Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.

Even as I passed through the doorway I wondered if I had entered the right place.

It was a rather large chamber with a high ceiling and an oversized fireplace with a dying bed of coals. Above the fireplace hung an oversized flag. At first I thought it was the Union Jack. It had the same blue cross bars on a field of red. Closer inspection showed stars within the bars. This was the flag of the American Confederacy.

An officer in a rumpled gray uniform sat at a nearby table. I couldn’t quite make out the rank. A colonel as a receptionist? I wondered. The Patent Office must really be an important place!

He held a small glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. He stood as I entered. “Come in, suh, come in! You’re just in time to join me in a toast to the second-greatest man who ever lived. Here, I’ll pour you a glass.” He spoke with an accent, definitely un-British, yet soft and pleasant, and as he spoke an odd thing happened to his face. A bulge in his right cheek vanished and reappeared in his left cheek.

I stared at this phenomenon for a moment, then held up my hands quickly. “Thanks just the same,” I said. “A bit early in the morning for me. But tell me, who is this second-greatest man?”

He looked at me in amazement. “You don’t know?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.”

He lifted his head proudly. “Today, suh, we celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, our first president, born on the third of June, eighty-six years ago.” (He pronounced “born” as “bawn.”)

That didn’t sound quite right. “But today is June 6. June 3 was last Sunday.”

“My point exactly, suh. It goes on all week, you know.”

I noticed then a dozen empty bottles in and around his desk. “So if I may ask, who was the greatest man who ever lived?”

He looked at me in a rumpled mixture of wonder and sorrow, then replied with measured reverence and, “Robert E. Lee, who else?” His eyes seemed to look far away. “Oh, you should have been with us at Gettysburg, when we beat Meade, and swept on to Washington. You come around in January, suh, when we celebrate Bobby’s birthday. Last year they had to call out the Home Guard. Nothing like back in Richmond, though.” His cheek bulge shifted again. He sighed. “Well, I guess you’d like to get down to business. Your name, suh?”

“Wells,” I said hurriedly. “Herbert G. Wells.” By now I was certain I was in the wrong place.

He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer under the table and examined it thoughtfully. “Wells? Hmm. Don’t seem to see it.” He cocked a curious eye at me. “You have an appointment, Mr. Wells?”

“Yes, sir.” I handed over my telegram. He examined it briefly, then gave it back. “Oh ho! Well dang my hide, suh. You’re looking for the Patent Office. They’s next door.” (He pronounced “door” as “dough”.) He pointed. “People always comin’ in heah’ tryin’ to get a patent. I tell ’em, the S’uthrun Colonies are now part of the British Commonwealth and covered by British patents. Son, you don’t want to see Mr. Mason. You go next door, they’ll help you.”

I glanced toward the door behind him that evidently led to an inner office. On it was painted the legend, J.M. Mason, Jr., H.M. Resident Deputy, Southern Colonies.

I knew now where I was. When the American Confederacy established their independence with British help in 1863, they accepted Dominion Status and had their own resident representative in London—in the same building with the Patent Office.

I backed out with mumbled apologies. I had inadvertently run headlong into a bit of history, for the Mason in question was his excellency Mr. James Murray Mason, Jr., son of the famous Mason of the pair of Mason and Slidell, who had persuaded England to recognize the American Confederacy and to back up the recognition with the British navy, arms, and money, lots and lots of money. It didn’t end there, of course. While we were thus happily ensuring a continuing supply of cotton for our Lancashire mills, Napoleon III had stepped in. When the dust settled, a lot of maps required extensive revision. The French had annexed Quebec and Mexico. We got the American South—and slavery. The American North survived and prospered.

I was in the act of leaving Mr. Mason’s suite when I was given a dramatic explanation of the bulge in the colonel’s cheek.

He spat. The target was a gleaming brass spittoon the size of a chamber pot, sitting beside the fireplace, four yards away. It was like striking a gong.

And drinking at the same time? I was awed. I closed the door quietly behind me.

Macauley had once argued that the British government had made only two really serious blunders since 1066: Number One, driving the American colonies away in 1776; and Number Two, taking back the southern half in 1863.

And so on down the hall, and this time through the portals of the genuine Her Majesty’s Great Seal Patent Office.

It had been a strange day, a day of shattered routine. Yesterday, and for many days prior, Jane[1] and I had scheduled our lives with order and despatch in our two rooms at 12 Mornington Place. Our bedroom had a double bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, chairs, wash basin, and so on. Every morning I jumped out of bed, pulled my britches on over my night shirt, Jane got into her wrapper, and then we’d go through the folding doors into the front room, already warmed up a bit if need be by a coal fire, set by the house servant in the cold dawn. I’d take a look at the paper while we had breakfast. And then we’d both get to work—I to my writing, Jane to her science studies. In the afternoon we’d take long walks, looking for material I could write about. So far in this year of 1894, I have done fairly well. By year’s end I’ll probably have sold seventy-five articles, and I was off to a marvelous start with my stories: “The Stolen Bacillus,” “The Diamond Maker,” “Aepyornis Island,” “Lord of the Dynamos.”

Home from our walk, it’s tea and scones, then back to work. Supper is brought up in the evening, and then more work. And finally to bed, and some wonderful love-making as the trains thunder by and rattle the house.

Yesterday that halcyon routine was blasted by a thing that I had set in motion the year before. In 1893 I had applied for a patent on “Temporal Flux Adjustment.” At the time I was simply thinking of a couple of articles, with titles such as “The Inventive Act,” “How to Get a Patent,” “The British Patent Office,” that kind of thing. Applying for a patent seemed a good way to start. But there were immediate problems. First, one must have what appears, at least superficially, to be an invention. So, how about my ideas for traveling back in time?

I explained the theory to three patent agents, one after another. Patent agents are special lawyers, and most of them have offices on High Holborn and in Staple Inn, near the Patent Office. They pontificated in buildings erected in Tudor times, with semiexposed beams, plaster, and jutting windows. For each century en retard I think they added another £ 10 to their fees.

One after another, they refused to take my case. Also, the cheapest wanted a £ 50 retainer. Ha! So I wrote up the patent application myself, complete with a proper description and drawing of the time-flux modifier, included a postal order of £ 5 for the filing fee, and mailed it off, all without benefit of clergy.

Months passed, and no word from the Patent Office. I tried to conjecture what might be going on in those august chambers. Probably they had read it, passed it around for all to have a good laugh, and then tossed it into the waste basket. Too bad. No articles. And so I forgot all about it.

Then, yesterday—the telegram.

I had been working on a short story. Jane answered the door, and a moment later came bouncing up the stairs, waving a little sheet of paper. She stood at the entrance of our sitting room, and in a trembling voice, she read:

“Wells, H.G., 12 Mornington Place, Camden, London. Re: Application for Letters Patent Serial Number 21-X, filed 3 March 1893, for Temporal Flux Adjustment. The comptroller respectfully requests your attendance in chambers at ten o’clock in the morning of 6 June, 1894 to discuss the subject patent application.”

I snatched it from her hand and read it myself, carefully, word for word. Yes. No hoax. Only the Patent Office had the filing data. It was real, at least in substance. But the form was unreal. A telegram is expensive. The message is generally presented in as few words as possible. But not this one. Look at the extra “the’s” and the several unnecessary prepositions. Over half the words were surplusage. Somebody—the comptroller?—was spending a lot of money just to make sure there would be no mistake in my instructions. It was all very very odd. I knew for a fact that (1) interviews for pending applications were rarely granted, (2) that when they did occur, the notices were sent by ordinary mail, and (3) the interviews were always before the examiner in charge of the case, never before the comptroller.

What was going on?

So, today, I arose early, had a quick biscuit and tea, and left Jane sleeping groggily as I set off for my mysterious meeting with the comptroller. I had earlier decided to walk. The exercise would put me there wide awake. I had a feeling I would need to be fully alert with every nerve tingling.

