Chronospace (37 page)

“Stevie,” Murphy whispered, feeling cold once more. “He still does.”

The entrance came up, and the old man gently turned the wheel, steering the car into the snow-covered drive. He put his foot on the pedal again, and the car fishtailed a bit. “Damn,” he mumbled. “Wished I’d . . . you’d bought snow tires for this thing.”

“Sorry. Can’t afford them.”

The old man grunted as he turned into the skid. The car straightened out, then headed for the wooden gate which
barred the park entrance. Yet now the gate was wide open; the Escort charged through, slewing snow as it passed the fieldstone fences on either side. “Not true,” he said. “You have enough cash, but snow tires are one more expense you don’t want to add if you didn’t have to. I mean, this is Virginia, isn’t it? Winter here isn’t as bad as it was in Ithaca, when you had the old Volvo . . .”

Murphy looked at him sharply. “How did you . . . ?”

“Donna sometimes snores when she’s asleep, and she doesn’t like to make love while the lights are on, but she’s got a thing for park benches. That’s one of the reasons why you like coming out here.” The old man flicked the wipers up higher. “On the way home, you always drop by a little roadside shack, where you can get fried clams and Stevie can use the pot. And sometimes you stop at the mall to rent a movie from Blockbuster. You always argue over what to get. She likes romantic comedies, but you prefer . . .”

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“You’ve got three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”

That had been one of Skip’s favorite expressions.

The road was nearly invisible, but Murphy could make out the faint furrows of tire tracks; someone had come this way only a little while earlier. They followed the road into the park, passing trees whose branches sagged beneath thick blankets of snow, the headlights barely piercing the white squall. The road led them around a small hill toward a broad pasture; the headlights caught a metallic reflection: the rear bumper of another automobile, parked in the road just ahead.

The old man stopped behind the other car. “Okay, we’re here,” he said. He switched off the ignition, then opened his door. As the dome light came on, Murphy saw the odd gun with which he had been shot in the parking lot, nestled next to his thigh. The old man smiled as he picked it up. “Thanks for not making me use this on you again,” he said, not pointing it at him. “I didn’t like doing so the first time.”

Murphy climbed out, shut the passenger door behind
him. Even in the darkness, he could make out the snow-covered hump of the other car. He expected someone to get out, yet no one did; so far as he could tell, they were all alone. “You said someone would be here,” he said as the old man walked around to join him.

“You’ll see.” He pulled the bill of his Mets cap low over his eyes, then motioned for Murphy to follow him. “C’mon. This way.”

Their boots crunched softly as they left the cars behind and trod into the pasture. Murphy’s imagination briefly entertained a dark thought—his frozen corpse, found face-down in the snow in this very spot by a park ranger—yet he found himself more perplexed than afraid. Somehow, he intuitively knew that he wouldn’t come to any harm.

About twenty feet from the road, the old man stopped. “Okay, we’re here.” He pointed into the darkness ahead. “Now watch . . . this is where it gets interesting.”

Murphy stared at him, then turned to peer through the snow. At first he saw nothing.

And then a flying saucer materialized before him.

It appeared quietly, reverse-phasing out of the storm as if it had been there all the time. Indeed, it must have, for its upper fuselage was covered with snow and shallow drifts were piled around its wedge-shaped landing gear. Yet they were so close to it that, had he taken a few more steps, Murphy would have walked facefirst into one of the lowered flanges.

Murphy felt his heart skip a beat. Unable to breathe, let alone muster the startled scream that caught halfway up his throat, he staggered back, his legs obeying an instinctive urge to flee, until his numbed feet slipped out from beneath him and he toppled to the ground. He landed on his back, his arms sprawled out on either side; for an absurd moment he looked as if he were trying to make a snow angel.

“Oh, Jesus!” he croaked. “What? . . . What is that . . . ?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” The old man chuckled. “It’s a timeship, David.”

“A . . . a timeship.”

