Analog SFF, June 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “When Cliff finally called, he gave us a detailed description of a meeting with an extraterrestrial. None of us had told him any of the details of our dreams, but his account exactly matched the dreams we'd had. We—”

  He stopped because the second limo was approaching the house. The rest of my guests were arriving, and it was time for me to play host.

  * * * *

  3

  After welcoming our strange collection of guests into our home, my wife began serving coffee, starting, of course, with Mrs. Kennedy. Wearing a stylish black French dress, she sat on a sofa with Campbell on her left and Robert Heinlein on her right. He and MacArthur both sat ramrod straight, their heritage from the U.S. Naval Academy and West Point, but Heinlein still showed signs of the illness that had ended his military career, and the General showed the weight of his years. Not to be outdone, movie star handsome Ronald Reagan sat as straight and tall as if he were in the saddle for a western. Nobel Prize winning Hungarian physicist Edward Teller completed the group.

  Once everyone was comfortably seated and had coffee, my wife explained that this had been a very long day for her, and, if no one minded, she'd go to bed now. I had to keep from smiling as she departed. Tired as she must be, she was not going to bed. Instead she was going to sneak out and talk to the Secret Service agents. Many times in our decades together, I've had an interview with some very important man, while she'd gotten the truth by talking to his support people.

  Campbell had told me an incredible story, and now all these people were confirming it. Did that make it true or were several highly respectable people lying? General MacArthur, Edward Teller, and Robert Heinlein were all right-wing republicans and avid anti-communists. Though Ronald Reagan was nominally a Democrat, he was also an avid anti-communist.

  Could this whole thing be a vast right-wing conspiracy? A plot to embarrass the young President Kennedy before he even took office?

  Maybe, but I didn't think so. I've had a lot of practice spotting liars. Sometimes a skillful liar can fool me, but not often. When this many people all told me the same story without a single false note, I was sure they believed what they were telling me. Of course, that didn't make it true, but how else could I explain it?

  The round robin confirmation of Campbell's story finished with Edward Teller. His bulbous nose twitching, his watery gray eyes half hidden under eyebrows that were as bushy and black as wooly caterpillars, he asked, “And now, would you like me to provide a logical scientific explanation of these strange events?”

  When I nodded, he continued, “Good, but remember a logical scientific—”

  “Please, Dr. Teller,” Mrs. Kennedy interrupted, “We don't have time for this. My husband is in danger!”

  “Yes,” MacArthur said with a small courtly bow to the troubled but elegant lady, “We are all in danger. Even you, Mr. Gardner. All of us were at a meeting with an alien who had the power to revise human history, and who, acting on our advice, used that power. The world we left to go to that meeting was different from the world we came back to. We changed history, and that means we changed ourselves. We let Fate throw the dice again, risking that every chance event in our lives which had gone one way could go another.

  “If the dice had fallen differently, you, Mr. Gardner, might have continued a legal career you found boring. Mrs. Kennedy's husband might have drowned when his PT boat sank, and she never met him. A host of other bad things might have happened to any, or all, of us, but they didn't. In our different ways we are all quite successful people.”

  “But I don't see any danger in that,” I objected.

  MacArthur waved his corncob pipe toward Robert Heinlein, who leaned forward and said, “The danger is that the dice will roll again. That puts everything we have, everything we are, at risk. It can all be lost at our meeting with the alien.”

  “But that meeting's over and done,” I objected. “It's in the past.”

  “No,” he corrected, “it's in our past, but it's in your future.”

  Before that strange idea could soak in, Mrs. Kennedy looked me straight in the eye and said, “Mr. Gardner, I've read several of your Perry Mason novels. I know that you're a very intelligent man when you're sitting behind a typewriter on a desk. What I need to know is how you were as a lawyer in court. Were you brilliant? Were you Perry Mason?”

  “No!” I protested. “That's why I quit law in favor of writing.”

  A smile passed between Heinlein and MacArthur, as though they'd just been proved right about something.

  Looking slightly unhappy, Mrs. Kennedy, making her voice soft and gentle, told me, “That's a problem. At the meeting you were quite brilliant. In fact, you were so clever that General MacArthur said someone must have briefed you in advance. I said that was impossible, and Mr. Campbell and Mr. Heinlein both snapped their fingers, shouted that this was the Red Queen's race, and that we had to run as fast as we could to stay where we were.”

  Everyone was looking at me expectantly. They were all hoping that I'd get what they were saying without further explanation.

  It took a moment, but I did. A meeting at which the fate of the world was at issue had come to a favorable conclusion because I'd been well briefed. Since they were the only ones who could give me that briefing, they'd rushed here to do it.

  As soon as I agreed to let them brief me for the coming meeting, they started taking turns doing just that. MacArthur lectured me on the appropriate way for an army officer to conduct himself with a foreign dignitary while Mrs. Kennedy urged me to laugh at the alien's jokes even if they weren't funny. Ronald Reagan wanted me to become Perry Mason. To help me do that he tried to teach me the tricks an actor used to get into character. On top of all this, Campbell and Heinlein tried to give me a crash course in world history.