So early this morning, while Jane slept, I set off down South Everholt Street, which changed to Southhampton Street, and then a left turn into High Holborn. (An article, perhaps, on how London streets keep changing their names? Or how they got their names? “Holborn” means “Stream in the Hollow”—the great highway runs along the route of what used to be Fleet River. London sucks up these little streams like a sponge.) Farther down High Holborn is the Viaduct and the circus with Prince Albert’s statue raising his hat to the city of London. Albert, born in 1819, died December 1, 1861. The date of his death sticks in my mind because it’s part of the sign over the draper’s shop where I was once (oh so unhappily!) apprenticed. It’s also the date Britain declared war on the Northern States during the American Civil War.

On to Chancery Lane on the right, and Gray’s Inn Road on the left. This is Dickens country. Hard by is The Old Curiosity Shop. As a lad of sixteen Dickens joined the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore at Gray’s Inn, and quickly acquired very definite ideas about lawyers and the law. As he said in Bleak House, “A poor man has nothing more to fear from lawyers than from a gang of pickpockets.” Again, in The Uncommercial Traveller: “I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar known to the children of men.” But apparently not everybody felt the same way. Shakespeare staged The Comedy of Errors in Gray’s Inn in 1594.

We English love history. A third of the English are busy making it, a third are busy recording it, and a third are busy reading it. A fine market for scribblers like me! Except that I want to write history before it happens. I want to write of things to come.

I go down to Chancery Lane to Lincoln’s Inn, then to Staple Inn, where Dr. Johnson lived for a while. They’re called inns because lawyers once lived here. Now they’re legal universities, and the seat of the Council of Legal Education. The lawyers have all moved to side streets.

The Patent Office (including—alas!—since 1863 the Confederate American residency) occupies an attractive two-storey Jacobean building on the south side of High Holborn. It is huddled in very nearly the center of London, and hence of course in the center of the world. The main entrance faces Staple Inn, and that’s where I came in and encountered Mr. Mason and the American Confederacy.

And now I think I’m finally in the right place.

I gave my name to the lad at the reception desk. I assumed he’d give me directions to the comptroller’s office, but for a moment he just stared at me. “Do you have something to identify you, Mr. Wells?”

I showed him the telegram.

“Thank you.” He arose, bowed slightly, and murmured in very formal tones, “This way, Mr. Wells.”

This both puzzled and alarmed me. I was not accustomed to civility, much less respect, from a government employee. Something very serious was going on. I was torn between an urge to turn and run, and an even stronger urge to stay and find out what it was all about.

I followed him upstairs and down a hall. At the end of the hall was a double door, guarded by four men-at-arms.

Their sergeant stepped forward.

My heart was now pounding away like a trip-hammer. Something was wrong, horribly wrong. Was I about to be arrested? Simply for filing a patent application? No. Not yet, anyway.

“Mr. Wells,” the receptionist announced to the sergeant.

“Proper I.D.?” demanded the sergeant.

“He has the telegram.”

The sergeant clicked his heels together vehemently, bowed, then held the door open for me.

I walked in.

Five people were spaced around a table in the center of the room. One was a woman, the others were men. As I entered, the men rose to their feet.

The woman was small, plump, and dressed in black. Except in pictures I had never seen her before. But I recognized her instantly: Victoria Regina, the Widow of Windsor, Her Majesty the Queen.

Now, I hold no brief for royalty, or for that matter, for the hereditary nobility. I’m a republican. It made no sense to me that they should live in the lap of luxury while I and my family had to watch every pence in a hardscrabble attempt to survive.

I now noticed a dark figure leaning against the nearest wall. He was peculiarly dressed, with a long light-colored jacket, black trousers, and a brimless cap. I took him to be the Hindu manservant that helped the queen in and out of her wheelchair and carried her up and downstairs. He kept half-lidded eyes on his mistress. The rest of us he ignored. And we ignored him.

So, as I waited for someone to say or do something, I had decided I wasn’t going to offer that spine-cracking ceremonial bow you see in the illustrated newspapers, when ambassadors from small unpronounceable countries are presented in court.

Meanwhile, I was trying to place the standing men, and I was having no luck at all. I couldn’t even identify the Patent Office Comptroller.

But the uncertainty ended quickly.

The man at the end of the table said. “Mr. Herbert George Wells?”

To him, I nodded slightly. “Yes?”

“Mr. Wells, I am Reader Lack, Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Patent Office.”

I nodded again and mumbled something inconsequential.

He now turned to the queen. “Your Majesty, may I present Mr. Herbert George Wells.”

And now, damn it, I found myself bowing deeply!

She said quietly, with no hint of sarcasm or irony, “We are grateful that you could spare the time to attend us, Mr. Wells.” She peered at me rather vaguely, and squinted, as though trying to bring me into focus. This seemed to confirm the gossip: she had cataracts, and was going blind. Not surprising. In this year of 1894 she was seventy-five. She continued, “Mr. Levering, now that we are all here, perhaps you would like to complete the introductions.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” He cleared his throat. “Major Banning, Her Majesty’s equerry.” The officer bowed somberly.

“Mr. Thomas Wilshire,” continued the patent official.

To his right a slight gray-haired man bowed slightly.

I blurted, “The Tom Wilshire?”

“Sir?” he said.

“Joseph Paxton’s lieutenant? Some say you invented the machinery for laying the glass panes in the Crystal Palace?”

“A gross exaggeration, sir.” But his lips lifted in a faint smile. “I merely carried out Mr. Paxton’s instructions.”

“And finally,” said the comptroller, “Sir Almroth Wright, M.D.” Dr. Wright bowed formally.

I knew the name of course. Everybody did. Dr. Wright had developed a typhoid antitoxin. A very new thing, and already a matter of great controversy in the medical profession. The entire army medical corps (which still had strong adherents for bleeding to combat fever and hanging asafetida around the throat to combat influenza) was dead set against it. Perhaps thereby proving it must have merit.

“And now gentlemen,” said the queen, “Please be seated.” I found myself sitting very uncomfortably directly across from the queen. After the chairs had stopped scraping, she said, “Mr. Lack, you may begin.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said the Comptroller. “And now, Mr. Wells, since the matter is complex, I trust that you will bear with me if 1 seem to digress from time to time.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that. I said simply, “Yes, sir.”

He continued. “As perhaps you are aware, our patent examiners are generally well educated and are widely read, particularly in their special fields.”

“So I understand.”

“The examiner in charge of your application has, in fact, followed fairly closely the published literature in multidimensional physics, including your own articles.” He opened the file folder that lay on the table before him and lifted out several papers. “I see here your three-part series, ‘Chronic Argonauts,’ in Science Schools Journal, 1888. You explored the rudimentary idea of time travel, and gave us a look at the future. A bit of fantasy, eh, Mr. Wells?”

I shrugged. “We don’t really know yet, Mr. Levering.”

“Well, let’s get on. You revised and rewrote, and we see earlier this year, in The National Observer, seven different articles, all unsigned, all dealing with the same materials. Your publications, Mr. Wells?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now we come to your patent application. Am I accurate when I say that, in this one document, you have summarized all essentials for making a machine that will let a man travel in time?”

“I tried to, sir.”

“And may we assume, Mr. Wells, that it was not your intent to perpetrate a hoax on the Patent Office, which is to say, a hoax on Her Majesty’s government?” He regarded me sternly through his spectacles.

I thought very rapidly. There was something in the rules that said filing a patent application was a good faith representation by the applicant that the invention would work as described. There were penalties for perjury, including jail time. I swallowed hard. “Certainly not, sir. I have not built the machine, but 1 believe it can be built, and that if and when it is built, it ought to work.”

He seemed to relax. “That’s good to hear. Now, Mr. Wells, as required by the rules, the core of your invention is stated in Claim One of your application.” He adjusted his spectacles. “Let me read it. ‘A brass rail frame comprising, in dimension-altering configuration, a sapphire crystal, a plurality of twisted quartz bars, ivory bars, ebony bars, and nickel bars, EMF source, two control levers for forward and reverse time motion respectively, means for indicating movement in time, and accommodation for the user.’ ” He peered at me over the rims of his spectacles. “Is that an accurate summary of your time machine, Mr. Wells?”