“That’s right. A timeship. Just like you wrote about in your article.” He bent down, offered his hand. “Nice guess. Couldn’t have done better myself. Now, c’mon, get up. There’s some people aboard who want to meet you.”

Murphy didn’t take his hand. Instead, he stared up the old man. His face lay in shadow, shrouded by snow and the darkness of night, yet suddenly it seemed as if he could see him as clearly as if it were high noon on a summer day.

“I know who you are,” Murphy whispered.

“Yes,” Murphy replied, “I expect you probably do.”

“
A
nd that’s why you’re here,” Franc finished. “Do you understand now?”

“Yeah, sure . . . sure.” David Murphy slumped in one of the couches, gazing at nothing in particular. “It’s perfectly clear.”

“No. You’re not getting it.” Leaning against a bulkhead, Zack Murphy had remained quiet during the entire discussion. “You say you do, but you’re still trying to find a way to fit this into your old worldview.”

Franc glanced over his shoulder at him. “Dr. Murphy . . .”

“You think I don’t know myself?” Zack crossed the crew compartment, sat down next to David. “Look here, son . . .”

“I’m not your son.” David glared at the older version of himself. “Unless you’ve got another paradox you want to tell me about.”

Zack grinned back at him. “Mom was pretty good-looking in her time,” he said drily, “but I wouldn’t go that far.”

David surprised everyone by laughing out loud. Franc and Lea gave each other uncertain looks, and Metz stopped sniggering. Only Zack was amused. “Just a figure of speech,” he added. “Sorry.”

“Excuse me . . . sorry . . . didn’t mean it.” David shook his head. “But y’know, you’re right. I didn’t quite believe it . . . until just now, at least.”

“So now we’re straight, right?” Zack looked at him closely. “You know this isn’t some CIA plot, anything like that? You know this is the real deal?”

“Uh-huh.” David let out his breath, slowly nodded. “I knew it the moment I saw this thing. I just had trouble getting used to it.” He hesitated. “The only thing I’m still unconvinced about is why I’m responsible.”

“You’re not,” Franc said. “All of us share the burden. You’re only the primary factor, and your role in this hasn’t even begun yet. It’s what you may do in the future that concerns us.”

“That’s the part I don’t quite understand.” David crossed his legs, bridged his hands together. “You say that, in a couple of years, I’m going to write a science fiction novel that will inspire Steven to become the scientist who figures out time travel. But I’ve already tried to write fiction, and everything I submitted to magazines was rejected. That’s why I wrote articles instead.”

“But you originally intended to write fiction, correct?” Lea asked, and he slowly nodded. “So it could be that, a few years from now, you try your hand at it again.”

“And this time, you succeed.” Clasping his hands together in a similar gesture, Zack pointed his forefingers at David. “Possibly because you used . . . could use . . . the article you published for
Analog
as the basis for your novel. At any rate, the solution is simple. Don’t write a novel . . . or at least not
that
novel.”

“So you’re warning me not to do something I hadn’t intended to do already.” David slowly nodded, and Zack shrugged offhandedly. “Easy enough, but I’m not sure that’s going to solve all your problems. Someone else may already be interested in time travel.”

Franc raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well, just this morning, I had a meeting with NASA’s
associate administrator, Roger Ordmann. He’s the chief of Space Science, my department, and . . .”

“Whoa! Wait a minute!” Zack Murphy raised a hand. “Did you say Roger Ordmann?” David frowned and nodded, and Zack gaped at him in surprise. “That’s the Chief Administrator of OPS in my worldline.”

“Another convergence,” Lea murmured. They had already noted a certain reoccurence of names; Paolo Sanchez and Ray Sanchez, for example.

“One more indication that the worldlines aren’t that far apart.” Franc absently rubbed his chin with his forefinger. “In this frame of existence, he’s a senior NASA administrator. In the other, he performs much the same function for the Office of . . .”

“Y’know, maybe you shouldn’t be telling me this.” David looked first at Franc, then at Zack. “I mean, you’ve already told me enough about the different worldlines. Maybe it’s better if I don’t know all the details.”

