The Obelisks of Mortimer Lodge

It would be dishonest to say that the great Lionel Rust and I were well acquainted. We were neighbors, after a fashion, though we each had a claim to view the other as a squatter.

I was living in Mortimer Lodge, a cottage on a corner of the land surrounding Mortimer House. The entire estate had been my inheritance, but over the years I had squandered it piecemeal on the roulette tables of the Riviera. The old hunting lodge was all I had left, and that too was only ever one spin of the wheel away from liquidation.

Lionel Rust had bought up the collected packets of land that I had lost, to re-establish the estate with Mortimer House at its heart. It now served as his country home whenever he happened to be in England, which was seldom enough.

He had offered me twice the market value of the lodge in order to complete the portfolio. Then ten times the going price. I believe I became a source of irritation for my stubborn refusal to sell up the last vestige of my own ancestral home.

Who was I to block the will of the Lion of Texas, the pioneer of modern space rocketry, artificial intelligence, and all things tech? Well, block him I did, for it was he who was the true squatter, and I never gave up the hope that I would one day win back my family home and land.

A few years after his invasion, I made overtures seeking a meeting, which after some months of putting off he graciously accepted, on the condition that he could come to see me at Mortimer Lodge, at an ungodly hour. He was, after all, a very busy man.

For most people a three a.m. attempt at persuading one of the greatest minds on the planet to hand you a portion of his riches would be, shall we say, less than optimal. But as luck would have it, I am a night owl, and that hour suits my own powers of reasoning much more than its daytime parallel.

It was a mild November night, and as the clock chimed three the sound of knocking echoed through the lodge. Argos, my old Scottish Deerhound, scrambled to the door, scratching and howling as he always did. I held him by his collar and lifted the latch.

Rust stood alone at the threshold, a physical specimen, projecting power and crowned with a mane of golden hair. He was unperturbed by Argos sniffing him over and giving him a few traitorous licks. Once satisfied that he had fulfilled his canine duty, the dog retreated down the passage to his bed.

“Looks like he’s not interested in what you got to say, Mr. Klarstein,” said Rust.

“Oh, he’s heard it all before.” I took Rust to my study, where I’d kept a fire burning steadily since midnight, with an armchair on either side of the hearth. He made no comment on the various trophies staring down from the wall, but seemed most pleased with the fire.

“Can’t get away from the fact that burning wood is what we evolved for,” he said. “All the alternatives just feel . . .”

“Cold,” I said. He nodded and gazed into the yellow glow.

It was my turn to be pleased, for when I offered a drink he did not fulfill the modern Spartan caricature of success by refusing, or worse, requesting water.

“Scotch.”

We sat down in the battered armchairs, half facing each other, half facing the fire, our glasses warming in our hands.

He took a sip and made no comment. It was, of course, from my best bottle of single malt, but he was doubtless used to better. The middle of the night may have long since passed, but he was not sitting there to idle away what was left of the darkness.

He sat forward sharply, his face becoming golden. “Now tell me about your proposal. How did you put it in your message? ‘More important than property, a matter of life and death, and a way to know the future without going there.’”

“That’s right.” I leaned forward too. “It is what you might call a speculative tech pitch. The core of which is this: the future will come back and tell you how you are going to die. And so you should be able to prevent it, or at the least postpone it.”

He blinked a few times, but otherwise his expression did not change.

“The stuff of blockbusters,” he said, but his tone was almost bored. “Details.”

“I need assurances first.”

He waved his hand as if to dismiss my petty mortal concerns.

I drew two cards from my pocket and handed the first to him. I had written on it a modest figure, as my opening gambit.

He glanced down and released a cruel laugh, standing up and shaking his mane from side to side. His accent thickened in his irritation. “You’re clearly wasting my time. You think you’ve got an idea that bends time, and you’re selling it for nothing. Worse than nothing. A joke.”

My pulse quickened and I stood up too. I had prepared for this. I spoke very quickly, with as great a force as I could muster. I could not lose my quarry now, after so many months of stalking, when I was so close to the kill.

“That is the fee for this evening’s conversation only. Regardless of whether you accept the final product. If you reject it, you promise complete confidentiality. Not a word of what we discuss leaves this room, so that I have a viable product for another customer. Now, here is my demand for completion of the project, if you choose to go ahead.”

He took the second card, raised an eyebrow, and paused. On it, I had written: The entire Mortimer House estate. He let out a different laugh this time. Warmer, understanding.

“Okay, Klarstein. You are serious. Or deluded. Or seriously deluded.”

He seemed satisfied with this, resumed his seat and sipped the whisky. I could not completely contain a sigh of relief, and sat down too.

“Against my better judgement, I agree to your discussion fee and the confidentiality clause,” said Rust. “Now go.” He gave the signal for a race to begin and sat back to spectate.

My quarry had presented its jugular. I drained my glass and leaped for the throat, so to speak, with the script I had rehearsed a thousand times. Fearfully fast, but not too fast for the ears of Lionel Rust.

“I call it Obelisk Insurance. Let’s say you die, a week or two from now. Probably not a natural death, given that you’re in your prime and have acquired a few enemies. Even your greatest fans can get . . . fanatical. That attempt in Colorado, for instance, came pretty close . . .”

“And that’s just the one that made the papers,” said Rust, with perhaps a hint of pride. I pressed on.

“So you’re dead. Let’s say a guy with a silver hammer called Maxwell did it. He’s acting alone or put up to it by some tech oligarch or political rival. Your people will find out all the facts, but even if they don’t, at least they’ll know how, when, and where you died. That’s enough, really.”

“Enough to stop me dying in the first place?”

“Correct. A couple of months after your death, in various locations around the globe, in major cities, in deserts, under the sea, underground, even in space or on Mars if you really want, something curious happens. Obelisks are erected.

“They’re huge and beautiful. One hundred feet tall, two hundred feet even. Made of granite, or marble, made of some new carbon that material scientists think up which won’t wear out for eons.

