Al was his best friend, and he didn’t understand. But if that was the way Al wanted to play it—
"Then all I need to do is talk her out of it.”
Al, scanning the handlink, snorted. “It’s not likely to be that easy. Ziggy says Bethica’s going to talk some kid out of—” He whapped the little mechanism and stopped, staring at the information feeding across to him. “Give me that again, Ziggy.”
The handlink squealed and blinked, colored cubes lighting up in sequence. Al tapped in a new series of codes, seeking a different answer and not getting it.
“What?” Sam circled behind the other man, trying without success to see what was going on with the glowing assemblage of cubes in Al’s hand. “What is it?”
When he looked up and around at Sam, he was pale, and no vestiges of resentment or anger remained in his bright
brown eyes. “Sam—she doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to go to the party to try to convince a kid named Kevin not to kill Wickie Starczynski.”
“Ziggy,” Verbeena said to the empty air.
“Yes, Dr. Beeks?” The response didn’t move the air as the spoken words of a physical presence would have. There was no sense of another person answering her.
Verbeena had never quite gotten used to it.
“Ziggy, tell me about Janna Calavicci.”
The pause that ensued was uncharacteristically long, even for Ziggy, who had been programmed to include pauses to make its conversations more human. Finally, the computer answered, “The personnel files currently identify Janna Fulkes Calavicci as a personnel specialist who was hired into the Project in 1993.”
“When did she and Al get married?”
She knew the answer. She had the personnel file on the computer screen in front of her. She knew exactly how Janna Fulkes had done in her performance ratings, how much she’d been paid, what days she’d taken off sick.
She knew Janna and Al’s wedding day, not only from the file but from her own memory. She’d been there. She’d stood with the other women, Janna’s friends, and tried to catch the bouquet. She’d had two pieces of wedding cake, carrot with cream cheese icing. She’d cried to see Janna and Al dancing their first dance as man and wife.
“Ziggy, Al tells me that before he last went into the Imaging Chamber he’d never met Janna. Never married her. He says you’ll back him up on this.”
Another long pause.
“Admiral Calavicci is correct.”
Verbeena rubbed her eyes. “Could you go over that again slowly?”
“Ad-mir-al. ..” Ziggy’s voice, a light soprano, deepened to baritone as the computer slowed down its speech.
“Ziggy, stop that. You know what I mean.”
Yes. Doctor.” The soprano was back. “While the Admiral is in the Imaging Chamber, the changes effected by Dr. Beckett’s presence in the past are potentials in this sphere, in own present. When the Admiral returns—leaves the Imaging Chamber—he actualizes the change. In effect, he is carrying those changes with him into our present.”
It sounded familiar, but—“He said he’d actually seen changes happen when he was in Washington. If he’s carrying the change with him, how—”
Those are changes outside the confines of the Project itself, Doctor. For a change to take place within this area—
where I am—the Admiral has to trigger it. The same phenomenon which allows me to stand outside of Time to observe is disturbed by the Admiral’s triggering of the Imaging Chamber and the link to Dr. Beckett. I can’t maintain the integrity of the Project under that stress. They’re part of me, after all.”
It was almost the same conclusion she’d come to on her own. She swallowed. “So while he’s married to Janna right now. as soon as he comes out again he won’t be?”
"He may not be,” the computer corrected.
"Well, is he or isn’t he?”
"You mean, will he or won’t he.” Ziggy had a pedantic streak. “There’s no way to know which possibility will become real until it actually happens. I can track what Dr. Beckett is doing, but I don’t have the capacity to track every person his actions touch, plus every person their resulting actions touch. Nor can I always tell which of his actions is the important one. Futures are infinite possibility trees, Dr. Beeks. All we can see is the result when the Admiral leaves the Imaging Chamber.”
“That’s ridiculous. If that’s the case, how can you and Al tell when Sam’s succeeded in making the change he needs to make?”
“Because I’m not tracking all the repercussions. I’m only looking at the gross changes, the effects of a given action on one or two people. The subtle changes, however, will make
greater or lesser changes like ripples in a pond, and we see those when the Admiral returns.”
“So we’re different every time the Admiral comes back?”
“Not necessarily,” the computer said, an edge of impatience in the mechanical voice. “Not every change affects us every time. Other changes may damp out the effects.
“We do know that no matter what change is made, the Project must still have been created. Otherwise an unacceptable paradox would exist.”
Verbeena couldn’t help it. She laughed. “ ‘An unacceptable paradox’? Do you have any idea how that sounds?” And then she thought about how she sounded, arguing with thin air, and laughed again. “Ziggy, honey, you may be the wave of the future, but this whole business is crazy.”
Somehow Ziggy managed to sound mortally offended. “If you say so, Dr. Beeks.”
“I wish I knew how Sam programmed all those emotions into you,” Verbeena said softly, shaking her head. “That boy could have made a fortune as a psychologist.”
“Could you explicate, Doctor?”
“Ziggy, the only emotion he left out of you was the one nobody’s ever been able to figure out. He knew enough about jealousy and anger and loneliness and pain and all the things that torment the human heart
