October the First Is Too Late

Chapter Fifteen: Coda

The prognostications were correct. Within a few hours of the departure of John Sinclair the world reverted to ‘normal’. The England of 1966, the Europe of 1917, the Greece of 425 B.C., all vanished just as remarkably as they had appeared. I have not seen John again, nor do I think there is the smallest possibility I will ever do so.

Although much more science is known here than was known in the world of 1966, the detailed operation of the singular mixing of epochs is not well understood. As I make it out, issues involving time-reversal were involved, but the physics of the matter is not within my competence. What is quite certain is that the affair was brought about from a higher level of perception than our own. That such levels exist seems reasonable. That we ourselves are unable to comprehend the thoughts, the actions, the technology perhaps, of an intelligence of a higher order also seems reasonable. Disturb a stone and watch ants scurrying hither and thither underneath it. Can those ants comprehend what it is that has suddenly turned their tight little world upside down? I think not. It emerges very clearly that humanity can also be stirred up at any time, just like ants under a stone.

Two years have passed since these events. I have learned the new language. I no longer speak any English. For the most part this causes no distress. Yet occasionally a pang sears through me, an overriding desire to hear the old sounds again. I began this present narrative while in such a mood, feeling that if I couldn’t speak my native language with any purpose I might at least write it.

In these two years I have composed a great deal of music. I do not compose nowadays for plaudits, for box office, or to please critics. I compose simply to please myself and my friends. I have returned to Europe, to England and even to Glencoe. I have climbed Bidean nam Bian again, followed the same ridge and come down into the same hidden valley. There is no village of Glencoe, no Macdonalds and Campbells to feud with each other, no motorists touring the glen. The country is entirely wild and still more beautiful.

More and more the old life has become vague and remote, like the memories of distant childhood. This gradual evaporation of a life which at one time was so intensely vibrant has come upon me with profound sadness. In these pages I have been able in some measure to give a sense of reality to what are now mere outlines in a gathering mist. Yet one detail stands out harsh and stark.

The day John Sinclair was missing from the caravan on the moors below Mickle Fell, I myself had the impression of a time gap of about two hours, between six and nine in the evening. I bitterly regret that I did not mention this impression to John. Of course I couldn’t be at all sure I hadn’t simply nodded off to sleep. I didn’t want to appear to be dramatizing myself. Then subsequent events soon swept the incident out of my mind. Yet I suspect this small detail—reconsidered in the light of all that followed—assumes a deep significance. Accepting a bifurcation of worlds, accepting the copying process which John himself believed in so strongly, accepting his view that it was an apparition, a copy of himself, who returned to the caravan after the gap of nine hours, could it have been a copy of myself who was waiting there to receive him, another apparition who cooked the meal when he said he was so devilishly hungry?

After the bifurcation there were two worlds, the straightforward world of 1966 in which nothing particularly unusual happened, and this strange new world belonging to the people of the future. Which of these worlds got our copies, which got the ‘originals’? We both took it for granted that the copies went to the new world, copies of everything, of the Prime Minister, of our Australian pilot. This presumption may well have been correct except for the two of us. For us it may well have been the world of 1966 which had the apparitions.

Why the two of us? Why should just the two of us be different? Because we were just the two who managed to penetrate into the territory of the people of the future. John always thought of this penetration as accidental. He laughed about my getting through to Greece, about my encounter with Melea in the temple on the hill. But was it really an accident? Hardly I think, for it fits too smoothly into a pattern, a pattern that would have been completed if John had elected to stay here, a pattern in which ‘copies’ vanished and ‘originals’ remained.

After the bifurcation in Hawaii, I was in the company of John Sinclair for a mere ten days. If at any time during those ten days I had looked for it I strongly suspect I would have found John’s old birthmark. The birthmark was a tell-tale clue giving away the whole story. An opportunity did indeed fall our way, perhaps was even deliberately put in our way, the day of our trip to Popocatapetl, the day when we all got so very wet on the return journey. But for the sexual distraction of the two girls being there as we dried off, the mark would very probably have been noticed. I have no doubt now it was the real John Sinclair who was sent out from here—into oblivion. The irony and tragedy is that to the two of us it was the world of 1966 that was the real cul-de-sac.