He had always prided himself on his memory and very soon he was going to lose it completely. But before that happened he would use his memory to try to find the answer. With his newly gained knowledge of what the project was really about he cast his mind back, going over all the clues, the overheard conversations, observations and deductions. Somewhere in that mass of remembered material there must be an answer.
But more than anything else he kept remembering John Pebbles--in the flat, at work and in the club. A grown man with high intelligence and the mind and sense of wonder of a small boy. Pebbles had returned safely from one and, by now, perhaps two minus trips. Wayne Tillotson had made only one trip into the past and they had made the mistake of assuming that he might be able to take control of his vehicle during re-entry and that he would have enough sense left not to touch anything if he did not feel capable of controlling it.
He remembered Daniels’s crack about traffic congestion--too many comings and goings--and began to wonder about paradoxes. Normally a trip involved travelling conventionally for many days until the vehicle reached that pre-calculated point in space which would be in the desired number of hours in the future, then the yellow button would be pushed and the earth would materialise below--no paradoxes, no problems. But for a minus trip the module would travel back, again taking many days for the trip, to where the earth had been a few hours earlier. In this case there would be a few hours when the pilot was both coming and going, that was, the last few hours of conventional travel before pushing the red button when he had already landed. But it was not an embarrassing paradox because the man concerned would not meet himself because he was in two very widely separated places at the same time. The real problem was that one of himself would be in no mental condition to worry about meeting the other.
The activity yesterday in the control centre when Jean and he had been sent to an outer office to talk to Pebbles was because the other, amnesiac Pebbles had already been on the way in.
Carson himself, if everything had gone as planned, was already down there being fed and cleaned and nursed ...
‘Carson to control.’ he said sharply.
He waited grimly for the reply, remembering some of the things Daniels and Pebbles had told him. The designer had stated that time-travel had no effect on mechanical or electronic devices, minimal effects on living tissue and quite drastic effects on the thought processes. Obviously the project people tried to avoid paradoxes, but they did not know what laws, if any, they were breaking because Daniels felt that the answer might lie in the soft rather than in the hard sciences.
John Pebbles had told him much more when he had said simply that a human brain could not be made to run backwards.
Carson thought he had the answer now. There might even be a chance for him ...
‘Carson to Con ... ‘
‘Go ahead, Carson,’ Daniels replied. ‘But remember to allow for the time-lapse between question and answer--even at the speed of light it takes a while for radio signals to make the round trip. You’re pretty far out, you know.’
‘Is John Pebbles safe, and am I?’
Two hundred interminable seconds later the reply came.
‘Both of you landed safely yesterday. It sounds as if you have it all figured out already, but you will want to ask questions anyway. Fire away, Joe, this time I’ll answer them all, fully and accurately.’
Carson thought bitterly that Daniels had nothing to lose when he was going to forget everything anyway, because when Carson pushed that red button and went back to yesterday the hour he had spent out here would be gone, it would never have existed so far as his mind was concerned. Aloud, he said, ‘I’d like you to tell me all you know about the physiological effects of forward and backwards travel in time. And up to now project security has kept you from having competent medical advice available. I would like Jean to hear this if she’s there. It will help her to better understand her ... patients.’
Ten seconds later Daniels said, ‘Jean is here--she has been up all night and now both of her patients are sleeping peacefully. As for the physiological effects you ask about, there isn’t much else I can tell you. A man going forward twelve hours in time, and that is the farthest ahead we’ve gone until your twenty-four hour trip yesterday, doesn’t suddenly need a shave or feel hungry or want to go to the toilet. But when we send very short-lived insects on similar trips, in both directions, they showed definite signs of biological ageing and rejuvenation respectively after trips into the future and past. They did not appear to be troubled by sudden hunger or thirst, their appendages had not grown or shortened--they simply got older or younger.’
‘We don’t know the reason for this, Joe, but we’ve come up with some pretty wild theories. The one I favour at the moment goes like this. Non-living material objects show no detectable effects--a camera, for instance, can be sent into the past or future, take photographs there which we can develop and print in the present. But the physiological effects are such that we are beginning to suspect that physical age may be imposed by the mind, because it is only the mind which is seriously affected by time-travel. The new material which we got from John Pebbles yesterday supports this, but we still need to do some serious thinking about it.’
‘I have been doing some serious thinking about it,’ began Carson, and stopped. For the first time since he had looked up from his tape-recorder and seen Donovan’s gun filling the universe he was beginning to feel hope.
‘Probably I am just fooling myself,’ he went on, ‘and wishing out loud rather than talking sense, but how does this sound. During a forward trip, which is instantaneous, the elapsed time of the journey is not recorded in the conscious mind because nothing at all happened during that period--no impressions, no cerebration, nothing whatever to remember. On a minus trip into the past it is different--especially, as was the case with Tillotson and Pebbles, when they went the long way out to the jump point on conventional rocket power. Before they travelled back in time they had spent many days in their modules, observing, reporting, making decisions, remembering. When they pushed the red button all these sensory impressions and memories were gone, ripped out, they had never happened.
‘It is possible,’ Carson went on, ‘that this sudden unlearning process, this violent removal of several days’ thoughts, impressions and memories with all their associated linkages produces a very severe mental shock--complete amnesia, in fact. Everything which went on in the mind during the period covered by the minus trip is lost for ever because they never really happened so far as the mind is concerned; the memories before this time-jump period still exist but, because of the mental shock, return only slowly and with great difficulty. This fits with what we know of Pebbles before and after his first minus trip … ‘
‘I think you’ve got it, Joe.. ,’
began Daniels excitedly, reacting to something Carson had said earlier, then stopped because Carson had gone on talking.
