ChronoSpace

by Allen Steele

  “Greg Benford?” Murphy flattened the receiver against his ear. “Is this Gregory Benford, the writer?”

  “Ahh . . . well, yes, it is, May I ask who’s calling?”

  The very same voice. From over three thousand miles away.

  “I’m . . . I’m . . .” Murphy felt a hot rush through his face. “I’m sorry, sir, but . . . sorry, I think there’s been a mistake.”

  “What? I don’t. . . .”

  Murphy slammed down the phone, his mind racing as he sought to understand what was happening.

  He had just met someone who looked exactly like Gregory Benford, who sounded just like Gregory Benford, but who was not only ignorant of one of the most common mathematical denominators in theoretical physics, but had also forgotten that he had coauthored a best-selling novel with another physicist, David Brin. Sure, all this might be explained by travel fatigue. Yet Gregory Benford would never be amnesiac of the fact that he had written Timescape, a novel which was not only regarded as one of his best-known works, and a Nebula Award winner as well . . .

  But also a time-machine story.

  Yet the Greg Benford with whom he had just shared lunch claimed never to have written a time-machine story.

  And now, however briefly, Murphy had spoken with a Gregory Benford whose voice was absolutely identical, yet who was in his office on the other side of the country.

  “Son of a . . . !” Murphy slammed his fist against the phone, then turned and stalked back down the hall toward the restaurant. Whoever this guy was, he had just played him like a yo-yo. It was a good impersonation, to be sure. For a little while there, the impostor had actually convinced him that he was the real deal. But just wait until . . .

  Murphy stopped at the cafeteria entrance.

  Their table was vacant. The chair where the impostor had been seated had been pushed back. Only their cafeteria trays remained in place. Children ran back and forth through the restaurant, but his lunch companion was nowhere to be seen.

  Murphy stared at the table, then dashed to the nearby stairwell. Catching himself against the railing, he peered down. Far below, he saw the top of Apollo lunar module, but nothing else. No one was on the stairs.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Mon, Oct 15, 2314—1427Z

  Like a scarab caught within a web of electrical lines and mooring cables, the Oberon floated in spacedock, its silver hull reflecting the raw sunlight that steamed through the bay doors. Hardsuited space workers moved around the timeship, their tethers uncoiling behind them as they inspected the vehicle’s negmass grid and wormhole generators. Standing in an observation cupola overlooking the spherical hangar, Franc watched the activity while he waited for the gangway to mate with the vessel. A foreman at a nearby console studied his screens as he gently coaxed the joystick that maneuvered the gangway into position; when its boxlike airlock was firmly nestled against the Oberon, he locked it into place and glanced over his shoulder at Franc.

  “All right, Dr. Lu, you can go through now. Vasili’s waiting for you aboard.”

  “Danke shön.” He was still practicing his German; the foreman gave him a baffled look in return. Franc slipped his feet from the stirrups on the floor, then pushed himself toward a nearby hatch. It parted in the center with a soft hiss, and he ducked his head as he entered an accordion-walled tunnel. The gangway was cold, its handholds frigid to the touch; regretting that he had neglected to put on a sweater before coming down here, he moved quickly down the long passageway.

  At the end of the tunnel, he reached up and pressed a couple of recessed buttons on the ceiling. A panel flashed from red to green, then the gangway hatch rolled open, revealing the timeship’s outer hatch. Much to his irritation, it was still shut. “I’m here, Vasili,” he murmured, tapping his headset mike. “You can let me in anytime you’re ready.”

  There was no reply, but a few moments later the hatch irised open. A young man floating upside down within the airlock peered down at him. “Sorry, Franc,” he said, giving him a embarrassed grin as he extended a hand. “We didn’t hear you coming.”

  Vasili had doubtless known that he was on his way over; he was just subtly reminding Franc who was in the charge of the timeship, if not the expedition. “Not a problem, Tom.” He grasped Hoffman’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled up into the narrow compartment. “Everything on schedule?”

  “We’re finishing the checklist now.” Hoffman backed away and nearly banged the back of his head against an open service port in the ceiling. He carefully shut it, mindful not to loosen the color-coded ribbons tied around the snakelike conduits that dangled from within. “Got a few more things to do, but we’ll be out of here on time.”

