Speaking with great emphasis, Simpson II swept this objection aside. (Simpson, now almost cheerful, insisted on reporting verbatim the terms in which he did so.) ‘If you leave it behind, you’ll have failed in your mission so totally that you’ll never get a decent job again. And you’re going to need that for the money. And since I’ve lived through what’s going to happen to you after this, I know you’re going to have taken it with you, so get on with it and stop arguing.’
‘All right. Thanks.’
‘A pleasure.’
Simpson was about to depart when he remembered something vital, and turned. ‘Hey, before I go — is the drink situation really quite hopeless?’
‘Put it this way,’ Simpson II said in a hurry, ‘the 1981 El Minya whites are almost…’
He broke off abruptly as shouts and running footfalls came into earshot again. Propelled by his rescuer, Simpson half-fell through the garage doorway and at once the TIOPEPE grabbed him.
‘El Minya,’ the Director said. ‘Somewhere in Spain, no doubt. Never heard of it. Anyway, the Spanish white wines are all terrible, aren’t they? Still, I suppose when there’s nothing else…’
‘They’d be in wine-cakes like the rest of the stuff.’ Simpson’s earlier gloom had returned in full.
Rabaiotti said nothing. I said nothing. Schneider had slipped away, perhaps to fetch the drinks we so sorely needed.
‘Well,’ the Director said, trying to strike a consoling note, ‘it’s just a phase, isn’t it? That’s the way to look at it. After all, everything was all right again in 2010 when you went there, Simpson. And the position couldn’t have cured itself in a couple of months.’
‘No, it might take twenty years. That’s 1990. Say ten of those twenty years to get things back into reasonable shape. That’s 2000. Say the 1983 situation had only been going in full for three years, which is pretty bloody optimistic. That’s 1980. So from then until 2000 or so it’ll be wine-cakes and beer-cakes. Oh, it’ll look like a phase from 2050 all right. But what good’s that?’
‘There’s spirits,’ Rabaiotti muttered.
‘I didn’t taste those. I expect they’ll make you drunk, though. Which is how I intend to be for the duration of the phase.’
The others nodded hopelessly. Then Schneider came tearing back into the lab, a large book held open in front of him.
‘El Minya!’ he screeched. ‘El Minya!’
In a moment we were clustered round him. ‘What is it? What have you—?’
‘I knew I knew it! It was one of the German objectives in 1943. It’s not in Spain, it’s in Egypt. On the Nile. Here, look at the atlas. Don’t you see? Israel! The only place where that Ernie chap said things were different!’
‘But Israel only goes up to the Suez Canal in that part,’ I objected.
‘Now it does! Now it does! Just the other day there was a report that they were preparing to get on the march again. The finest agriculturalists in the world! Who can make the desert blossom like a rose! Or flourish like a vine!’
The Director looked round the circle, beaming. ‘Saved, gentlemen! No wonder you, Simpson, or rather the other you, said you’d had a long journey. All the way from Jerusalem!’
INVESTING IN FUTURES
‘There’s no risk involved and no one else I can send,’ the Director said imploringly. ‘Please help me, you four — we’ve been through a lot together, after all. I just have to know the answer about those damned vines. And you appreciate why.’
Our association had started back in the old days of the first temporal probes. Then, under a still-secret programme, the government had used our Unit to explore the nearer future and find answers to some of its more awkward problems. And we of the Unit, being all of us rather interested in the fortunes of our own chosen kind of alcoholic drink, had privately used those chances to explore the future of vintage port (the Director’s obsession), my own humble draught beer, and so on with the rest of the team.
All that was over. The probes had long been stopped as uneconomic. The Unit was disbanded and the Director had for years been, officially, sadly, the ex-Director. But he had sounded quite as excited and secretive as his old self when, two days previously, he had telephoned me and asked me to get the others together at an obscure address in Soho. The four of us had turned up on the dot, all agog.
He had begun no less mysteriously by running over the known and abominated career of phylloxera XO, the deadly sub-species of vine-aphid first seen in the Bordeaux vineyards in 1984, classified and named in California three years later, rampaging everywhere by the end of the ’80s and now, in 1993, the apparently invincible curse that had reduced world wine-production to 59 % of 1986 levels. He continued with fresh data: using revolutionary forced-growth techniques, French agricultural scientists had succeeded in developing five new strains of vine, which early tests had shown to be resistant to all forms of phylloxera including the XO. But early tests were early tests: it would take ten years of growth in the soil, of successive harvest, of standing up to the assaults of the deadly little insects before any of the new strains could be pronounced proof against them and systematic replanting begun. Five special areas in Burgundy were ready for the ten-year trials. ‘And that,’ the Director had said with relish, ‘is where we come in. Literally. Or to be even more precise, it’s where you come in, Simpson.’
At that old Simpson, our traveller on previous time-trips, just gaped.
‘Yes. You’re off to the year 2003 as soon as we can arrange it. You’ll bring back reports on all five of the experimental vineyards. Cuttings too if possible.’
‘Against Temporal Regs, sir,’ I objected. ‘Inter-sectoral transfers are out.’
‘I’m sorry, Baker, we’ll have to overlook that. This whole thing is — well, not very official anyway, or even legal. But just consider. Frankly, I’m not a rich man. I doubt whether any of you are either — one doesn’t get rich in this business. But anyone who knows the result of those long-term trials now, in 1993, is going to know something very valuable. Do you — if I may so express myself — read me?’
There was a new stir of interest. ‘But how would anyone get there, sir?’ I demurred. ‘All the hardware was broken up ages ago.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. At least not all of it has proved impossible to reassemble. With a little goodwill. If all goes well we could share the cost, eh?’
‘I’m ten years out of touch, sir.’ This was Rabaiotti, my senior assistant.
‘We’re all getting on a bit, sir,’ said Schneider, our former MO.
Which was when the Director came out with the appeal I quoted earlier, and after that it was just a question of detail. When, the following week, we assembled in a sort of dungeon off Whitehall we found waiting for us the good old modified TALISKER (Temporal Accelerator with Latent-Indeterminacy Suppressor and Kinetic-Energy Recompensator) that had served us so well in the past — or should I say, in bygone futures? Rabaiotti fed the power, took a long look, ran his hands over the relay banks, nodded slowly at me and started punching co-ordinates. Schneider was passing his hand-scanner over Simpson. The Director called me over to meet a tall swarthy man whom he introduced as a friend of his, a Dr Hanif Khan.
I didn’t know why, but I immediately felt there was something odd about Dr Khan, not suspect exactly, just odd, something too that was unknown to the Director. Before speaking Khan produced what looked like a small old-fashioned television set with attachments but which I recognized as one of the new boson microscopes.