“These obelisks are testaments. There’s writing on them in every major language, living and dead, in pictograms, in hieroglyphs.

“They proclaim your greatness, your biography in terms of your achievements. Electric cars, space rockets, colonies on the moon and on Mars. Like the tablets of Sumerian Kings.”

“Or like the foot of Ozymandias . . .” said Rust, with a smile on his golden face. He motioned me to continue. I still had him gripped.

“No, not Ozymandias. This is no mere folly. You won’t just be projecting vanity into a future which does not know you.”

“It’s sounding rather vain so far. You know, I intend to live on through my paradigm shifts in tech and through the dawn of interplanetary human civilization, which I am ushering in. I don’t need to leave a giant stone brag.”

I was ready for this.

“Who invented the wheel?”

He frowned, and got the point. “Okay, so perhaps my name will be forgotten. But perhaps not.”

“What is the likelihood of a global civilizational collapse in the next hundred years? I’ve heard you talk about this, Mr. Rust.”

He paused and frowned again. “Ten to fifty percent, depending on which experts you ask.”

“Right. So there’s maybe a half chance that advanced human civilization will disappear. And that’s just in the time frame we can reasonably imagine. In the next ten thousand years there may be five more such events.

“And after each, the crucial question will be how to rebuild, how to get back to where we were and progress further. Your obelisks will provide the best chance of that, and will accelerate the recovery for future generations. They will preserve crucial technological information. Agricultural methods, electricity generation, antibiotic production, all the way to space travel. Imagine if the Egyptians or the Romans had the foresight to preserve this essential information, as insurance against their own collapse. We would be having this discussion on Mars already!”

“Okay,” he said, “so it’s insurance against civilizational collapse. I see the merit in that, though I know others are working on similar projects, albeit not on the scale you are describing. But what has it got to do with me dying? Why couldn’t I just start putting up those obelisks now?”

“Because Obelisk Insurance, as well as being good for humanity in general, is also a uniquely personal insurance for you. It represents forward time travel. Some of those obelisks will still be around in ten thousand years. If civilization is preserved and progress in technology continues, there’s no telling what might be achieved by future generations.

“Cold fusion, travel beyond our solar system, beyond our galaxy, and perhaps, travel beyond the limits of time itself.”

He looked doubtful.

“Consider this. Could a Stone Age man have anticipated a video call from one continent to another? They would have had no conceptual framework to do so, other than magic. We’re just the same as them. Limited by our imaginations. But it doesn’t mean these things will not happen.”

“By these things, you mean time travel? Including retrograde time travel?”

“Certainly. And your obelisks are your invitation to meet with those time travelers, and to benefit from them. For at the end of all your instructions on technological recovery and your biography, there will be a description of your death. The how, the when, the where, and possibly the whodunnit—Maxwell. And at the base will be an invitation to visit you a week or two before your death, wherever you happened to be at that time.”

I made my voice theatrical, as if I were reading out his ancient text of the future.

“Children of ages yet to come. When you learn how to traverse time, come back to me. Come back and tell me what you have read here. Come to x, before I die, at x hour on x day. Say ‘Obelisk’ and I will listen. Tell me about Maxwell and his silver hammer. I will reward you with great wonders. With secrets none can know.”

I stopped and surveyed my lone spectator for a reaction. He was as marble. Nothing could be read upon that face. But I was encouraged by his silence.

I had made the great mind pause for thought. He finished his whisky, and held out the glass for more.

We sat for a moment, and I gave myself another slug too. I needed it just as much as he did.

The lion frowned. He pointed a finger at me and said, “Cigar.”

“Certainly, I think I’ve got some . . .”

The finger wagged. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out two silver tubes.

“Try mine,” he said. “I promise they’re better.”

He was correct. They were magnificent. And besides their quality and flavor, the smoke they conjured signaled my first great victory. I allowed myself a brief moment of luxuriation to relish what I had achieved.

Rust had committed to my initial fee, which though a scornful amount for one so grand as he, was a life-changing sum for a mere mortal such as I.

I now had his committed attention for a cigar’s worth of time. I delighted in each of those first glorious puffs, for the promise of future wealth and glory which they signified.

“Klarstein, it’s absurd. It’s laughable. They’ll all think I’ve gone mad. Anyway, we can get to that. My team researched you thoroughly, of course. I know you’re a gambler. I know you’re in debt. Anyway, you played your cards very well tonight. You’ve extorted enough out of me to pay your debts and retire comfortably with this wild story about obelisks.” He gestured at our surroundings. “I’ll never be able to buy this place off you now!”

He laughed weakly and rubbed his face. I laughed too.

“But I haven’t told you all of it. I haven’t told you about how by building these obelisks after your death, you save us all in the here and now.”

He clapped his hands with glee.

“An add-on! How I save the world not just in the future, but now too. As a bonus! I need to get my money’s worth from this truly epic shill.”

I leaned over the armchair and threw some logs on the fire. Sparks flew up the chimney and the flames rose hungrily.

“Well, if it’s mad, then you are madder. Your security team knows I’m an indebted gambler. I knew they’d get that. But I know much more about you. Half the planet does. You give an interview every other day. You’ve stated your belief in human progress, human exceptionalism, the shattering of all constraints of space and even time—yes, time—again and again.

“Why do you think I came to you and not some other billionaire with this idea? Because they wouldn’t believe it. They can’t. They think too small.”

“And you’re not neighbors with them,” he laughed. “You are talking about time travel, Mr. Klarstein. Have you ever met a time traveler?”

“No. But I’m not Lionel Rust.”

“Well, I am. And I haven’t met one either.”

“And with that attitude you never will. Listen. Did you know there was a time travelers’ convention a few years back? Well, there was, at a small Midwestern college in the States, organized by some nerd undergraduates, who also were not Lionel Rust.

“They booked a conference hall for a science experiment and all sat there for an hour, and nothing happened. They then went for some beers and announced the date and time of the convention in the past on social media and even put out an advertisement in some national papers and a science journal.”