  Things were happening this way because these people had traveled here in three cars and hadn't had a chance to agree on what I should be told. To make matters worse, Teller abruptly realized that the coffee we'd been drinking was Sanka. MacArthur's solution to this problem was to shout, “Wake up, soldier!” whenever he saw I was in danger of nodding off.

  At first this worked, but my eyelids were getting heavier. When Edward Teller suddenly said that he thought he understood the quantum mechanics of time travel, I tried to listen, but whatever he said was lost in the gray fog into which I sank.

  * * * *

  4

  Blinking my eyes, I had a blank moment. I knew I was Earl Stanley Gardner, but who was that? Was I a writer of detective stories?

  No. I'd written two closets full of detective stories, but no one would publish them. By profession I was a professor in a law school, and this was another of those necessary but horribly boring faculty meetings

  Though maybe this one would be a little different. We were all sitting in a line along a conference table that didn't have any legs or any other visible means of support. The person to my right was Agnes Bethell, the dean of both the law and graduate schools. At my left were journalism professor Simak (chain-smoking like a reporter on deadline) and physics professor Teller. Beyond them were civil engineering professor Campbell, military science professor MacArthur, and Miss Jacqueline Bouvier, an instructor in French. The last of our group were naval engineering professor Heinlein and theater arts professor Reagan.

  I couldn't give my colleagues much attention because of what I could see beyond Professor Reagan. A vast metallic face floated there. In a voice like distant thunder, this impossible being was telling a joke. For a moment I was too startled to listen. When I turned my ears back on, I heard, “So the scientist claimed that the experiment in which he sawed the front legs off bears and sewed on human arms didn't violate the animal rights act because under the second amendment he had the right to arm bears.”

  Normally I despise puns and make no secret of the fact. Just now though, I had a strong feeling that not laughing would be a very bad idea.

  Apparently everyone had that idea because we all laughed quite me
rrily. When the laughter subsided, the metallic face said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Now that you are all here, this meeting can proceed. I am Atigon. I summoned you here to serve as an advisory panel. Based on your unanimous recommendation, human history will be finalized.”

  When that produced a lot of surprised squawks, Atigon said, “While that's a new idea for you, finalizing history is only what you might expect if you thought about things logically.

  “In general, time travel is impossible because it can produce paradoxes, closed circles of causality in which the cause becomes the effect, and the effect becomes the cause. Conversely time travel is possible in special cases in which such closed circles cannot occur.

  “One of these special cases is that of an alien observer such as myself coming to an isolated planet such as your Earth. As long as I remain slightly outside your reality, a reverse causality cycle cannot occur. Without any danger of a time travel paradox, I can revise your history the way an author rewrites a novel.”

  “Then you called us here to help you play God!” Jacqueline Bouvier protested. “You want our advice on how to change history!”

  “No,” the metal face said. “Previous committees did that. That's why your history contains so much good luck—World War II, for example. The Germans would have won a quick and easy victory if it hadn't been for extremely fortunate weather that allowed the British to evacuate their troops from Dunkirk.”

  Looking very much like a bright schoolboy, Ronald Reagan raised his hand. In a respectful voice, he said, “From what you say, I gather that human history, as we know it, is more or less the final, no-further-revisions-needed product. Our history, however, contains many terrible events. The Holocaust. African Slavery. Natural disasters and needless wars. Is it beyond your power to prevent these things or are there reasons why they are necessary?”

  With a hint of the smile a teacher would give a bright student, Atigon said, “They are necessary. It is a hard lesson, but one that must be learned: pain is good. It is a needful part of the learning process.” Our alien host went on in the same vein at some length. Much of it sounded to me like a mixture of Zen Buddhism and patent law, but Ronald Reagan listened eagerly, taking in every word.

  When Atigon finish, Reagan asked, “Then, Master, what is there for us to do?”

  “In less than a century, a ship from a nearby star will visit your solar system,” Atigon replied. “That will end the isolation of your race and make further improvements in your history impossible. That means your history must be finalized, and—Here you must understand—the Law of the Galaxy is that no good thing is completely free. Having gained great improvements in your history, you must pay a price in pain. You must make a small sacrifice so that what you gained will not be free.”

  “What kind of sacrifice?” Heinlein asked.

  The wall on the other side of the conference table suddenly held a list of names: Adolph Hitler, Guy Fawkes, Christopher Marlowe, King Leonidas of Sparta, William the Silent, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Isaac Newton, Werner Heisenberg, Thomas Edison, and Bartolome de las Casas, bishop of Chiapa. “If one of these people dies young, that will pay your debt,” Atigon said.

  “I have two questions,” Simak said, “First, is this list complete? Second, you mentioned our giving you a unanimous recommendation. What happens if we can't all agree?”

  “The list is complete with the exception of one name my programming doesn't allow me to process.” Atigon replied.

  Nodding, Simak said, “When we were telling jokes, you had problems with Professor Heinlein's use of navy language. Is this name you can't give us somehow vulgar?”

  “That is correct,” Atigon replied. “The answer to your second question is that, under Galactic Law, your race has rights. One of these rights is to reject improvements in your history. If you do not give me a unanimous recommendation, you will be exercising that right.