“At this juncture, I’m not sure if it makes much difference,” Franc said, “but if you’d rather not know . . .” David shook his head. “Very well, but what about this meeting you had with Ordmann?”

“He’d read my article . . . someone else at NASA had brought it to my attention . . . and he said he was concerned about it being published by someone who worked at the agency. Said it might cast NASA in a bad light and all that. But the thing that really struck me . . . especially later, after you and I had our little chat at the Air and Space . . .”

“I haven’t apologized for that,” Franc said. “Sorry. It had to be done.”

“You scared the hell out of me, but . . . well, apology accepted.” David grinned at him. “I’d love to know how you did it, but . . . I dunno, maybe that’s one of those things I shouldn’t know, right?” Franc smiled, and he went on. “What struck me later was that your questions were the same as his. Like, what led me to believe that UFO sightings were tied to time travel.”

Lea groaned softly. “Oh, no,” Metz said, closing his eyes and putting a hand over his face. “Here we go again . . .”

“No, no,” Franc said quickly. “They’re not necessarily linked. This could be exactly what it seemed to be . . . a senior government official concerned about public perception.”

“But what if it isn’t?” Zack asked. “Again, look at the convergences. In my worldline, in this very same year, the American government began a crash program to develop time travel. Does this mean that the same thing is going on here, in this worldline?”

Lea wrapped her arms around herself and turned away. “Nothing we do matters,” she murmured. “No matter how this turns out, someone will eventually build a timeship.”

“My point exactly,” David said. “It may not matter whether I publish a novel or if my son becomes a physicist, because the idea’s out there already. So what are you going to do? Go back to 1898 and kill H.G. Wells? You can, if you really want to, but what’s to prevent another writer from coming up with the same concept? Or maybe you stop Einstein from developing the theory of relativity. You might, but does that necessarily prevent Stephen Hawking or Kip Thorne or someone else from investigating the same problems?”

“Free will,” Zack said quietly.

“Pardon me?”

“It all comes back to the question of free will.” Pushing himself out of his chair, the other Murphy clasped his hands behind his back. “We may be able to do certain things,” he said, pensively staring at the floor. “In fact, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that we will. The question is,
should
we?”

“Like . . . I dunno.” David thought about it a moment. “Maybe like the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . .”

“If you mean atomic bombs, that didn’t happen in my worldline,” Zack said. “About five thousand American
G.I.s were killed during the invasion of Japan, and nearly fifty thousand Japanese died defending their country, but no country has ever dropped a bomb in wartime . . . or at least not where I come from.” He shook his head. “But you get the point. The technology may be inevitable, but the consequences aren’t, and the consequences of time travel are far more hideous . . . at least in the long run . . . than nuclear war would ever be.”

“So what do we do?”

“You already know what you have to do . . . or rather, don’t do. It’s up to you. These people have already made their decision.” Zack took a deep breath, then turned to face the others. “Dr. Lu? You’re still ready to go through with this?”

Franc hesitated, then glanced at Lea and Vasili. Both quietly nodded, Metz a little more reluctantly than the others. He smiled grimly, then turned back to the two Murphys.

“Yes, we are,” he said. “We’re staying here.”

“What . . . ?” David Murphy rose from his chair. “Here? In this . . . I mean, in this year?”

“We don’t have much choice,” Lea said. “If we’ve succeeded, then the place we came from no longer exists. Or will never exist, technically speaking. The fact that we didn’t board the
Hindenburg
is proof of that. If we attempt to go forward from this point in time, we may very well crash-land again in some place farther up this worldline, as we did the first time we attempted to leave 1937.”

“Therefore potentially causing another paradox, with similar outcomes,” Franc said. “The same thing would probably occur if we tried to go back in time. No matter where we go, regardless of the year or location, in all likelihood another paradox would result. We would survive, of course . . . but the consequences would be unimaginable.”