“Sounds great. They disproved time travel. I can go.” But he made no move and drew on his cigar.

“Nonsense!” I said. “They only proved that social media posts and papers are transient ephemera as far as durable historical sources go. They might as well have announced the thing by whispering in a cave.”

He laughed again. “I see. So what you really want me to do is peer review their experiment and prove for all eternity that time travel is impossible in the most conclusive way.”

I sighed. “That’s a very pessimistic way of looking at it, but actually that is still of value. In the very worst case, you and future generations will know that time travel is an avenue not worth wasting resources on exploring.”

“So I’ll waste huge resources of my own proving that others won’t need to waste theirs, and will make an historic ass of myself for generations untold as part of the deal.”

“Maybe. But look at it like venture capitalism. You only have to have a one percent chance of this paying off. A fraction of a fraction of a percent, for this to be more worthwhile than any endeavor, ever.”

He stood up, and with his back to me he stoked the fire. It did not need stoking, as far as I could see. He was agitated. Excited, and trying to hide the fact. His head was shaking from side to side. Willing disbelief by mimicking the movements of a disbeliever, like a cargo-cult atheist.

“Crazy. Crazy Klarstein. Oh dear, but this is fun to think about. Frivolous fun. I had a feeling I’d enjoy tonight, you know? My secretary thought you were a real dead end.

“I’m glad she was wrong. You’ve made me laugh, which is always good these days . . .

“But what if she were really, really wrong? Let’s explore more about what you’re saying, if that fraction of a fraction were to truly come to pass.”

He turned around, his powerful outline framed in red, his face for a moment in darkness, beyond my sight. I suddenly felt a great wave of fatigue and had to rub my eyes.

“Your secretary was wrong,” I agreed. “And if you accept that second card, and you truly commit to it, I believe you will meet one. A traveler.”

He sat down again.

“But I would have to die first.”

“In one sense, but there’s no need to rush that side of things, Mr. Rust.”

He traced a horizontal line in the air, made a loop, and continued on at a slightly different angle, saying, “But as far as we experience reality, and time, I suppose I would not die first. I would . . . have died . . . in a future that never came to be.”

“I think you’re right, if you subscribe to the Copenhagen theory of time as I do.” He nodded to that. “Now, I’m not saying you won’t die ever. Your death may be one that simply can’t be prevented. Something dull like pancreatic cancer. But that means you survived all unnatural or sudden deaths that could be avoided.”

“Can you imagine! The traveler comes to me in a hospital wing when I’m a hundred and four and bald and just irradiated skin and bone and says, ‘By the way, you die next week of that cancer you already know about.’ What a letdown. I’d want my money back, you know.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Time travel is still time travel. And besides, they might bring back the cure. It’s worth every penny.”

“And every obelisk,” he raised his glass. I clinked it jovially, and we drained them.

“Okay, gimme the fun version. Maxwell’s silver hammer. And how do I save the world exactly? You keep digressing from that part.”

I looked him straight in the eye.

“You kill him.”

“Who, Maxwell?”

“Well, sure, if you like you could kill Maxwell, but that doesn’t save the world. Just you. No. You kill the time traveler.”

I saw in his face that for a second time I had landed a major blow. His eyes flickered with effort for a moment, but he was too impatient to work it out himself.

“Explain,” he said.

“Well, look at it like this,” I said. “We have to consider the psychology of a time traveler who goes backwards more than a year or two.”

I gave him the chance to work it out. He blew a smoke ring and stared off through it as it grew and dissipated.

“They’re psychopaths,” he said quietly. “They don’t give a damn about anyone from their own time. If they understand causality they’ll know that if they change anything in the distant past—even something tiny—they are risking changing their own era beyond recognition. Broad trends may continue, sure, but the people they know and love, their families, their children . . .” He clicked his fingers. “Gone. Never conceived. Never born.”

I laughed with delight. The working of Rust’s mind was a pleasure to behold. So quick to grasp concepts I had spent months already grappling with. “Yes! Correct. Time travelers are absolute bastards. They will destroy everything they know. Everything. For what? Curiosity? The thrill of traveling somewhere new?”

“Gosh, and I thought those cat-lady backpackers were bad.”

“Well, you haven’t seen anything. Imagine if one of them could time travel.”

“Dear God. They could go back to the first humans and kill them with the common cold. Or further back to take a selfie with primordial slime and prevent any life from ever evolving in the first place.”

“Exactly. So that is why you have to execute them. Once you get the lowdown on how you die.” I aimed my cigar at an imagined traveler between us. “Bang. They have to die.”

He shivered. “Can’t risk them going back further. Can’t risk them stopping my kids being born. Or me. Or—or everyone.”

“That’s right. Are you seeing now? This isn’t funny anymore, is it? I’ve seen you talking about other existential threats. About A.I. if one of your competitors gets the jump on you. About the nuclear holocaust. Even aliens. They keep you up at night.”

“And now you’re putting another one on my plate!” He laughed hollowly, and mimed his head exploding. “Man! Klarstein, this is kinda stopping being fun. You’re starting to scare me a little bit. I don’t know if it’s your whisky or this house, but I’m not feeling great. How did you come up with this?”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking. There was a real edge on his voice. He seemed for the first time almost vulnerable.

“Thinking by this fire, with Argos at my feet,” I said. “Or maybe a good traveler visited me and gave me the idea.”

“Listen. Well done. You got my attention brilliantly and I’m gonna take this seriously. I need to talk this through with a couple of people. A quantum physicist I know from Berkeley. A philosopher from Cambridge. I need to scrutinize it really—”

“No!” I said, raising my voice for the first time. “No way. That was never part of the deal, Mr. Rust. If you do that you breach all honor. I thought I could trust—”

“You can, Klarstein, you have my word, I just—”

“If you tell anyone, it will not work. If you tell anyone the reasoning behind it all. The Secret of the Obelisks. If anyone but you and I know, it will not work. The secret behind it will become as famous as the obelisks themselves.”