“It is.”

And everything was still a great mystery. Whatever was happening was happening because the queen wanted it to happen. But why? What was her interest? And Dr. Wright? How was he involved? And Tom Wilshire, the supermechanic? I gave a couple of covert glances in the queen’s direction, but she remained silent. No answers there.

I waited. It was up to these people to make sense out of this.

The Comptroller said, “Inventions with possible military applications are routinely brought to the attention of the War Office. To shorten the story a bit, Mr. Wells, the examiner in charge of your application sent an abstract to our military liaison, Major Banning, and he mentioned it, rather casually, I understand, to her majesty, who, it happened, was aware of the typhoid work of Sir Almroth. Dr. Wright, perhaps you can continue the explanation?”

The famous physician took up the tale. “Of course. First, a little background. Prince Albert died of typhoid on December 1, 1861. His illness was quite possibly complicated by an earlier bout of influenza from which he had never fully recovered. Considering his general poor health, taken with the rather limited medical knowledge of the day, there was no way to save him. Today, though, we might have done better. Summed up, I have developed an antityphoid vaccine, which can be administered by hypodermic inoculation. Our preliminary experiments give protection in ten days. To prepare the vaccine, I simply sterilize broth cultures of the bacillus at sixty degrees Centigrade.” He pushed a little box toward the center of the table. “It contains a vial of vaccine, syringe, and a needle. Everything is sterile. The box should not be opened until just prior to use.”

Use? What use? By whom? How?

Nobody made a motion to pick it up.

I caught the doctor’s eye. He continued quietly, and he was talking directly to me. “I come to the point. Her Majesty proposes that someone go backward in time, to a date at least a month prior to the prince’s death. The volunteer takes with him the typhoid vaccine, injects the prince, and returns. If all goes well, the prince does not contract typhoid, and indeed may live a long and useful life.” He continued to look at me.

So that was what they wanted. That was why I was here. But no. Not I. I was not going to volunteer. Anyhow, for the time being I felt safe. They would first have to build a machine.

“What do you think, Mr. Wells?” the queen asked.

“I can speak only for the time machine, Your Majesty. If it is built, it ought to work. As for the rest, well, surely Your Majesty can see the problem. If the prince lives, tremendous changes in history could result. Our own lives could be altered in unpredictable ways. I might not be born. Dr. Wright, you might succumb to one of your own strange bacilli.” I turned toward the equerry. “And in that world, Major, you might be killed in a war.” I studied him, then asked bluntly, “Why don’t you go, Major?”

He laughed in a couple of humorless gasps. “Quite right, Mr. Wells. Actually, as originally conceived, the Project was designed around me, right down to the fitting of my—ah—body—to the saddle of the machine.”

I sat up suddenly. “Wait a moment… you mean… the machine has already been built?”

“Yes,” said the major. “Perhaps we should have explained that earlier.

Mr. Wilshire?”

“Built to your exact specifications, Mr. Wells,” said the engineer. “Indeed at this very moment it is sitting in a room in Windsor Castle, ready to go.”

My heart skipped a couple of beats. I was at a temporary loss for words. Finally I managed a feeble question. “So, Major, you are going?”

“No. There was a change of plans, Wells. The doctor has raised a serious objection to me. Doctor?”

“Yes. Actually, the problem that suggested the change of plans arose at Buckingham Palace, not at Windsor. It turns out that a lad, they call him ‘Boy Cotton,’ had been discovered under a sofa. He had been hiding in the royal suite for three days, rather like a human rat, eating leftover food, and generally keeping out of sight. Your Majesty may recall—?”

“I do indeed,” murmured the queen. “A notorious incident. The Mudlark, the Times called him. He and I talked a bit before they took him away. Harmless, really, but it made everybody nervous.” She sighed. “They doubled the guards. A month later though, another boy was found.”

The doctor resumed. “The point is, Mr. Wells, and with all respect, a small man such as yourself would have a better chance than a big man, such as the major.”

“Makes sense,” I said curtly. “Less chance of getting shot.”

The queen spoke. “Mr. Wells, we would not dream of persuading you against your will. Actually, when we decided against using Major Banning, we reverted to an earlier possibility, a quite diminutive person, and one very familiar with the Windsor routine of the time.”

I caught a vision of that regal bottom in the saddle of the machine, and the Empress of India riding off into the unknown. It was unreal. I stammered, “Not you, Majesty!”

“Yes, Mr. Wells, I. This meeting is adjourned.” She turned to her equerry. “Major Banning, you and I will proceed immediately to Windsor.” She signalled her Hindu servant, and he took a step forward.

“No! Wait!” I jumped up. I had been thinking. And it was a crazy mix of thoughts. I couldn’t analyze it all just then. Was I chivalrously risking my life for my queen? Never! As far as the monarchy was concerned there wasn’t a chivalrous bone in my body. What was it, then? I was thinking, my machine. My invention. Mine, mine, mine. For better or worse, I was entitled to the first ride. Nobody else. Not even the queen!

“Majesty,” I said calmly, “I will go. I insist. I know the machine better than anyone. My stature may indeed facilitate concealment, if that should become necessary. Of all present, I stand the best chance of saving the prince and coming back alive.”

She sat there a moment, just looking at me. Then she smiled, and she bowed, not deeply, but graciously and sincerely, thereby demolishing the myth that the queen bowed to no one, not even to the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Let it be so. Major, will you and Mr. Wells kindly take the carriage to Windsor forthwith?”

Major Banning picked up Dr. Wright’s vaccine box from the table and put it in a small black satchel. Then he and I made our respectful farewells, and he led me down a flight of stairs to a side port, where a carriage waited. The door, I noted, carried the royal crest and the letters “VR.” The driver whipped up the horses, and we set off at a great clip.

Windsor Town lay a little over twenty miles across the river and to the west, and it was well known that the fastest way to get there was to take the Great Western from Paddington Station, which lay a brisk half hour drive down High Holborn and Oxford Street. And here came a surprise. We didn’t angle around the Marble Arch into Edgeware Road. We cut through Hyde Park. In fact, a gatekeeper opened the bars as soon as he saw the carriage approaching. It had all been prearranged, of course. Ordinary people would be arrested if they had tried the same shortcut* but she could get away with it without asking anybody. I sensed the power of that remarkable woman, and I was simultaneously annoyed and exhilarated.

In a way I was just as happy not to pass by the Arch. It marked the spot where in other days regicides and other high miscreants were publicly hanged. If I fouled up on the Project and the prince died at my hands, would I be hanged as a regicide? I shivered.

Major Banning looked over at me. “Cold?”

“Nervous,” I said.

“Understandable.” He peered out his window. “We’re coming in to the station.”

I looked at my watch. “When’s the next train?”

“We have a special. Steam’s up, and it’s waiting.”

Of course. And all other trains—mail, goods, express, local—would have to puff idly on lay-byes while her majesty’s special made the wild dash to Windsor Town.

In a way, all this rush and bustle was quite silly. Whether we reached Windsor today, yesterday, or tomorrow, it wouldn’t have the slightest effect on the pending scenario. The critical moment, for better or worse, had already occurred long ago.

The workmen at Paddington Station claim, with justifiable pride, that their station is the grimiest in London, hence in the world. Glass skylights over the tracks are cleaned periodically, but without much effect. A few days of chuffing locomotives suffice to undo the cleanups. The smoke even obliterates the words “Paddington” painted in large black letters on pilasters in the trackside walls. It is well to know where you are without reference to the printed word.

So it was another surprise to find the queen’s special train in a newly scrubbed and white-washed shed, shut off from the curious by iron gates and armed guards. We were hardly aboard when the guards pulled the gates open and the train began to jerk forward.

We found our seats, the major set his bag down, let out a long windy sigh, and pulled out a cigar. But then he frowned and put it away again.

