by Peter Heath
He fell forward face down and cried.
This was the history of Earth. This was the history of the human race. His tears fell on machine-made soil which immediately absorbed them, his cries echoed in the silence, and his thoughts were transmitted to the memory bank of the vast machine which was his planet. After the machine had ainalyzed them, it acted.
It created daylight—from the West instead of the East . . . it had forgotten the proper rotational pattern of the old Earth. It spread clouds across the envelope it had built to protect itself from the dangerous sky. And it grew flowers instantaneously, so that his feet were buried in them. It wished to serve again.
As he thought, Jason thought . . . sharing every emotion, every experience.
The man stood thinking for a moment. Then, as the artificial sun rose over the artificial world, he turned and walked inside toward his old laboratory.
In six months he learned the cruel truth. The intricate machine had gouged away the soil, destroyed the oceans, and rebuilt the core of the planet until it was now a machine itself. The real world of plants, flowers, trees and birds that he had left could never exist again. Acting on his secret instructions to be reawakened, the machine had created an artificial welcome for him—a five-mile square of plastic grass, mechanical birds, and breeze machines, with a sun that made its appearance whenever he asked for it.
There was one possibility, and he explored it.
If the inevitability of history could be altered, then man’s future could be changed. He set to work on the Time Dilator. The planetary machine assisted him. It had learned more than man during its ten thousand lonely years. But it apparently needed man’s guidance to function, for he learned that, little by little, the vast machine had been switching itself off during the past thousand years. It had decided that its functions were purposeless and so was eliminating them.
When the Time Dilator was completed, he had used it to begin the search through all of human history for the point at which to change the course of technical development and, thus, the final dreadful result.
The period called the twentieth century was that point in the infinite river of time. It was the branch from which man had chosen one of many parallel paths. It was the place to attempt the revisions that he had in mind.
Now the voices, images and sensations faded. Jason was being whirled back into the vari-colored mists of shifting light. He came to in the car. He was still looking into the other man’s eyes . . . eyes that had veiled themselves again in fathomless green.
“It’s not easy to accept,” said Jason, rubbing his eyes. He felt a little groggy and, at the same time, very excited. The story that he had just seen was the destiny of his own race on Earth. The man who sat beside him was from the distant future.
“Do you understand now, Mr. Starr?”
“I think so. If there was only one man who survived the—sleep—and he was the one who created the time traveling device . . . then you must be that man!”
“Approximately correct,” the stranger smiled slightly.
“What do you mean ‘approximately’?” Jason asked.
“In order to cross the space-time continuum certain changes were necessary,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Only living material can cross,” said the man from the future. “And long before our race had decided to sleep forever, it had discarded most of its unnecessary functions.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Jason.
“Only the brain was preserved. It was attached to whatever form of locomotion it needed. The range of available equipment was great.”
“Then your body—I mean the one you have now—isn’t the original you?”
“All infant brains were removed surgically immediately following the end of the growth cycle. Painless and necessary in my society. Then, Mr. Starr, perfect humanoid bodies were grown in artificial wombs. The useless parts were discarded. The brains could use these or other vehicles at will. In order to cross the continuum I had to grow myself a new body. My brain was transplanted by a machine designed long ago for that purpose.” The stranger’s voice was low and far away. Fifty thousand years away, thought Jason in awe.
“What did you use for a model, if anything?” he asked.
“I used you, Mr. Starr. As you can see, with a few alterations. Perhaps you would call them improvements. I am your genetic brother 1,455 generations removed.”
“My brother!” It wasn’t an easy idea even for Jason’s cool and analytical mind to accept.
“Perhaps we should say—your Mind Brother. In order to adapt to your century I found it expedient to borrow some of your experience. This was done while you were under repair.”
Suddenly Jason remembered awakening in the repair apparatus, and shivered. He asked the obvious question. “Why me?”
“In my search for the right place in the right time plane to begin the delicate process of altering certain events that would affect the future developments of technology, I discovered several men who were instrumental in leaping beyond the known facts to discover hitherto unknown scientific laws and to create new machines derived from their use. Brilliant men, Mr. Starr. One lived nearly two thousand years ago. I believe he called himself Aristotle. Another in your eighteenth century . . . Newton. And, of course, Einstein. Now, Mr. Starr, it is you.”
“Me! That’s ridiculous,” Jason laughed. “Oh, I’m a crack computer scientist—or was,” he added, thinking of his ruined future. “But hardly a great theoretical brain.”
“On the contrary, you have already proven yourself quite brilliant in that respect,” said the stranger.
“How?”
“The thought machine, Mr. Starr,” the man smiled dryly.
“You must be kidding,” said Jason. “According to the best sources, the whole thing was a hoax. I’m more or less finished as a scientist because of it.”
“No, not what you call a ‘hoax,’ Mr. Starr,” sighed the stranger. “The electronic devices in the smashed aircraft were perfectly real. They were also the most important development of your century. A development that must be forestalled for the good of mankind’s future progress.”
