Rainbow Mars (35 page)

Svetz's heart lurched. “How do you know?”

“You should recognize that machine in the walkway. We brought it back last month from Los Angeles, from the day of the Great California Earthquake. It's an internal combustion automobile. It belongs to the Secretary-General.”

“What'll we do?”

“Go in and show him around. Pray he doesn't insist on being taken back to Watts, August eleventh, twenty Post Atomic.”

“Suppose he does?” If they boiled Ra Chen for treason, they would surely boil Svetz too.

“I'll have to send him back if he asks it. Oh, not with you, Svetz. With Zeera. She's black, and she speaks American. It might help.”

“Not enough,” said Svetz, but he was already calmer. Let Zeera take the risks.

They passed close by the Secretary-General's automobile. Svetz was intrigued by its odd, angular look, its complex control panels, the shiny chrome trim. Someone had removed the hood, so that the polished complexity of the motor was open to view.

“Wait,” Svetz said suddenly. “Does he like it?”

“
Will
you come on?”

“Does the Secretary-General like his automobile?”

“Sure, Svetz. He loves it.”

“Get him another car. California must have been full of automobiles on the day before the Great Quake.”

Ra Chen stopped suddenly. “That could be it. It would hold him for a while, give us time…”

“Time for what?”

Ra Chen didn't hear. “A racing car…? No, he'd kill himself. The Circle of Advisors would want to install a robot chauffeur-override. Maybe a dune buggy?”

“Why not ask
him?
”

“It's worth a try,” said Ra Chen. They went up the steps.

*   *   *

In the Center there were three time machines, including the one with the big extension cage, plus a host of panels with flashing colored lights. The Secretary-General liked those. He smiled and chuckled as Ra Chen led him about. His guards hovered at his shoulders, their faces stiff, their fingernails clicking against their gunbutts.

Ra Chen introduced Svetz as “my best agent.” Svetz was so overwhelmed by the honor that he could only stutter. But the Secretary-General didn't seem to notice.

Whether he had forgotten about seeing the Watts Riot was moot; but he did forget to ask on that occasion.

When Ra Chen asked about cars, the Secretary-General smiled all across his face and nodded so vigorously that Svetz worried about spinal injury. Faced by a vast array of choices, five or six decades with dozens of new models for every year, the Secretary-General put his finger in his mouth and considered well.

Then he made his choice.

*   *   *

“‘Why not ask him? Why not ask him?'” Ra Chen mimicked savagely. “Now we know. The first car! He wants the first car ever made!”

“I thought he'd ask for a
make
of car.” Svetz rubbed his eyes hard. “How can we possibly find one car? A couple of decades to search through, and all of the North American and European continents!”

“It's not that bad. We'll use the books from the Beverly Hills Library. But it's bad enough, Svetz…”

*   *   *

The raid on the Beverly Hills Library had been launched in full daylight, using the big extension cage and a dozen guards armed with stunners, on June third, twenty-six Post Atomic. Giant time machines, crazy men wearing flying belts—on any other day it would have made every newspaper and television program in the country. But June the third was a kind of Happy Hunting Ground for the Institute for Temporal Research.

No Californian would report the raid, except to other Californians. If the story did get out, it would be swamped by more important news. The series of quakes would begin at sunset, and the ocean would rise like a great green wall …

Svetz and Ra Chen and Zeera Southworth spent half the night going through the history section of the Beverly Hills Library. Ra Chen knew enough white American to recognize titles; but in the end Zeera had to do all the reading.

Zeera Southworth was tall and slender and very dark, crowned with hair like a black powder explosion. She sat gracefully cross-legged on the floor, looking very angular, reading pertinent sections aloud while the others paced. They followed a twisting trail of references.

By two in the morning they were damp and furious.

“Nobody invented the automobile!” Ra Chen exploded. “It just happened!”

“We certainly have a wide range of choices,” Zeera agreed. “I take it we won't want any of the steam automobiles. That would eliminate Gugnot and Trevethick and the later British steam coaches.”