He tried to interrupt, but I cut him off.

“The Sphinx!” I said. “The riddle of the Sphinx. Who knows the answer to that?”

He frowned. “Everyone. Okay, no one will know. The plans will remain secret until I die. If I agree to go ahead with it.”

“By all means, take your time to think it through.”

“I’ll need at least a month.”

“Agreed.”

“If I don’t go through with it, who will you approach next?”

“Some other guy with spaceships.”

He smiled.

“I can make the introductions, though that might not help your case,” he said. We watched the fire together in silence. The logs had all burned through, and there remained a mass of glowing ember, like a magical mountain rising from a plain of ash.

From time to time I glanced at Rust, trying to discern his thoughts. I was aware enough of the relative weakness of my mind compared to his to realize that whatever initial mastery I had on this scheme was only a function of the months of head start I had in developing it. Once the full force of his reason was applied to the matter, he would overtake me swiftly. I only hoped he did not find holes I had not foreseen, through which my fortunes would fall.

“Uncertainties,” he said quietly. “So many uncertainties. Unknown unknowns. And the morality of it! We invite back a traveler from ten thousand years from now, and in so doing wipe out those ten thousand years. Do we not bear responsibility?”

This question had worried me also, but I had not wanted to raise it unnecessarily.

“The future will change, yes. And one future will die. But a better future will be born. One with you still in it for a while. And me. And our past will be preserved.”

“Yes, but by me murdering the time traveler. Murdering a guest, who went to considerable lengths to visit me. Doesn’t seem fair.”

I shrugged. “If a beast who threatens you, your family, and the entire world happens to want to visit you, do the laws of hospitality prevent you from doing what you must to protect everyone?”

“Maybe you’re right. But this is one of the things I have to think about. I’ve never actually killed anyone, that I know of. I’ll need to carry a lethal weapon at all times if I take this seriously.”

“Yes.” I said. “You will.”

We sat a while longer.

“Will . . . will,” he muttered. “This is all a matter of will. My will, when I die. My will now. The longevity of my will and its influence down the millennia.”

He drew on his cigar, which was nearing its end, and blew another smoke ring up towards the ceiling. Peering through it, as if into another world, he said, “There is a way of knowing. Yes, I see it.”

For the first time, I became alarmed. He had overtaken me. Already something seemed clearer to him than to me. Until now I had been the leader. Gently and deferentially, but it was always me leading him. My will had brought us this far.

Now I feared being led, down a path I had not explored. Into darkness.

“What do you mean? What is on your mind?” I asked.

“Well, it’s simple. We can test your Obelisk Insurance right here. Right now. At least the time traveler aspect.”

“I don’t follow.” Any fatigue that had gathered in my body left me and I stiffened in my seat, knowing I must think very quickly indeed to avert failure, or some greater disaster.

“I must only fix my will, for good,” said Rust. “Say I agree to your entire plan—obelisks everywhere, when I die. All the information you suggested. But one small change. The invitation will not be to x place and x time before my death. But this place and this time.” He looked at his watch. “In two minutes it will be five o’clock. That seems a good time to write on the Obelisks.”

He stood and raised his voice theatrically, but without any hint of humor that I could detect: “Time travelers of the future, I invite you to visit me here two minutes hence, at five a.m. in Mortimer Lodge. So it shall be written in stone after my death for all the ages. And so it shall be done.”

It struck me that his language and manner was no longer that of a scientist or tech oligarch but of a wizard uttering an incantation. I was alarmed, assaulted by two separate fears. The first and foremost was that five a.m. would come and go and nothing would happen, his experiment apparently confirming the null hypothesis that time travel could never and would never happen. Rust could walk out of the lodge and out of my life, which would return to its less-than-exalted status, albeit with my debts paid off and the wolf thrown very far indeed from the door.

The second fear was more obscure, and therefore more profound in its menace. The fear that the incantation may actually work. That his will would truly fix on carrying out my plan with his adapted invitation, and that a visitor from millennia hence would appear in my home in just two minutes’ time.

I stood and raised my hands imploringly, as if to perform a counter-charm.

“Don’t be so rash! Take this seriously, Mr. Rust. Please, I beg you.”

“I am taking it seriously, Klarstein. Perhaps more seriously than you ever did. Now let me commit my will to this action, to your Obelisk Insurance.” He stared hard at the dying fire, as if willing it to expand and consume us.

Perhaps it was my heightened emotion, but I perceived at that moment a change in the room. The air grew chill and heavy. I had finished my cigar some time before and there was no smoke on my breath, but it now seemed to rise visibly as on a cold winter’s night.

“Mr. Rust,” I said quietly, “please. Don’t do this. We haven’t yet thought through what we would do.”

“Haven’t you, Klarstein?” There was an edge of cruelty in his voice again. “I had the impression you had thought it through in its entirety. All through our discussion you’ve had an answer to my every question, ready to hand. Don’t play unprepared now. Or are you a coward?”

“But you may be wasting invaluable years. Think of your children, the other children you might have had. All will be changed now.”

“I will not mourn for children I have yet to know. But you are wrong, Klarstein. It would be a waste not to see the travelers now. To waste time on incremental progress when we can leapfrog centuries with tech insights from the future.”

If my alarm had been severe before, it was now intensified. I had not really understood the character of Lionel Rust. I had heard so many interviews, read so much about him and by him. But here he was in the flesh, presented with a possibility I believe no man before had ever had to consider, and rather than taking stock of the novelty and approaching it with trepidation, he had chosen to leap into the void with a wild and reckless confidence. It was as though I had offered him a promising experimental drug, and he was injecting it straight into his beating heart, not caring for the dosage or the side effects.

I realized then how very different we were, and why he was who he was, a man behaving like a god. But for every one Lionel Rust who flourished to the point of godliness, there must have been a thousand similar men who perished before their prime, consumed by their own headstrong courage and ambition, overdosing and descending into hell.

