Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Come, come—’

‘No, listen to me for a minute, Carswell. Call me crazy but I did wonder if all this was some cruel experiment by some scientists in the future. Maybe a million years in the future. But – and just humour me for a moment – but just suppose that, say, here in 1865 the shit really did hit the fan. That time barriers did break down and people from different centuries found they could move into a different time zone. Probably one of the greatest problems of the latter half of the 20 thCentury was refugees moving in their tens of thousands from war zones into places where they thought they could find food and somewhere peaceful to live. The problems this caused were immense. The local populations couldn’t cope with the influx of refugees – there simply wasn’t enough food for all those extra people. They began to starve. So what happened? Those refugees who were fit and able turned to robbing their unwilling hosts. Soon there were murders, raids, kidnapping, all kinds of banditry. Now imagine if this were to happen where people didn’t just move from one place to another, but from one time to another.’

‘Now that would be the mother of all refugee problems,’ Jud said in a hushed voice.

‘So what’re you saying?’ Carswell said. ‘That people who are starving in the 10 thCentury are going to up sticks and move into the 20 thCentury and expect the welfare state to look after them?’

‘Partly, yes. But I think it’s going to be worse than that. I think you’re going to find whole armies coming through from the past to invade the present.’

‘Well, my money is on a modern tank regiment, backed up with helicopter gunships, beating the pants off any hairy-arsed barbarians armed with swords and spears.’

‘Eventually, perhaps. But that would be in a pitched battle on open ground. But what if a thousand men armed with swords and longbows came out of that amphitheatre right now? For one thing, we wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Secondly, neither would Casterton. They could walk into the place, burn every building to the foundations and murder the whole population before sufficient troops could be mobilised to stop them.’

‘Bloody,’ Carswell allowed thoughtfully. ‘But I still don’t see how flattening a little town in the middle of nowhere would affect the rest of the planet.’

‘Who knows?’ Sam replied. ‘In the States we’re being engulfed by illegal immigrants from all over the world. They’re pouring in across the Mexican border in their hundreds every week. Simply because they’re fed this diet of Hollywood films and TV programmes that screams loud and clear, “Hey, the US of A’s the place to be. It’s glitzy, it’s glamorous, and if you can only get your ass onto American soil you’re going to be rich and happy.” So, are the millions of human beings who inhabit the past going to see that this world of the 19 thCentury, or the 20 thCentury, as a land of milk and honey? A place to emigrate to, come what may?’

‘Or even a place to invade and conquer?’ mused Jud.

Carswell said to Sam, ‘Earlier you were saying that you thought that our trip through time was no accident. That we might have been pitched backwards into history as part of some scientific experiment.’

‘That’s what I thought might be possible. But the more I think about it, the more I’m beginning to suspect that it’s more than that.’

‘What, then?’

‘That we’ve been sent back in time for a purpose.’

‘And that purpose is?’

‘To plug this puncture in time. To stop this invasion of people from history marching into 1865 or 1944 or 1946 or 1999, or whenever.’

‘You mean this little bunch of tourists is intended to stop them?’

‘Yes.’

‘We don’t make a particularly formidable band of time warriors, do we? A handful of tour representatives shepherding some middle-aged to elderly holidaymakers?’

‘Perhaps it’s a desperate last-ditch attempt to save the human race.’

‘Pretty desperate at that, if you ask me,’ Carswell said with a thin smile.

‘Okay, imagine this…’

‘More fairy stories, Mr Baker?’

‘If you like. Humour me, though… please.’

Carswell shrugged. ‘Okay. Shoot.’

‘Picture this. It’s a million years in the future. The world is a wreck. I mean, completely screwed. Society’s in chaos. The cities are in ruins. All those glossy scenarios we’ve seen in sci-fi films about us colonising the planets are in the bin, too. Human civilisation is up the spout because there’s been a constant flow of refugees and invading armies from different periods of history. Get the picture?’

‘Go on.’

‘Perhaps this flood from history has affected the whole world. Thirteenth-century Mongol hordes might sweep down from the mountains into modern China. Sixteenth-century Apache and Cherokee warriors rampage in New York in the 1990s.’

‘They wouldn’t stand a chance. Not against modern armies.’

‘Not at first they wouldn’t. But the civilisation of the 20 thCentury would be like a human body being constantly battered by a viral infection. It can withstand it for a long time, but eventually the immune system is overwhelmed and breaks down. Maybe the individual illegal immigrants coming into America can’t do anything to harm the nation but collectively they’re beginning to erode the economy. Every year tens of millions of dollars are spent dealing with the problem. Europe, too, is terrified of an influx of refugees, whether it’s Kurds or the dispossessed from the former Soviet bloc. Now, this hypothesis I’m pitching at you says that, in a nutshell, this constant exodus of people from the past will eventually bring future civilisations to their knees. Imagine for a moment that scientists find they can send a bunch of people back in time. Perhaps right to the time that this rupture, or puncture if you like, in the barrier of time occurs.’

‘But why not send back a trained team? Why only a bunch of oldies and a few others who just happened to be in the area?’

‘I’m not going to be arrogant enough to say I’ve worked out all the answers. But my guess is that, for some reason, they can’t send their own people back as far as this. Perhaps they were forced to take pot luck, snatch up a few people from the amphitheatre and send them back into history in the hope they could plug this hole in time.’

‘Well, that’s a very interesting reason why we’ve been sent back through time,’ Carswell said slowly. ‘But just supposing that your entertaining guesswork is all true? How do we prevent this tidal wave of humanity gushing through from the past? After all, this time gate’s not something we can simply roll a big stone across the entrance of, is it?’

‘True.’ Sam gave a thin smile. ‘Very true. But don’t you think we should be considering some solutions? Before it’s too late.’

Nicole Wagner stepped into the shade of the woods. Above her, fluffs of cumulus cloud floated against a clear blue sky. After laying out the bodies in the museum room she’d spent ten minutes on the bus trying to tune in the radio.

There’d been nothing but the hisses, snaps and clicks of static. There were no stations broadcasting now; she was certain of that, even though she didn’t know what year it was.

Now the woodland stretched out before her: deep, dark and mysterious.

There was a stillness about it now; that, although peaceful, was a little frightening. Almost like entering a ruined building that had a sinister reputation.

She looked round at the towering tree trunks soaring up into a hissing world of leaves and sunlight. While away through the columns of tree trunks the shadows gathered deeper and darker.