Read Times Without Number Online
Authors: John Brunner
Times Without Number (7 page)
Don Miguel inclined his head and looked politely alert.
"I hold no grudge against you for acting as you did in this matter.
Of course not. I fully understand how seriously any question of temporal
contraband must be regarded."
"I'm pleased to hear it," Don Miguel murmured. "Some people seem to treat
the dangers over-lightly."
"I'd never do so! Oh, I'm hardly one to talk, of course -- I confess
I should have made inquiries about the mask, in view of its perfect
condition. But as you know that's not my speciality . . . Tell me,
though, if you're free to do so: how was it that the mask got brought
to the present? Surely only Licentiates are permitted to travel in time,
and one can hardly imagine a Licentiate being corruptible!"
"It would appear," Don Miguel said after a moment's debate with himself,
"that certain -- ah --
outsiders
have contrived to grease the necessary
palms and get taken on visits to the past. Doubtless one of them brought
the mask back."
"Terrible!" Don Arcimboldo widened his eyes. "And yet . . . Well, I could
find it in my heart to envy such outsiders." He grinned with engaging
frankness. "You wouldn't appreciate the urge which someone like myself
feels to walk among the people to whom the rare and beautiful objects I
collect were modern -- virtually commonplace! Do you suppose, Don Miguel,
the day will come when private applicants, properly indoctrinated against
the risk of interfering with the past, will be permitted to share the
marvel of time-travel?"
"If you're wondering whether I am one of the Licentiates whose palm is
open to being greased," said Don Miguel coldly, "I assure you I am not."
"No -- no, of course not!" Distressed, Don Arcimboldo half-rose. "I had
no intention of implying . . ."
"Then shall we change the subject?" Don Miguel deliberately exploited
the presumptive insult to let an acid tone enter his voice. "Shall we
speak of your collection? Shall we for example discuss the fact that it
contains not merely your Saxon and Irish and Norse antiques, but also
Moorish, Oriental, and other items I fail to recognise?"
At a loss, Don Arcimboldo said, "Why, certainly it does, but -- "
"In short, your taste is more eclectic than I was led to believe."
Don Miguel set his glass aside, not looking at the other man directly.
"Which makes it surprising that you did not keep the Aztec mask, having
bought it. Tell me, why did you give it to the Marquesa, Don Arcimboldo?"
His host's face darkened. "It is unseemly to pry into such personal matters!"
"I have no choice. I have a commission to fulfil, under the orders of the
Prince of New Castile."
"Your behaviour is ungracious and unmannerly nonetheless! However, I will
answer -- if you'll give me good grounds for requiring the information."
Don Miguel rose from his chair and walked, glass in hand, towards a display
of fine Saxon torcs and belt-buckles in hammered! gold, many of the latter
set with garnets. Not looking in Don Arcimboldo's direction, he said, "You
must have had a reason for adding so hugely to your debt to Higgins. It
can hardly have been a moment's whim which led you almost to double your
already long-outstanding obligations."
There was no immediate reply. When Don Miguel turned away from the antiques
he was admiring, he found that Don Arcimboldo had drawn a delicately
wrought silver chain from a pouch at his belt, with a little pendant on
the bottom of some sort of glittering crystal, and was letting it swing
from his fingers as though suddenly very nervous.
"I suppose you took possession of Higgins's records," he muttered
eventually. "But the cold figures give a misleading impression,
I assure you. There was no reason for him to doubt my credit. After all,
I'm far from being a poor man."
"Indeed?" said Don Miguel glacially.
"What do you mean?" Don Arcimboldo flushed and bridled, though the swinging
chain did not vary its pendulum-like motion. "Do you think that this place
around you is the home of a pauper?"
"Yes."
The single sharp word seemed to drain much of the spirit out of Don
Arcimboldo. He gave a sigh. "I yield, I yield . . . There is a grain
of truth in what you say, for of late my estates in Scotland have not
provided me with as much as they used to. Accordingly I will tell you
why I gave the mask to the Marquesa. I hoped that she would loan me a
sum to rescue me from my temporary -- temporary! -- difficulties."
The chain went on swinging. There was silence. Don Miguel allowed the
silence to stretch. And, after a little while, Don Arcimboldo's
self-possession began to fray. He looked first puzzled, then alarmed.
When the alarm was acute enough, Don Miguel spoke out.
