by Smith, Glenn
Judging from the president’s reaction, that last statement had made exactly the impact on her that Verne had been hoping it would. If MacLeod didn’t know it before, he certainly must have realized by now that he, too, was dealing with a much more politically insightful opponent than he had originally anticipated.
“I believe the professor makes a valid point, Mister MacLeod,” the president said. “How do you propose to protect the world against drastic changes for the worse?”
“Yes, Mister MacLeod. How do you?” Verne parroted, despite his perceived need for caution.
“With all due respect, Madam President, could anything that might happen as a result of this mission possibly be any worse than what we’re already facing?” MacLeod asked. “If we don’t do this, then how do you propose we save the Coalition from Veshtonn domination here and now, given what’s happened? The way I see it, and the way the council sees it, it’s simply a matter o’ choosing the lesser of two evils. If we don’t do this, then we lose everything. Earth and the Coalition will fall to the Veshtonn and all our people will be at best enslaved. At worst... Well, I think we’re all aware o’ what the Veshtonn did to the Boshtahri when they retook that system.”
He paused momentarily to allow those images that Solfleet’s Intelligence operatives had been able to smuggle out of that system—those few horrible images of what had been left of the Boshtahri population after the Veshtonn invasion—to replay themselves in the minds of each person in the room. Professor Verne might have shown himself to be a bit more politically savvy than he’d originally given him credit for, but he was still an amateur when it came to playing politics with the big boys. “If, on the other hand, we do go through with this mission, then we at least have a chance,” he concluded.
“That’s twice you’ve referred to ‘this mission’, Mister MacLeod,” the president pointed out. “The Earth Security Council passed the resolution only yesterday, yet you talk as if you’ve already laid down a plan and are prepared to move forward with it immediately.”
“To be honest with you, ma’am, we have and we are, to an extent. I believe it’s our only hope of survival at this point.”
The president hesitated a moment, then stood and smoothed her deep burgundy and black African serape as she turned away from her guests to once again gaze out through the large window behind her desk at the city streets below. She saw none of the grandeur before her as she considered both sides of the argument in silence for what seemed to her guests like several long minutes, during which time none of them dared speak for fear of drawing her rarely brandished but nonetheless infamous wrath down upon themselves.
Finally, she faced them again. “Gentlemen, our Coalition is...or rather was...comprised of over a dozen member worlds and many more protectorates. Too many of those worlds have already fallen to the Veshtonn and I have no desire to stand by and watch while the rest of them meet that same fate.”
MacLeod straightened triumphantly in his chair.
“However,” she continued, looking directly at him with something of an angry glare, “I do not share your apparent taste for playing God with the galaxy, Mister MacLeod.” A glimmer of hope now shone in the professor’s eyes, while the chairman’s shoulders began to slouch ever so slightly under the burden of impending defeat.
But the always resourceful chairman still held one more card to play. “I understand your misgivings, ma’am,” he said, “but there is something more you should consider before you make your final decision.”
Caught off guard, Professor Verne leered at his opponent and scratched his chin with suspicion. Any and all information and/or secret arguments that existed between the two sides of the issue were supposed to have been brought out into the open between the two of them prior to this meeting. The fact that the chairman had held something back smelled to the professor like evidence of some kind of conspiracy.
“What more should I consider?” the president asked as she returned to her chair.
“Over the years,” MacLeod began, all traces of his accent gone, “it has become common knowledge that the Excalibur was attacked and destroyed by the Veshtonn while attempting to rescue a Cirran shuttle in the Caldanran star system. But in all that time, some of the more so-called minor details that appear in the official reports seem to have been forgotten. One of them is the precise wording of the final report itself. Specifically, it states that the Excalibur was destroyed by ‘unidentified superior hostile alien forces, presumed to be the Veshtonn.’ That’s ‘presumed’ to be the Veshtonn, Madam President. That presumption now appears to be wrong.”
“Really?” the president asked skeptically. “And why is that?”
“Because about a month and a half ago, while the Battle of Rosha’Kana was still raging, the admiral here received information that indicates the Excalibur was destroyed by one of our own starcruisers, the Albion, with the help of two former military vessels that were in service with Newstar Corporation at the time. The initial Veshtonn attack on the Excalibur battle group is and always has been a known, confirmed fact. But according to this information they had nothing to do with the follow up attack.”
The president glanced at Hansen as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desktop, confident that he would read the ‘Why-didn’t-you-ever-tell-me-about-that?’ very clearly as it flashed across her face. But the words she gave voice to were still directed at the chairman. “The Albion?” she asked. “Are you telling me that one Solfleet vessel attacked and destroyed another Solfleet vessel?”
