Time Loves a Hero

by Allen Steele

  Murphy climbed out, shut the passenger door behind him. Even in the darkness, he could make out the snow-covered hump of the other car. He expected someone to get out, yet no one did; so far as he could tell, they were all alone. “You said someone would be here,” he said as the old man walked around to join him.

  “You’ll see.” He pulled the bill of his Mets cap low over his eyes, then motioned for Murphy to follow him. “C’mon. This way.”

  Their boots crunched softly as they left the cars behind and trod into the pasture. Murphy’s imagination briefly entertained a dark thought—his frozen corpse, found facedown in the snow in this very spot by a park ranger—yet he found himself more perplexed than afraid. Somehow, he intuitively knew that he wouldn’t come to any harm.

  About twenty feet from the road, the old man stopped. “Okay, we’re here.” He pointed into the darkness ahead. “Now watch … this is where it gets interesting.”

  Murphy stared at him, then turned to peer through the snow. At first he saw nothing.

  And then a flying saucer materialized before him.

  It appeared quietly, reverse-phasing out of the storm as if it had been there all the time. Indeed, it must have, for its upper fuselage was covered with snow and shallow drifts were piled around its wedge-shaped landing gear. Yet they were so close to it that, had he taken a few more steps, Murphy would have walked facefirst into one of the lowered flanges.

  Murphy felt his heart skip a beat. Unable to breathe, let alone muster the startled scream that caught halfway up his throat, he staggered back, his legs obeying an instinctive urge to flee, until his numbed feet slipped out from beneath him and he toppled to the ground. He landed on his back, his arms sprawled out on either side; for an absurd moment he looked as if he were trying to make a snow angel.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he croaked. “What? … What is that …?”

  “Exactly what it looks like.” The old man chuckled. “It’s a timeship, David.”

  “A … a timeship.”

  “That’s right. A timeship. Just like you wrote about in your article.” He bent down, offered his hand. “Nice guess. Couldn’t have done better myself. Now, c’mon, get up. There’s some people aboard who want to meet you.”

  Murphy didn’t take his hand. Instead, he stared up the old man. His face lay in shadow, shrouded by snow and the darkness of night, yet suddenly it seemed as if he could see him as clearly as if it were high noon on a summer day.

  “I know who you are,” Murphy whispered.

  “Yes,” Murphy replied, “I expect you probably do.”

  7:38 P.M.

  “And that’s why you’re here,” Franc finished. “Do you understand now?”

  “Yeah, sure … sure.” David Murphy slumped in one of the couches, gazing at nothing in particular. “It’s perfectly clear.”

  “No. You’re not getting it.” Leaning against a bulkhead, Zack Murphy had remained quiet during the entire discussion. “You say you do, but you’re still trying to find a way to fit this into your old worldview.”

  Franc glanced over his shoulder at him. “Dr. Murphy …”

  “You think I don’t know myself?” Zack crossed the crew compartment, sat down next to David. “Look here, son …”

  “I’m not your son.” David glared at the older version of himself. “Unless you’ve got another paradox you want to tell me about.”

  Zack grinned back at him. “Mom was pretty good-looking in her time,” he said drily, “but I wouldn’t go that far.”

  David surprised everyone by laughing out loud. Franc and Lea gave each other uncertain looks, and Metz stopped sniggering. Only Zack was amused. “Just a figure of speech,” he added. “Sorry.”

  “Excuse me … sorry … didn’t mean it.” David shook his head. “But y’know, you’re right. I didn’t quite believe it … until just now, at least.”

  “So now we’re straight, right?” Zack looked at him closely. “You know this isn’t some CIA plot, anything like that? You know this is the real deal?”

  “Uh-huh.” David let out his breath, slowly nodded. “I knew it the moment I saw this thing. I just had trouble getting used to it.” He hesitated. “The only thing I’m still unconvinced about is why I’m responsible.”