And for each of those there were a million Klarsteins. Timid and calculating, weak and hesitant. Gambling with peanuts and dreaming only of a slightly larger serving. Safe and heading nowhere but an overgrown, forgotten grave, to be swallowed by the passing of the years and never again recalled to mind.

Now I, a lowly Klarstein, in a night so unnatural and insane, had made a disciple of a Lionel Rust, who was before my unbelieving eyes embracing this new religion with a convert’s zeal which shook my very bones.

There had been no wind all night. Yet now the curtains began to quiver. The windows were most certainly closed. The fire, which had burned so low, appeared to rise anew from its spent fuel. The perimeter of ash around the glowing mountain seemed to catch fire again, the redness flowing from the mountain base out across the cinder plain. Amazing and unsettling to observe. I looked around and the room seemed brighter, the shadows cast by the eerie light much starker.

Rust’s stare remained fixed upon the hearth. I could feel palpably how he strained his will to conform with what he had decided only moments before, for great ages yet to come.

Though ashes became embers and the fire seemed to resurrect, the room grew not warmer, but to my skin cold and clammy.

“Rust,” I said weakly, feeling I was throwing my last roll of the dice, “you are not ready. Where is your weapon? How will you kill them?”

His gaze faltered momentarily.

He bounded to the fireplace and seized the iron poker. “This will have to do.”

I balked, and the sheer awfulness of this gave me power to raise my voice against him: “That is utter madness! An iron bar to slay a time traveler . . . we have no idea what defences they will have!”

I had a vision of Rust striking impotently at a future Übermensch’s force field, and the justified response—to be vaporized at a mere blinking of its eyes.

A terrible sound interrupted my vision.

Knocking. Loud and heavy. Carrying the weight of centuries.

The future, knocking on the flimsy door of Mortimer Lodge.

Argos bounded into the study and jumped up to Rust with his front paws to his chest, knocking him off balance. He recovered and raised the poker as if to strike my faithful dog.

Argos, for the first time in his life, cowered. Whether from Rust’s raised poker or the ominous knocking, I could not tell. He shrank into a corner of the room and whimpered. He showed no urge to greet the new visitor.

Rust seized me with his free hand by the nape of my neck with an almighty grip and pulled me in towards him. His face was mad and glorious.

“Your invitation worked. It looks like time travelers are punctual! It’s five o’clock, neighbor.”

He stuffed the poker in his belt like a sword and dragged me to the door.

I had lost control of all things.

The knocking was deafening. Slow and leaden. The old timber shook with every blow. Where time had seemed to flow backwards in the study it now flowed glacially onwards. My breathing became shallow. My brow dripped with perspiration.

I shrank in Rust’s mighty grip and pathetically looked up at him for instruction.

“You should open it. It’s your home,” he said, all matter of fact. “Your guests. But stand up straight, man. Shoulders back. First impressions count.”

I reached out to the latch and could not help trembling at what awful wonders lay on the other side. Rust, apparently impatient, reached across and swung the door back in one swift pull.

A most unexpected sight. The dawn was breaking, and by its gentle light we saw on the doorstep a small, neat lady. I knew her face. Rust’s secretary.

“Ah, Lucy,” said Rust with undisguised disappointment. “It’s you.”

His shoulders sagged, and his mad energy left him. He recovered more quickly than did I, who wanted to sob like a baby in my relief. He turned to me, and took my hand to shake it. His tone was polite and insincerely jolly. It came with a matching smile of his brilliant teeth.

“Well, Mr. Klarstein, thank you for a very entertaining evening. It’s a shame that the product doesn’t have the potential we hoped for, but it was tremendous fun to consider. Lucy will wire you the fee you suggested later on today. I do wish you all the best.”

I was unable to speak, which seemed to suit him just fine. He crossed the threshold and pulled the door closed behind him.

By the time I had recovered enough to step outside again, all trace that Lionel Rust had ever graced my property was gone. Argos found the poker lying by the gate.

✥ ✥ ✥  

A month later, I received the message. “Agree to card two. Project as per your specifications. Payment when the obelisks rise.”

Time passed. He put a man on the moon. Then two years later, he sent one to Mars. Meanwhile, I was playing roulette.

I did not see Rust again until the day my dear old Argos died. It had been difficult digging in the cold January earth, and his shallow grave was covered with a dusting of snow in the afternoon. After sunset I heard a knock at my door. It was Rust, alone in the winter twilight.

I was immediately struck by how old he looked. While only four years had passed since our nighttime meeting, he now looked as though he had aged twenty. This surprised me, as I had seen an interview with him around Christmastime looking as healthy and vigorous as ever.

“Happy new year, Mr. Klarstein,” said Rust, with a smile which emphasized the new lines on his face. There were streaks of gray in his majestic hair. His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes had lost some of their shine. He did not look like one of the wealthiest and most revered figures on Earth. “May I come in?”

He declined any drink and we sat, as before, in my study, facing one another. He took a while to speak.

“Oh man, not much has changed here. That’s good. You look the same as the last time we met. Are you even wearing the same shirt?”

“It’s quite possible,” I said.

“Me, on the other hand,” said Rust. “I’ve changed a great deal, haven’t I?”

“You have?” I tried to sound uncomprehending. He leaned forward and pointed at his worn, gray face.

“No need to be polite, Mr. Klarstein. I look like a ghoul. I feel like one too.” He sighed wearily. “And you are somewhat responsible.”

“I don’t quite follow . . .”

“No, you probably don’t.” He repeated himself: “You probably don’t.”

He looked as if he would not speak further. I allowed the silence to draw out whatever it was he had to say. He clearly had something to say, or why had he come? I was too surprised by his visit and appearance to make any rational suppositions.

So I waited.

“Damn it, give me your Scotch, man,” he said finally. “I’ll pour for us both.”