  “Please have your decision ready when I return an hour from now, and please be careful in your selection. There are some individuals on this list who can be removed without undoing the improvements I have made to your history. There are other individuals for whom this is not the case.”

  With that Atigon vanished.

  * * * *

  5

  One of the things I hate about faculty meetings is that there's always someone who wants us to make the decision without discussing it. Usually that's someone who has guessed what the decision will be if we think about it and doesn't like that result. This time it was Miss Bouvier. Before anybody said anything, she declared, “Our choice is obvious. Getting rid of Adolph Hitler will prevent the Holocaust!”

  “No!” Heinlein snapped. “We can't give Adolph Hitler the chop. His blunders were the reason we won the war! He attacked Russia while he had his hands full fighting England. He sent the German Army into Russia without their winter uniforms because he didn't want the Russians to think the war was going to last that long! Later he got sick and couldn't think clearly and made a host of disastrous decisions.”

  “But without Hitler, World War II might never have happened,” she protested.

  “Of course it would. After World War I, the German people were furiously angry.” Heinlein declared. “It was inevitable that—”

  “You can't know that!” she said, but a look from Dean Bethell stopped her from arguing any further.

  “Before we proceed further, we need to get the ground rules straight,” the dean announced. “We've been told that choosing any name from that list will have painful consequences. Given that, we need to assume a worst case scenario for each of our possible choices.” Turning toward Professor MacArthur, she continued, “Douglas, if we eliminate Adolph Hitler, what the worst that could happen?”

  After a moment's thought he said, “Without Hitler, Rommel would have far more freedom of action. That would certainly make the war longer and bloodier and, in the worst case, Germany would win.”

  “What about Guy Fawkes?” she asked the group at large.

  “I think that, like Hitler, he's on the list for being a bungler,” Campbell said. “Fawkes got himself and all the other plotters hanged because he went ahead with the plan to blow up Parliament even though he knew they'd been warned. Almost certainly someone else would have retreated and attacked another day.”

  “Thank you,” Dean Bethell said, smiling now that she had the meeting under control. “Miss Bouvier, please tell us why removing Marlowe from history would be a great loss.”

  “Why, because he was the greatest writer in history!” she exclaimed. “If he dies as a young man, it won't just be a disaster to English literature. It'll be a disaster for all literature! Everything based on his work will disappear. Half the bookshelves in all the libraries will be empty. Our children will grow up unable to read anything of any great complexity! The theater will be impoverished. TV will be a vast wasteland!”

  “Good,” she said. “Professor Campbell, do you see any reasons why Marlowe might still be our best choice?”

  After looking at the ceiling for a moment, Campbell said, “It's sometimes necessary to remove a large tree from a forest so the small trees have room to grow. Without Marlowe, all these library bookshelves would have room for the works of other writers. There'd be room in the Elizabethan theater for other playwrights, people like Shakespeare, who wrote some decent plays.”

  “I agree,” Heinlein put in. “There's also the fact that many of the people on the list had children. Removing one of them could cause a domino effect. We don't have that problem with Marlowe because he was gay.”

  “A good point, but children aren't the only dominos,” MacArthur added. “There's a children's game in which one builds a tower of blocks and then tries to take blocks out of the tower's foundation without causing it to collapse. That's what we're doing here, but the tower is Western civilization, and the next three names on that list are essential to keeping it standing.

  “King Leonidas and his three hundred Spart
ans held the pass at Thermopylae against a vast army, perhaps a million men. Delay for an army that size is disaster. Leonidas and his men all died, but they weakened the Persians so greatly that their subsequent defeat was inevitable. That saved Greece and all the Greek learning on which our civilization is built.

  “In 1573, the Spanish Army laid siege to the city of Leyden, vowing to kill everyone, even the smallest baby. At that time the Spanish Army was invincible in the sense that no other army could defeat them. William the Silent had vowed to save the city, but for a year Leyden's people starved waiting for him to keep his promise. At the end of that year, when all seemed lost, he broke the dykes and attacked with his navy. Not only did he save the city, he set the stage for the subsequent destruction of the Spanish armada.

  “Joan of Arc prevented France and England from becoming a single kingdom, which would have been a disaster for England.”

  “Yes,” Dean Bethell agreed. “Joan of Arc is also critical because she inspired Florence Nightingale, and, of course, history without Florence Nightingale would be an unmitigated disaster. She established the modern profession of nursing and saved countless lives. To do that she had to force the world to change the way it thought. She had to pick up mountains of Victorian prudery and use the moral force of her example to cast them into the sea. She invented the pie chart to shame the British Army into spending more on the care of wounded soldiers. In the area of hospital reform she...”

  During this diatribe, Miss Bouvier kept glancing at me. Obviously she wanted to save Marlowe and was hoping for my help to do so. Well, she might be a demure defendant, but I wasn't Perry Mason.

  While the Dean ranted, Teller took long puffs on his pipe. Once she finished, he said, “I don't think there can be any serious question about eliminating Isaac Newton. He's absolutely central to the development of modern science. Heisenberg, on the other hand, might be a good choice. If he hadn't discovered the Uncertainty Principle when he did, someone else soon would have.”