Timemaster

by Robert L. Forward

  "Improbable things become probable once warpgates exist," Randy reminded him. "Now, watch ... He's going to have to duck ..." The two watched as Oscar dodged the outgoing stream of missiles from the younger warpmouth, while the ingoing stream was heading for the older warpmouth, where they disappeared. Oscar's ship changed its course, heading directly toward Timemaster in a deliberate attempt to ram; but two collisions and a few seconds later, the ship was heading directly away from them, deflected with a vengeance by the timetrap. Randy relaxed and took another gurgle of his beer through the long neck of the bottle.

  "See!" he said. "All over in a few seconds. If Oscar hadn't tried to hurt us, he wouldn't have hurt himself." He munched down the last of his pretzels.

  "Is he dead?" the kid asked quietly.

  "I'm afraid so," said Randy, and mentioned Alan's report to him.

  "Thank God this nightmare is over at last!" said the kid.

  "That's where you're wrong, me boy," said Randy. "I've done my part—and I get to go back and live a happy future with Rose. You, however, have a lot of work left ahead of you, and if you're to be successful, you'd better get a move on."

  "Me?" asked the youngster. "Why me?"

  Randy looked pensively at the soot-caked chimney in the fireplace, and shivered internally at the memory of the soot dark access hole above. What a nightmare the poor kid has coming. I won't warn him, though. I'm sure glad the older Randy at that time didn 't warn me. I don't know if I could have forced myself to board the ship, much less go down that soot-black hole. He shuddered again at the thought.

  "It's a dirty job," he told the kid, "but somebody has to do it." He sighed at the kid's denseness. "Think, me boy ... think."

  Randy watched the kid's eyes widen and a stricken look come over his face as he realized what lay ahead of him.

  "You're right ..." the youngster finally admitted. Then he panicked a little. "But what am I supposed to do!?!"

  Randy got up from the sofa. "The first thing I'd do is contact Andrew Pope and tell him to warp out some pilots to ferry the Errol Flynn and John Wayne to a safe landing at Tau Ceti." He headed for the elevator door. "I'll tell you the rest while we're waiting for your Silverhair to dilate so I can pod home."

  Chapter 14

  Off to the Future!

  THE POD opened and Randy floated out into the spherical vacuum chamber that held the Silverhair at the Earth end of the warpgate. Siritha and Andrew reached out and pulled him over to the handholds on the wall. Off to one side, Hiroshi Tanaka was monitoring the laser beam coming through the Silverhair. As Randy watched, the beam shrank.

  said the Silverhair in obvious relief. It then noticed Randy. it called. it demanded.

  "I'll feed it," volunteered Siritha. "You and Andrew can cycle through and change. I'm sure you two have important business matters to discuss."

  "Not really," said Randy. "The youngster I just left on Timemaster is running the company just fine through daily videolinks with Andrew and Alan. It wouldn't do to have two bosses trying to run the company, so I'm going to let him do all the work, while I get to dance with Silverhairs and have fun with my family." He reached for the plasma gun on the wall. "What's the latest dance you've taught the Silverhair?"

  "The tango," said Siritha. She tapped some keys on her chestpack and the rhythmic beat of a tango came from her suit radio. The two danced around the Silverhair while Randy fed its waving tendrils with iron atoms from the plasma gun.

  <> sang the Silverhair as it fed and danced with the humans.

  RANDY let the pilot land the Reinhold Astroengineering Company VTOL jet at his private strip in the Princeton Enclave. He had taken the controls for about an hour on their way home from the Havana spaceport, but soon grew tired of it. Puttering along at a mere thousand kilometers an hour was kind of boring to someone used to traveling at near light-speed. He was met at the airstrip by Rose and the children.

  "Home at last!" he cried as he tried to take them all into his arms. Junior, a mature seventeen-year-old who now towered over his dad, squirmed self-consciously out of his grasp, while eleven-year-old Rosey backed off sputtering.

  "Poot! Dad, kissing you is like kissing a toothbrush."