He swallowed a good slug and sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, and began his story:

Last week, I was in Sardinia. You’ve never been, have you? Well, neither had I, but I needed to secure some rare-earth minerals they have in their mountains, in the heart of the island. The biggest deposit in the world of this stuff.

Anyway, that’s beside the point.

I was there with my people, and we were in this little mountain town. Poor little place, ignored by everyone since civilization took off in the Mediterranean—about to become very rich, mind you—and we were sitting out in a café on the main street, trying to get the local administration to buy in, when something weird happened. We heard cowbells, lots and lots, coming down the street. A tremendous racket.

We couldn’t hear each other speak, so we gave up and looked around for the cattle.

But instead of a herd of cows there came a herd of . . . monsters. Men dressed as devils, head to toe in thick brown goat fur, and copper bells on their backs in clusters, which formed great metal humps. The clappers in the bells were made of bone.

And the masks—I’ve never seen anything like them—so primitive and so pure in their menace. They were solid ebony, polished, with thick features—skewed eyebrows, twisted noses, and lips contorted in these perpetual grimaces. The hair was covered with a black silk scarf. Only the eyes and hands of the men were discernibly human, but in those masks they lost all humanity. They were wild.

The men in Sardinia are pretty small, but these beasts looked twice the size of us.

“They are Mamuthones,” said the mayor. He was clearly enjoying our surprise. “Ancient spirits of the island. From before Christ, before the Romans, before history.”

Now I’m no etymologist, but the name worked. They sure looked like the love child of Cro-Magnon man and a woolly mammoth. They were hideous, awful things. And they knew it. They ran around roaring at children, at old women, at us. Everyone shrieked, and it wasn’t clear if this was some old Mediterranean game everyone was in on or if we were just being attacked. My team and I tried to laugh it off, but we were all spooked.

“What are they doing?” I said.

“They are scaring off foreign spirits.” The mayor straight looked at me as he said it.

“So these are the good guys?” I said.

“You could say that. We do not remember if they are good or bad. But they are ours. They are Sardo.”

I have to say I did not like the Mamuthones one bit. The mayor told us that the men behind the masks were in a state. One of their number, a young shepherd, had disappeared in the mountains the week before. He was feared dead.

This gathering was their way of intervening for him. To scare off dangerous spirits and so protect him, wherever he might be.

“Let’s do better than that,” I said, seeing an opportunity to win the mayor and the whole town over. “We’ll find him.”

One of my security team was ex–special forces, and a top-class tracker. I had wanted to spend a day there hunting anyway, so this gave the trek a nobler purpose.

If we could find the missing man alive, that would secure their trust, which would be invaluable when it came to all the changes I would bring.

And if he was dead, they would be grateful for the body and the chance of a proper burial. Catholic or pagan, I wasn’t sure which at this point.

The two of us set off that afternoon from the farm where the missing shepherd, Francesco, lived with his mother. She was displaying that hysteria that Mediterranean women are so good at. Her clothes were ragged from her tearing at them. She pulled at her hair as she spoke. She wailed more than she used words.

It was normal for the shepherds to pass several days at a time with their flock on a mountainside, sleeping under the stars, but in summer, not winter.

Francesco had left with his herd on New Year’s Day, without his phone, in a bleak mood. Girl trouble. And he had not been seen or heard from since. Worse still, his flock had scattered. A very bad sign. Some sheep had found their way back to the farm alone. That was when the mother knew he must be in trouble. Others were spotted across three separate mountains. They were tagged with orange paint on their haunches.

I asked the mother what he’d been wearing when he left. She mimed a mask and said one word: “Mamuthone.”

My tracker had a heavy rifle and carried twice my load but was always ahead of me. And I tired of trying to keep up with him. The winter sun sets early and sudden there, behind the western peaks.

That first day we hiked deep into the mountains. We found a few sheep with orange tags, around a narrow gully, but no sign of Francesco. A sheep dropped into the gully, and we, after securing a rope to get us back out, followed him.

The gully was like a tunnel running through a cleft in the mountain. Twelve feet deep and six across, it appeared to be always coming to an end, but then you turn the corner and—oh look—there’s another stretch. My tracker found what he said was a footprint. I couldn’t see it, but he was certain and we followed the gully slowly, scanning the ground for clues.

We were rewarded a hundred yards farther, with a copper cowbell. The clapper was made of bone.

Francesco had been here.

I ran ahead. I wanted to be the one to discover him. My tracker understood this and slowed his pace.

I ran around one corner, then another, and another.

My next discovery I smelled before I could see. Rotting flesh.

A goat was lying on the ground ahead with an orange tag on its haunch. Flies buzzed around it. lt lay unnaturally, as if it had died by falling in the gully.

I thrust my boot under its gut to turn it over and inspect how far decomposed it was, but found myself jumping back in horror as the thing came to life!

It sprang up and screamed at me—you know the way their voices can sound like a man’s—its yellow-black eyes locked with mine, and it kept on screaming and I just stood there dumbfounded.

The thing had been dead. It was rotten in places. One leg seemed broken. The flies kept buzzing round it, same as on a corpse. But there it was, screaming at me.

It lowered its horns and charged. I turned, but it slammed into my flank and knocked me sideways. My ankle twisted as I fell. It’s ugly stinking face came right up to mine, screaming all the time. Feeling it was gonna bite my nose off, I seized it by the horns and held it at bay.

Just in time my tracker showed up and he slammed the goat with his rifle butt, and the goat recoiled away. Before I could stand, it screamed at the tracker louder than ever, and then did the strangest thing.

It charged into the rock wall of the gulley and cracked its skull. Once, twice. And on the third strike it fell down still, a godawful crater in its head.

“We better get a rabies jab when we get back to town,” I said. That was all I could think of to explain what I had just seen. Ha! Goat rabies. Sure.

But we had a more pressing concern. My ankle was busted, and the sun was coming down fast. My satellite phone had broken with the fall.

