The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  He was looking across the pool. Katrina had left the water and was now perched on the tiled rim of the opposite side, freeing her hair from the confines of a plastic cap. Arthur Saltus was as close as their two wet suits would permit, but none of the loungers about the pool were staring at him. Two other women in the water weren’t drawing half the attention — but neither were they as exposed as Katrina. Military codes extended to the swimming pool whether WACS liked it or not.

  Chaney continued to stare at the woman — and at Saltus hard by — but a part of his mind dwelt on Gilbert Seabrooke, on Seabrooke’s matter-of-fact statements. He thought about the machine, the TDV. He tried to think about the TDV. Every effort to visualize it was a failure. Every attempt to understand its method of operation was a similar failure — he lacked the engineering background to comprehend it. It worked: he accepted that. His own ears told him that every time they rammed through a test.

  Drawing an enormous amount of power and piloted by a remote guidance, the vehicle displaced — what? Temporal strata. Time layers. The machine didn’t move through space, it didn’t leave the basement tank, but it — or the camera mounted in the nose — peered and probed into time while photographing a clock and a calendar. Soon now, it would transmit humans into tomorrow and those humans were expected to do more than merely look through the nose at a clock. (But it had also killed nine men when it doubled back on itself.) Despite an effort to control it, his skin crawled. The cold shock would not leave him.

  Chaney said shortly: “You picked a hell of a crew.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Not an engineer in the lot — not a hard scientist in the lot. Moresby and I love each other like a cobra and a mongoose. I think I’m the mongoose. Want to try again?”

  “I know what I’m doing, Chaney. The engineers and the physical scientists will come later, when the probes demand engineers and physical scientists. When did the first geologist reach the moon? The first selenographer? This survey demands your kind of man, and Moresby, and Saltus. You and Moresby were chosen because each of you is supreme in your field, and because you are natural opposites. I like to think the pair of you are delicate balances, with Saltus the neutral weight in center. And I say again, I know what I am doing.”

  “Moresby thinks I’m some kind of a nut.”

  “Yes. And what do you think of him?”

  Sudden glee: “He’s some kind of a nut.”

  Seabrooke permitted himself a wintry smile. “Forgive me, but there is a measure of truth to both suppositions. The Major also has a hobby which has embarrassed him.”

  Chaney groaned aloud. “Those damned prophets!” He looked around at the Major. “Why doesn’t he collect toy soldiers, or be the best chess player in the world?”

  “Why don’t you write cookbooks?”

  Chaney glanced down at his chest. “See how neatly the blade entered between the ribs? Notice that the haft stands out straight and true? A marksman’s thrust.”

  Seabrooke said: “You like to read the past, while the Major prefers to read the future. I will admit yours is the more valuable vocation.”

  “Another futurist. You collect futurists.”

  “He places an inordinate faith in prognostication. He begins with so simple an act as reading his horoscope in the daily papers, and conducting himself accordingly. After his arrival here he admitted to Kathryn the mission was no surprise to him, because a certain horoscope had advised him to prepare himself for a momentous change in his daily affairs.”

  Chaney said: “That is as old as time; the earliest Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, all were crazy about astrology. It’s the most enduring religion.”

  “I suppose you are familiar with the small booklets known as farmer’s almanacs?”

  A nod. “I know of them.”

  “Moresby buys them regularly, not only to learn how their minute prophecies may affect him but to anticipate the weather a year in advance. I will admit I have looked into that last, and the Major has a remarkable record of correlating military operations with weather conditions — when he’s stationed in the United States, you understand. One would suppose the weather works for him. And on some previous military posts, he has been known to plant a garden in strict accordance with the guidelines laid down in those almanacs — phases of the moon and so forth.”

  Skeptically: “Did the spinach come up?”

  The firm lips twitched and toyed with a smile, then controlled themselves. “Finally, there is his library. Moresby owns a small collection of books, perhaps forty or fifty in all, which he moves with him from post to post. Books by such people as Nostradamus, Shipton, Blavatsky, Forman, and that Cromwell woman in Washington. He has an autographed copy by someone named Guinness; he met the author at some lecture or other. I inquired into that because of the security angle but Guinness proved harmless. Just recently he added your volume to the collection.”