“That is what the information indicates, ma’am,” the chairman answered, choosing his words very carefully. If he was going to win this debate, it was important he maintain at least the appearance of possessing some measure of objectivity. “Unfortunately, we cannot be absolutely sure this information is a hundred percent accurate because there’s no way for us to positively confirm the source’s identification.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, Madam President, as you know, once we found the Excalibur’s wreckage, it wasn’t long before most of the life pods were also located. And while it’s true that no survivors were ever found, there were about twenty crewmembers whose remains were never recovered. In the absence of any direct evidence of their deaths, they were all listed as ‘Missing-in-Action’, and their names remain on the M-I-A roles to this day.
“This information came to Admiral Hansen indirectly, in the form of a Veshtonn computer record of a high-power burst transmission that originated deep within their space. It was intercepted sometime last year as best we can tell, and was transmitted by someone alleging himself to be one of those missing crewmembers.”
“Really?” the president asked. Although their names still appeared on the M.I.A. roles, Solfleet Central Command had all but written off the missing members of the Excalibur’s crew years ago. The possibility that one of them might suddenly have been heard from after all this time was nothing short of astonishing. Especially considering where he’d alleged himself to be. “Did this alleged crewmember identify himself?”
“Yes, ma’am. He claimed to be a Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell. Our records indicate he was a tactical officer aboard the Excalibur for the three years leading up to its loss.”
“O’Donnell?” She looked at Hansen. “Any relation to that Crewman O’Donnell of yours whose arrest you mentioned the other day, Admiral?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hansen answered. “Robert O’Donnell is, or was her father.”
“Hmm. Interesting. You’ll have to fill me in on some of the details when we have more time.” Addressing MacLeod again, she asked, “And what about the Albion itself? What do we know or think we know of its whereabouts during the time of the Excalibur’s destruction?”
“We know the Albion was decommissioned in early February of twenty-one sixty-two, and that it was dry-docked at the Mars Orbital Shipyards—MOS-balled, as it were. According to shipyard records, that’s exactly where it stayed until a little over
two years after the battle of Epsilon Eridani, at which time several major upgrades were completed and it was relaunched under a temporary recommission.”
“Two years after the battle of Epsilon Eridani, you say?” the president asked. “But the Excalibur was destroyed only a year and a half after that battle,” she then reminded him.
“A little less than seventeen months, actually,” MacLeod corrected her.
“A little less or a little more, what difference does it make?” she asked. “If the Excalibur was destroyed several months before the Albion was ever relaunched, then how can this new information of yours possibly be correct?”
“As I’ve already said, Madam President, we can’t be absolutely sure that it is. But we’ve also discovered something that makes me wonder if the shipyard records might be erroneous.”
Even as Professor Verne threw his hands up with a disgusted grunt and dropped them noisily to his lap, the president drew a deep breath and sighed, trying to hold on to the last shred of her sorely-tested patience. “And what is that, Mister MacLeod?”
“At least as early as three years after the Excalibur’s destruction, perhaps even earlier than that, everyone who was stationed at the Martian shipyards at that time and who could reasonably be expected to have possessed some knowledge as to whether or not the Albion was ever relaunched prior to its upgrade and recommissioning, was dead.”
The president was taken aback, and judging from the professor’s reaction—Hansen, for his part, remained as stoic and unreadable as ever—he was just as surprised as she was. Clearly, he hadn’t been told about this before.
“Everyone?” she asked, her patience suddenly renewed.
“Yes, ma’am. Every space traffic controller, every flight engineer, every deck crewman, technician, records clerk, and every former member of the Albion crew. Not to mention an inordinately high percentage of their immediate family members. Everyone who might possibly have known anything about it.”
“That is most...unusual, Mister MacLeod,” she remarked.
“It is most suspicious, Madam President, and I believe it lends a certain amount of credibility to this new information. It’s too much of a coincidence to be just a coincidence.”
“I agree. I trust the matter is being looked into.”
“Indeed it is, ma’am. The admiral’s agency and the Federation Bureau of Investigations are looking into it jointly.”
“Good. Now, all that being said, and as obvious as it might seem, are we absolutely sure that whatever was going on back then that led to all those deaths had to involve the Albion?”
“To be honest, Madam President, we can’t be absolutely sure of that either, at least not yet. But the investigators have been looking into every record of events from that time period that they can find, and so far the apparent status of the Albion is the only thing we have any reason to question, other than the deaths themselves of course.”
“That reason being nothing more than this new information of yours,” she concluded. “This...this transmission record, which is itself of questionable reliability.”
“That’s correct, ma’am.”
The president gazed silently at MacLeod for a moment, then shifted to Verne. “I take it from your reaction a few moments ago, Professor, that you were not made aware of this information prior to this meeting.”
