Rebel in Time

Chapter 15

Troy accepted the fact of time travel without hesitation. Why shouldn't he? He had grown up in the age of technological miracles. First there had been the atomic bomb, well before his birth, then, one after another, the hydrogen bomb, atomic energy, jet aircraft that could fly faster than sound, followed by orbiting satellites, and lastly the almost unbelievable, real-time television pictures of men walking on the Moon. There seemed no end to the cornucopia output of the laboratories and he, like many others, had stopped trying to understand how they worked. They just did. He had used electronic guided missiles in the Army. You pressed the button and they went. That's all that you had to know.

So you pressed another button and something travelled through time. There was really no difference. The only question was — what had the machine been used for? What was it that McCulloch and Harper had sent backwards in time? Was it the gold? What would that have possibly accomplished? But if it hadn't been the gold — then what had it been?

When the question was asked this way, the answer became obvious. The pieces fitted together at last. Troy spun about and called out to Kleiman, who did not hear him. The physicist was muttering to himself as he pawed his way through the sheets of print-out. Troy had to raise his voice to get the man's attention.

'What?' Kleiman said, looking up and blinking distractedly. 'What did you say?'

'I asked you, can you tell from the figures how big the thing was that was sent through your time machine?'

'How big? Its mass, you mean? Yes, we can find out. I'll have to work out the equation though, the tau settings against the power consumed as the factorial aspects…'

'Can you tell me now, even roughly, how big a mass can be moved through time?'

'Though we have only used small objects up until now there is theoretically no limiting factor on size. If we had a field big enough, why, I suppose that we could move the Washington Monument. There is nothing in the theory that precludes the possibility.'

Troy hesitated before he said it. 'If that's true, then it is within reason, it is possible — that a human being could be sent through time?'

'Yes, why not, mass is mass—' Kleiman stopped, and he tilted his head as he looked at Troy. 'Are you getting at what I think you are getting at? Is it your theory that this explains the colonel's sudden disappearance?'

'Possibly. It might explain a lot of things. The way he committed those brutal murders just to buy himself some time. Then there was his apparent indifference to leaving a trail that could be followed later. Why should he care what crimes he committed — if he were no longer here to face the consequences of his acts?'

'You're right, he wouldn't care in the slightest. If his escape through time were possible. But during the research to date we never even considered using living creatures in our experiments. It might very well be lethal, we don't know. It was never tried.'

'So try.'

'Spoken in the true spirit of science. And I know just what we need.'

Kleiman rooted around in his desk until he found the in-house telephone directory. He checked a number, then push-buttoned it into the phone. Then leaned back in his chair with his feet on the desktop as he listened to it ring.

'Is that you, Hugo? Yes, Bob Kleiman here. I know, long time no see. This is a big place, we're all overworked. Listen, I got a question for you if you've got a moment. Great. You remember about six months ago I set up a small field generator for you, so you could check out the effect of the tau field on cellular life? Any results? Well, no news is good news. Did you ever move on from unicellular forms the way you said you would? Good news indeed, white mice. Maybe I can help. I want to put one through the entire field at full strength. Right — I thought you would be interested. But please send me one that you are not too fond of, because there is no guarantee how healthy it will be after it has zipped its way through the space-time continuum. You're a bubeleh, thanks.' He hung up the phone and turned back to Troy.

'A messenger is on the way. I'll set up the experiment now and we'll soon have the answer to at least one of your questions.'

It was a very small white mouse. It had pink eyes and a pink nose, and sat up while it daintily cleaned its whiskers with its front paws. It looked on with interest while its cage was placed on the laser marker at the experimental site.

'Blast off,' Kleiman said, pressing the button that initiated the experiment. The cage vanished. 'I'm giving it a full five minutes. The alarm will sound ten seconds before return. Now let me check this print-out again. Because I have been doing some thinking myself. It is obvious by hindsight that those jokers must have run some kind of experiment that we never thought of. Some way of finding if past projection works, a way of testing the theory experimentally without getting involved in time paradoxes.'

'You've lost me again.'

'Sorry. But like it or not, when we begin to talk about reverse time flow we very quickly find ourselves getting involved with the old saw about what would happen to me if I went back in time and killed my grandfather before my mother was born.'

'What would happen?'

'That's the question. If I killed him, why then I could never be born, so I couldn't have gone back and killed him, therefore—'

'A paradox.'

'Correct. We never found a way to set up an experiment that would get around this difficulty. And of course very brief time movements were out of the question. We had proof of that before we even started.'

'You wouldn't care to explain that in some detail, because once again I haven't the slightest idea of what you are talking about.'

'It's obvious. We never found anything lying on the transmission site on the rock — so we never sent anything back that we could find lying on the rock. So we didn't try. If we had found something unexpected on the test site we would have known that we in the future had sent it back in time to be found, so therefore we would have to make the experiment later to send it back. It gets complicated.'

'You think that it is complicated!' Troy burst out laughing. 'Can you imagine how it looks to me? This stuff is just not in my league. After high school I went to college, graduated with a BA in history, then was instantly snapped up by the draft. For a couple of years I got shot at, so I learned how to shoot back. I stayed in the Army after the war. I've forgotten most of my history but I know a lot about modern weaponry, as well as how to stay alive when a lot of other guys are trying to kill me. But about all this equipment here, I know — what was that word you used? — bupkas.'

