Thrice upon a Time (20 page)

A few minutes later Charles bade the others good night and went to bed. Cartland suggested to the other two that it wouldn't take the three of them long to tidy the machine up in readiness to commence the phase-two tests first thing in the morning. Murdoch and Lee agreed, and they all proceeded on down to the lab.

Cartland reassembled the subunits strewn across the top of the bench, rapidly ran through a series of checks, nodded his head in satisfaction, and slid the assembly back into the equipment rack from which he had taken it. Then he began reattaching wires and connectors, his hands moving swiftly and deftly with practiced ease. Lee leaned with his elbows resting on one of the low cubicles and watched with the unspoken respect of one professional for another.

"Doc says that you spent a lot of time in the British Air Force," Lee said after a while. "Was that where you studied electronics?"

"
Royal
Air Force, old boy," Cartland said without looking up. "Yes, I suppose I did pick most of it up there. I was mixed up with military types and gadgets long before I joined the jolly old RAF though… ever since I was a boy, in fact."

"Charles once said that you were born in Malaya. Is that right?"

"Yes… born into an Army family. My father was an instructor in a school of jungle warfare that the Australians ran in Malaya in the 1960s… mainly for U.S. Rangers and Special Forces, actually. He was with the British Army, of course, but attached to the Aussies. When the war in Vietnam fell apart in 1970 whenever-it-was, he moved to Australia, so that was where I grew up." Cartland shrugged as he tightened the restraining clips of a bus microconnector. "You know how it is—the town wasn't much more than a glorified Army camp and air base. I got interested in electronics and flying and that kind of thing, and when we moved back to England I went to Cambridge for a while, then joined up."

"The RAF?" Lee said.

"That's right. After a while they sent me to the U.S.A. for shuttle training in Nevada. Spent a year there. Then went to Germany to work with the people who were designing the E.S.A. shuttle, then to the Sahara to fly it."

"You sure got around."

"That's not all of it either," Murdoch threw in from where he was tidying up the cables at the rear of one of the racks. "Tell him the rest, Ted."

"Well," Cartland said, "to cut a long story short, I suppose I became a sort of Air Force consultant on designing orbital vehicles. I did that in the U.K. for a while, then went back to Australia to do testing at the missile range at Woomera. Then when the Americans and the Europeans merged their space programs, I went to Washington to do technical liaison."

"So how did you wind up at Cornell?" Lee asked. "That was where you met Charles, wasn't it?"

"That's right. I got to know him fairly well while working in Washington. They were doing some interesting things for NASA on orbiting observatories. Charles was with NASA at the time, and that was how we bumped into each other."

"I can see why you never got married, Ted," Lee remarked.

"Good heavens! No time for anything like that." Cartland looked positively shaken by the idea, as if the possibility had occurred to him for the first time in his life. "Mind you, there's no shortage of popsy on that kind of circuit, so there's no reason to miss out on anything. I mean… just because a chap likes a drink now and then, it doesn't mean he has to go mad and buy himself a whole bloody pub, does it?" He straightened up and placed the tools that he had been using back on the bench, where Maxwell was pawing frantically at a CRT screen in a futile attempt to trap the flickering trace. Then he moved over to the console and ran quickly through a sequence of system checks. "There," he announced. "That seems to be it. I'll leave it running in monitor mode in case anything comes in. Talking about drinks, I wouldn't say no to a quick noggin before turning in. How about you chaps?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Lee said.

"I might as well put these covers back while I'm at it," Murdoch called from behind the rack. "You go on upstairs and set 'em up. I'll be there in a couple of minutes." Cartland and Lee left the lab, and Murdoch heard their voices fading away along the corridor outside.

He finished replacing the covers, came around from behind the rack, and stood for a while staring at the console of the machine. It was strange, he thought, that everybody could appear outwardly so nonchalant and matter-of-fact about it—a discovery that seemed on the verge of rocking the whole of established science back on its heels. And yet, inside, surely the others were all as excited as he was. He tried to picture the possibilities that would be opened up when they could relax the rules and communicate freely with pasts that had been and with futures that still lay ahead. Staggering possibilities, which in all probability none of them had even glimpsed yet.

His eyes strayed to a sheet of hardcopy printout that was lying on the desk by the console. It was a memory map that he had used earlier in the day, showing which parts of the system's memory were reserved for programs and other purposes and which were left free. For no particular reason he mentally selected a portion of the unallocated space and decided that, when the time came, there would be his own personal mailbox from the future. Crazy!

And then an intriguing realization dawned on him: By virtue of his having made that simple decision, every version of himself who existed along the timeline ahead as it then stood would possess that same knowledge, by remembering having been him now. For the same reason, they would remember having thought exactly what he was thinking at that very moment. Therefore, if any of them had anything to say that was sufficiently important to warrant breaking the rules for any reason, this would be the obvious moment in the past to send it to.

With a shrug and not really expecting to find anything, he moved a step forward and tapped a code into the touchboard to interrogate the mailbox. As he had expected, nothing was there. He laughed inwardly at himself for being silly, scooped Maxwell out of the trash bin below the desk, and closed down the lab for the night.

But the thought still intrigued him as he walked back along the white-walled passage that led to the foot of the stairs. He would continue to check his mailbox regularly from then on… just in case. Something might come in one day. And there was no harm in simply interrogating an area of memory. That wouldn't involve the breaking of any rules.

As Murdoch came down the main staircase after getting up and showering the next morning, the first thing he heard was Morna's high-pitched voice coming from somewhere immediately below him.

"I cannot see him, Robert. He's gone right down inside. I can hear him scrabblin' around somewhere down here near the leg."

