Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 3 October 2006

by Baen Publishing

  As always, he studied the other man while he worked. Himself. The man he would be in five years. Or ten, depending on how you counted.

  He looked good. Oh, the hair was a touch longer, turning to gray, the face more lined. But Robbins had the kind of face that aged well. In a few years all those wrinkles would somehow pull together the unremarkable features he had been born with and give them depth and definition. If the process continued he'd be a real ladykiller at the retirement home.

  Of course, the whole reason they were meeting in this park was because he didn't want to wait that long. Neither did he. Er, the other guy. Er. . . .

  Robbins shook his head. Such distinctions made no sense. He'd long ago decided to think of his future self as "him" and to call him Chuck just so he didn't go crazy from pronoun overload or infinite logical regressions.

  "So what've we got?" Robbins asked, gesturing at the papers clutched in Chuck's hands.

  "Instructions," Chuck said calmly, holding up the first sheet of paper so Robbins could focus the Nikon in on it. "It's time."

  Autofocus was useless in a situation like this, and Robbins was grateful for the excuse to concentrate on the mindless technicality of framing the shot. His hands shook as he checked the aperture and shutter speed, but if Chuck noticed he gave no sign.

  Robbins snapped two pictures in rapid succession, then examined the results on the LCD panel. He nodded as much to himself as to Chuck, and said as calmly as he could, "Okay, we're ready."

  One by one Chuck held up sheets of paper, and Robbins snapped two or three frames of each. There were just nine pages total, including a hand-drawn map; a few minutes later they were done.

  "Got 'em," Robbins said, straightening. He popped out the memory card and slipped it into an inside jacket pocket; the rest of the gear went back into the bag.

  Chuck waited for Robbins to finish, then got to his feet. "Be back here the day after tomorrow, mid-afternoon. Clear your schedule. We'll talk about the next step." Without another word he turned and walked off down the path, coat wrapped tightly around him, hunched slightly against the cold. Robbins watched until he disappeared around a small grove of trees, then turned in the opposite direction and went back to his car. He had a lot of homework to do.

  ****

  The next day at half past two, Robbins mounted the steps of a forlorn-looking Cape Cod a few blocks off the freeway. Leaves stirred in a slight wind, rubbing fretfully against the white clapboard siding, a watery sun barely able to raise a shadow on the sidewalk in front.

  Taking a deep breath, he rang the doorbell.

  Shuffling steps inside, then a muffled voice through the door, high and raspy: "Who are you?"

  Robbins took a step backward so he was more clearly visible through the peephole. "Charles Robbins, Mr. Welken. I called earlier?"

  There was a pause, and then the sound of bolts being undone. The door swung wide, revealing a short, wiry man with a shock of white hair perched untidily on his head. He looked Robbins up and down and then smiled, showing crooked teeth. "Ah, yes. The reporter. Come in." He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door open behind him.

  Robbins followed him through a cluttered living room, past a dark, outdated kitchen and into a small office at the back of the house. The rooms were tiny and spare, built during a time when the number of bedrooms was more important than their size.

  He took a seat behind a desk that looked like it had been picked out of an office building's dumpster, all angular steel and fake wood panelling. As Robbins walked in Welken waved him into a chair set haphazardly among piles of books and overflowing boxes.

  "So, Mr. . . ."

  "Robbins. Charles Robbins."

  "And you're a. . . ."

  "Freelance reporter. I explained it all on the phone."

  "Yes. . . ." He leaned back and rubbed his jaw, eyeing Robbins with a startlingly sharp gaze. "And what do you want with me?"

  "Well, Mr. Welken, as I explained on the phone, I'm doing a story on inventors and aliens, and you seem to be a bit of an expert in both. Everywhere I look, your name keeps popping up."

  His eyes sparkled at that; like every closet genius, he liked the idea that he was famous in some small corner of society. But when he spoke, his tone was amused. "Inventors and aliens? Do you work for the Enquirer, Mr. Robbins?"

  Robbins shook his head. "I'm a freelancer, Mr. Welkin. I write stories and try to sell them. Sometimes I work under contract; sometimes I work on spec. This . . . is the latter."

  He snorted. "I'll bet." An amused smile creased his face. "You seriously expect me to go on record about alien inventors?"

  "Not quite." Robbins took a deep breath, trying to calm the nervous twitters that were suddenly roiling in his stomach. "I don't believe in wasting time, Mr. Welken, so I'll be direct.Where is the artifact?"

  Welken's smile vanished. He watched Robbins for a very long time, the index finger of his right hand idly drumming on his knee. "I think I should ask you to leave, Mr. Robbins," he said finally.

  "You don't want to do that," Robbins said. "There are a lot of people, both in and out of government, who would be interested in my research on you. You've been careful, but not careful enough."