  Franc nodded as he glanced around the compartment. While in spacedock, the timeship’s artificial gravity was neutralized; since its floors and ceilings lacked handrails and foot restraints, slender nylon ropes had been temporarily laid throughout the vessel’s four major compartments. He noted that the timeship’s EVA suit was barely fastened to the wall; someone had used it recently and hadn’t stowed it properly. “Good to hear,” he said, reaching over to cinch its straps a little more tightly. “Hey, nice haircut.”

  “Like it?” The last time Franc had seen Hoffman, he was still sporting a scalplock. The braid was gone now, replaced by an early-twentieth-century hairstyle: sides and back trimmed close, slightly longer on top, neatly parted on the left. “I got it from a picture of Charles Lindbergh,” he said, running a hand through the bristles on the nape of his neck. “Think I’ll pass?”

  “Sure. You look fine.” This expedition was going to be Hoffman’s first, and he was understandably self-conscious about his appearance. “Don’t worry about it,” Franc added. “So long as you keep a low profile, nobody’ll notice. Is Vasili in the control room?”

  “He’s waiting for you.” Then he dropped his voice. “What’s going on? I hear you and Lea had a meeting with Sanchez.”

  “Just the usual. Nothing to be concerned about.” Franc didn’t like lying to a member of his team, but he didn’t want to make Hoffman any more nervous than he already was. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a library fiche. “Here,” he said, handing the wafer to the mission specialist, “do me a favor and load this into the pedestal. Historical appendices for the twentieth century.”

  “No problem.” Pulling himself along a rope, Hoffman floated through the open hatch into the narrow passageway. Franc fell in behind him and waited until Hoffman entered the monitor room at the far end of the corridor before he entered the open hatch on the right.

  Oberon’s control room was a wedge-shaped compartment, its longest wall dominated by a horseshoe-shaped console. Some of the screens displayed diagrams and rapidly changing text, while others showed only test patterns. Service panels gaped open on the floor and ceiling, exposing densely packed nanocircuitry and bundled wiring. Through the single rectangular porthole above the console, he saw a space worker hovering just outside.

  Vasili Metz was seated in the pilot’s seat, his head and shoulders thrust beneath the console. “Hello, Dr. Lu,” he said, not looking up. “You’ve seen Sanchez, I take it.”

  “We met with him a couple of hours ago.” Pushing himself over to the chair, Franc grasped the seatback and let his feet dangle in the air. “He told us about the Miranda. They say they spotted an angel.”

  “Yep. That’s what I’ve heard from Brech.” Beneath the console, Metz’s penlight moved back and forth. “It was only for a couple of seconds, but Hans mentioned it in his reports, and I’ve spoken with him about it. Did Paolo give you my recommendation?”

  “Yes, he did. We discussed it for a while, and decided to proceed with the C120-37.”

  Metz said nothing. Franc waited patiently until the pilot finally backed out from beneath the console and sat up straight in his chair. “You know,” he said at last, “I should be surprised, but I’m not. Figures you’d ignore this.”

  “I’m not ignoring anyt
hing. I’m just refusing to be deterred by something we can’t explain.”

  “I can’t explain them either.” Metz clicked off the penlight, shoved it in the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. “I just know that they show up when something’s about to go wrong.”

  Franc knew all about angels. They had been spotted during two previous CRC expeditions: luminescent, vaguely man-shaped apparitions that suddenly appeared in the close vicinity of timeships, then winked out of sight just as quickly as they had appeared. Each time, only CRC historians or pilots had seen them; they never appeared when locals were present. Although no one knew what they were, several theories had been advanced to explain the sightings, the most popular being that they themselves were chrononauts, yet from farther up the timestream. They had never directly interfered with an expedition or caused any historical disturbances, but timeship pilots in particular regarded them as harbingers of misfortune. This fear wasn’t entirely unwarranted; the first time an angel had been spotted, it was during the C119-64, when a historian had been lost during the Battle of Gettysburg, and the second sighting was during the C220-63, when two researchers had been inadvertently photographed by contemporary bystanders in Dealy Plaza during the Kennedy assassination.