Murdoch came down the lower flight to find Robert dismantling the suit of early sixteenth-century English armor that stood by the foot of the stairs, while Morna watched anxiously from behind his shoulder. The helmet, gorget, and pauldrons were on the floor surrounded by a heap of ironmongery that had once been an arm. Robert was muttering profanities to himself while he fiddled with the straps securing the breastplate.

"What's the idea?" Murdoch asked cheerfully. "Thinking of selling it on the side as scrap?"

"Och, it's Maxwell," Morna told him. "He stepped off o' the stairs and into the helmet. The visor fell shut behind him, and now he's gone down inside."

"He's fallen into the leg and cannot get back up," Robert grumbled blackly. "I'll have to be takin' the whole damn thing to pieces now to get him out."

"Grilled cat for dinner today, huh?" Murdoch said with a laugh, and walked away in the direction of the kitchen.

After breakfast he went down to the lab just for the hell of it and checked his mailbox. There were no deliveries. Then he went back upstairs and joined Charles in his study. Charles had some calculations that he was particularly anxious to complete in time for a clean start on Monday morning, and Murdoch had agreed to spend the whole day helping out until the time came for him to leave for Inverness to meet Anne. The work divided itself conveniently into two parts that could be tackled separately and merged together later on, and they worked largely in silence throughout the morning. They broke off to have lunch with Cartland and Lee, who had been in the lab setting the system up for phase two, and resumed immediately afterward. It was a necessary but not especially exciting part of the research, and Murdoch found the hours dragging. But he consoled himself with pleasant anticipations for the evening that lay ahead.

It was approaching five in the afternoon when Murdoch suddenly screwed his face into a puzzled frown. A check-function that he had just finished evaluating had failed to give the expected result. He sighed and began the procedure again, using a terminal connected into the datagrid. Ten minutes later the same, wrong, answer was staring him in the face. He gritted his teeth against rising impatience and recalled to the screen a summary file of the results he had stored before lunch. It was five-thirty when he groaned aloud and slumped back in his chair.

"What is it?" Charles asked, looking up from his littered desk on the far side of the study.

Murdoch gestured wearily toward the screen. "I got the third integral of the theta field wrong. It's carried on right through all the envelope profiles. Everything I've done since lunchtime has been garbage." Charles got up, came across the room, and stood looking from the papers lying at Murdoch's elbow to the screen and back again while Murdoch explained briefly what had happened.

"Ah well," Charles said with a heavy sigh. "I suppose it's better you found out about it now than in a week's time. Why don't you pack it in now and give your brain a rest. You can straighten it out tomorrow. Anyhow, it's almost time you were thinking of getting away to your fooling around in Inverness, is it not?"

"Ah hell, that'd mess up all your plans for tomorrow," Murdoch said. He heaved a long sigh and cursed himself inwardly. "Look, I'll give her a call and put tonight off. Now I know where the problem is here, I'll still be able to get it done tonight. It'll be a straight substitution when I've figured the right integral."

"You can't do that," Charles protested. "That's no way to be treating your lassie."

"No, really, I'd feel better about it if I fixed it and got it out of the way."

"There's no need. Dammit, a day sooner or later won't make any difference to me," Charles said dubiously.

"It will to me," Murdoch insisted.

He called Anne fifteen minutes later from the viset in the sitting room. The way her face lit up when she saw him made him feel worse. She was obviously disappointed when he explained the situation, but understanding, and insisted that he couldn't think of letting Charles down under the circumstances. She was due to work late-shift on Monday and Tuesday, but could make it for Wednesday. It seemed a hundred years away.

All through dinner Murdoch was far from happy. By then, his imagination was starting to play tricks and blow the whole thing out of proportion in his mind. He could see how it must have looked to her, even though she hadn't actually said anything to suggest it—a precedent that said computers and theories would always take first place. That wasn't true, of course, but how could Anne possibly be expected to know it wasn't when she had no inkling of what was happening at Storbannon and what it all meant? And
his
knowing that it wasn't true made matters all the worse. The rational part of him conceded that he was probably exaggerating everything in his mind, but still there was an emotional part that wouldn't stop worrying about it. He knew it was adolescent, but that didn't help much.

After dinner, still moody, he left the others and started walking through the main hallway on his way back to the study to begin work again. As he passed the door that led down to the lab, an insane thought hit him from nowhere. He stopped dead in his tracks.

The mailbox! It could remove the whole problem—literally. At this very moment he, or at least a "him," could be halfway to Inverness.

A sinking feeling came with the realization that something inside him was yielding to the idea. The rational part of his mind clutched wildly for straws, reciting over and over in his head all the reasons why such an action would be utterly and completely out of the question. But even as he contemplated it, the emotions that were in control were guiding his feet to the top of the stairs.

His reason came spluttering back to the surface when the message was composed and staring back at him from the screen, awaiting only the press of a single key to send it back to the destination that he had specified. He shook his head and blinked at the words in front of him, as if he had just awakened from a dream and was seeing them for the first time. What the hell did he think he was doing? Nobody fully understood the complexities of meddling with things like this yet. And besides, doing so was against all the rules that he had agreed to. No, it was unthinkable.

He had never sent back a signal that would alter a past event. None of the team had. They couldn't, because of the way the process worked. Anybody who sent back such a signal would alter the past that had molded his recollections, and in doing so would establish a new timeline that included a new self whose recollections would be consistent with the signal being received and whatever else followed as a consequence of it. The "self" who sent the signal would no longer exist on the new timeline; he would have been erased, and therefore could never exist to remember that the event had ever taken place.