I looked at him questioningly.

He shrugged. “I keep forgetting. She can’t stand tobacco. She can even smell the traces on the fabrics and woodwork.”

“Are you familiar with Windsor Town?” asked the major.

“Just the common knowledge,” I said. “The castle stands on a slight hill at the northeastern edge of the town. Legend has it that King Arthur conferred with his knights on that hill. Anyhow, when the Normans came, they built the tower on it as a fortress. The accessory buildings came later. A flag flies on the turret when the queen is in residence. No flag today, I suppose.” 1 paused, then added noncommitally, “I was once apprenticed to a draper there. I could see the castle from the shop roof, and sometimes the royals playing beyond the walls.”

He smiled faintly. “You didn’t like the draper business?”

“No.” I thought of Charles Dickens, and how he had been apprenticed to a maker of bootblacking, and how he had hated it. I knew just how he felt. My tone was so brusque as to seem tactless. I changed the subject. “Major,” I said, “I once made a conservative estimate of what it would cost to build the machine. As I’m sure you know, it has some unusual components and requires painstaking manufacture and assembly. For parts and labour I estimated at least & 100,000. The sapphire core alone would account for half of that. You can see why the machine would be beyond the means of myself or any other ordinary citizen.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“So who is paying?”

“The queen.”

“Even for the sapphire?”

“She is providing that.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. “You mean, she already had a stone of the exact specifications?”

“Yes.”

I could see he wasn’t inclined to elaborate. And actually, it didn’t matter where the gem came from, so long as it would perform properly.

Major,” I said, “you realize this is all quite mad.”

He made no response.

I realized I had put him in an awkward position. Perhaps he didn’t really believe in the Project, but he was totally loyal to the queen. Well, it was easy for him. He was just following orders. He was risking nothing, neither life nor sanity.

I was remorseless. “If I succeed in prolonging the life of the prince, she will never get the benefit of any additional years with him. It will be a different world, with a different Queen Victoria and a different Prince Albert. It cannot possibly come out the way she wants.”

His mouth tightened. “Wells, I know that, you know that, Dr. Wright knows that. She does not know that. And which of us is willing to try to explain it to her?”

He had a point.

“So,” he said, “let’s just go ahead as if everything made sense. And indeed, my dear fellow, it could make sense, though not exactly in the way she hopes for.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve read about The Trent Affair?”

“Just what I was taught in school.”

“And I suppose they taught you that the Affair started the Great Intervention, also known as the War of Sixty-One, where we came in on the side of the Confederates and clinched the Secession in the American Civil War?”

“And got the Southern Colonies back,” I added.

“Just so,” said the major. “And while we were busy grabbing the American South, the French picked up Quebec and Mexico. A disaster, Wells. We did it for the Lancashire mills, for cotton. In the beginning, that was fine. But today it’s different. One third of the national income goes to the support of the Southern regime. We perpetuated slavery in the southern states. We are the shame of nations.”

I couldn’t see the connection between the Project and The Trent Affair, but I felt sure that the major was about to enlighten me.

He gave a short bitter laugh. “If the prince had lived, he could and would have prevented the War of the Intervention. In fact, if he had lived just a couple of weeks longer, he might have managed it.” He tugged at his mustache. “So you see, Wells, it’s either a mad fiasco, or else it’s a thing of great wonder, and the salvation of Britain. But you must understand Trent. There’s much more to the Affair than you’ll find in the history books.” He had to stop temporarily. The train had rolled into Windsor Station. We stepped down from the cars, into a waiting carriage, and were immediately on our way to the castle.

Inside the carriage the major resumed his exposition of The Trent Affair.

“By the fall of 1861,” continued the major, “the federal blockade of southern ports was seriously hurting the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, attempted to send commissioners to England and France to seek naval aid in breaking the blockade. The agent to London was Mr. James M. Mason, and the man headed for Paris was Mr. John Slidell. The Americans boarded a British Royal Mail packet in Havana, the Trent, under Captain Moir. At noon, November 8, 1861, one day out of Havana, the Trent was stopped in Bahama Channel by the San Jacinto, a screw sloop of the federal navy. American marines forcibly removed Mason and Slidell.” He stopped for a moment and we both held to the side straps as the carriage bounced over a cluster of potholes.

“Dates,” said the major as he caught his breath, “now become important. After a fair voyage of nineteen days, the Trent reached London. You hadn’t been born yet, Wells, and I was just a lad of ten, but I remember it vividly. I remember the mobs in the streets, the spontaneous parades, the scenes in front of the American Embassy. The Times rushed extra editions to the streets every few hours, and finally brought out an edition with just one word on the front page, in big black letters: WAR. Eight thousand troops were called up and loaded onto ships for Canada. Lord Russell, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, urged that war be declared immediately. He prepared an appropriate message for the prime minister to present to parliament and to the queen. On this same day Prince Albert was moved from his apartment in the castle to the Blue Room. He was dying, and the Blue Room was the proper room to die in. George Fourth and William Fourth had died there. And so the prince died, December 1, 1861.

“As you probably know, the queen customarily consulted the prince on all matters of state, but now, in his present condition this was no longer possible. So when Prime Minister Palmerston brought her Russell’s proposed note, she had only the judgment of her ministers to guide her, and the consequences were catastrophic. Russell’s note was an ultimatum. It demanded the release of the two commissioners and an immediate apology. The wording was so insulting that no nation could, in honour, answer it. It was delivered December 18 in Washington to Lord Lyons, the British ambassador there, and he immediately passed it on to Secretary of State Seward. Lincoln and his cabinet considered it a few days later. It was of course never answered. Parliament duly declared war, and the Great Intervention was on. In sixty-two the British navy broke the federal blockade, and Lee beat McClellan at Antietam, and the next year he took Washington.

“But while we were busy getting entangled in the American war, the French had not been idle. They supported the uprising in Quebec and made a colony of Mexico.” He sighed. “All for cotton, Wells. Our entire Industrial Revolution was based on cotton, grown and picked by slaves in Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Alabama, and Georgia. In 1860 we imported over one billion pounds of American cotton into Liverpool. Directly or indirectly, our Lancashire mills supported hundreds of thousands of millhands, shipbuilders, sailors, and clerks—workers in a dazzling occupational array, and their families. If we lost our supply of cheap cotton, we all knew the mills would close and the government would fall. Today we look at it differently, of course. Today Indian cotton is both better and cheaper than Confederate cotton, and our entire textile trade accounts for less than 10 percent of our gross national product. Looking back, we can see that the Intervention was a ghastly error.”

He seemed to have all the facts at his fingertips. But what was he adding that couldn’t be found in the history books? I said, “And you believe that if the prince had lived, he could have prevented the Intervention?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s the real reason for all this?”

“From my viewpoint, again, yes.”

I thought about that. We weren’t going to restore Albert to the Widow, but perhaps we could restore honour to old England. No more textiles from slave-grown cotton.

But I had another question. “Did they know Albert had typhoid?”

“They knew.”

“Surely there was some sort of treatment available?”

He smiled grimly. “That brings us to the question of Dr. James Clark, the palace physician.”

“Clark…? He wasn’t mentioned back at the conference?”

“No. And with good reason. The queen insisted that he and he alone attend the prince. The modem medical profession, including Dr. Wright, has tactfully refrained from questioning her judgment, at least within her presence.”

“He was a quack?”

“No, Wells, he was not a quack. He was actually quite skilled. Indeed, he was thoroughly familiar with the accepted treatment of typhoid.”

“Which was?”

“With no treatment, the fever rises quickly, to 104°, and stays there. In eight days, more or less, the patient dies. Treatment is simple: keep the fever down with cold baths. Dr. Clark didn’t do that. Save for a daily visit to the patient and periodic assurances to the queen, he did nothing.”

“But he knew? You said he knew?”