We made slow progress back down the gully, me leaning on the tracker and hopping on my good foot. It was an awful effort to climb that rope, and when I got out it was clear we wouldn’t make it back to the road, let alone a village, that night.

The tracker scouted the surrounding area, and found me a place to stay the night. A nice little cave a hundred feet higher up the hillside. The entrance was about the size of the wall here, and it went a good way back, all in all a lot bigger than this study.

My tracker brought wood and made me a fire, which I lay down beside, grateful for its warmth as the temperature dropped. He left me some rations and the rifle, and then he was gone, off into the night with his flashlight. I just had to lie there and wait for help.

My ankle was swollen and increasingly painful. I was in a terrible jam. The mission was a failure, and now instead of me rescuing Francesco, I was needing rescuing myself. The papers would have a field day.

After I had some hot chow from a tin I managed to enjoy the irony of it all. The only man in history to have rockets on Mars had just become a caveman! I chuckled to myself, and seeing that there was nothing more productive for me to do, I settled down and tried to catch some shut-eye. I must have slept a little, because when I opened my eyes again, the fire was burning low and it was pitch black outside the cave.

A draft of cold air was flowing in, and with it came a sound. Wind chimes, it seemed to me at first. But no, it was too low. I listened hard, and as the sound grew clearer, the realization dawned on me, and I felt a sudden fear. Copper bells. Clapped with bone.

Their ring was coming closer, carried on the wind. I threw more wood on the fire, and slid back deeper in the cave, setting my back against the cold stone wall to one side. I pulled the rifle to rest hidden alongside my bad leg. And I waited.

A shadow filled the entrance of the cave. A deeper darkness silhouetted against the night outside. It came towards the fire, swaying slowly. Its feet dragged forward over the floor, and with each step the bells on its back rang out like a whole herd shrugging.

As it came closer it was illuminated. A Mamuthone. Its head was lowered as if tired from the weight of bells upon its back. It leaned upon a wooden staff. Its mask was hideous and shining black. Its fur was smeared with mud and darker stains. The red brown of old blood.

“Dear God!” I said. “Francesco? Francesco! Is that you? Ti . . . Ti chiami Francesco?”

The Mamuthone said nothing. It dragged itself forward slowly to the fire, and struck it with the staff, sending sparks into the air.

Then it lifted its head and looked at me with pale eyes, which pierced the mask. I could hear its breathing now. A kind of rasp.

And then it spoke, just one word, stretching out each syllable in a kind of whisper, which made my skin crawl: “Ob-el-issk.”

It was too much. I could not believe what I was hearing from Rust. As he said the word I flew into internal panic. Panic and excitement. I drained my whisky and stood, my mind racing. I started pacing the study. Rust did not appreciate the interruption. It was as if in telling the story he was exorcising himself of the experience.

“Sit down Klarstein, damn you,” he said. “You don’t get to hide from what I’m telling you.”

I sat. “But Mr. Rust, what you’re saying . . . it’s so . . .”

“Impossible?” said Rust. “Horrifying? Well, don’t be so upset about it, old man. Show some pride in your success. Isn’t this what you wanted? After all, it’s all because of you.”

I fought to calm my nerves, and realized that while I did not understand what had happened, I had been the instigator. I now had a duty to understand the consequences of my idea. Of my obelisks.

“Please,” I said. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

He looked at me with an expression of withering distaste, which made him look even older than he had before. Like a haggard peddler, wearied by his life adrift, jealous of the settled folk.

He turned to the fire and carried on with his tale:

“Ob-el-issk,” the Mamuthone said again. I had told nobody—nobody—of the Insurance, though I had committed totally to it and made discreet provisions in my will. I sought for a rational explanation, that this was some kind of complex ruse that you, Mr. Klarstein, had devised. But given the circumstances, the location, the unexpected nature of—it was too bizarre to be an act of fraud. I decided it must be true.

“Obelisk!” I said, as if to return the greeting, and forced myself to stand, leaning on the rifle as the Mamuthone leaned on his staff. Mirroring him. And pleased the fire lay between us. I spoke slowly and loud, as if to a foreigner, and tapped my chest.

“I . . . am . . . Rust. What . . . is . . . your . . . name?”

The Mamuthone lifted his hand to his chest.

“Yung Eye Ron,” he seemed to say.

Then he pointed to me. “Old Eye Ron.” I actually laughed. It was fantastic. He was right, in his way. I am Old Eye Ron.

“Welcome, Young Iron. Yes, I am Old Iron. I am Rust.”

Young Iron nodded. He seemed pleased that we could talk. I decided to embrace the madness.

“When do you come from, Young Iron?”

He waved his hand forwards.

“Far . . . far . . .” he said. No dates. No figures. Just far.

I had not anticipated that an encounter would look like this. But naturally once I committed to your Obelisk program I had given quite some thought to what I would say in any encounter. It had occurred to me that English might be long dead and that language would be a problem. But I had assumed the traveler would have found a way to overcome this. It seemed Young Iron had, by studying a dead language, and not very well. It was like if we tried speaking high school Latin to an Ancient Roman. His pronunciation was wild. But it was enough.

“How did you come back, Young Iron?” I said.

He looked down a bit, like he was hurt.

“Great . . . great . . . sac-ri-fice.”

“Sacrifice?” I said. “But what technology? What mechanism?”

The masked face did not move. I felt he may not have understood. But then he spoke.

“Where . . . is . . . Old . . . I-ron . . . maj-ick?” He looked around the cave and gestured at the emptiness. He pointed out the cave into the sky. “Where . . . is . . . boat . . . to . . . stars?”

My heart sank. What was he saying?

“Magic?” I said. “You think that is magic? No! Tech-no-lo-gy. Sci-ence! You know science?”

He pointed down at the flames between us and thumped his chest, as if with pride.

“I know fire! I am Fire-Lord!”

I was appalled. I almost shouted at him, “You have fire? Fire!”

He nodded solemnly.