  Chaney said: “He wasted his money.”

  “Do you also believe I’ve wasted mine?”

  “If you were looking for prophetic visions, yes. If you were interested in a biblical curiosity, no. The future should bring some great debates on that Revelations scroll; a dozen or so applecarts have been upset.”

  Seabrooke peered at him. “But do you see how I’m using Moresby?”

  “Yes. Just as you’re using me.”

  “Quite so. I like to think I’ve assembled the best possible team for the most important undertaking of the twentieth century. There are no real and solid guidelines to the future, there are only speculative studies and pseudo-speculative literature. We’re making use of both, and making use of trustworthy men who are actively involved in both. One or both of you will have a solid foot on the ground when you surface twenty-two years hence. What more can we do, Chaney?”

  “You’ve taken hold of a wolf by the ears. You might look around for a way to let go — an escape route.”

  A moment of thoughtful silence. “A wolf by the ears. Yes, I have done that. But Chaney, I have no desire to let go; I am fascinated by this thing, I will not let go. This step is comparable to the very first rocket into space, the very first orbital flight, the very first man on the moon. I could not let go if I wanted to!”

  Chaney was impressed by the vehemence, the passionate eagerness. “Why don’t you go up to the future?”

  Seabrooke said quietly: “I tried. I volunteered, but I was pushed aside.” His voice betrayed the hurt. “I was washed out in the first physical examination by a heart murmur. Once again this is comparable to space flight, Chaney. Old men, disabled men, feeble men will never know the TDV. We have been shut out.”

  The man’s gaze wandered back to Katrina, and Chaney joined him in the watchfulness. Her skimpy suit was beginning to dry under the June sun and some of the more interesting rubs and contours were smoothing out, losing the revealing contours beneath. Beside her, skin touching skin, Arthur Saltus monopolized her attention.

  Chaney felt that he had been shut out.

  After a while he asked a question that had been playing in the back of his mind.

  “Katrina said you had a couple of alternatives in mind, if this future probe didn’t work. What alternates?” And he waited to see if the woman had reported a breakfast table conversation to the Director.

  “A confidence, Chaney?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I know the President a bit better than you do.”

  “I’ll grant you that.”

  “I know what he will not buy.”

  Chaney had a premonition. “He won’t buy your alternatives? Either of them?”

  “Buy them? He will be outraged by them. Shock waves will be felt all this distance from Washington.” Seabrooke hit the table and his empty glass was upset. “I wanted to visit the future, see the future, smell the future, but I was rejected the first day by the medics; I was shipwrecked before I got aboard and that hurt me more than I can say. The only other way left to me, Chaney, was to s
ee that future through your eyes — your camera, your tapes, your observations and reactions. I can live in it through you and Moresby and Saltus, and I am determined to do that! There is nothing else left to me.

  “To that end, I prepared two alternatives to submit to the President. I made sure each of the alternate probes would be unacceptable to him, and he would direct me to proceed with the original plan. I want the future!”

  Chaney asked: “Outrageous?”

  A short nod. “The President is a religious man; he practices his faith. He will never permit a probe to the scene of the Crucifixion with film and tape.”

  “No — he won’t do that.” Chaney considered it. “But because of political consequences, not religious ones. He’s afraid of the people and afraid of the politicians.”

  “If that be true, the second alternative would be more frightening.”

  Warily: “Where — or what?”

  “The second alternative is Dallas in November, 1963. I propose to record the Kennedy assassination in a way not done before. I propose to station a cameraman on the sixth floor of that book depository, overlooking the route; I propose to station a second cameraman in that grove atop the knoll, to settle a controversy; I propose to station a third cameraman — you — on the curb alongside the Kennedy car, at the precise point necessary to record the shots from the window or the trees. We will have an accurate filmed record of the crime, Chaney.”