“Then how do you explain my failure to convince the people I worked for on the project?” said Jason.
“After your body was removed through the lens of the dilator, I observed a uniformed group approach the area. They spoke a dialect of the language called Chinese. They were led by a man who called himself Po. The equipment was removed and other similar instruments were substituted. The process by which the lens is created is complex and it cannot move easily from place to place. When the men retreated into the jungle I was forced to break contact with their further activities,” said the man from the future.
Jason’s first reaction was to feel a great sense of relief. His pride and the dignity of his work was restored. His second reaction followed swiftly.
“Somehow or other I’ve got to convince the government that they have made a mistake,” he mused. “A dangerous mistake.” It had been a deliberate attempt to frame him by replacing his equipment in the wrecked plane. The Chinese had been waiting for them all the time. Meaning someone who was in a position to know the nature of the project had passed the information over to the other side. With Jason dead and thoroughly discredited, the U.S. would have covered up the whole episode, leaving the Chinese free to either rebuild the equipment or to duplicate it. When a new working model of the mind control device was perfected, the Reds would have a device that could destroy more people in a split second than a hundred H-bombs!
He turned toward his Mind Brother, half-visible in the darkness.
“I don’t know how we’re going to convince the CIA that the most potentially destructive force ever created is in the hands of men who would use it without mercy or reason, but we’re going to do it,” he said.
“Perhaps there is a way,” said the stranger.
“And what might that be?” asked Ja
son. “The CIA will never let me past the receptionist.”
“Your thinking is correct . . . as far as it extends. But the ways of proof are many, and often they are found by traveling away from the objective . . . or as you would say, at a tangent.”
“What kind of tangent did you have in mind?” asked Jason.
“A psychological one,” the stranger replied dryly.
* * *
Chapter †
SIX
THE SUMMER MOONLIGHT filtered through the Japanese cherry trees, coloring the Potomac a rich molten yellow, illuminating the distant slopes of Arlington National Cemetery so that the flame over the Kennedy grave was reduced to a dim spark, the gentle but awful reminder of a good man whose life had ended too soon.
The propjet sighed down out of the night sky and its tires massaged the greasy old runway of the Washington National Airport with the gentlest possible touch. It swung off at the first taxiway and coasted to a stop in front of the Eastern Airlines terminal, its human contents disgorged themselves down the old-fashioned aluminum ramp, and the always sweating, always angry ground crew hustled the baggage out of its belly.
It was a soft, warm, clear night, and it reminded the two tall men at the baggage terminal of the war that was being fought 10,000 miles away. A war directed, movement by movement, from this peaceful and beautiful city with its monuments and memorials dedicated to courage, conviction and sacrifice and its buildings dedicated to history.
And history would be made again tonight. History of a different sort.
The bags were heavy. Too heavy for the roustabout to pick up and toss casually across the counter. But the men to whom they belonged—the tall one with the green eyes and his companion with the sun-bleached hair—carried them easily across the waiting room and out through the plate-glass doors to the rented car that was waiting at the curb.
“We’re cracking along right on schedule, Adam,” said Jason Starr, thinking that “Adam” wasn’t such a bad name for a man who had been the last man on earth fifty thousand years in the future. “Adam Cyber.” He had selected it from a book of the twentieth century explaining the principles of thinking machines. Cybernetics was the study of mechanical thought and Adam Cyber was the product of fifty millennia of effort.
Jason whipped the convertible around the parking oval and into the stream of traffic going toward the Mall. Checking his watch, he let the car slow a bit behind a truck and maintained his distance. Everything was precise. When they had hidden the car they would wait until the convoy of MP’s from Fort Lee—the relief guard, on from 11:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M.—would roll slowly up the grade—two light trucks, one for the dogs and one for the men—and then down to the first of the three outer perimeters that surrounded the vast new building housing the Central Intelligence Agency.
His work for RAND had helped, Starr chuckled. RAND had designed the security procedures for the area and it had invented the systems within the building as well. And RAND had studied the behavior of guards many, many times in the past.
They were out of the city now, and traffic thinned to a few red tail-lights ahead of them. Starr let the car slip farther back until they were riding alone through the warm summer night. It was easy so far, he thought. But was it the right psychological tangent? He didn’t know. He wouldn’t know . . . not, at least, until tomorrow morning.
The highway curved to the right, and they swept around it. A split second later, Jason cut the headlights and twisted the wheel sharply, and they were jouncing down the maintenance road that was the main approach to the CIA. Too bad there hadn’t been time to teach Adam the mysteries of the American car. His friend had demonstrated his unbelievable reaction time already—the day Starr had taught him to play tennis. When, after a half-hour of racing futilely after the fastest hit balls he had ever seen, Jason had conceded and told his friend that he was capable of beating anyone in the world, the other man had smiled as if it were the least important thing.
And, Jason had to admit, it probably was.