"It's no use. Don Arcimboldo! Before coming here I spent a long while in
conversation with an inquisitor who is expert in matters of the mind.
I have taken an antidote to the sort of thing you gave me in this very
good wine. So you cannot lull my brain with your swinging crystal and
wheedle me into forgetfulness -- as you served Higgins!"
The last phrase cracked like the lash of a whip. Don Arcimboldo let fall
his hands; white-faced he whimpered, "I swear I do not understand!"
"Your oath is false. You understand me well. What has happened went
like this. The temptation to join fortunate outsiders who have voyaged
illegally into the past grew too strong for you to resist, but in order
to bribe the corrupt Licentiate who made your journey possible you were
compelled to overspend your income. Consequently you ran up a debt with
Higgins -- an undignified situation! Doubtless he pestered you for his
money, and you feared he might warn the other merchants in the market
that you were defaulting on a bill. Presumably -- for you are not at
bottom a stupid man -- your original intention in smuggling back the
splendid Aztec mask was merely to keep it in secret and gloat over it by
yourself. When Higgins became a nuisance, I think you must have considered
offering it to him in settlement, and then rejected the idea, knowing his
reputation for caution and his habit of checking that the extratemporal
objects he was offered had been licensed by my Society. So you hit on
a subtler way out of your corner. You deluded him into believing he had
bought the mask from someone else.
"Small wonder he cannot tell the inquisitors from whom! How can one
remember a person who did not exist? But you did not manage to get at
his clerks, did you? I've spoken to them, and even the clerk who keeps
Higgins's stock-list had no record of the mask.
"Oh, possibly this was intended to lend colour to the hoped-for outcome,
the imprisonment of Higgins for trading in temporal contraband. In jail
he could scarcely continue to dun you for his money! I deduce this from
your action in giving the mask to the Marquesa, who could be relied upon
to boast about it within days and draw the attention of someone like
myself who would recognise the illegality of its presence here. Whereupon
you would play the innocent dupe, and let Higgins suffer the rigours of
the law.
"You acted your role well. Indeed, until you drew that chain from your
pouch I still half-doubted my own conclusions. But the inquisitor
I talked to this afternoon warned me about such tricks, and now I'm
convinced beyond a doubt."
Don Arcimboldo cast the silver chain violently to the floor. "It's a
pack of lies!" he shouted. "This nonsense will never convince anyone
but a fool like you!"
"I'm prepared to take that risk," Don Miguel said stonily. He slid his
sword from its scabbard and presented its point to the other's chest.
"Don Arcimboldo Ruiz, by the authority in me vested of the Society
of Time I arrest you on charges of temporal contraband and desire you
to go with me to face trial. You may have met one corrupt Licentiate,
Don Arcimboldo -- but learn from this that some of us take our rules
seriously. After all, we are meddling with the very fabric of the
universe."
VIII
The vacant space between the crystal pillars hummed faintly; those
present in the hall shifted on their chairs, wiping their faces now
and then. It was always warm in the neighbourhood of the pillars when
a traveller was about to return from a voyage into time.
The Prince of New Castile seemed worse affected by the heat than were his
colleagues, and grunted and muttered to himself. Abruptly he could not
stand it any longer, and snapped his fingers at an attentive aide nearby.
"Wine!" he barked. "The heat is terrible!"
"Yes, your highness," said the aide alertly. "And for the General Officers
as well?"
Red Bear moved his long Indian face once in a gesture of acceptance,
but Father Ramón did not stir. After a pause, the Prince waved at the
aide to hurry up.
"Think you it is well done, Father?" he snapped.
Father Ramón seemed to come back to the present from a private voyage
into the elsewhen. He sketched a brief smile, turning to the Prince.
"As well done as we may do," he parried. "At least we know that the golden
mask is being restored; whether the restoration itself was wise, we can
only guess."
Red Bear snorted. "If you had doubts about the wisdom of putting the thing
back, why give me so much trouble over it?"
"We must always doubt our own wisdom," said Father Ramón peaceably.
He raised a hand towards the crystal pillars. "I think the moment is at
hand -- the humming grows louder."
The technicians on duty around the time-hall had tensed to their
positions. Now, suddenly, there was a clap like thunder and a smell
of raw heat, and in the space between the pillars a shape appeared: a
curious shape of iron and silver bars, that seemed to glow for a moment
as energy washed out of their substance in the process of their rotation
back to normal-dimensionality.