'A good word. It's Yiddish for goat shit. And what could be of less value than that?'

'Nothing. Bupkas. For openers, I don't even know why that rock is there.'

Kleiman looked at the mass of grey granite rising out of the floor and nodded. 'That's an easy one. When you think of time you have to think of physical movement. Not only do people move around in physical space during any given time interval, but the Earth also revolves around the sun. While the entire solar system itself is moving through interstellar space. This is a complication that we luckily do not have to face. The tau field works in what we call world time. That means that objects are displaced in time — but not in space. An object on top of that rock will move minutes into the future and still be on top of that rock. Which is why we use it. If we used something like a workbench instead, there is always the chance that someone might move the bench. The object would move in time to the space where the workbench used to be — but no longer is. Crash, tinkle, the experiment hits the floor. Therefore our pet rock. This very solid object is a hundred per cent metamorphic granite. It has been on this spot for a couple of million years, and hopefully will be there for as long again. The preliminary research was done before my time, but I understand that a geological survey was made of the area before this lab was built. In a sense it was built here, because that stone was here…'

The ping of the bell interrupted him. They turned to the rock just in time to see the cage reappear. The mouse was sitting up, looking at them. It hurried over and sniffed Troy's finger when he put it between the bars.

'Another question answered,' Kleiman said cheerfully, picking up the cage and smiling at its very lively occupant. 'Time travel is good for you. A tonic. This mouse never looked better. Hugo will be happy to get the results.' The smile vanished. 'So, to answer your earlier question. Yes, the iron colonel could have escaped through time. How or why, I have no idea.'

'Then we'll just have to find out. You're doing great so far. Do those figures tell you how far into the past he went?'

'Those figures tell me little or nothing at the present moment. We must calibrate — and we can save time by finding out how McCulloch and company calibrated their own experiments. For openers we can reverse the equation that we use for future displacement. However there is no guarantee that the terms will work precisely in reverse. But McCulloch and Harper must have done something to calibrate the time displacement or they wouldn't have dared risk the big trip. If they did it — we can follow their lead, get their results and use them ourselves. Let me see if I can find their traces. There's a coffee machine in the corner. Pour us a couple of cups while I browse through the print-outs looking for their footsteps. It shouldn't take long.'

It didn't. By the time they were finishing their coffee, Kleiman had found the entry he was looking for.

'Eureka! Which, in case your classical education was deficient, is Greek for I have found it. There are some smaller probing experiments here, a lot of them, but I looked for a big one. And here it is. It took place a little over a year ago. Look at the juice they used! Don't show the electricity bill to the tax payers. Now some quick work with the math.'

Kleiman checked the figures twice, and the results remained the same. He scribbled on a ruled pad, then tore off the sheet and passed it to Troy. 'December tenth, nineteen forty-one,' he said.

Troy looked at it. 'This is the arrival date?'

'Correct. Something weighing approximately fifteen kilos was sent back to that date. Or at least I think that is the date. The mass is correct, but the date is simply an inversion of the future equation. It may not check out exactly, but we can do the same thing they did to find out. Check the newspapers. Whatever they sent back had to be unusual enough to make news. A rabid wolf, twenty-five plucked and deep-frozen two-headed chickens, I don't know what. But you can be sure that whatever they sent, it was something odd enough so that they knew it would be noticed and reported in the papers.'

'Are you sure of this?'

'Nope. But it's a good enough theory to start with. Why don't we split the work? I'll keep analysing the print-out and put together a list of how much they sent and when. While I'm doing that you drive over to the Washington Post and look through their files for that date. If there is nothing recorded, look forward and backwards until you do find something. It has to be there or McCulloch wouldn't have gone ahead with his nefarious plans.'

'I agree. How late will you be here?'

'Until you phone.' Kleiman placed his hand on his heart and looked heavenward. 'I break a long-standing rule to be out of the shop by five and into the first martini by five-thirty. No sacrifice is too great for the cause. Go, and come back with your shield or upon it. I want good news or none at all. You can do it.'

Why not, Troy thought, as he drove back into the city. Just stick with it until he uncovered some trace. He would do this because he had the sure knowledge that the information was there. McCulloch had found it — and so would he.

The files at the Post were well organized. Copies of back issues were available for consultation or purchase. But in order to save space, after some weeks had gone by, the newspapers were stored on microfilm. Troy filled out an order form for the December 1941 reel and pressed the button on the counter to call the clerk. There was a long wait. He didn't appear until Troy rang the bell again.

'Patience, brother, patience,' he said. A mulatto youth with an impressive afro, the hair standing out a good eight inches from his head. He took the call slip from Troy and vanished back into the files. But returned in less than a minute and gave the slip back to Troy.

'Can't do it,' he said. 'No way I can oblige you with this one.'

'Why not?'

'It's not there, man, that's why not. Happens once in a while. Sometimes they get misfiled, sometimes the dudes even walk away with them. This is a hard world. It could have happened a long time ago for all I know. We hardly ever get requests for stuff this old. The reel might have been missing for months even. But whatever happened — this one is gone for sure.'