“He knew. He knew several things, Wells. Probably the thing uppermost in his mind during the critical period of November-December 1861 was the fact that in ’59 and ’60 he had invested heavily in half a dozen mills in Lancashire. He had done this with borrowed money. If cotton was cut off he would be ruined. He might even have to call on the queen to save him from debtor’s prison. He knew the prince hated slavery. He knew that if the prince got into the act, Britain would remain neutral.”

“But… no… surely…?” I understood what the major was telling me. I just couldn’t bring myself to put it in words.

He laughed his bitter humorless bark. “You’re looking for a nice word, Wells? Something like ‘negligent homicide’? Or ‘reckless manslaughter’? You don’t like ‘murder premeditated’?”

I had no ready answer.

He said, “Calm yourself. Shortly after Albert’s death she knighted James Clark, and he died within the year. Her carriage was first in line at his funeral, and she wept.”

“As well she should have,” I muttered.

“De mortuis, Wells,” he chided. “I mention this to fill you in on the situation, and to explain why you can expect no cooperation from Dr. Clark. Avoid him if you can. Ah, here we are. We’ll go on up.”

The two guards at the castle gate stood at attention as our carriage rattled past. A moment later we were at a side entrance of the main residence building and on our way up into the castle.

I stole a glance at my watch: it was just a few minutes before noon. Where had the time gone? I thought of Jane. She would soon be having a bit of lunch. I wished I could be with her!

We walked into a gloomy high-ceilinged hallway, then toward a double door guarded by a sergeant in blue palace livery. The non-com snapped to attention and saluted as we approached. The major returned the salute. “At ease, sergeant. Mr. Wells, meet Sergeant Roper.”

“Sir!” snapped the sergeant.

“Sergeant Roper has the responsibility of guarding these rooms,” said the major.

Meaning (I translated), we can work without interruption.

We went on inside.

“This is the prince’s bedroom, two single beds, some chairs, a table,” said Banning. “That door over there leads to his study. Everything here is pretty much the same as when he died.”

“But he didn’t die here, not in this room?”

“That’s true. He was ill here, in that bed, for three weeks. At the very last, though, he was moved to the Blue Room, and he died there.”

“December 1, 1861.”

“That’s correct. Come, let’s go into his study.”

Within the study, off to one side where it could not easily be seen from the bedroom, stood something about the size of a large chair, and covered by a white canvas tarpaulin. I knew what it was. I walked over and gingerly pulled the coverlet off.

With blended awe, reverence, and curiosity, I inspected the Time Machine.

The major watched me in silence for a moment, then he said, “With a couple of minor modifications we have followed fairly faithfully the description in your patent.”

Modifications? I wondered. No changes were immediately apparent. So far as I could see they had done a fine job. The saddle was placed properly over the battery compartment, slightly off-center, as required, and fronting the console, with two time dials; the whole being constructed within a framework of glittering brass rails.

The core of the system, the thing that actually altered the four dimensions enclosing the machine, was presumably positioned in place under the dial console. The access panels had already been folded out for my inspection. I knelt down and began checking the internals. Primarily I was looking for the crystal that had to be there for the machine to work—a great blue sapphire.

I stared. The gem-receptacle was there, all right. But it was empty.

My feelings at that instant were impossible to describe. I felt acute disappointment. I felt anger. 1 felt relief. At least I would not be arrested and/ or shot in 1861 for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. My feelings coalesced into a question mark. I twisted my neck and looked up at Banning.

He was in the act of taking something from his black satchel. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He held up a sizeable piece of jewelry, a brooch: an outsize sapphire. He was grinning.

I took it from him without a word. It was difficult to be angry at this man. A close inspection satisfied me that the jewel would not have to be removed from the setting in order to mount it in the machine. I leaned back into the core compartment and clipped the brooch into its mountings. Then I closed the panel doors carefully and got to my feet.

Banning watched me in silence.

I studied the two time dials in the console. “These are your ‘minor modifications’?”

“Yes. In your patent you call for four time dials: days, thousand days, million, and billion. As you see, this machine has only two dials, one for days, the other for thousands of days. For the Project you should need only these two.”

“I see two marks on the thousand-day dial,” I said. “I assume the first is set for early November, 1861?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, November first.”

“And the other mark brings me back here, to 1894?”

“Right again.”

I held up a hand. I had to think about this. The time of return was critical. I pulled my watch from my waistcoat. It was high noon. Suppose I return today, but at 11 A.M.? I haven’t left yet. In fact, at that hour the train is pulling out of Paddington Station. Then, how about returning at 12 noon? That doesn’t work either. Wells, returning from 1861, meets me, Wells leaving for 1861. Do we exchange nods in silence? Do we speak? Does the returning Wells say to me, you had better go on, else I can’t return as me? And how might I reply? I might well say, indeed, old chap, since you’re here, it’s clear I’ve already been there. So there’s no need now for me to go. In fact, if I went, you and I might be caught in an iterative time oscillation that would never end.

I scowled and shook my head in an attempt to bring order out of the time-paradoxes. This seemed to amuse Banning. I realized then that he had already considered the problem.

“The time forward dial is set for one a.m. tomorrow morning,” he said. “You’ll return twelve hours after you leave. That gives you plenty of clearance. You won’t meet yourself en route at any point. It’ll be nighttime, but that should not be a problem. I’ll be here, waiting for you.”

I breathed a long sigh. “All right.” I examined the time forward dial again. “What happens if I accidentally overshoot the one A.M. exit?”

“Just use the reverse time lever and come back to the proper moment.”

“But what’s this red mark, one at the far edge of the dial?”

Banning winced. “Sort of a contingency exit, in case things get totally fouled up. Can’t think of any reason why you might need it. Anyhow, it brings you out about one hundred years from today—into the closing years of the twentieth century.”

Something to keep in mind. I pointed to the threaded studs on the console. “You have the control levers?”

Banning pulled them from his leather case. “We know they thread on properly. However, they have not been used to actually operate the machine.” He handed them over, and I got into the saddle and screwed the handles onto the studs. The one on the right should take the traveler forward in time, the other into the past.

“The vaccine?” I said.

The major pulled the third and final item from his black bag: the little vaccine box. He handed it over to me, and I pushed it carefully into an inner jacket pocket. He checked his watch. “Five minutes after twelve. Remember, be back here at one A.M. tomorrow. Good luck, Wells.” We shook hands. There was no expression at all on his face.

It was time to go.

How had I let this happen to me?

I ground my teeth, grabbed the back-time lever… I think the major said something… as he saluted… and vanished.

I was falling, and whirling around and around in some sort of time-swept vortex. I screamed, but of course no one heard, and even if they had, they could have done nothing for me. I was certain that I was going to crash into something, that every bone in my body would be broken, that I would conclude my twenty-eight years as an unrecognizable bloody pulp. For the first time I had intimations that Isabel, my first wife, was right: I should not have tried to rise above my station. I should never have gone into science, and writing. I should have remained a draper’s assistant. But then I thought, no. Never. Death first.

I found myself gasping and sweating and still sitting in the saddle of the Machine, and still in the prince’s study in Windsor castle.

The room was well lighted. At least I had arrived in daylight. Shakily, I got out of the Machine and looked about the little room. It differed but little from the room I had just left. It seemed to have the same furniture, the same bookshelves, even the same books. She had left everything the way it was when he had died. The only functional difference seemed to be the lamp over the study desk. Here, in 1861, it was the new brilliant Welsbach gas-mantle. In 1894 it had been the new electric light bulb (which, in my humble opinion, gave somewhat less light). Progress.

The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the far side of the desk. I glanced at the dial. Ten fifteen, A.M., of course. Beside the clock lay a newspaper. I tiptoed over and looked at the date: November 1, 1861. So far so good.

It was time to get down to business. I unscrewed the two drive levers and put them in my jacket pocket next to the syringe case. I took a deep breath, gathered my courage, and peeked around the half-open study door and into the prince’s bedroom.

He was lying on his bed against a bulwark of pillows. His head was canted to one side and his eyes were closed.

