The Warlord of the Air Read Free Page B

“I’m afraid I don’t remember. Since I left— since I came back—it has been like a dream. Only the damned opium helps me forget. Those dreams are less horrifying.”
    “You take opium?” I felt like a hypocrite, framing the question like that.
    “As much as I can get hold of.”
    “You seem to have been through some rather terrible experience,” I said, forgetting my manners completely.
    He laughed then, more in self-mockery than at me. “Yes. Yes. It turned me mad. That’s what you’d think, anyway. What’s the date, by the way?”
    He was becoming more communicative as he downed his third drink.
    “It’s the twenty-ninth of May,” I told him.
    “What year?”
    “Why, 1903!”
    “I knew that really. I knew it.” He spoke defensively now. “1903, of course. The beginning of a bright new century— perhaps even the last century of the world.”
    From another man, I might have taken these disconnected ramblings to be merely the crazed utterances of the opium fiend, but from him they seemed oddly convincing. I decided it was time to introduce myself and did so.
    He chose a peculiar way in which to respond to this introduction. He drew himself up and said: “This is Captain Oswald Bastable, late of the 53rd Lancers.” He smiled at this private joke and went and sat down in an armchair near the window.
    A moment later, while I was still trying to recover myself, he turned his head and looked up at me in amusement. “I’m sorry, but you see I’m in a mood not to try to disguise my madness. You’re very kind.” He raised his glass in a salute. “I thank you. I must try to remember my manners. I had some once. They were a fine set of manners. Couldn’t be beaten, I dare say. But I could introduce myself in several ways. What if I said my name was Oswald Bastable—Airshipman.”
    “You fly balloons?”
    “I have flown airships , sir. Ships twelve hundred feet long which travel at speeds in excess of one hundred miles an hour! You see. I am mad.”
    “Well, I would say you were inventive, if nothing else. Where did you fly the airships?”
    “Oh, most parts of the world.”
    “I must be completely out of touch. I knew I was receiving the news rather late, but I’m afraid I haven’t heard of these ships. When did you make the flight?”
    Bastable’s opium-filled eyes stared at me so hard that I shuddered.
    “Would you really care to hear?” he said in a cold, small voice.
    My mouth felt dry and I wondered if he were about to become violent. I moved towards the bell-rope. But he knew what was in my mind because he laughed again and shook his head. “I won’t attack you, sir. But you see now why I smoke opium, why I know myself to be mad. Who but a madman would claim to have flown through the skies faster than the fastest ocean liner? Who but a madman would claim to have done this in the year 1973 A.D.— nearly three-quarters of a century in the future?”
    “You believe that you have done this? And no-one will listen to you. Is that what makes you so bitter?”
    “That? No! Why should it? It is the thought of my own folly which torments me. I should be dead—that would be just. But instead I am half-alive, hardly knowing one dream from another, one reality from another.”
    I took his empty glass from his hand and filled it for him. “Look here,” I said. “If you will do something for me, I’ll agree to listen to what you have to say. There’s precious little else for me to do, anyway.”
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “I want you to eat some lunch and try to stay off the opium for a while—until you’ve seen a doctor, at least. Then I want you to agree that you’ll put yourself in my care, perhaps even return with me to England when I go back. Will you do that?”
    “Perhaps.” He shrugged. “But this mood could pass, I warn you. I’ve never had the inclination to speak to anyone about—about the airships and everything. Yet, perhaps history is alterable...”
    “I