In the middle of the frame, a man's form was seen to collapse.
Father Ramón jerked to his feet. "Be swift!" he ordered the
technicians. "Help him -- come on, move!"
The technicians darted forward, some to dismantle the frame of metal bars,
others to help Don Miguel to his feet and lead him to a couch that stood
waiting. Slaves hastened to fetch restoratives and basins of clean warm
water.
A bare half-hour had elapsed in the hall since the moment they had
dispatched their emissary to the past. But it was plain that for him
much time had gone by. His skin was burnt by sun to the colour of leather,
and his eyes were red and inflamed with dust. The General Officers
gathered anxiously about his couch, wondering how gravely he had suffered.
Not especially, it transpired. For, having accepted a sip or two of
stimulating cordial, he brushed aside further attentions and managed to
sit up. He passed his tongue over sunchapped lips and spoke in a thick
slow voice.
"It is done," he said, and looked about him as though not yet convinced
of his return to the familiar world. His mind was still whirling with
the memory of the great city of Texcoco burning in tropic daylight,
as his body was still clad only in the breech-clout of an Indian of
that time. The slaves had begun to wash away the painted symbols from
his cheeks, but had completed only half their task; the division of his
face summed up the way he was still poised between two realities.
The General Officers breathed a sigh of relief. Red Bear said harshly,
"You are certain?"
"Absolutely. I found the workshop of Hungry Dog without trouble, at the
very time he was working on the mask. When it was complete, it waited
in his house for the festival at which it was to be dedicated with
sacrifices to the great god Tezcatlipoca. I contrived to see it on a
number of occasions prior to the date of the festival. And the last day
before, a man came into the shop and stole the mask."
"Was it Don Arcimboldo?" demanded the Prince.
"Presumably. Perhaps."
"Aren't you certain?" The Prince leaned forward angrily, but Father Ramón
laid a hand restrainingly on his arm.
"Our brother Navarro has done well," he said.
"How so, if he cannot prove who the thief was?" the Prince countered,
blinking.
"Why, he had at all costs to avoid the risk of being seen by Don Arcimboldo.
Had they met, Don Arcimboldo might have recognised him when they met at the
Marquesa's. This did not happen. Therefore it was correct not to confront
him."
"So I reasoned," said Don Miguel, resting his chin wearily in his hands.
"Accordingly, when I saw the mask was gone, I simply replaced it --
I mean I replaced it with the version I'd brought from now. I stayed
long enough to ensure that it was dedicated at the festival as planned,
and . . . here I am."
The Prince grunted. "It's all in order now, you think, Father Ramón?"
"As far as we can tell."
"Good! Then I must go back to New Castile. Had it not been for this delay
I'd planned to leave Londres days ago. Red Bear, I charge you with attending
to the rest of the details. Good day!"
He gave curt nods to his colleagues and departed from the time-hall with
cloak flying and aides trotting at his heels. After a thoughtful pause,
Red Bear moved away from Don Miguel's couch to supervise the dismantling
of the time apparatus, and Father Ramón remained alone.
"How do you feel, my son?" he asked eventually.
"I begin to recover," said Don Miguel, and accepted another sip of the
cordial. "My hurts are more in my mind than in my body. I was witness
to a sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca less than a day ago, and I still feel
nauseated."
"Understandably," the Jesuit said with sympathy.
Don Miguel sat up on the couch with his arms linked around his shins and
set his chin on his knees, staring into nowhere. After a pause he said,
"You know, Father, it sometimes makes me wonder what blindness we also
may be guilty of."
"Explain further," the Jesuit invited.
"Well . . . Well, what I mean is this. I recall the Marquesa saying
to me how much she admires the goldwork and featherwork of the Aztecs,
and it's true: their artistry was magnificent. Yet for all their art,
their masonry, their social discipline, the people I've just been among
were savages, habituated to sacrificing men by the score in the most cruel
manner. For all that they understood the motion of the stars and planets,
they never used the wheel except to move children's toy animals. In some
ways, unquestionably, we're superior. And yet we may have our blind spots
too. Although Borromeo showed us how we might rotate the dimensions of
substances so that the world becomes flat and we can voyage back into
time, although we live in an orderly world rid of much of the horror of
war -- nonetheless, one cannot but wonder whether we too are wasting on
children's toys marvels that later ages will put to use."