I studied him for a moment. Could this be Prince Albert? His portraits showed him as tall, erect, chin lifted proudly, hand on sword pommel. What I saw here was as shrunken wreck, a near cadaver, a creature with hollow ivory-coloured cheeks. The nose, formerly merely aquiline, was now blade-like from emaciation. The wispy hair was in disarray. His once bountiful beard that looped under his chin was gone, presumably shaved off to facilitate bedside care. The room gave off a sickly sweet perfume: the odor of terminal illness, the smell of death.

My first thought was, the vaccine is too late.

I took a step forward. Even under the thick carpet the floor boards creaked.

The sick man opened his eyes and looked at me.

He rose shakily on an elbow and blinked in my general direction. “Who are you?” he croaked.

I approached and bowed with dignity. “Sire, my name is Wells. I’m your new medical orderly.”

“I don’t remember…” He peered over to the hall door. “When did you come in?”

“Just now, Highness. But I didn’t come in through the hall door. I entered via your study.”

He passed his hand over his brow. “Wells… The study…?” He gave me a suspicious look and fumbled for the bellpull just over his head.

I rushed forward. “Please, sire. Let me explain.”

“Oh?” He lay back in bed, but his eyes never left me.

I went on hurriedly. “Highness, what I am about to say, I know you will find quite incredible. Yet, if you will permit, I know I can prove it all to your satisfaction. To start, sire, I am from the year 1894. I came here in a Time Machine, which at the moment stands in your study.”

I let him think about that. Clearly, he didn’t believe me. Nor did I expect him to. Not yet, anyway.

“Go on,” he said. “Why did you come? To what end?”

“Sire, it now becomes difficult. For what I am about to reveal to you, I ask your forbearance in advance.”

“I forbear. So tell me.”

“Sire, you are presently in a very rundown condition, compounded by a case of influenza brought on by exposure to rain and cold during your recent visit to Cambridge.”[2]

He looked at me sharply. “So?”

“That’s not the worst of it, sire. In a day or so, indeed, perhaps even as we talk here, you will contract typhoid… and…” I gulped and coughed.

“And I will die?”

I nodded silently. He was taking it very well, perhaps in large part because he didn’t necessarily believe me.

“When?”

There was no gentle way to put it. “You will die the first of December, sire.”

He considered that. I think he almost smiled. “And in your world of 1894, is December first carved on my gravestone?”

“Yes, sire.”

It didn’t seem to bother him. When death is close, everything in life seems to shift focus. Many things once critically important become trivial, and vice versa. I think this was already happening to Albert.

“To survive a dozen assassination attempts,” he murmured, “only to be brought low by an invisible bug.”

The statement about the bug astonished me. But then, I should have recalled that he read all the new science journals. Pasteur had published his seminal papers on microorganisms only three years ago, by the prince’s calendar.

“Wells,” he said, “dying is not such a terrible thing.”

“Sire,” I admonished him, “after your death, her majesty went—or should I say, will go?—into a secluded mourning that was still going on when I left my world of 1894. She still wears black. For her, your death was—will be—a terrible thing.” I paused and took a deep breath. “It is time to state my mission.”

“Yes, Wells, please do.”

“I am here by the queen’s order and request. She thinks I can save your life.”

“She was always overly sentimental,” he muttered. “Do you know she still has all her dolls from childhood, catalogued and stored away?”

“No, sire, I didn’t. But surely you don’t want to die?”

“You’re blunt, Wells. And that’s good. Saves time. So let’s get to the facts. You claim the queen sent you?”

“Yes, sire.”

“That should be easy to verify. I’ll ring for her.”

“That won’t work, sire. Her majesty of 1894 sent me. The present queen never heard of me. She would send for the palace guard.”

“Oh. Hm.” He peered at me quizzically. “We’ll try something else. You claim you came here in some sort of vehicle?”

“Yes, sire. A Time Machine.”

“So you say. And it’s presently sitting in my study?”

“It is, sire.”

“Help me up, Wells.”

“Of course, sire.” I’m not a big man. The prince was not much taller, at five foot seven. He got an arm over my shoulder and we walked slowly, step by step, into the study. I could sense from the contact that he was running a high fever.

When he saw the Machine, his eyes opened wide, and he stumbled. I held him tight. I had a pretty good idea what he was thinking: that thing is too big to come in through the study door. How did it get in here? Is this for real?

He asked in a rasping whisper, “Perhaps the queen gave you a note for me?”

“No, sire.”

“Nothing to prove this was her idea?”

I sighed. “Not exactly. But at least I’ve got the typhoid vaccine… for whatever that proves.”

“Vaccine?”

“Dr. Wright—Sir Almroth Wright—prepared it. If the injection is given in time, it will provide immunity to the disease. Rather like a smallpox vaccine, I’m told.”

He was frowning. “Not even a glove, a ring, a fan…? Most unlike her.”

So that was what was bothering him. “Sire, a moment please.” I bent down into the internals of the Machine, loosened the contacts that held the sapphire brooch, and extracted it with infinite care. I held it up. “Sire, do you recognize this?”

He stared in amazement, then took it with his free hand. “The Juggernaut!” he whispered.

“The… what?”

“Juggernaut, Wells. It wrecked the financial system of my little duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha for a decade. This is the brooch I gave Victoria to wear at our wedding. How did you come by it?”

“We needed it for the piezoelectric unit in the Machine. She gave it. I have to return it when this is over.”

“Yes, of course. All right, Wells, I believe you. I believe everything.” He handed the stone back, and I reclamped it into the core box. He did not raise the question of whether there were now two Juggernauts, this one, and a second in the Windsor strongbox. I would not have known how to answer!

“Wells,” he said, “am I to understand that you risked your life to save mine?”

That was certainly one way to look at it. I shrugged. “Sire, the risk is difficult to assess. Permit me to say, simply, that I was glad to come, and I hope that with my coming your life will be prolonged.”

“Well said. Thank you. Now what?” he asked.

“Three things, sire. First, let’s get you back to bed. Second, I recommend that I administer the vaccine, followed by a cold sponge bath. We need to get your fever down.”

“Yes. I’m very tired, Wells. Let’s get on with it.”

I got him back to bed. A few minutes later I had drawn the required three cc of vaccine from the vial into the hypo, pushed the plunger up to get rid of the air bubble, and thrust the needle into the royal rump. It bothered me that the prince didn’t wince.

I brought a basin of water over to the night stand, found a clean towel by the commode rack, pulled his nightgown up around his armpits, and began to sponge him down, front and back. By the time I had finished not even his mother had ever seen more of Albert than I. Was I really doing him any good? Just then, of course, it was impossible to tell. But I had an uneasy feeling that he had already contracted the disease and that I was too late with the vaccine. I would have to wait for history to give its final judgment. As I pulled down his nightdress he murmured, ‘You said three things, Wells. What’s number three?”

“A ship, sire, the Trent—”

There was a knock on the door. I jerked around guiltily. A little man stood there, age about fifty, with short white hair, razor-sharp nose, gimlet black eyes. I knew him from the major’s description.

“Come in, Dr. Clark,” I said coolly.

The resident physician stared at me, then at the prince, who seemed to be half-dozing, then back at me. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“The name is Wells, doctor, H. G. Wells, of London.” I was trying to think up a plausible story that might explain why I was here, when the prince woke up, saw the newcomer, and quickly grasped my predicament.

“James,” said the prince quietly, “Would you mind waiting outside for a moment? I’ll ring for you.”

“But milord, you’re to have no visitors…Who…? Why…?”

“If you please, James.”

One of the prerequisites of royalty is, they don’t have to explain anything.

The doctor gave me one last hard look then bowed and left the room.

“Wells,” said the prince, “it’s hard for me to stay awake. We’ll have to make it short. The Trent…?