  "I don't mind," said Rose. So Randy gave her a kiss so long that the kids got embarrassed. Franklin escorted them to the limousine and they drove through the compound to their mansion.

  "What's the date and time?" asked Randy, pulling out his cuff-comp. "Now that I'm back for good, I might as well be keeping the same time as everyone else."

  Junior stretched out his cuff-comp. Spiraling across the blue clasp on his outer wrist were clusters of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and white and yellow diamonds representing the various atoms in a segment of DNA. Randy had arranged for Alan to give it to him on his fifteenth birthday. "It'll be Wednesday, 18 March 2054, 1550 Eastern Standard Time ... now!"

  "Just lost about four years," said Randy as he readjusted his cuff-comp. "Or gained it—depending upon your point of view."

  As they passed by the stables, Junior reached forward and pushed the button to signal Franklin. "Pull into the stables for a moment, please, Franklin. I want to show Dad my new colt." The limousine slowed and entered the driveway.

  "Who are the sire and dam?" asked Randy.

  "Winter Winds and Pollyana Parasol ... mostly," said Junior.

  "That breeding won't work," said Randy with a frown. "Winter Winds broke a leg from running too hard, and Pollyana has matchsticks for legs. That poor colt will snap a foreleg just trying to get up."

  "Not my colt," said Junior proudly. "He has legbones like Ironman Mike. That's why I said 'mostly'. I used a nanomachine to snip out Pollyana's legbone genes from one of her eggs, and inserted Ironman Mike's instead. It only took five tries before I got a viable egg."

  "Say, what a great idea!" said Randy, highly impressed with his son. "That's going to raise havoc with the pedigree charts, though."

  "Just an asterisk," said Junior. "The important thing is that all the genes come from thoroughbred horses. It isn't as though I cheated by inserting antelope or oryx genes. I merely got what Curly and I wanted in one foaling, instead of having to crossbreed the three lines for a dozen generations."

  "There's Winds-O-Iron over there in that pasture," said Junior, pointing. Randy watched the large strong colt as it ran circles around the other colts in the pasture.

  "You'll have to show me how that gene program works," said Randy. "So I can play with it while you're off at school."

  "I NEVER thought I would be saying this," Rose said one day at lunch a few months later. "But I'm tired of having you around the house all the time. Why don't you go to work or something?"

  "You married me for better or worse—but not for lunch?" Randy joked. "I can't go to work. The youngster on Timemaster is doing a fine job of running the company, even if he is pulling gees most of the time. If I went by the office, people would ask me for decisions, and things would get messed up—a classic case of too many cooks."

  "How about taking up a hobby?" said Rose. "One that takes you out of the house."

  Randy thought for a while. "Well, the playing around I've done with Junior's horse-gene program has gotten me interested in biology. I think I'll go bother the researchers at the Hunter Institute for Aging Research."

  "Spend all the time away you want," said Rose, relieved. "Just make sure you come home at night."

  "I wouldn't miss this night for anything ..." murmured Randy, raising an eyebrow at her and giving her a knowing smile.

  Rose blushed.

  THAT AFTERNOON, Randy met with Dr. Angela Garibaldi and two of her senior scientists, Dr. Raymond Anderson and Dr. Charles Wentworth.

  "We've had a number of months to study the message file, Mr. Hunter," said Dr. Garibaldi. "It contained a large number of different medical procedures, many of them simple treatments using new medicines or techniques that can be applied
immediately. We passed all that information on to the World Health Organization, and they are using them even as we speak, to improve health all around the world."

  Dr. Anderson interjected a comment from the other end of the table. "What is most interesting is that all the new medicines or techniques were already in existence in our time, but had either been neglected, abandoned, or not yet tried for that particular illness."

  "What is even more interesting," added Dr. Wentworth, "is that in each case, without the intervention of the message, the probability of our ever trying that particular treatment for that particular disease was very low."

  "When timegates exist," Randy reminded them, "low-probability events can become high-probability events."

  "In addition to the relatively simple treatments for specific diseases, there is also a description of a much more complex procedure that we at the Institute are studying ourselves. It is a general technique for the repair and maintenance of human cells. Once we understand all the procedures, and more importantly have developed the background technology needed to carry out those procedures, we will be able to cure any disease."