  SEVEN

  The TDV was a keen disappointment.

  Brian Chaney knew dismay, disillusionment. Perhaps he had expected too much, perhaps he had expected a sleek machine gleaming with chrome and enamel and glass, still new from an assembly line; or perhaps he had expected a mechanical movie monster, a bulging leviathan sprouting cables like writhing tentacles and threatening to sink through the floor of its own massive weight. Perhaps he had let his imagination run away with him.

  The vehicle was none of those things. It was a squat, half-ugly can with the numeral 2 chalked on the side. It was unromantic. It was strictly functional.

  The TDV resembled nothing more than an oversized oil drum hand-fashioned from scrap aluminum and pieces of old plastic — materials salvaged from a scrap pile for this one job. Chaney thought of a Model-T Ford he’d seen in a museum, and a rickety biplane seen in another; the two relics didn’t seem capable of moving an inch. The TDV was a plastic and aluminum bucket resting in a concrete tank filled with polywater, the whole apparatus occupying a small space in a nearly bare basement room. The machine didn’t seem capable of moving a minute.

  The drum was about seven feet in length, and of a circumference barely large enough to accommodate a fat man lying down; the man inside would journey through time flat on his back; he would recline fulllength on a webwork sling while grasping two handrails near his shoulders, with his feet resting on a kickbar at the bottom of the drum. A small hatch topside permitted entry and egress. The upper end of the drum had been cut away — it appeared to be an afterthought — and the opening fitted with a transparent bubble for observing the clock and the calendar. A camera and a sealed metal cube rested in the bubble. Several electric cables, each larger than a swollen thumb, emerged from the bottom end of the vehicle and snaked across the basement floor to vanish into the wall separating the operations room from the laboratory. A stepstool rested beside the polywater tank.

  The contrivance looked as if it had been pieced together in a one-man machine shop on the backlot.

  Chaney asked: “That thing works?”

  “Most assuredly,” Seabrooke replied.

  Chaney stepped over the cables and walked around the vehicle, following the invitation of an engineer. The clock and the calendar were securely fastened to a nearby wall, each protected by a clear plastic bubble. Above them — like perched and hovering vultures — were two small television cameras looking down on the basement room. A metal locker, placed near the door and securely fastened to the wall, was meant to contain their clothing. Light fixtures recessed in a high ceiling bathed the room in a cold, brilliant light. The room itself seemed chilly and strangely dry for a basement; it held a sharp smell that might be ozone, together with an unpleasant taste of disturbed dust.

  Chaney put the flat of his hand against the aluminum hull and found it cold. There was a minute discharge of static electricity against his palm.

  He asked: “How did the monkeys run it?”

  “They didn’t, of course,” the engineer retorted with annoyance. (Perhaps he lacked a sense of humor.) “This vehicle is designed for dual operation, Mr. Chaney. All the tests were launched from the lab, as you will be on the out-stage of the journey. We will kick you forward.”

  Chaney searched that last for a double meaning.

  The engineer said: “When the vehicle is programmed for remote, it can be literally kicked to or away from its target date by depressing the kickbar beneath your feet. We will launch you forward, but you will effect your own return when the mission is completed. We recall only in an emergency.”

  “I suppose it will wait up there for us?”

  “It will wait there for you. After arrival on target the vehicle will lock on point and remain there until it is released, by you or by us. The vehicle cannot move until propelled by an electrical thrust and that thrust must be continuous. The tachyon generators provide the thrust against a deflecting screen which provides the momentum. The TDV operates in an artificially created vacuum which precedes the vehicle by one millisecond, in effect creating its own time path. Am I making myself clear?

  Chaney said: “No.”

  The engineer seemed pained. “Perhaps you should read a good book on tachyon deflector systems.”

  “Perhaps. Where will I find one?”

  “You won’t. They haven’t been written.”

  “But it all sounds like perpetual motion.”

  “It isn’t, believe me. This baby eats power.”