“We'll concentrate on internal combustion.”

Svetz said, “Our best bets seem to be Lenoir of France and Marcus of Vienna. Except that Daimler and Benz have good claims, and Selden's patent held good in court—”

“Dammit, pick one!”

“Just a minute, sir.” Zeera alone retained some semblance of calm. “This Ford might be the best we've got.”

“Ford? Why? He invented nothing but a system of mass production.”

Zeera held up the book. Svetz recognized it: a biography she had been reading earlier. “This book implies that Ford was responsible for everything: that he created the automobile industry singlehanded.”

“But we know that isn't true,” Svetz protested.

Ra Chen made a pushing motion with one hand. “Let's not be hasty. We take Ford's car, and we produce that book to authenticate it. Who'll know the difference?”

“But if someone does the same research we just—oh. Sure. He'll get the same answers. No answers. Ford's just as good a choice as anyone else.”

“Better, if nobody looks further,” Zeera said with satisfaction. “Too bad we can't take the Model T; it looks much more like an automobile. This thing he started with looks like a kiddy cart. It says he built it out of old pipes.”

“Tough,” said Ra Chen.

*   *   *

Late the next morning, Ra Chen delivered last-minute instructions.

“You can't just take the car,” he told Zeera. “If you're interrupted, come back without it.”

“Yes, sir. It would be less crucial if we took our duplicate from a later time, from the Smithsonian Institution, for instance.”

“The automobile has to be new. Be reasonable, Zeera! We can't give the Secretary-General a second-hand automobile!”

“No sir.”

“We'll land you about three in the morning. Use infrared and pills to change your vision. Don't show any visible light. Artificial light would probably scare them silly.”

“Right.”

“Were you shown—”

“I know how to use the duplicator.” Zeera sounded faintly supercilious, as always. “I also know that it reverses the image.”

“Never mind that. Bring back the reversed duplicate, and we'll just reverse it again.”

“Of course.” She seemed chagrined that she had not seen that for herself. “What about dialect?”

“You speak black and white American, but it's for a later period. Don't use slang. Stick to black unless you want to impress someone white. Then speak white, but speak slowly and carefully and use simple words. They'll think you're from another country. I hope.”

Zeera nodded crisply. She stooped and entered the extension cage, turned and pulled the duplicator after her. Its bulk was small, but it weighed a ton or so without the lift field generator to float it. One end glowed white with glow-paint.

They watched the extension cage blur and vanish. It was still attached to the rest of the time machine, but attached along a direction that did not transmit light.

“Now then!” Ra Chen rubbed his hands together. “I don't expect she'll have any trouble getting Henry Ford's flightless flight stick. Our trouble may come when the Secretary-General sees what he's got.”

Svetz nodded, remembering the gray-and-flat pictures in the history books. Ford's machine was ungainly, slipshod, ugly and undependable. A few small surreptitious additions would make it dependable enough to suit the Secretary-General.
Nothing
would make it beautiful.

“We need another distraction,” said Ra Chen. “We've only bought ourselves more time to get it.”

Zeera's small time machine gave off a sound of ripping cloth, subdued, monotonous, reassuring. A dozen workmen were readying the big extension cage. Zeera would need it to transport the duplicate automobile.

“There's something I'd like to try,” Svetz ventured.

“Concerning what?”

“The roc.”

Ra Chen grinned. “The ostrich? Svetz, don't you ever give up?”

Svetz looked stubborn. “Do you know anything about neoteny?”

“Never heard of it. Look, Svetz, we're going to be over budget because of the roc trip. Not your fault, of course, but another trip would cost us over a million commercials.”

“I won't need the time machine.”

“Oh?”

“But I could use the help of the Palace Veterinarian. Have you got enough pull to arrange that?”

*   *   *

The Palace Veterinarian was a stocky, blocky, busty woman with muscular legs and a thrusting jaw. A floating platform packed with equipment followed her between the rows of cages.