  “But nothing went wrong during the C314-65, did it?” Franc asked. “The Miranda came home safely, right? No mishaps, no paradoxes?” Metz reluctantly nodded. “Then don’t worry about it. Whatever these things are, it’s nothing we should worry about.”

  Metz seemed unconvinced. “I still don’t like it. It’s a bad omen. . . .”

  “We can always find another pilot, if it makes you that nervous.”

  Franc tried not to sound too hopeful, but Metz shook his head. “No time to train another pilot. Miranda launches at 1800 hours, and Oberon follows at 0600 tomorrow.” He glanced toward the passageway. “Speaking of which, where’s Lea?”

  “Up at Artifacts Division, making sure our outfits are ready.” Franc gazed around the control room. “Is this tub going to be flightworthy by tomorrow morning?”

  “Routine maintenance. I always tear Oberon apart before we make a trip.” He scowled as he pulled an electric screwdriver from his tool belt. “And don’t call my ship a tub,” he added. “She’ll get us there and back, so treat her with a little respect.”

  “Right. Sorry.” One more reason he didn’t much care for Metz: he got along better with machines than people. Franc released the seatback, turned toward the door. “All right, then. I’ll see you at 0500 for the prelaunch briefing.”

  “I’ll be there.” Metz was already crawling back underneath the console. Franc heard the thin whine of a screwdriver as he loosened another panel. He waited another moment to see if the pilot had anything more to say, but apparently their discussion had come to an end.

  Monday, January 14, 1998: 12:55 P.M.

  Murphy almost collided with a pair of nuns as he flung open the glass front doors of the Air and Space Museum and dashed out onto the broad plaza.

  The nuns glared at him as he trotted down the stairs to the sidewalk. He stopped to look first one way, then the next. A couple of teachers sneaking a smoke near the line of yellow school buses idling at the curb, a hot-dog vendor chatting with a police officer next to his pushcart, a homeless man rummaging through a garbage can. The fake Gregory Benford, though, was nowhere in sight.

  There was no way he could have disappeared so quickly. He must still be nearby. Neglecting to button his parka, Murphy walked quickly past the school buses, then left the sidewalk and jogged across Independence Avenue to the Mall. Frozen grass below the thin blanket of fresh snow crunched beneath his boots as he jogged down the greenway, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched the faces of pedestrians strolling past the Smithsonian.

  A couple of hundred feet away, he spotted a red M-sign: Smithsonian Station, the nearest Metro stop. He must have gone there. Lungs burning with each breath of cold, dry air, Murphy ran past snow-covered park benches and bare trees until he reached the subway station. Ignoring the slow-moving escalator, he bolted down the stairs, taking the steps three at a time.

  He halted on the upper concourse, glanced in all directions. There were a dozen or so people in sight, purchasing farecards from the ticket machines or hurrying through the turnstiles to the lower platform, yet of the impostor there was no sign. A train rumbled into the platform below, and for a moment he fumbled in his pocket for a dollar. If he was fast enough, he could still buy a card and catch the next train. Yet common sense told him that there was no way Benford—or rather, the pseudo-Benford, as he now thought of him—could have reached the Metro before he did.

  Gasping for air, Murphy sagged against a newspaper machine. He had guessed wrong. Whichever direction the impostor had taken after leaving the museum, it clearly hadn’t been this way.

  He waited until he caught his wind, then he stepped onto the escalator and rode it back up to street level. He glanced at his watch: five after one. He could turn around, catch the subway to L’Enfant Plaza, yet there was always the slim chance that he might spot the impostor on the sidewalk. And even if he didn’t, he needed time to think. . . .

  Why would anyone impersonate a science fiction author just to talk to him? That was the big question, of course, but besides why? there was also how? The impersonation had been nearly perfect; not only had the impostor looked exactly like Gregory Benford, but—judging from the brief conversation Murphy had with the real Benford on the phone—he sounded like him as well. True, a good actor might be able to don a wig, a false beard, and fake glasses. An even more talented actor could mimic someone’s voice . . .

  But why go to so much trouble?