  “You’re not,” Franc said. “All of us share the burden. You’re only the primary factor, and your role in this hasn’t even begun yet. It’s what you may do in the future that concerns us.”

  “That’s the part I don’t quite understand.” David crossed his legs, bridged his hands together. “You say that, in a couple of years, I’m going to write a science fiction novel that will inspire Steven to become the scientist who figures out time travel. But I’ve already tried to write fiction, and everything I submitted to magazines was rejected. That’s why I wrote articles instead.”

  “But you originally intended to write fiction, correct?” Lea asked, and he slowly nodded. “So it could be that, a few years from now, you try your hand at it again.”

  “And this time, you succeed.” Clasping his hands together in a similar gesture, Zack pointed his forefingers at David. “Possibly because you used … could use … the article you published for Analog as the basis for your novel. At any rate, the solution is simple. Don’t write a novel … or at least not that novel.”

  “So you’re warning me not to do something I hadn’t intended to do already.” David slowly nodded, and Zack shrugged offhandedly. “Easy enough, but I’m not sure that’s going to solve all your problems. Someone else may already be interested in time travel.”

  Franc raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “Well, just this morning, I had a meeting with NASA’s associate administrator, Roger Ordmann. He’s the chief of Space Science, my department, and …”

  “Whoa! Wait a minute!” Zack Murphy raised a hand. “Did you say Roger Ordmann?” David frowned and nodded, and Zack gaped at him in surprise. “That’s the Chief Administrator of OPS in my worldline.”

  “Another convergence,” Lea murmured. They had already noted a certain reoccurence of names; Paolo Sanchez and Ray Sanchez, for example.

  “One more indication that the worldlines aren’t that far apart.” Franc absently rubbed his chin with his forefinger. “In this frame of existence, he’s a senior NASA administrator. In the other, he performs much the same function for the Office of …”

  “Y’know, maybe you shouldn’t be telling me this.” David looked first at Franc, then at Zack. “I mean, you’ve already told me enough about the different worldlines. Maybe it’s better if I don’t know all the details.”

  “At this juncture, I’m not sure if it makes much difference,” Franc said, “but if you’d rather not know …” David shook his head. “Very well, but what about this meeting you had with Ordmann?”

  “He’d read my article … someone else at NASA had brought it to my attention … and he said he was concerned about it being published by someone who worked at the agency. Said it might cast NASA in a bad light and all that. But the thing that really struck me … especially later, after you and I had our little chat at the Air and Space …”

  “I haven’t apologized for that,” Franc said. “Sorry. It had to be done.”

  “You scared the hell out of me, but … well, apology accepted.” David grinned at him. “I’d love to know how you did it, but … I dunno, maybe that’s one of those things I shouldn’t know, right?” Franc smiled, and he went on. “What struck me later was that your questions were the same as his. Like, what led me to believe that UFO sightings were tied to time travel.”

  Lea groaned softly. “Oh, no,” Metz said, closing his eyes and putting a hand over his face. “Here we go again …”

  “No, no,” Franc said quickly. “They’re not necessarily linked. This could be exactly what it seemed to be … a senior government official concerned about public perception.”

  “But what if it isn’t?” Zack asked. “Again, look at the convergences. In my worldline, in thi
s very same year, the American government began a crash program to develop time travel. Does this mean that the same thing is going on here, in this worldline?”

  Lea wrapped her arms around herself and turned away. “Nothing we do matters,” she murmured. “No matter how this turns out, someone will eventually build a timeship.”

  “My point exactly,” David said. “It may not matter whether I publish a novel or if my son becomes a physicist, because the idea’s out there already. So what are you going to do? Go back to 1898 and kill H.G. Wells? You can, if you really want to, but what’s to prevent another writer from coming up with the same concept? Or maybe you stop Einstein from developing the theory of relativity. You might, but does that necessarily prevent Stephen Hawking or Kip Thorne or someone else from investigating the same problems?”

