Timescape

tone. “It’s a big play, Gordon! People are going to sit up and take notice.”

Gordon said sourly, “Yeah, notice.”

“We’ll get some action on that picture. We’ll crack this thing.”

“It’ll crack us, more likely. Saul, I said I didn’t want to get dragged in. You said—”

“Don’t you see that was unrealistic?” Saul’s voice was calm and reasonable. “I humored you, sure, but it was bound to come out.”

“Not this way.”

“Believe me, this is how things work, Gordon. You weren’t getting anywhere before, were you? Admit it.”

He took a deep breath. “If anybody asks me, Saul, I’m going to say I don’t know where the signals are coming from. That’s the plain truth.”

“But that’s not the whole truth.”

“You are talking to me about the whole truth? You, Saul? You, who talked me into withholding the first message?”

“That was different. I wanted to clarify the issue—”

“The issue, shit! Listen, anybody asks me, I say I don’t agree with your interpretation.”

“You’ll release the first message?”

“I…” Gordon hesitated. “No, I don’t want to stir things up any more.” He wondered if Ramsey would continue to work on the experiments if he made the message public. Hell, for all he knew there really was some sort of national security element mixed up in this. Gordon knew he didn’t want any part of that. No, it was better to drop it.

“Gordon, I can understand your feelings.” The voice warmed. “All I ask is that you don’t hinder what I’m trying to do. I won’t get in your way, you don’t get in mine.”

“Well…” Gordon paused, his momentum blunted.

“And I truly am sorry about Cronkite and your name getting into it and all that. Okay?”

“I… okay,” Gordon muttered, not really knowing what he was agreeing with.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1998

GREGORY MARKHAM STOOD WITH HIS HANDS BEHIND his back, the gray of his temples giving him a remote, solemn air. The muted humming of the laboratory seemed to him a warming sound, a preoccupied buzzing of instruments which, if only in their unpredictable failures and idiosyncrasies, often resembled busy mortal workers. The laboratory was an island of sound in the hushed husk of the Cavendish, commanding all remaining resources. The Cav had ushered in the modern age, using the work of Faraday and Maxwell to create the tamed miracle of electricity. Now, Markham mused, at its center, a few men remained, trying to reach backward, swimmers against the stream.

Renfrew moved among the banks and lanes of instruments, darting from one trouble spot to another. Markham smiled at the man’s energy. In part it arose from the quiet presence of Ian Peterson, who lounged back in a chair and studied the oscilloscope face where the main signal was displayed. Renfrew fretted, aware that beneath Peterson’s veiled calm the man never lost his assessing eye.

Renfrew came stamping back to the central oscilloscope and glanced at the dancing jumble of noise. “Damn!” he said vehemently. “Bloody stuff won’t go away.”

Peterson volunteered, “Well, it’s not absolutely necessary for you to send the new signals while I watch. I simply stopped by to check up on matters.”

“No, no,” Renfrew shifted his shoulders awkwardly under his brown jacket. Markham noted the jacket pockets were crammed with electronics parts, apparently stuck there and forgotten. “I got a good run yesterday. No reason why I shouldn’t today. I transmitted that astronomical part steadily for three hours.”

“I must say I don’t see the necessity for that,” Peterson said, “considering the difficulty in sending the truly important—”

“It’s to help anyone receiving on the other end,” Markham said, stepping forward. He made his face resolutely neutral, though in fact he was rather distantly amused by the way the two other men seemed to immediately hit upon an area of disagreement, as though drawn to it. “John here thinks it might help them to know when our beam will be easiest to detect. The astronomical coordinates—”

“I fully understand,” Peterson cut him off. “What I don’t understand is why you don’t devote your quiet periods to the essential material.”

“Such as?” Markham asked quickly.

“Tell them what we’re doing, and repeat the ocean material, and—”

“We’ve done all that to death,” Renfrew blurted. “But if they can’t receive it, what bloody—”

“Look, look,” Markham said mildly, “there’s time enough to do it all, right? Agreed? When the noise goes down, the first priority should be sending that bank message of yours, and then John here can—”

“You didn’t send it right away?” Peterson cried with surprise.

Renfrew said, “Ah, no, I hadn’t finished the other material and—”

“Well!” Peterson seemed excited by this; he stood up quickly and paced energetically in the small space before the towering gray cabinets. “I told you about finding the note—quite surprising, I must admit.”

“Yes,” Markham admitted. There had been considerable agitation when Peterson appeared this morning, bearing the yellow paper. Suddenly the entire thing had seemed real to them all.

“Well,” Peterson went on, “I was thinking about your trying to, ah, extend the experiment.”

“Extend?” Renfrew asked.

“Yes. Don’t send my message.”

“Good grief,” was all Markham could say.

“But, but don’t you see that…” Renfrew’s voice trailed off.

“I thought it would be an interesting experiment.”

Markham said, “Sure. Very interesting. But it will set up a paradox.”

“That was my idea,” Peterson said swiftly.

“But a paradox is what we don’t want,” Renfrew said. “It’ll bugger the whole idea.”

“I explained that to you,” Markham said to Peterson. “The switch being hung up between on and off, remember?”

“Yes, I understand that perfectly well, but—”

“Then don’t suggest rubbish!” Renfrew cried. “If you want to reach the past and know you have done it, then leave hands off.”

Peterson said with glacial calm, “The only reason you do know is that I went to the bank in La Jolla. The way I see the matter is that I have confirmed your success.”

There was an awkward silence. “Ah… yes,” Markham put in to fill the pause. He had to admit Peterson was right. It was precisely the kind of simple check he or Renfrew should have tried. But they were schooled in thinking of mechanical experiments, full of devices which operated without human intervention. The notion of asking for a confirming sign simply had not occurred to them. And now Peterson, the know-nothing administrator, had proved the whole scheme was right, and he had done it without any sophisticated thinking at all.

Markham took a deep breath. It was heady, realizing that you were doing something never accomplished before, something beyond your own understanding, but undeniably real. It had often been said that science at times put you into a kind of contact with the world that nothing else could. This morning, and Peterson’s single sheet, had done that, but in a strangely different way. The triumph of an experiment was when you reached a fresh plateau of knowledge. With tachyons, though, they had no true understanding. There was only the simple note on a scrap of