"I hold no grudge against you for acting as you did in this matter.
Of course not. I fully understand how seriously any question of temporal
contraband must be regarded."
"I'm pleased to hear it," Don Miguel murmured. "Some people seem to treat
the dangers over-lightly."
"I'd never do so! Oh, I'm hardly one to talk, of course -- I confess
I should have made inquiries about the mask, in view of its perfect
condition. But as you know that's not my speciality . . . Tell me,
though, if you're free to do so: how was it that the mask got brought
to the present? Surely only Licentiates are permitted to travel in time,
and one can hardly imagine a Licentiate being corruptible!"
"It would appear," Don Miguel said after a moment's debate with himself,
"that certain -- ah --
outsiders
have contrived to grease the necessary
palms and get taken on visits to the past. Doubtless one of them brought
the mask back."
"Terrible!" Don Arcimboldo widened his eyes. "And yet . . . Well, I could
find it in my heart to envy such outsiders." He grinned with engaging
frankness. "You wouldn't appreciate the urge which someone like myself
feels to walk among the people to whom the rare and beautiful objects I
collect were modern -- virtually commonplace! Do you suppose, Don Miguel,
the day will come when private applicants, properly indoctrinated against
the risk of interfering with the past, will be permitted to share the
marvel of time-travel?"
"If you're wondering whether I am one of the Licentiates whose palm is
open to being greased," said Don Miguel coldly, "I assure you I am not."
"No -- no, of course not!" Distressed, Don Arcimboldo half-rose. "I had
no intention of implying . . ."
"Then shall we change the subject?" Don Miguel deliberately exploited
the presumptive insult to let an acid tone enter his voice. "Shall we
speak of your collection? Shall we for example discuss the fact that it
contains not merely your Saxon and Irish and Norse antiques, but also
Moorish, Oriental, and other items I fail to recognise?"
At a loss, Don Arcimboldo said, "Why, certainly it does, but -- "
"In short, your taste is more eclectic than I was led to believe."
Don Miguel set his glass aside, not looking at the other man directly.
"Which makes it surprising that you did not keep the Aztec mask, having
bought it. Tell me, why did you give it to the Marquesa, Don Arcimboldo?"
His host's face darkened. "It is unseemly to pry into such personal matters!"
"I have no choice. I have a commission to fulfil, under the orders of the
Prince of New Castile."
"Your behaviour is ungracious and unmannerly nonetheless! However, I will
answer -- if you'll give me good grounds for requiring the information."
Don Miguel rose from his chair and walked, glass in hand, towards a display
of fine Saxon torcs and belt-buckles in hammered! gold, many of the latter
set with garnets. Not looking in Don Arcimboldo's direction, he said, "You
must have had a reason for adding so hugely to your debt to Higgins. It
can hardly have been a moment's whim which led you almost to double your
already long-outstanding obligations."
There was no immediate reply. When Don Miguel turned away from the antiques
he was admiring, he found that Don Arcimboldo had drawn a delicately
wrought silver chain from a pouch at his belt, with a little pendant on
the bottom of some sort of glittering crystal, and was letting it swing
from his fingers as though suddenly very nervous.
"I suppose you took possession of Higgins's records," he muttered
eventually. "But the cold figures give a misleading impression,
I assure you. There was no reason for him to doubt my credit. After all,
I'm far from being a poor man."
"Indeed?" said Don Miguel glacially.
"What do you mean?" Don Arcimboldo flushed and bridled, though the swinging
chain did not vary its pendulum-like motion. "Do you think that this place
around you is the home of a pauper?"
"Yes."
The single sharp word seemed to drain much of the spirit out of Don
Arcimboldo. He gave a sigh. "I yield, I yield . . . There is a grain
of truth in what you say, for of late my estates in Scotland have not
provided me with as much as they used to. Accordingly I will tell you
why I gave the mask to the Marquesa. I hoped that she would loan me a
sum to rescue me from my temporary -- temporary! -- difficulties."
The chain went on swinging. There was silence. Don Miguel allowed the
silence to stretch. And, after a little while, Don Arcimboldo's
self-possession began to fray. He looked first puzzled, then alarmed.
When the alarm was acute enough, Don Miguel spoke out.
"It's no use. Don Arcimboldo! Before coming here I spent a long while in
conversation with an inquisitor who is expert in matters of the mind.