The final hill loomed up in front of the windshield. He let the car roll onto the shoulder, and when he felt the grass hillside become too steep for further progress, he cut off the engine and both of them got out. The car was well up from the road, half-hidden already by a screen of branches. He opened the trunk and removed the two cases. In thirty seconds the net he had designed was in place: the car was now part of the shadows.
His watch read 10:42.
Then he heard the low rumble of the convoy approaching the hill. He motioned to Adam, and together they hustled the suitcase with the special equipment up the embankment. They squatted behind a tree and watched the two trucks sweep by, up over the crest, and then disappear into the darkness again. All was quiet for a moment.
With Cyber in the lead, they set off at a fast trot through the woods, Cyber flitting like a swallow through the trees, never stumbling, not even cracking a twig in a demonstration that only a bat could have equalled. This is infiltration par excellence, Jason thought as he followed along. The soundless approach that every guerilla fighter dreams of.
The defense was a rigid pattern and, like all rigid patterns, easy to crack if you knew where to deliver the blow, thought Starr.
The guard posts were spaced 150 yards apart and the guards walked a staggered pattern, so that one pair of eyes could always see another pair of eyes, a system adapted from a RAND Corporation study that Starr had worked on. A good system if no one slipped out of gear.
The tree line ended abruptly. Beyond it lay no-man’s land and the first fence. Fattened behind a leafy hillock, they heard the tired footsteps of the guard who was about to go off duty. Then the sudden challenge as his relief came up the footpath.
“Hey, buddy, the countersign is ‘Whiskey à Go-Go’,” said a voice. “And it’s too damn bad we can’t be spending the night in good old D.C.,” the voice added.
“Yeah, cool it . . . got a butt?” the other voice replied, and two sets of feet moved off into the darkness.
“Now,” Jason whispered.
Five seconds later they were flattened next to the fence.
“Careful,” he hissed to Cyber. “It’s sensitive as Hell.”
It was indeed. Without the RAND-designed discriminating equipment located in the gatehouse, every mosquito that decided to touch the wire grid would have set off the alarm system. Cyber’s fingers selected the little device that he had perfected during the last week. A silver-gray item, the size of a thin cigarette case with four delicate wires leading out of one end. Jason had calculated the touch pressure of a mosquito on a micro-scale. Now, with infinite care, he slid the first contact toward the fence. When it was perhaps a tenth of an inch away he could feel what he was waiting for—the minute attraction of the magnetized wire tip and the fence grid . . . human fingers were too unsteady for a job like this.
Now the wires touched and held. Then Cyber attached the second, third and fourth. He pressed a stud and activated the machine. All remained silent. He motioned to Cyber, who clipped away the neutralized square of fence in a few seconds. They wriggled through. A few more seconds sufficed to patch the hole with metallic tape. Then they were into the second stretch of woods.
It was 10:50. There were two more fences and two more devices. By 11:02 they were sprinting across the freshly cut lawn . . . not toward the gigantic building that loomed in front of them but at a diagonal that would intersect one of the huge heat-exchangers that were part of the air-conditioning system of the CIA headquarters. Jason knew about them, too. He knew that each of the forty-foot-high radiators cost $150 an hour to operate and he knew that half of them were shut down as soon as the 12,000 CIA employees checked out for the day to go home to children, wives and the so-called normal world where espionage and clandestine were words you laughed at while you watched The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
They were lucky. The first radiator was off, its pumps silent, no water tumbling across the louvered surface to exchange its cargo of heat with the
night air before it entered the large pipes which fed it back into the main building.
The ordinary brass padlock on the little half-sized door to the pump room took ten seconds to pick. Then they were inside. With Cyber’s help, Jason lifted the heavy cover off the inspection tube. He opened the case and took out two sets of foam rubber knee pads. When they were in place, he motioned Cyber to follow him and let himself slide down into the main feeder pipe.
It was tight going. An endless, cramped avenue into blackness, first leading down, then up, until finally Jason was levering himself straight up, using his elbows and shoulders and knees like a mountain climber in a chimney of rock. Except that this was cold steel and it offered no handholds and one mistake would have dropped both of them down to the bottom to lie squashed until the water flushed them out the next morning.
At last the pipe leveled out. They were coming to the first series of baffles—metal wings that controlled the flow of water just before it entered the pressure exchange system. It was time to cut their way out.
It took the miniature oxy-hydrogen torch just four minutes to do the job. A final wriggle and they were both standing in darkness, a utility room just behind the maximum security area . . . that is, if Jason’s calculations had been correct.
He opened the door a crack. The formula was still perfect. A dimly lit corridor and a sign that read: ENTERING RED ZONE H. Red Zone H was the core around which the CIA had built its building and entire world-wide intelligence operation. It housed the world’s most advanced computer—a machine that IBM wouldn’t even admit existed. A machine so fantastically swift that it could reach decisions in a matter of seconds that thousands of men and women would take years to arrive at. It was the master tool in the hands of the free world, and Jason Starr was about to render it insane.