It didn’t make any sense. It was like talking to a caveman. And yet, here he was. Dressed as a Mamuthone, apparently from the future. How could he get here? He must have something, some tech, perhaps left behind by an intermediary civilization that had perished, which he did not understand and called magic.

“Tell me about your magic,” I said. “Tell me how you traveled back through time.”

“Sacrifice,” he said again and drew a finger across his throat. “Many, many sacrifice. All . . . sacrificed . . .” he held the staff up high in front of him, “at Ob-el-issk. Then . . . un-flesh . . . Young Iron.” He thumped his chest and drew his finger across his throat again.

“Unflesh?” I said.

“Unflesh,” he confirmed.

I was shocked. But it started to make an awful kind of sense.

“And now? What flesh is this?” I gestured up and down at the Mamuthone figure before me, but I already knew the answer. “. . . Francesco.”

“Fran-ces-co,” said the Mamuthone. I brought up my chow on the cave floor. The Mamuthone actually took a step back like he was disgusted. I had it figured now.

“And the goat?” I said, when I recovered. “The goat was you too?”

Young Iron nodded Francesco’s head. “Goat flesh. Bad flesh. No voice for Young Iron.”

“Okay . . . Young Iron. Okay. I will share my magic with you. But first, tell me how I die. Who kills me? When?”

He clasped and unclasped the pale fingers on his free hand twice and gestured forwards again. “Ten . . . days . . . killed . . . by . . . Bright Rock.”

“Bright Rock,” I said, trying to recall a group by that name. “I don’t know any Bright Rock.”

“Bright Rock,” said Young Iron, “Trait-or.”

I put it to the back of my mind. My people would find out.

“Thank you, Young Iron,” I said.

“Now,” said Young Iron, “share magic.”

I smiled at him sadly. This high priest, Fire-Lord from a blighted future, had sacrificed untold lives at the foot of my obelisk to come and see an ancient who held for him no supernatural secrets.

“All my magic was written on the Obelisks,” I said. “You should have studied it harder.”

“All spells gone,” said Young Iron, “by gods of wind and rain.”

“Then how did you read of me?” I asked.

“Old Iron spell bur-ied deep, deep, deep. At foot of ob-el-issk . . . Come back to me.”

I sighed. How far he had come. And just as I could not comprehend his magic, he would never grasp our science.

“I’m sorry, Young Iron, I have nothing for you. Can you go back?”

He looked down. Then pulled a dagger from his goatskin. “By great sacrifice, per-haps. By Old Iron blood. A mighty power.”

He started staggering across the fire towards me. The flames rose unnaturally high as he entered them. He blazed and was almost upon me. I raised the rifle and pulled the trigger.

✥ ✥ ✥  

“Dear God,” I said. “Did he . . . ?”

“Die?” said Rust. “Well, with the second bullet to the head he fell and moved no more. Spoke no more. At least not through poor Francesco.”

“So what was he? This Young Iron?”

“A ghost,” said Rust, without a hint of uncertainty. “An immaterial being detached from the matter of his own time, in order to travel back to ours. Unfleshed, as he himself said. And re-fleshed in recently vacated matter in the here and now. A squatter.”

“And his message? Did you find Bright Rock?”

“We did,” said Rust. “A small outfit operating out of Eastern Europe. Mercenaries. Tough bastards. We’re still not clear on their motive and they denied any plans of assassination, but . . . they are no longer a threat.”

“So it worked!” I said. “The insurance! You are alive.”

“Yes,” said Rust with a weak smile. “It would appear I have cheated death, and for that, I thank you, Klarstein. But at what cost?”

“Well, I cannot deny that the form in which your insurance manifested was most unexpected. But we always knew that there would be such unknown unknowns.” I tried to be jolly about it. “All’s well that ends well and all that. You’re here, alive after all! Let’s drink to that!”

Rust did not raise his glass. He sank back in his chair, a wearied, shrunken form of the Texas Lion who had sat there four Novembers back.

“You’ve cursed me, Klarstein.”

“Now come, come—” I said, and then stopped. I thought I heard—but no, it couldn’t be.

“What’s wrong?” said Rust. “Just let the dog in, man. It’s freezing outside!”

There was a howling and a scratching at the front door. So familiar to me, and yet so strange to hear that evening.

“Argos died this morning,” I said quietly, standing up. Rust knelt quickly and pulled a snub-nosed revolver from his ankle. He aimed it at the entrance to the study. We didn’t dare go out into the passage or approach the front door. I grabbed the poker.

“When he comes,” said Rust, “we aim for the head. The head.”

The scratching became more intense and the door shook, and then went quiet. We waited silently, trying to catch a sound on the wind. I looked at the fire and saw it slowly spread across the ash.

Then all of a sudden the window behind us burst into a thousand shards, as Argos leapt through it onto the floor, and in one bound its jaws were on Rust’s wrist. He screamed, and the gun fell to the floor.

I watched in horror as the shaggy, muddy hound growled and pulled.

“Argos! Down! Stop!” I tried to command. All in vain! The dead deerhound turned its head towards me for a moment, eyes flashing pale with alien hatred. It growled contemptuously at me and then turned again on Rust and leaped, this time for the throat. Rust only just managed to hold the snapping jaws an inch away from his flesh.

“Shoot him, Klarstein!”

I retrieved the gun and aimed but could not clear the man from the beast.

Rust fell back with the beast upon him, scratching, biting, growling like a hound from hell. Young Iron devouring Old Iron. And Old Iron fighting back with all his strength. “Shoot him! God! Shoot!”

I pulled the trigger. Once, twice, thrice.

The beast fell still. I dragged it off Rust, who lay panting, lacerations on his face and arms. He sat up and groaned, and pulled apart his shirt. The neat puncture of a bullet gushed hot blood from his abdomen. I knelt and held him as his life leaked out upon the floor.

He looked at me, and as the iron drained from his face, he seemed to chuckle, saying quietly, “Bright Rock. Clear Stone. Klarstein.”