I have taken an antidote to the sort of thing you gave me in this very
good wine. So you cannot lull my brain with your swinging crystal and
wheedle me into forgetfulness -- as you served Higgins!"
The last phrase cracked like the lash of a whip. Don Arcimboldo let fall
his hands; white-faced he whimpered, "I swear I do not understand!"
"Your oath is false. You understand me well. What has happened went
like this. The temptation to join fortunate outsiders who have voyaged
illegally into the past grew too strong for you to resist, but in order
to bribe the corrupt Licentiate who made your journey possible you were
compelled to overspend your income. Consequently you ran up a debt with
Higgins -- an undignified situation! Doubtless he pestered you for his
money, and you feared he might warn the other merchants in the market
that you were defaulting on a bill. Presumably -- for you are not at
bottom a stupid man -- your original intention in smuggling back the
splendid Aztec mask was merely to keep it in secret and gloat over it by
yourself. When Higgins became a nuisance, I think you must have considered
offering it to him in settlement, and then rejected the idea, knowing his
reputation for caution and his habit of checking that the extratemporal
objects he was offered had been licensed by my Society. So you hit on
a subtler way out of your corner. You deluded him into believing he had
bought the mask from someone else.
"Small wonder he cannot tell the inquisitors from whom! How can one
remember a person who did not exist? But you did not manage to get at
his clerks, did you? I've spoken to them, and even the clerk who keeps
Higgins's stock-list had no record of the mask.
"Oh, possibly this was intended to lend colour to the hoped-for outcome,
the imprisonment of Higgins for trading in temporal contraband. In jail
he could scarcely continue to dun you for his money! I deduce this from
your action in giving the mask to the Marquesa, who could be relied upon
to boast about it within days and draw the attention of someone like
myself who would recognise the illegality of its presence here. Whereupon
you would play the innocent dupe, and let Higgins suffer the rigours of
the law.
"You acted your role well. Indeed, until you drew that chain from your
pouch I still half-doubted my own conclusions. But the inquisitor
I talked to this afternoon warned me about such tricks, and now I'm
convinced beyond a doubt."
Don Arcimboldo cast the silver chain violently to the floor. "It's a
pack of lies!" he shouted. "This nonsense will never convince anyone
but a fool like you!"
"I'm prepared to take that risk," Don Miguel said stonily. He slid his
sword from its scabbard and presented its point to the other's chest.
"Don Arcimboldo Ruiz, by the authority in me vested of the Society
of Time I arrest you on charges of temporal contraband and desire you
to go with me to face trial. You may have met one corrupt Licentiate,
Don Arcimboldo -- but learn from this that some of us take our rules
seriously. After all, we are meddling with the very fabric of the
universe."
VIII
The vacant space between the crystal pillars hummed faintly; those
present in the hall shifted on their chairs, wiping their faces now
and then. It was always warm in the neighbourhood of the pillars when
a traveller was about to return from a voyage into time.
The Prince of New Castile seemed worse affected by the heat than were his
colleagues, and grunted and muttered to himself. Abruptly he could not
stand it any longer, and snapped his fingers at an attentive aide nearby.
"Wine!" he barked. "The heat is terrible!"
"Yes, your highness," said the aide alertly. "And for the General Officers
as well?"
Red Bear moved his long Indian face once in a gesture of acceptance,
but Father Ramón did not stir. After a pause, the Prince waved at the
aide to hurry up.
"Think you it is well done, Father?" he snapped.
Father Ramón seemed to come back to the present from a private voyage
into the elsewhen. He sketched a brief smile, turning to the Prince.
"As well done as we may do," he parried. "At least we know that the golden
mask is being restored; whether the restoration itself was wise, we can
only guess."
Red Bear snorted. "If you had doubts about the wisdom of putting the thing
back, why give me so much trouble over it?"
"We must always doubt our own wisdom," said Father Ramón peaceably.
He raised a hand towards the crystal pillars. "I think the moment is at
hand -- the humming grows louder."
The technicians on duty around the time-hall had tensed to their
positions. Now, suddenly, there was a clap like thunder and a smell
of raw heat, and in the space between the pillars a shape appeared: a
curious shape of iron and silver bars, that seemed to glow for a moment
as energy washed out of their substance in the process of their rotation
back to normal-dimensionality.