  "Even aging?" asked Randy.

  "That will take some time," warned Dr. Garibaldi. "From our research to date here at the Institute, we know that aging is a very complex process, involving many different parts of the cell as well as the interactions of cells with each other. It could take a hundred years or more before we even know all the causes of aging, much less how to counteract them."

  Randy gave a knowing smile. "I don't think it'll take that long."

  "I hope not," said Dr. Garibaldi. "Our real problem with the message, however, is that it constantly refers to a technique called the 'McPhie Procedure' that the writers of the message assume we know about—but we don't!"

  Randy's heart skipped a beat. Could there be something wrong? Could the past have somehow been changed—changed in such a way that the procedure didn't exist in this timeline? He felt a twinge of anxiety as he saw immortality slipping from his grasp.

  "What are the clues in the message concerning the procedure?" he asked.

  "Fortunately, the first paper written about the McPhie Procedure is referenced in the message," said Dr. Garibaldi. "It is dated four months from now."

  "Then all we have to do is wait four months," said Randy, relieved. "In fact, if the reference includes the authors, we can call them up and ask them for an advance copy of their paper."

  "I am the first author," said Dr. Garibaldi. "And not only am I not doing any research on the McPhie Procedure now, I haven't got the slightest idea what the McPhie Procedure is."

  Randy's anxiety returned. "There must be some other clues," he said desperately. "Who are your coauthors on the paper? Maybe one of them knows something."

  "There are several coauthors," said Dr. Garibaldi, "most of them physicians on the research staff here at the Institute. There are also two who aren't."

  "Who are they?" asked Randy, hoping that would solve the problem.

  "One of them is you."

  "Me!" exclaimed Randy. "I don't even know anything about biology, much less about any McPhie Procedure."

  "You must have contributed to the research in some significant way," said Dr. Garibaldi. "Institute policy does not permit 'honorary' authors on scientific papers."

  "Who's the other outside author?"

  "I've heard his name somewhere," said Dr. Garibaldi. "But I'm fairly certain he is not a biologist. It is Steven Wisneski."

  Randy laughed. "Of course!" He shot his cuff-comp out from under his coat sleeve. "Get me Steve," he said to it. There was a pause and soon Steve's face was on the screen, his large black mustache twitching in irritation at the interruption.

  "Randy the Eldest, I assume," he said. "I thought you were going to leave the pestering of company employees to Randy the Youngest."

  "This isn't company business, Steve," said Randy. He turned up the volume on the cuff-comp so Dr. Garibaldi could hear Steve's reply. "Tell us about the McPhie Procedure."

  "The McWhat Procedure?" replied Steve, his mustache coming to a bewildered halt.

  Randy's heart sank. He looked up at Dr. Garibaldi. "I think we had better call a meeting of all the coauthors on that paper."

  "SO NO one here at this meeting has any clues as to what the McPhie Procedure might be," said Dr. Garibaldi. "Well, it is certain that this group is not going to be publishing a paper about the subject in only four months." She turned to Randy. "There must be something wrong with the theory behind timegates."

  "Impossible," Steve blurted. "I've worked out every detail. The Novikov Self-Consistency Principle is inviolable. You cannot change the past. If those people from the future said that we published a paper on the McPhie Procedure in the New England Journal of Medicine four months from now, then we will write a paper on the McPhie Procedure, and it will appear in that journal exactly four months from now."

  "That's crazy," Dr. Anderson protested. "The only thing I know about the procedure is that it's named after somebody named McPhie."

  "There's a lead!" exclaimed Randy. "Does anyone know a person named McPhie? We can ask him if he knows what the procedure is."

  "I once knew someone named McPhie," said Dr. Wentworth. "But we can't ask him anything. He's dead—killed in a car accident four years ago."

  "I remember him now—one of our first postdocs," said Dr. Garibaldi. "Caused me all kinds of paperwork problems. He was driving an Institute car—and he had no living relatives."