  “Free will,” Zack said quietly.

  “Pardon me?”

  “It all comes back to the question of free will.” Pushing himself out of his chair, the other Murphy clasped his hands behind his back. “We may be able to do certain things,” he said, pensively staring at the floor. “In fact, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that we will. The question is, should we?”

  “Like … I dunno.” David thought about it a moment. “Maybe like the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki …”

  “If you mean atomic bombs, that didn’t happen in my worldline,” Zack said. “About five thousand American G.I.s were killed during the invasion of Japan, and nearly fifty thousand Japanese died defending their country, but no country has ever dropped a bomb in wartime … or at least not where I come from.” He shook his head. “But you get the point. The technology may be inevitable, but the consequences aren’t, and the consequences of time travel are far more hideous … at least in the long run … than nuclear war would ever be.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You already know what you have to do … or rather, don’t do. It’s up to you. These people have already made their decision.” Zack took a deep breath, then turned to face the others. “Dr. Lu? You’re still ready to go through with this?”

  Franc hesitated, then glanced at Lea and Vasili. Both quietly nodded, Metz a little more reluctantly than the others. He smiled grimly, then turned back to the two Murphys.

  “Yes, we are,” he said. “We’re staying here.”

  “What …?” David Murphy rose from his chair. “Here? In this … I mean, in this year?”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Lea said. “If we’ve succeeded, then the place we came from no longer exists. Or will never exist, technically speaking. The fact that we didn’t board the Hindenburg is proof of that. If we attempt to go forward from this point in time, we may very well crash-land again in some place farther up this worldline, as we did the first time we attempted to leave 1937.”

  “Therefore potentially causing another paradox, with similar outcomes,” Franc said. “The same thing would probably occur if we tried to go back in time. No matter where we go, regardless of the year or location, in all likelihood another paradox would result. We would survive, of course … but the consequences would be unimaginable.”

  “But …” David Murphy gaped at them in astonishment. “This is 1998. You’re from 2314. You don’t have a clue where you’re going to go, what you’re going to …”

  “Sure they do.” Zack Murphy turned toward him. “I’m staying with them.”

  “You’re … what?”

  Zack smiled. “What else am I supposed to do? Come home with you, claim I’m your long-lost uncle?” He shook his head. “No, I’m going where they’re going, wherever that is. This may not be my 1998, but it’s close enough. So far, we haven’t done too badly. The currency’s a little out of date, but we managed to buy some clothes, rent a car …” He frowned, then gave David a wry smile. “We’re running a little low on cash, though. Think you could spare a few bucks?”

  David hesitated, then reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet. A ten, three fives, and two ones. “That’ll do for a start,” Zack said as he took the money and folded it into his pocket. “Thanks. If Donna asks where you’ve been, tell her the car died and you had to call for a tow.”

  “And what about the ship? You’re going to have trouble hiding something this big.”

  Vasili looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “We’re not going to hide it,” he said. “We’re going to destroy it.”

  Again, David’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Do you know what you’re saying? You’re going to maroon yourselves here.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Franc appeared no less discomfited by the notion. “But again, we’ve got no other choice. As you just pointed out, we’d have trouble concealing it. Its chameleon requires a constant energy input, and once the batteries drained below a certain level it would become visible once more. There’s virtually no place on Earth where it could remain hidden without chance of discovery. Having someone stumble upon an operational timeship is far too great a risk for us to take. So destroying Oberon is the only option.”

  “I’ve already programmed the AI to fly it out of the atmosphere.” Metz’s eyes were sad, his voice bleak. “The chameleon will remain operational until it’s achieved orbit. After Oberon reaches space, it’ll open a wormhole that will take it straight into the Sun.”

  “Once it’s destroyed,” Franc continued, “for all intents and purposes, it will have never existed.” He gazed at the pilot. “I’m sorry, Vasili,” he added quietly, “but it has to be done.”