  Buttoning up his parka against the cold, his head lowered against the wind, Murphy strode down the sidewalk. As he reached the corner and waited for the green Walk light, another thought occurred to him: hadn’t he read somewhere that Gregory Benford had a twin brother?

  Yes, he did: James Benford, another physicist, an identical twin who had also written some science fiction, both on his own and in collaboration with his more famous sibling. Could that be the person who . . . ?

  No. Murphy shook his head as the light changed and he stepped into the street. That didn’t make sense either. For one thing, why would Jim Benford want to impersonate his brother? Perhaps as a practical joke, but what would be the point if the intended victim was a complete stranger? And for another, Jim Benford wouldn’t have made the mistakes that had gradually tipped him off: not knowing that c was the common variable for the speed of light, for instance, or being unaware that his brother had written a time-machine novel.

  He could always call Greg Benford again, once he had returned to the office. Yeah, sure; Murphy could imagine how that conversation would go. Hello, Dr. Benford? You don’t know me, but my name’s David Murphy and I work for NASA Headquarters in Washington, and I just had lunch with someone who looks exactly like you . . . well, yes, I know there’s a lot of guys who kinda look like you, but this guy said he was you, and . . . anyway, can you tell me where your brother is right now, and if he has a weird sense of humor? Right. And if he was Greg Benford, he’d call someone at NASA to say that some wacko named Murphy was asking bizarre questions about him and his brother Jim.

  The sky had begun to spit snow again. Glancing up, Murphy could make out the Capitol, obscured behind a milk white haze beyond the Reflecting Pool. He lowered his gaze again, began making his way back up Independence toward the Air and Space. No, better leave the real Gregory Benford out of this. Yet whoever the impostor was, he knew enough about Murphy to know that he would have been impressed enough with Benford’s reputation to meet with him for lunch to discuss . . .

  An article in Analog about time travel.

  Murphy stopped. That was the crux of the issue, wasn’t it? Forget for a moment whom he had met; it was the subject of their conversation that mattered.

  This was the second time today that someone had paid undue attention to a piece he had wr
itten.

  Despite the warmth of his parka, Murphy felt a chill run down his spine. First, a meeting with a senior NASA administrator, who had expressed concern that Murphy might somehow embarrass the agency by writing about UFOs and time travel, and then requested. . . no, mandated, really . . . that any future articles he wrote be submitted in advance to the Public Affairs Office. Then, less than an hour after that meeting, a phone call from someone pretending to be a noted physicist and author, who in turn wanted to know where he had gained the inspiration to write the same article . . .

  How much of a coincidence could that be?

  Murphy pulled up the parka’s hood and tucked his hands deep in its pockets. For some reason, his article had attracted someone’s attention. Yet all he had done was taken a few available facts, tied them to possible explanations, and come up with a plausible scenario, however unlikely it might be. Yet his piece hadn’t appeared in Nature or in the science section of the New York Times, but in a science fiction magazine. Hardly a venue guaranteed to gain a lot of attention.

  Only . . . hadn’t this sort of thing happened once before?

  Yes, it had. Back in 1944, at the height of World War II, when a writer . . . who was it again? Digging at his memory, Murphy absently snapped his fingers. Heinlein? Asimov? Maybe Hal Clement or Jack Williamson . . . ?

  No. Now he remembered. It was Cleve Cartmell, a writer almost completely forgotten today were it not for one particular story he had written for Astounding.

  Titled “Deadline,” it was otherwise negligible save for one important detail: in it, Cartmell accurately described an atomic weapon, one which used U-235 as its reactive mass. He even went so far as to say that two such bombs, if dropped on enemy cities, could end the fictional war depicted in his story. An innocuous novelette in the back of a pulp SF magazine, yet within a few days of its publication in Astounding, its editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., was visited at his New York office by a military intelligence officer, who inquired who Cartmell was and how he might have come by his information. Yet Cartmell hadn’t worked for the Manhattan Project; his bomb was strictly the product of his imagination, his sources no more classified than textbooks found in any well-stocked public library. Nonetheless, he had stumbled upon the closest-kept secret of World War II; little more than eighteen months later, Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.