  Welken looked slightly alarmed. "What are you talking about?"

  "Comments at conventions . . . Articles in small-circulation science journals . . . Short stories with remarkably well-developed physics . . . All written under pseudonyms, of course, but that wasn't too hard to unravel. The trail is there if you look. Completely understandable; I'm amazed you've been able to sit on this secret for as long as you have."

  "Get out." But Welken looked nervous, and his words lacked force.

  "Mr. Welken, please," Robbins said, leaning forward. Welken flinched. "I don't mean to threaten you. But try to see it from my perspective. I've been researching this stuff for years. Every lead I get eventually points to you. I don't want to expose your secrets, but I have to know."

  Welken's index finger resumed its drumming. But the look in his eye had changed. "Even if I could tell you something, what difference would it make?"

  Robbins relaxed slightly. "It would justify the decade I've spent studying this, for one thing." He smiled reassuringly at the older man. "Surely you know what I'm talking about. The search for knowledge for its own sake, because you simply have to know. And maybe, too, it will start me off in the right direction. Because once I know aliens exist, I'll have to find a way to meet them, won't I?"

  Welken snorted, genuinely amused. "Aliens are overrated," he said. "But yes, I do know exactly what you're talking about."

  He eyed Robbins for several long seconds, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he stood. "Okay, Mr. Robbins," he said with a hint of dramatic flair. "You win. But I won't tell you anything. I'll show you something instead. Something extraordinary. Wait here."

  He went out. Robbins heard him pull open a door and clomp down the stairs into the basement.

  Robbins looked around the office. Behind Welken's desk were shelves piled high with books, magazines and old coffee mugs. The desk itself was clear except for a couple of pens and a largish crystalline square that looked like some sort of hologram. It sparkled and flickered hypnotically if he stared at it too long.

  The wall behind him was stacked to the ceiling with filing boxes that were themselves overflowing with papers. A quick glance showed them to be abstracts of research papers, magazine and newspaper clippings, other random bits of data. Perched precariously atop the shortest stack was an old-fashioned rotary phone, the AT&T label faded but legible beneath the clear plastic wheel.

  Robbins waited. Before too long he heard Welken on the stairs again, and a moment later he came back into the office, sat down, and tossed something small on to his desk. "Take a look at this."

  Robbins leaned forward and Welken leaned back—but not too far. He seemed torn between wanting Robbins to examine the object and hovering protectively over it.

  The
thing was not very impressive. An asymmetrical square of bluish metal, about the size of a child's letter block. Short prongs or tubes stuck out of it on two sides, while a third held a tiny numeric keypad, the numbers indicated by clusters of dots rather than Arabic numerals.

  "May I hold it?" Robbins asked, glancing up.

  "Sure. Just don't touch the keypad."

  Robbins picked it up gingerly between two fingers and turned it from side to side, studying it closely. It felt slightly warm to the touch, though he could easily have been imagining that.

  "What . . . What is it?" He had to force the words out. He knew exactly what it was, but the enormity of the moment still hit him like a nuclear-powered sledgehammer.

  "My posterity," Welken said, chuckling. He eyed the object almost fondly. "A time machine."

  Robbins looked at him sharply. "You're serious."

  Welken smiled broadly at the expression on Robbins' face. "Oh, thoroughly." He stood, reached out and gently took the device from Robbins' reluctant fingers. He held it up and regarded it, as one might examine a surprisingly excellent glass of wine. "And I'd like to add that it isn't easy grafting controls on to a device built with an understanding of physics that we won't have for another century."

  "Then how—"

  Welken sat back down. "I found it aboard an alien spacecraft that crashed into the Canadian Rockies fifteen years ago."

  Robbins gaped. "How did you know it was a time machine?"

  "It wasn't. Took me awhile to figure out. I won't bore you with the details."

  "But you said—"

  "This little guy was the power source for the ship. I have no clue how it works. But what it does is draw energy from spacetime itself, and converts it to something the ship could use. It's like tapping the Big Bang and riding the blast."

  "Sounds dangerous."

  "Oh, probably. But the aliens seemed to have it worked out well enough."

  "How did you turn it into a time machine?"

  "I didn't. It turns out that when you draw energy out of spacetime in one place, you've got to give it back in another place—a place that can be distant in space, or time, or both. Since the amount of energy is, as I said, enormous, the aliens usually chose 'both.'"

  "Are you telling me that time travel was a side effect of their engine!?"

  Welken grinned. "You got it. I think they considered it an irritating engineering problem."

  Robbins looked with newfound respect at the little gadget. "So how does it work?"

  Welken turned the device around so the reporter could see the keypad. "Pretty simple, really. You key in the spacetime coordinates you want, and it takes you there. Here." He reached behind him, grabbed a small booklet and tossed it toward Robbins. "I wrote a user's manual."