  "Did he ever publish anything on any sort of procedure?" asked Randy.

  "Nope," said Dr. Wentworth. "He was working for me at the time on a dreary, time-consuming job—sequencing the gene that controls the differentiation of cells. Nothing really publishable in that work. I remember he kept complaining that there ought to be a better way of sequencing genes than chopping up DNA and inspecting the pieces. After he died in the accident, I turned over his Institute notebooks to another postdoc, who continued his work."

  "Then his notebooks still exist?" said Randy eagerly.

  "Show us where they are, Wentworth," said Dr. Garibaldi.

  "HE SEEMS to have been quite a cartoonist," said Dr. Garibaldi, looking over Dr. Wentworth's shoulder as he leafed through the old notebooks. "Drawings in the margins of practically every page."

  "That one looks like a Silverhair with someone peering out of a warpmouth in its belly," Steve observed.

  "That's McPhie," said Dr. Wentworth. "I'd recognize that nose anyplace. He seems to be holding a pencil and an Institute notebook. He's inside the nucleus of a cell and looking at a segment of DNA."

  "That's crazy!" Steve snapped. "Silverhairs aren't that small."

  Randy was thinking furiously. "Say, Steve ... how small do you think an artificial Wisneski Warpmouth could be made?"

  "Since they're made out of ultradense negative matter, theoretically, they could be smaller than an atom," said Steve. His eyes brightened as a thought came to him. "And, since the space between atoms is a vacuum, if we leave a little excess positive charge on the warpmouth, the atomic nuclei would be repelled from the warpmouth and nullification won't take place."

  "If they can be made smaller than an atom, then we could pass a warpmouth through the wall of a living cell without hurting it," said Randy. "Once the warpmouth is inside, we can expand it enough to warp a nanomachine through. The nanomachine would do its job, then warp back out again. Since we don't damage the cell wall, the yield should be close to one hundred percent."

  "There are an awful lot of cells in a human body," mused Steve. "But the way computer power is increasing every year, it should soon be possible to treat every single cell in a human body in a reasonable period of time."

  "I think, Mr. Hunter," said Dr. Garibaldi, "you two have just described the McPhie Procedure."

  SUMMER was nearly over when Randy got a message from the youngster traveling back home on Rip van Winkle. After a long conversation, the two of them expanded it into
a three-way conversation with Alan Davidson, and a decision was made.

  That night at dinner, Junior said, "Dad? I'll be entering Princeton in a few weeks, and I was wondering if it would be OK for me to get my own apartment near the campus."

  "Sure, son," said Randy. "We can certainly afford it. But I was going to discuss something else with you tonight that might have a bearing on that decision."

  "What?" asked Junior, a little puzzled.

  "You are also going to turn eighteen in a month," said Randy, pausing to wipe his beard with his napkin. "I just finished a long conversation with Alan and your other father. If you are willing to accept the responsibility, we would like you to take over as president of Reinhold Astroengineering Company on your eighteenth birthday."

  "What!?!" cried Junior, completely overwhelmed.

  "I'm sure you can do it," said Randy calmly. "I did it with even less preparation than you have."

  "If he's going to get to be president of Reinhold Astroengineering Company for his eighteenth birthday," interrupted Rosey, "what am I going to get for my eighteenth birthday?"

  "You will see, Rosey," said Randy, smiling at her. "I can guarantee it will be just what you wanted." He turned back to Junior. "It'll mean that you'll have to take college courses part-time, but you'll be getting a lot of on-the-job training."

  "OK ..." Junior hesitated. "As long as I'll have you and Alan Davidson around to give me advice."

  "I'm sure Alan Davidson will stay around as long as you want him," said Randy. "But your mother and I are going to have to leave in about fifteen months, right after your other father sets up the timegate."

  "You're leaving!" said Rosey and Junior simultaneously.

  "I've already told you that your mother and I are going to be the first ones to receive immortality treatments," Randy said. "We will have to go almost a hundred years into the future where they have the technology adequately developed. The treatments to produce immortality in the body are quite lengthy, and stretch out over almost five years. But once they are complete, we will live forever."