On the panel a few inches away the red hands told him that he had less than twenty minutes and the red button stared at him, a little like Donovan’s gun. He was going to commit suicide in ... sixteen minutes, and he wondered if there was any other way of getting back without effectively killing himself...
‘I am hoping that my own case may be somewhat different,’ he went on quickly, ‘in that I did not come the long way out. The only thinking I have done which will be unlearned at the jump back took place during the hour I have been out here--an hour, remember, instead of several days as was the case with Tillotson and Pebbles. I am hoping that the mental shock of having this hour removed from my mind will be less than that suffered by my predecessors. If this is so my “cure” should not take as long as John’s did, either, because I expect to be surrounded by familiar things and people--people who know what has happened to me--from the start.’
‘The people who surrounded John Pebbles did not know what they were supposed to do and did not even speak his language.’
Carson took a deep breath, then ended, ‘What do you think, Jean. Does all this sound reasonable?’
But it was Daniels who replied first.
‘I think you have the answer, Joe! And you’re damn right we’ll take care of you and help bring back your memory as fast as we can. Jean has already started. Apparently there is a whole range of medication that could help ... she will probably tell you about it herself. I’ve got to go to Control right now to oversee your minus jump. You have about ten minutes. See you. And ... thanks, Joe.’
Jean said,
‘How do you feel?’
Carson felt angry suddenly as well as afraid. She was treating him as a patient already. But then he was her patient already and he would remain her patient for months or years to come. All at once it did not matter to him that he was going to forget everything, if he could be sure of forgetting his need for her.
‘I never wanted to be your patient, Jean,’ he said bitterly. ‘I was hoping for a less professional relationship.’
It took much longer than two hundred seconds for the reply to come back. Then he heard her laughing, or rather making the strained, odd-sounding noise that a person makes who doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She said
, ‘I know what I said about preferring healthy friends to sick patients, Joe. But please don’t worry about that. I mean it. You are a special case and ... and just because a baby has to be looked after for a while does not mean that it is sick ...’
He had only a few minutes left and there did not seem to be anything else to say. Carson leaned towards the port and with his left hand near the red button he used his right to block off the glare from the sun. He thought about Jean and he stared at the spectacle outside, trying uselessly to print it and her indelibly on his mind. He thought that if something was to go wrong out here he could dive for all eternity without ever hitting the ground, but the thought did not worry him very much. He was too busy trying to remember everything that had ever happened to him and drink in all this splendour, the vast and incredible beauty of it all, because it was the last thing he would experience in his present life...
The counter said minus five seconds.
‘Jean,’ he said very seriously, ‘Please don’t let me forget you...’
He felt very pleased with himself the day he learned how to make it light or dark at will by opening and closing his eyes. He did not know what day or light or dark or eyes were, or what was meant by opening and closing, but he could do it and it was great fun. Then a time came when it stayed dark whether he opened or closed his eyes. This made him feel angry and he cried. He did not at that time know what being angry or crying was, but he did it anyway and the light came on.
The faces of a man and a girl looked down at him. The girl put her hand on his forehead and began to stroke it. He did not know what man, girl, faces, hand and forehead were either, but he could see and feel. He stopped crying.
‘Are you sure he is all right?’ said the man.
‘Look at the way he is opening and closing his eyes,’ said the girl. ‘He’s playing a game of some sort. That’s a very good sign ...’
The words and sights and sounds went into his mind and circled endlessly, looking in vain for a place to live.
Without knowing how or why, he felt sure that later they would find a home and he would be able to remember what it was that he had seen and heard. And the next day when he discovered how to play with his fingers, the sight and sound and soft feel of the girl was very pleasing to him, even though he did not know what that meant, either.
They put him down on the floor and he found out how to roll about, crawl and walk by holding on to the furniture. He learned to eat off a spoon instead of sucking at a bottle. He looked forward to eating because it meant the girl putting her arm around his shoulder to hold him steady and he could push the side of his face against her. When she taught him how to hold and use his own spoon and sit at a table to eat, he cried at first. But then she diverted his attention by showing him the glass and flowers and trees at the bottom of the lawn and the clouds in the sky, and she demonstrated gently how the window glass could hurt his head if he tried to push through it. Or she would teach him how to go to the toilet by himself or play a game where he got in and out of complicated clothing ...
But she always put her arms around him and held him close before he went to sleep.
He still did not know what the things were that he was experiencing except between the times when he went to sleep and woke up. Then things happened which frightened him sometimes, but he thought he almost understood them.
Without knowing what mind and black and glass were he thought of his mind as being behind a sheet of black glass. When he learned or saw or touched something new a tiny, shining hole appeared in the black glass with cracks of association radiating from it in all directions. He was sure that the things which were always happening around him should widen and lengthen the cracks, extend the associational network, link up those tiny, shining stars of knowledge.
He did not know what cracks and associational networks and stars and frustrations were, but stars made him feel excited and afraid and it was very frustrating not to know what it was that his mind was thinking about.
‘No,’ said the sight-sound-smell-touch of the girl who was standing beside his chair with her hand on his head. ‘There is no real need for alphabet building blocks, or kindergarten teaching aids, or basic reading and maths. He should
remember
how to read, not have to have it taught to him all over again, even if he is a very fast learner. This time I’ll begin with illustrated encyclopaedias, aviation journals, samples of company paperwork. I’d like you to bring in a TV, and set up a projector and screen ...’
‘Rushing things a little, aren’t you?’ said the man on his other side, adding quickly, ‘I wasn’t criticising, Doctor. I know how you must feel after these past few years.’