“Yes, sire. Know then, that twenty-seven days hence, on November 27, the Royal Mail Packet Trent, under Captain Moir, will dock at London. Captain Moir will make his report direct to Lord Russell, and he will say that a warship of the Federal American navy stopped the Trent and forcibly removed two civilian passengers, a Mr. Mason and a Mr. Slidell. Russell declares for war. The prime minister wavers, but finally agrees. They draft an ultimatum to be delivered to the American ambassador in London. They run it by the queen. She wants very much to have your advice, but you are in a near coma.” I paused. “Do you follow me, sire?”

“I’m ahead of you, Wells. It’s cotton, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sire.”

“And so we come in on the side of the Confederacy?”

“Yes, sire. The navy broke the blockade and assured their independence.”

He was silent for a while. “And slavery? In your 1894 does slavery yet persist in the American South?”

I hesitated. “Yes, sire.” This must be especially bad news for the onetime president of the Anti-slavery Society.

“And I did—do—nothing?”

I, too, was having trouble with the tenses. My future was equally my past. “You were totally out of it, sire. You died December first, the day Russell declared war. We call it the War of Intervention—as every schoolboy knows.”

“Sad, sad,” he muttered. He lay there silently for a time, then looked up at me. “You’ll have to leave in a few minutes, Wells, else Dr. Clark will make a scene. But you can come back, can’t you?”

“Yes, sire. I’ll be looking in on you from time to time.” I walked in to the study and closed the door quietly. I was determined to give him more cold baths in the coming days, episodes that would take only a few minutes of Machine time, but would spread out over several weeks on the prince’s calendar. Even if the typhoid vaccine didn’t work, bringing his fever down ought to give him a few extra days of life.

The next several calendar days were oddities. For me they went by in spurts of a few minutes each. While dodging visits of the queen and Dr. Clark, I did indeed manage to give the prince intermittent sponge baths. Whether this amateurish treatment helped him, or whether it was Dr. Wright’s vaccine, or both (or neither!) probably no one will ever know for sure. At least I don’t believe they hurt. Something was definitely prolonging his life.

On the morning of November 27 the prince was definitely worse than our first encounter. On the other hand he was far from lying in a coma. Already, history as I knew it was changing. And both of us were waiting for news of the Trent.

During the afternoon of November 28 the explosive news reached Windsor Train Station by telegraph, and so on to the castle by fast rider. The queen herself brought the despatch to the prince’s bedside.

I put my ear to a crack at the study door.

The queen was distraught. “Oh Bertie, those awful people. What shall we do?”

“What does Russell say?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

I could hardly hear him.

The queen said, “He’s preparing an ultimatum to give the American ambassador.”

That would be Charles Francis Adams, in London, I thought.

“Palmerston?” whispered the prince.

“I think the PM would prefer to delay,” she said.

“Vicki… we cannot permit this madness. Insist… that Palmerston bring Russell’s note to you.”

“Yes, dear, of course.”

He murmured something else. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it might have been, “Schnell… schnell—” Quickly, quickly. He was determined to outlive and remold his own predestined history.

And now the literal anomalies begin.

One history says he died December 1, 1861, another on December 14, 1861. Both are right, of course, depending on in which world one lives. I, who write this, am a citizen of both worlds. Except that I renounced my citizenship in that gloomy world where Albert, Prince Consort, died December 1.

For in the history I now relate, he did not die on December 1. As we can look at any of his stone-carved memorials, we see from the dates there engraved that his great spirit left my newly adopted world on December 14. And in that additional two weeks he changed history drastically and dramatically and forever.

What gave him that extra two weeks? Did Dr. Wright’s typhoid vaccine help? Maybe a little. Did the cold baths help? Perhaps. In my own humble opinion I believe his own iron will gave him the added time. He was determined to stop the war before it started.

At six-thirty on the cold dark morning of November 30, 1861, Victoria in her dressing gown and carrying a lantern, brought Lord Russell’s proposed notes to Albert’s bedside. The ministers had evidently worked on them all night in the conference room downstairs. I watched from a crack in the study door.

“Let me think about it, Schaetze,” he said.

So she left him. I hurried out and helped him struggle to his study desk. He sat there, read the papers by gaslight, and groaned. “This means war! Oh what fools!” He began fumbling for pen and paper. I put them in front of him.

He picked up the pen, dipped it into the inkwell with trembling fingers, then waited until his hand steadied. “Lincoln,” he murmured. “Abraham Lincoln surely never authorized stopping the Trent.”

“Can you give him a way out, sire?”

“I think so. He’s smart, and he’ll meet us halfway.” He dipped the pen in the inkwell again. This time his hand did not tremble. He whispered the words as he wrote, slowly, carefully, “The Queen returns these important Drafts,” (German-style, he capitalized all nouns) “which on the Whole she approves… but she cannot help feeling that the second Draft… is somewhat meagre. We would like to have seen the Expression of a Hope that the American Captain did not act under Instructions, or if he did, that he misapprehended them… The U.S. Government must be fully aware that the British Government could not permit its flag to be insulted.” He sat back in his chair, exhausted. I heard him mutter, “Ich bin so swach ich habe kaum die Feder halten koennen.” I am so weak I can scarcely hold the pen. It was true. He dropped it to floor. I picked it up and returned it to his desk.

It was 7 A.M.

“Wells,” he muttered, “this is the end. I am soon gone. In a year I will be totally forgotten.”

“Sire,” I said, “You completely misapprehend your position in history.

“The English people finally awakened to your benefits to the country. You will be known as Albert the Good. Monuments will be erected to you all over London. Indeed, all over the country. Historians will proclaim you England’s greatest king since Alfred. And all this without knowing that you probably prevented a war today.”

He just looked at me, puzzled. “I fear you’re greatly misinformed, Wells. I think it likely that at most I’ll be remembered as a horseman. I once jumped a five-bar fence… that’s all these people care about. They’ve already forgotten the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the things I did for science and education.”

“Sire,” I said, “aside from how the English regard you, I strongly believe that your rescript will let Mr. Lincoln win his war and free five million slaves.”

“Do you really think so, Wells?”

“Of course, sire. Shall I help you back to bed?”

“Please. Then you’ll have to leave. The messenger is due back any minute.”

When the room stopped trembling and came into final focus I found myself staring straight into the barrel of a Webley 38. In the dim half-light, just above the revolver a grim face looked down at me. It was Major Banning. Not surprising. He was supposed to be here when I “came back,” and indeed, here he was. But he looked… somehow different. And for God’s sake, why the pistol!? Something was wrong, terribly wrong. I continued to look up, with my eyes going back and forth between his face and that horrid weapon. “Major Banning?” I said weakly.

His weapon barrel did not waver a micron; yet when I called his name his eyes widened. He said, “I’m Captain Banning. Who are you? How did you come here?” Translation: Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t scatter your brains all over the carpet.

I hit the depths then. In this new world he was not the queen’s trusted equerry sharing a crucial mission with me. He was not a major. He was a captain in the Windsor guards, and he was my enemy.

What else was strange and different? Jane? Did I still have Jane? Would she know me?

“My name is Wells,” I said mournfully. “H. G. Wells.” Just then I thought of one last possibility of salvation. “Major… Captain, I mean… would you please call Sergeant Roper. He knows me. He can vouch for me.”

He frowned. “There’s no one around here named Roper, sergeant or otherwise.”

No Sergeant Roper, either. Of course.

“And now, Mr. Wells, I’ll thank you to raise you hands and step out of that infernal machine. Real easy, now.” He made an imperious motion with his pistol.

“All right,” I said. Very quickly, I looked about the study. It was night, that much was per schedule. The only light in here still came from a small electric bulb sconced on the study wall. I could see no changes. In the half light I surreptitiously unscrewed the back-time lever from its stud and stuck it up my sleeve. A desperate idea was forming.

“Up, up!” Captain Banning commanded. “And tell me, what is this thing?”

I stood up slowly from the saddle, raised my hands, and stepped down out of the vehicle. “Captain, I’ll explain everything. But first, please tell me what day it is.”

He looked puzzled. “Thursday, of course.”

“The full date?” I persisted.

“June 7, 1894, about one-thirty in the morning.” He glowered at me. “All right young man, your turn. What is going on here?”