“Ah, no ma’am, I certainly was not,” he responded, glaring at the chairman again. Then he looked back to the president and said, “But, ah, since we seem to be laying our hold cards out on the table now, here’s another one for you to think about. Of all the published theories on the possible effects of backward travel through time and subsequent changes to history, only three have ever really been accepted as plausible by the scientific community.”
“And they are?”
The first, which seems to have its roots in nothing more scientific than a late twentieth century work of science fiction, states that any given historical event is the result of a complex. That is to say that there exists no one single cause of any event, so it’s quite difficult, though not completely impossible, to change the flow of history simply by altering one event. That being said, if someone were to go back in time and kill one of a man’s immediate parents before that man is conceived, then his birth would naturally be prevented. But according to this theory, if someone were to go back and kill an ancestor numerous generations before that man’s birth, then he would still be born because his genes result from the entirety of his ancestry. There will have been compensation for the loss of that one single ancestor.”
“That’s all well and good for a single person, Professor, but what about a major event?” the president asked. “Like the destruction of the Excalibur?”
“Such an event could be, and I stress could be, what’s referred to under this theory as a nexus—a key event in history. If such an event is altered, then the subsequent timeline is drastically changed. Examples of such a nexus might include the prevention of Adolph Hitler’s birth by killing one of his immediate parents, the destruction of the Japanese fleet before they launch their planes for the attack on Pearl Harbor, or certainly the destruction of the Veshtonn home world before they ever achieve space flight.”
“Now there’s an idea,” MacLeod quipped.
Ignoring him, the president asked, “What are the other two theories?”
“The second, the one the chairman is obviously counting on to be the correct one, states that if a significant event in history is altered, then all subsequent events that occurred as a result of that event are altered as well, thus changing the future that the time-traveler came from. The farther back along the timeline the initial change occurs, the more drastic all the subsequent changes become because their numbers compound exponentially. The major argument against this theory is that a traveler could not possibly make a significant change to the timeline without creating a paradox.”
“Explain.”
“All right. Say for example that a traveler went back in time to prevent World War Two, and that he was successful. Not just in delaying it, mind you, but in completely stopping it from ever happening. World War Two never happens, and because it never happens, his mission back in time to prevent it never happens, either. But, if his mission to prevent it never happens, then the war breaks out.”
“I see. And the third theory?”
“The third and somewhat more logical theory is that if a significant event in history is altered, then a new timeline is created from that point forward. That timeline continues to unfold on its own as a sort of parallel universe if you will, but the future that the time-traveler originally came from remains unchanged.”
“You said that theory is the more logical of the three, Professor,” the president observed. “May I assume then that it’s the one to which you yourself subscribe?”
“Yes you may, Madam President,” he answered without hesitation. “You may absolutely assume that.”
“And why is that?”
“Because physical and natural science supports it.”
“How so?”
“Think of time as a river, Madam President. Let’s assume that the water in this river flows down hill in a southerly direction. Halfway down the hill the riverbed forks, but all the water bounces off a large rock near where the fork occurs and stays to its left, thus flowing southeast from that point on. One day, a creature that lives in the water sees the fork as he floats by it. He climbs out of the water and walks back to the fork to try to move the rock and force all the water to bounce to the right and flow to the southwest. He succeeds, and from that moment on, all the water hits the other side of the rock and flows southwest. But has the water that the being climbed out of—the water that has already flowed to the southeast, changed its course? No, it hasn’t. It continues along its original path, still flowing to the southeast.
“According to this theory, Madam President, if you send someone back in time to change the past, and if that someone is successful, i
t still won’t change a thing for us. Unless of course the analogy of the river is even more accurate than any of us in the scientific community have previously theorized, in which case our timeline might one day simply dry up and cease to exist altogether.”
The president sat back in her chair and considered all that she’d been told. This decision was going to be even more difficult than she had originally anticipated. “Standard procedure dictates that I present this proposal to the Council of Coalition Member Worlds for their input,” she pointed out.
“Of course,” Verne agreed immediately. “Then you’ll see.”
“What will I see, Professor?”
“Wisdom, Madam President. The representatives of the other Coalition worlds will know of the incredible dangers we’re dealing with here. Especially the Tor’Kana. They’ll never approve of this insane resolution.”
“You seem very sure of yourself.”
“Madam President, I’ve had a number of opportunities throughout my career to work with some of the most brilliant minds the Coalition has to offer. I am sure of myself.”
“Excuse me, Madam President,” MacLeod interjected, “but I must caution you against taking this matter up with any of the other Coalition governments’ representatives. The members of the Earth Security Council feel it is vitally important that we continue to keep the existence of our Earth-targeted Portal classified.”