  “I suppose you need that nuclear reactor?”

  “All of it — it serves this lab alone.”

  Chaney revealed his surprise. “It doesn’t serve the station outside? How much does it take to kick this thing into the future?”

  “The vehicle requires five hundred thousand kilos per launch.”

  Chaney and Arthur Saltus whistled in unison. Chaney said: “Is that power house protected? What about wiring? Transformers? Electrical systems are vulnerable to about everything: sleet storms, drunken drivers ramming poles, outages, one thing after another.”

  “Our reactor is set in concrete, Mr. Chaney. Our conduits are underground. Our equipment is rated for at least twenty years continuous service.” A wave of the hand to indicate superior judgment, superior knowledge. “You needn’t concern yourself; our future planning is complete. There will be power to spare for the next five hundred years, if need be. The power will be available for any launch and return.”

  Brian Chaney was skeptical. “Will cables and transformers last five hundred years?”

  Again the quick annoyance. “We don’t expect them to. All equipment will be replaced each twenty or twenty-five years according to a prearranged schedule. This is a completely planned operating system.”

  Chaney kicked at the concrete tank and hurt his toe. “Maybe the tank will leak.”

  “Polywater doesn’t leak. It has the consistency of thin grease, and is suspended in capillary tubes. This is ninety-nine percent of the world’s supply right here.” He followed Chaney’s lead and kicked the tank. “No leak.”

  “What does the TDV push against? That polywater?”

  The engineer looked at him as if he were an idiot. “It floats on the polywater, Mr. Chaney. I said the thrust against a screen, a molybdenum screen provides the momentum to displace temporal strata.”

  Chaney said: “Ah! I see it now.”

  “I don’t,” Arthur Saltus said mournfully. He stood at the nose of the vehicle with his nose pressed against the transparent bubble. “What guides this thing? I don’t see a tiller or a wh
eel.”

  The engineer gave the impression of wanting to leave the room, of wanting to hand over the instruction tour to some underling. “The vehicle is guided by a mercury proton gyroscope, Mr. Saltus.” He pointed past the Commander’s nose to a metal cube within the bubble, nestled alongside the camera. “That instrument. We borrowed the technique from the Navy, from their program to guide interplanetary ships in long-flight.”

  Arthur Saltus seemed impressed. “Good, eh?”

  “Superior. Gyroscopes employing mercury protons are not affected by motion, shock, vibrations, or upset; they will operate through any violence short of destruction. That unit will take you there and bring you back to within sixty-one seconds of your launch. Rely on it.”

  Saltus said: “How?” and Major Moresby seconded him. “Explain it, please. I am interested.”

  The engineer looked on Moresby as the only partly intelligent non-engineer in the room. “Sensing cells in the unit will relay back to us a continuous signal indicating your time path, Mr. Moresby. It will signal any deviation from a true line; if the vehicle wavers we will know it immediately. Our computer will interpret and correct immediately. The computer will send forward the proper corrective signals to the tachyon deflector system and restore the vehicle to its right time path, all in less than a second. You will not be aware of the deviation or the correction, of course.”

  Saltus: “Do you guarantee we’ll hit the target?”

  “Within four minutes of the annual hour, Mr. Saltus. This system does not permit a tracking error greater than plus or minus four minutes per year. That is on target. The Soviet couldn’t do any better.”

  Chaney was startled. “Do they have one?”

  “No,” Gilbert Scabrooke interposed. “That was a figure of speech. We all have pride in our work.”

  Seniority was all. Major Moresby made the first trial test, and then Commander Saltus.

  When his turn came, Chaney undressed and stored his clothing in the locker. The hovering presence of the engineer didn’t bother him but the prying eyes of the two television cameras did. He couldn’t know who was on the other side of the wall, watching him. Wearing only his shorts — the one belated concession to modesty — and standing in his bare feet on the concrete floor, Chaney fought away the impulse to bolster his waning ego by thumbing his nose at the inquisitive cameras. Gilbert Scabrooke probably wouldn’t approve.