I sighed. Right place, right time—but everything was wrong. I said, “This is a machine for traveling in time, Captain. I’ve just come from the year 1861. I was attempting to prolong the life of Prince Albert.” First the captain frowned, then he grimaced, and finally he grinned. (This was not going well.) I said, “I know how this must sound, Captain, but I can assure you, it’s true. I’m not crazy. But tell me, is Prince Albert alive or dead?”

That got him to frowning again. “You really don’t know?”

“I don’t know. Please tell me.”

“Dead these many years, laddie.”

That could mean anything. “Did he die in 1861?”

“Something like that.”

It was ironic that I, who had been there, had to ask these questions. The whole world knew the answers, but not I. So the prince had died pretty much according to history. Too bad for the queen, I thought. But in this world she probably doesn’t even know she tried to save him. So what else happened, or not happened? What was the great defining fact for this new 1894? “Captain Banning,” I said, “I know this sounds like another very strange question, but I have to ask. Who won the American Civil War?”

“Why, laddie, you’re not only crazy, you’re ignorant. The North won it—the Feds.”

“We didn’t intervene on the side of the Confederacy?”

“Where were you schooled, young fellow? No, we didn’t intervene. We stayed neutral.”

“And France didn’t grab Quebec and Mexico?”

He peered at me curiously. “Sonny, enough of this. You’re over my head. Maybe Scotland Yard can make some sense out of you.”

That would not do. I realized now that I had surfaced in a world that had been greatly altered by my visit to 1861. I also realized that I was now in a place I should not be and that I faced prison. And Jane—?

I had to get out of here.

“Captain, I hope you’ll permit a personal question?”

“Go ahead, not that I have to answer it.”

“Of course. Are you married?”

“No, no time for that foolishness.”

“That’s fine. Parents depend on you?”

“They’re both dead and buried.” He crossed himself.

“You’re all alone.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Captain,” I said, “I’ll be happy to go with you. I’m sure I can explain everything to the police. But first, let me turn off the machine. We can’t let it overheat. I’ll have to get back in it to shut it off.”

The machine was, in fact, still humming, as indeed it should. Even though the battery current was turned off, the piezoelectic core would continue vibrating for a few moments as a result of the residual interplay between the alumina atoms in the sapphire crystal. But it couldn’t last long. Already the oscillations were audibly damping. I had to move fast. I held a finger to my lips. “Listen!”

He could hear it, and I could see it worried him. He looked at me, then at the machine. Obviously his mind was working carefully. I knew what he was thinking. He wasn’t sure he believed the machine would overheat, but on the other hand he certainly didn’t want to be held responsible for a disaster in the study of the late prince. “How do you turn it off?”

he asked.

“Simple. See that little white lever? I sit in the saddle and pull the lever slowly to the right.” I took a step toward the machine.

“Not so fast, me bucko. You stand in front there, where I can keep an eye on you. I’ll turn it off.”

“But—”

“Move!”

“All right, all right.” Meekly, I moved over to the front of the machine.

The captain pointed his pistol with his left hand and grasped the time-forward lever in his right.

“Move it slowly, all the way to the right,” I said.

He did. The machine shimmered, vibrated, and vanished. The last I saw of Captain Banning was a mouth wide with horror. And the last sound was a kind of “pop.” He had pulled the trigger on his revolver, but of course by the time the bullet reached the spot where I had been, it would be the 1990s, and my brains would not be spread about on the carpet as intended.

I hefted the back-time lever in my left hand. Without it, the captain could never return here.

I walked over to the study window and looked down. It was still dark, but by dim moonlight I made out a big clump of bushes—probably the queen’s prize azaleas—beneath the window. I dropped the lever into the bushes.

Was it a cruel thing that I had done to the captain? Well, yes and no. The captain will emerge in Albert’s study in the closing years of the twentieth century, in possession of a sapphire brooch worth millions. Overnight he will be rich and famous.

There might be one little problem. Banning had fired one shot before leaving our mutual 1894. I don’t pretend to be a ballistics expert, but it appeared to me that when the bullet finally emerged it might strike the socket of the electric light. If it did that, a serious electrical fire could result. Windsor had a stone veneer, true, but inside it was 90 percent wood. Very dry wood. The bullet would emerge simultaneously with Captain Banning, and there would be a memorable blaze.[3] I hope the captain finds the brooch and gets away safe and sound.

I finally got around to looking at my watch. It was 1:40 A.M. The time was exactly right, so why did I feel strange? I took a hurried look at my face in the little hand mirror in the prince’s desk. The upper lip of the new Wells sported a rakish mustache. I could not remember acquiring it. I touched it tentatively. Not bad, not bad. But how would I explain it to Jane? When I left her yesterday morning I had been clean-shaven. Oh well… sort it all out later.

Within the next ten minutes I climbed out the window, dropped into the azaleas, and strode brazenly to the servant’s way-in, where I signed the check-out book and bid a cheery farewell to the sleepy guard. I started walking to the town and the G.W. station, mumbling all the while, “Jane, Jane…” Finally, the morning trains began arriving. I caught one and was back in Paddington Station within the hour. Next, I awakened a sleeping cabbie in the stalls. “Twelve Mornington Place,” 1 said. And off we went.

So I’m sitting here, writing this in the same open window, under the same green paraffin lamp, and probably under the scrutiny of the same nocturnal insects who watched me finish the final revision of The Time Machine.[5] Which history of the Machine shall I send Henley? The one he already knows, of course. Who would believe the version where Albert and I changed the world?

In this year Britain has a burst of creativity that could have come only from a nation with boundless optimism and a strong sense of honour. In this year Du Maurier came out with Trilby; Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda; Kipling, The Jungle Book; Shaw, Arms and the Man; Beardsley, drawings for Wilde’s Salome; and Ramsay and Raleigh discovered argon. We owe at least some of this to the prince and his ideals of education and social justice.

I had not intended that this turn into a eulogy for the prince, and certainly not as a recommendation for the monarchy. I remain a staunch republican. Yet I cannot resist a temptation to compare the British achievement of 1894 with that of the French. His innocence notwithstanding, in this year 1894 to save the “honour” of the French army, Captain Dreyfus was sent to Devils Island. Could this have happened in Britain? Under the immortal eye of the prince? Never!

Ed. Note: “Jane” was Wells’s very personal name for Catherine Robbins. They were living together and would be married as soon as Wells’s divorce from his first wife, Isabel, became final.

Ed. Note: Prince Albert apparently caught influenza during a recent visit to his son, Edward, at Cambridge University.

Ed. Note: The cause of the famous Windsor Castle Fire of November 1992 has never been conclusively determined. Nor is it certain that Captain Banning emerged on that occasion.

Ed. Note: William Ernest Henley, 1849–1903, famous London editor and poet, known to American readers best for his great self-paean, Invictus.Ed. Note: In August 1894 Wells, “Jane” (Catherine Robbins), and her mother departed from Charing Cross Station by train for Tusculum Villa, 23 Eardley Road, 7 Oaks, Kent, for a two week vacation. The vacation was overdue. Mrs. Robbins was ill and Wells was exhausted for reasons never adequately explained before the discovery of this document. He spent those two weeks rewriting The Time Machine, following Henley’s suggestion to “cycle in on time to the end of the world.” (In the prior rewrite Wells had stopped with the Traveler’s escape from the Morlocks.) He wrote the last pages of the final revision at an open window at night, while down below the landlady loudly proclaimed the sinful morals of her new tenants to her neighbors. (Wells and Catherine were still unmarried.)

In June 1894 The Time Machine was published as a book in the form we know it today. Since 1888 it had been revised and/or rewritten six times and printed in various forms four times, with extensive revisions each time. As of its Centennial The Time Machine remains the most widely read of all Wells’s novels. Probably only the Bible has been translated in more foreign languages.

Ed. Note: William Ernest Henley, 1849–1903, famous London editor and poet, known to American readers best for his great self-paean, Invictus.