Our Children's Children

24

The Attorney General's visitor was an old and valued friend. They had been roommates at Harvard and in the years since then had kept in touch. Reilly Douglas knew that, in large part, he owed his cabinet appointment to the good offices and, perhaps, the political pressure that could be commanded by Clinton Chapman, a man who headed one of the nation's most prestigious industrial complexes and a heavy contributor to the party's funds.

"I know this must be a busy time for you," Chapman told Douglas, "and under the circumstances I'll take very little of your time."

"It's good to see a friendly face," said Douglas. "I don't mind telling you I don't go along with this. Not that there's nothing to it, for there is. But we're rushing into it. The President has accepted at face value this story of time traveling and while I can see, at the moment, no other explanation, it seems to me there should be some further study of the matter before we commit ourselves."

"Well, now," said Chapman, "I agree with you — I couldn't agree more completely with you. I called in some of my physicists this afternoon. You know, of course, that among our several branches, we have a respectable corps of research people. Well, as I was saying, I called a few of them together earlier today and we did some brain-storming on this time tunnel business…

"And they told you it was impossible."

"Not exactly that," said Chapman. "Not quite that at all. Not that any of them can see quite how it's done, but they told me, and this is something that surprised me, that the matter of the direction in which time flows and precisely why it flows that way has been a subject of some quiet study and very scholarly dispute for a number of years. They talked about a lot of things I didn't understand and used terms I'd never heard before. Arrows of time and boundary conditions, for example, and it seems that the arrows of time they talk about can be viewed from a number of different points — statistical, biological, thermodynamical, and I suppose other terms that have slipped my mind. They talked about the principle of wave retardation and causality and there was quite a lot of discussion about time-symmetrical field equations and the upshot of it all seemed to be that while, on the basis of present knowledge and research it all seems plain impossible, there is really nothing hard and fast that says it can't be done. The gate, it appears, is just a little bit ajar. Someone come along and give that gate a little push and it might be possible."

"You mean that in another hundred years or so…"

Chapman nodded. "I guess that's what it means. They tried to explain some of it to me, but it didn't take. I haven't the background to understand what they were telling me. These people have a lingo of their own and so far as people like you and I may be concerned it's a foreign language we never knew existed."

"So it could be true," said Douglas. "On the face of what is happening, it quite clearly is true. There seems no other explanation, but my point was that we should not move until we know it's true. And, personally, while I could think of no other explanations, I found a great deal of difficulty in believing it."

"Just exactly what," asked Chapman, "is the government thinking about doing? Building new tunnels, I understand, and sending the people of the future still farther back in time. Do they have any idea of what it's going to cost? Or how much time it might take? Or…"

"They have no idea," said Douglas. "Not a single figure. No inkling of what's involved. But if anything can be done, we will have to do it. The people from the future can't be kept here. It would be impossible to do it. Somehow we must get rid of them."

"My hunch," said Chapman, "is that it will cost a bundle. And there'll be hell's own uproar about the cost of it. The public is more tax-conscious than it has ever been, and something like this could bring about a confiscatory tax."

"You're getting at something, Clint."

"Yes, I suppose I am. A gamble, you might say."

"You always gambled well," said Douglas. "You have a natural poker face."

"It's going to cost a lot of money," Chapman said.

"Tax money," Douglas said.

"I know. Tax money. And that could mean we'd lose the election a year from now. You know I've always been rather generous in my campaign contributions and have very rarely asked for favors. I'm not asking for one now. But under certain circumstances, I would be willing to make what I might think of as a somewhat more substantial contribution. Not only to the party, but to the country."

"That would be very generous of you," said Douglas, not entirely sure that he was happy with the turn the talk had taken.

"I'd have to have some figures and some facts, of course," said Chapman, "but unless the cost is higher than I could manage, I think I would be agreeable to taking over the construction of the tunnels. That is, if the tunnels can be built."

"In return for which?"

"In return for which," said Chapman, "I should like exclusive future license for the building of tunnels and the operation of them."

Douglas frowned. "I don't know," he said. "I can't be certain of the legality of an arrangement of that sort. And there is the international angle…"

"If you applied yourself to it," said Chapman, "you could figure out a way. I am sure you could. You're a damn good lawyer, Reilly."

"There must be something I am missing. I don't see why you should want the license. What good would the tunnels be?"

"After all of this is over," Chapman said, "people will be considerably intrigued with the idea of traveling in time. A brand new way of traveling. A way of getting places they could never get before."

"But that's insane!"

"Not as insane as you might think. Imagine what a sportsman would be willing to pay for the privilege of going back to prehistoric days for a spot of hunting. Universities would want to send teams of paleontologists back to the Age of Reptiles to study and photograph the dinosaurs. Classical historians would sell their souls to go back and learn what really happened at the siege of Troy."

"And the church," said Douglas rather acidly, "might want a first-class ticket for a seat at the Crucifixion."

"I suppose that, too," Chapman agreed, "and, as you imply, there would be times when it might get slightly sticky. There'd have to be rules and regulations worked out and certain safeguards set up not to change the course of history, but…"

"It wouldn't work," said Douglas flatly. "Time traveling, we are told, works in only one direction, back toward the past. Once you go back, you can't return. You can't move futureward."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Chapman. "Maybe that's what you were told. Maybe that's true now. But my physicists assured me this afternoon that if you can move in time at all, you can move in both directions. They were sure of that. Sure it could be worked out. It simply makes no sense, they said, for the flow to go only one way. If you can go into the past, you certainly can go futureward for that would seem the preferred direction. That's what we have right now."

"Clint, I can't go along on this."

"You can think about it. You can see how things develop. You can keep me well informed. If it should work out, there would be something very worthwhile in it for you."