In the middle of the frame, a man's form was seen to collapse.
Father Ramón jerked to his feet. "Be swift!" he ordered the
technicians. "Help him -- come on, move!"
The technicians darted forward, some to dismantle the frame of metal bars,
others to help Don Miguel to his feet and lead him to a couch that stood
waiting. Slaves hastened to fetch restoratives and basins of clean warm
water.
A bare half-hour had elapsed in the hall since the moment they had
dispatched their emissary to the past. But it was plain that for him
much time had gone by. His skin was burnt by sun to the colour of leather,
and his eyes were red and inflamed with dust. The General Officers
gathered anxiously about his couch, wondering how gravely he had suffered.
Not especially, it transpired. For, having accepted a sip or two of
stimulating cordial, he brushed aside further attentions and managed to
sit up. He passed his tongue over sunchapped lips and spoke in a thick
slow voice.
"It is done," he said, and looked about him as though not yet convinced
of his return to the familiar world. His mind was still whirling with
the memory of the great city of Texcoco burning in tropic daylight,
as his body was still clad only in the breech-clout of an Indian of
that time. The slaves had begun to wash away the painted symbols from
his cheeks, but had completed only half their task; the division of his
face summed up the way he was still poised between two realities.
The General Officers breathed a sigh of relief. Red Bear said harshly,
"You are certain?"
"Absolutely. I found the workshop of Hungry Dog without trouble, at the
very time he was working on the mask. When it was complete, it waited
in his house for the festival at which it was to be dedicated with
sacrifices to the great god Tezcatlipoca. I contrived to see it on a
number of occasions prior to the date of the festival. And the last day
before, a man came into the shop and stole the mask."
"Was it Don Arcimboldo?" demanded the Prince.
"Presumably. Perhaps."
"Aren't you certain?" The Prince leaned forward angrily, but Father Ramón
laid a hand restrainingly on his arm.
"Our brother Navarro has done well," he said.
"How so, if he cannot prove who the thief was?" the Prince countered,
blinking.
"Why, he had at all costs to avoid the risk of being seen by Don Arcimboldo.
Had they met, Don Arcimboldo might have recognised him when they met at the
Marquesa's. This did not happen. Therefore it was correct not to confront
him."
"So I reasoned," said Don Miguel, resting his chin wearily in his hands.
"Accordingly, when I saw the mask was gone, I simply replaced it --
I mean I replaced it with the version I'd brought from now. I stayed
long enough to ensure that it was dedicated at the festival as planned,
and . . . here I am."
The Prince grunted. "It's all in order now, you think, Father Ramón?"
"As far as we can tell."
"Good! Then I must go back to New Castile. Had it not been for this delay
I'd planned to leave Londres days ago. Red Bear, I charge you with attending
to the rest of the details. Good day!"
He gave curt nods to his colleagues and departed from the time-hall with
cloak flying and aides trotting at his heels. After a thoughtful pause,
Red Bear moved away from Don Miguel's couch to supervise the dismantling
of the time apparatus, and Father Ramón remained alone.
"How do you feel, my son?" he asked eventually.
"I begin to recover," said Don Miguel, and accepted another sip of the
cordial. "My hurts are more in my mind than in my body. I was witness
to a sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca less than a day ago, and I still feel
nauseated."
"Understandably," the Jesuit said with sympathy.
Don Miguel sat up on the couch with his arms linked around his shins and
set his chin on his knees, staring into nowhere. After a pause he said,
"You know, Father, it sometimes makes me wonder what blindness we also
may be guilty of."
"Explain further," the Jesuit invited.
"Well . . . Well, what I mean is this. I recall the Marquesa saying
to me how much she admires the goldwork and featherwork of the Aztecs,
and it's true: their artistry was magnificent. Yet for all their art,
their masonry, their social discipline, the people I've just been among
were savages, habituated to sacrificing men by the score in the most cruel
manner. For all that they understood the motion of the stars and planets,
they never used the wheel except to move children's toy animals. In some
ways, unquestionably, we're superior. And yet we may have our blind spots
too. Although Borromeo showed us how we might rotate the dimensions of
substances so that the world becomes flat and we can voyage back into
time, although we live in an orderly world rid of much of the horror of
war -- nonetheless, one cannot but wonder whether we too are wasting on
children's toys marvels that later ages will put to use."
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