“I know most of these beasts,” she told Svetz. “Once upon a time I was going to give then all names. An animal ought to have a name.”

“They've got names.”

“That's what I decided.
GILA MONSTER, ELEPHANT, OSTRICH,
” she read. “You give Horace a name so you won't mix him up with Gilbert. But nobody would get
HORSE
mixed up with
ELEPHANT.
There's only one of each. Poor beasties.” She stopped before the cage marked
OSTRICH.
“Is this your prize? I've been meaning to come see him.”

The bird shifted its feet in indecision; it cocked its head to consider the couple on the other side of the glass. It seemed surprised at Svetz's return.

“He looks just like a newly hatched chick,” she said. “Except for the legs and feet, of course. They seem to have developed to support the extra mass.”

Svetz was edgy with the need to be in two places at once. His own suggestion had sparked Zeera's project. He ought to be at the Center. Yet—the ostrich had been his first failure.

He asked, “Does it look neotenous?”

“Neotenous? Of course. Neoteny is a common method of evolution. We have neotenous traits ourselves, you know. Bare skin, where all the other primates are covered with hair. When our ancestors started chasing their meat across the plains, they needed a better cooling system than most primates need. So they kept one aspect of immaturity, the bare skin. Probably the big head is another one.

“The axolotl is the classic example of neoteny—”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what a salamander was, don't you? It had gills and fins while immature. As an adult it grew lungs and shed the gills and lived on land. The axolotl was a viable offshoot that never lost the gills and fins. A gene shift, typical of neoteny.”

“I never heard of either of them, axolotls or salamanders.”

“They needed open streams and ponds to live, Svetz.”

Svetz nodded. If they needed open water, then both species must be over a thousand years extinct.

“The problem is that we don't know when your bird lost its ability to fly. Some random neotenous development may have occurred far in the past, so that the bird's wings never developed. Then it may have evolved its present size to compensate.”

“Oh. Then the ancestor—”

“May have been no bigger than a turkey. Shall we go in and find out?”

*   *   *

The glass irised open to admit them. Svetz stepped into the cage, felt the tug of the pressure curtain flowing over and around him. The ostrich backed warily away.

The vet opened a pouch on her floating platform, withdrew a stunner, and used it. The ostrich squawked in outrage and collapsed. No muss, no fuss.

The vet strode toward her patient—and stopped suddenly in the middle of the cage. She sniffed, sniffed again in horror. “Have I lost my sense of smell?”

Svetz produced two items like cellophane bags, handed her one. “Put this on.”

“Why?”

“You might suffocate if you don't.” He donned the other himself, by pulling it over his head, then pressing the rim against the skin of his neck. It stuck. When he finished he had a hermetic seal.

“This air is deadly,” he explained. “It's the air of the Earth's past, reconstituted. Think of it as coming from fifteen hundred years ago. There's no civilization. Nothing's been burned yet. That's why you can't smell anything but ostrich.

“Out there—Well, you don't really need sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide and nitric oxides to stay alive. You do need carbon dioxide. There's a nerve complex in the lymph glands under your left armpit, and it triggers the breathing reflex. It's activated by a certain concentration of CO
2
in the blood.”

She had finished donning her filter helmet. “I take it the concentration is too low in here.”

“Right. You'd forget to breathe. You're used to air that's four percent carbon dioxide. In here it's barely a tenth of that.

“The bird can breathe this bland stuff. In fact, it'd die without it. What we've put into the air in the past fifteen hundred years, we've had fifteen hundred years to adapt to. The ostrich hasn't.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” she said shortly; so that Svetz wondered if he'd been lecturing someone who knew more than he did. She knelt beside the sleeping ostrich, and the platform floated lower for her convenience.

Svetz watched her as she ministered to the ostrich, taking tissue samples, testing blood pressure and heartbeat in reaction to small doses of hormones and drugs.