the same dear old type faces greeted me, although I spotted a new letter in the alphabet, a cross between an 'a' and a 'y'.

The 'Collected Works of Angus Wilson' in 22 volumes hypnotised me. It cost nine poundels. Alas, I had no poundels! My eyes floated over novel titles. His Dear Dead Body, In What Mad Ecstasy? Too Soon the Plebiscite. Not much change there ...

Dust jacket art was impressive. Nearly every one looked fit for framing, to my bulging eyes. I glanced at a blurb. 'This absorbing account of the ages when our ancestors travelled by railway trains holds the reader in an iron track all its own. Every chapter sizzles with steamy excitement - not a sleeper among them. Once you pick up this saga of a man who commuted - I dropped it, plus ça change ...

But the quote came from the Mirror Literary Supplement. What fantastic revolution in taste did that denote?

Even more tantalising were the technical books. Teach Yourself Astrogravitics - there was a counter full of that. Current best-sellers: Third-Stage Mutation, published by Harwell University. Cybernetics in the Home, Through the Time Barrier and Lunar Fungi and Quasi-grasses. And what were Venusian Calatapods?

Many publishers' names were new, although most of the old ones still seemed to be going strong. I could see nothing of Blank and Blank, rather to my pleasure - I had always hoped they would expire since they rejected a modest little treatise on money I had written.

What quaint story, I wondered, lay behind the name: Jonathan Carp. Or was it merely a pronunciation change?

I sighed. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was still in 48 volumes. Knowledge was still accumulating.

Biographies also accumulated. Abide the Question, One Final Thing - the usual kind of title. And then I jumped! A memoir by John Fluffstone, 1950-2027. It must, it couldn't, it must be my infant son, Johnny! Fluffstone is not such a common name, and the dates fitted. And the title - That Old Rip, Father: or, The Naked and the Dud. Tenth edition, too!

My hour was up! Indeed, I was almost late. I burst out of the door, dodging the robot, and bolted down the street ...

He was just climbing into the time machine.

'Hey!', I called wildly. 'Hey! If you will take me back to 1953, I promise not to mention those books you stole from Albert's.'

It was hardly a tactful way of cadging a lift. I admit I was upset. But the fellow smiled and said, 'Jump in'.

I did so.

'Those books were not stolen', he said casually. 'I'm a bookseller. I left a small gold nugget for them. It's tedious I know, but we have different currencies, then and now.'

'Why didn't you make yourself known to Albert?', I asked accusingly. 'He's always helpful.'

He flipped up his lapel, revealing a hidden badge. On it were the initials ABA. 'Not - not the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association?' I gasped.

He nodded grimly. 'We're a secret organisation these days', he said. 'There have been two major wars since your time. All the old books have gone up in smoke. Our only source of supply is the past. It's illegal, of course - police after us night and day.'

'I see. You have come back a century for supplies? It seems very underhand.'

'We'd never see a Golden Cockerel otherwise', he said sadly. 'Besides, a chap has to live.'

'O.K. I won't say anything', I promised. How did I know what weapons he could produce if driven too far?

'Right. Hold on.' The lever flipped, the dials crawled ... back to 1953.

Wordlessly, I made my way back to the bank. As you see, I did not keep my word; somehow it hardly seems binding - after all, the fellow will not be born for 50 years yet.

You do not believe this? Doubters may call and inspect a little volume I pocketed with few qualms; it provides complete proof for my statements. It is published by Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, 2052. It is called The Observer's Book of Spaceships.

This story is included in The Complete Short Stories, Volume One : The 1950s.