  Metz nodded, but said nothing. Franc turned back to David Murphy. “Which brings us to a final question. Besides us, you’re the only person who knows anything about this …”

  “Are you asking if I can keep a secret?” He shrugged. “Who would believe me?”

  “Someone probably would,” Zack said. “In fact, there’s a lot of people out there who would be only too willing to suspend their disbelief, if they had any in the first place. You may be tempted to write a book about all this. Maybe you’d get lucky and it would become a best-seller. In any case, you could stand to make a few bucks.”

  Temptation stole across David Murphy’s face. Zack noticed it; he frowned and shook his head. “Don’t do it,” he said quietly. “I beg of you, please don’t. You don’t know the things I’ve seen, but if you did, you’d never contemplate such a thing.”

  “All right, so I won’t,” David said, reluctantly. “I promise. Mum’s the word. But you know, and I know, that the idea of time travel is already out there. Destroying this ship won’t make any difference if someone is already trying to figure out how to build something like this.”

  “Which is another reason why we’re staying here,” Zack replied. “To make sure that no one does.” He smiled grimly. “Remember, I’ve already been through all this. I know what to look for.” Then he raised a finger and shook it at David. “And don’t think for an instant we’re going to forget about you. I know where you live.”

  David didn’t reply. Franc studied him for a moment, then turned to the others. “I think that covers everything. Lea, is everything in the car?” She nodded, and he stood up. “Then it’s time to go.”

  8:01 P.M.

  The storm had let up while they were in the timeship. Although the sky was still overcast, the only snow that fell was a few crystalline flakes the wind blew away from Oberon’s fuselage. Lea shuddered within her 1930s-style overcoat as she marched through the drifts away from the timeship. “I’m going to have to get used to this,” she murmured to Franc through chattering teeth, then she looked at Zack. “Is it always this way, this time of year?”

  “Usually. Sorry.” He took off his baseball cap, gave it to her. “We can always head south. Florida’s pretty nice in January.”

  David Murphy trailed behind them, reluctant to leave the timeship behind. As they approached the road, he stopped and turned around. Vasili Metz had just climbed down the ladder and was jogging away from the Oberon. He was the only one who
didn’t have a coat, and he wrapped his arms around himself in a futile effort to stay warm. On sudden impulse, Murphy pulled off his parka, offered it to him as he approached. Metz regarded it with surprise, then gratefully accepted it with mumbled thanks.

  They trudged through the snow to the cars. “Mind if I borrow your brush?” Zack asked David, then he opened the left rear door of the Escort and found the long-handled ice scraper. He had just finished clearing the front and rear windows of the rental Chevy when they heard a low hum from somewhere behind him.

  Murphy turned just in time to see the Oberon lift off. The hemispheres beneath its hull gleamed against the white pasture as the timeship slowly rose, the negmass drive whisking away sheets of snow from the ground below. The flanges folded up against the bottom of the saucer, and for a few seconds it seemed to David as if he were watching a scene from one of the fifties science fiction movies he had relished as a kid.

  Then the Oberon faded from sight. The last impression they had of its passage from Earth was a vague shadow slightly darker than the sky, quickly disappearing into the night.

  “Well … okay. Let’s go before we freeze to death.” Zack opened the Chevy’s rear passenger door, turned to help Lea inside. She stared at the place where the Oberon had once stood, then she allowed herself to be guided into the backseat.

  Metz started to follow her, then he stopped. “I think this is yours,” he said to David, and began to pull off the parka.

  “Keep it,” Murphy said. “You need it more than I do.” The former timeship pilot nodded, then climbed in behind Lea.

  Zack shut the door behind him. “That’s awfully nice of you,” he said, “but wasn’t that a Christmas gift from Donna? Two years ago?”

  “Umm … no, I bought it myself, at the outlet mall. Donna gave me a watch.” He grinned at Zack. “Maybe the convergences aren’t as close as we think.”