  Robbins picked up the booklet and leafed through it. A lot that Chuck had told him became much clearer as he read.

  "Time travel" was a bit of a misnomer, because the traveller never truly left his own time continuum. The machine somehow created a bulge in spacetime, a bubble or tube with the traveller inside it, which reached over to the chosen coordinates. That avoided most of the paradoxes normally associated with time travel.

  Most, not all. A traveller could still interact with the other time stream to some extent: Talk to people, for instance, even touch them. But he had to return to his own continuum with roughly the same mass that he left with. And the amount of mass was limited: not much more than the weight of an average adult male.

  Robbins glanced up at Welken. "So I could change the past?"

  "Yes, but I think you'd find it surprisingly difficult," Welken replied easily. He seemed relaxed, freed, finally able to discuss this with another human being. "Time is rather resilient, with lots of alternate paths to the same destination. Assassinate Hitler, for instance, and you don't prevent World War II; another Nazi steps in to take his place. That's no coincidence; it appears to be a law of interdimensional physics. I'm afraid it's a bit devastating to the 'great man' theory of history."

  Robbins considered. "Okay, so change is difficult. I notice you didn't say impossible."

  "No, but consider three things. One, it probably wouldn't work. Two, the unintended consequences would probably swamp whatever benefit you'd get anyway. And three, you really want to avoid meeting yourself."

  "Why?"

  "Because that bubble of spacetime contains a lot of energy. And whatever is inside the bubble cannot exist in the same place at the same time as itself. For all practical purposes, when you're inside the bubble you're an antimatter version of yourself. Come into direct contact with yourself in another continuum and—boom."

  "Boom?"

  "The bubble collapses, releasing all the energy used to generate it. Think matter-antimatter explosion, with the energy released almost equally between the two time streams. You'd kill your past yourself, your present self, and leave a huge crater in both continuums—destroying the time machine itself for a garnish."

  Robbins smiled weakly. "So you're saying that would be bad."

  "On multiple levels."

  They lapsed into silence. Robbins leaned back and stretched, then glanced at his watch. "So how often do you use it?"

  Welken looked fondly at the device in his hand. "A few small trips to spotcheck specific theses, all well outside the present day."

  Robbins gaped. "That's all?"

  Welken nodded seriously. "I don't fully understand how it works, Mr. Robbins. For one thing, you don't experience the effect of whatever changes you make until you return to your own continuum. So you can't test radical changes unless you're willing to risk annihilation. It's one thing for aliens to vent their exhaust into uninhabited space. It's entirely another to meddle with one's own past or future."

  Robbins nodded thoughtfully. "Sensible, I suppose. Though I can't believe there are many people who could resist the temptation as you have."

  Welken's smile was grim this time. "Which is why I have not alerted the authorities to the device's existence, Mr. Robbins."

  "May I . . . May I try it?"

  Welken shook his head. "A natural question, but not today, I'm afraid. I don't know you very well, Mr. Robbins, and I'd prefer to check you out and provide a little preflight training before setting you loose in another era."

  Disappointment plain on Robbins' face, he sat back. "Another time, then, I hope."

  After that there wasn't much more to say. Robbins thanked him for his time, which Welken waved away with mumbled words of deprecation. They stood, shook hands. Welken came around the desk, the time machine held tightly in his left hand. "Let me put this back, then I'll see you to the door," he said, and stepped past Robbins.

  The crystalline hologram had a nice weight to it, and a very hard edge. When Robbins brought it down on Welken's skull he gave a soft mewing sound and crumpled, sprawling bonelessly across the floor.

  Robbins stooped and plucked the time machine from Welken's outflung hand, stowing it carefully in his pocket along with the manual. Then he went into the kitchen, blew out the pilot light on the stove and opened all the burners. The smell of gas filled the air as he returned to the office and picked up the rotary phone. Pulling a small handyman's tool out of his pocket, he unscrewed the base and rewired the ringer, scraping a goodly length of insulation off the wires in the process. He reassembled the phone, checked for a dial tone and replaced it on its perch.

  Moving quickly now, he yanked open the door to the basement and ran downstairs. Ignoring the lab equipment visible through an archway at the other end of the basement, he went straight to the furnace and blew out the pilot light there, too, making sure the gas continued to flow. Back upstairs he paused in the front hall long enough to dial the thermostat up as far as it could go.

  Robbins looked around one last time. The air reeked of gas. Welken lay unmoving on the floor, his breathing labored, a small rivulet of red running down his scalp and beginning to pool on the floor. Everything else looked exactly as it had when he had a
rrived.

  He went out and closed the door behind him, careful to make sure it was locked. As casually as he could manage, he walked down the steps, around the corner and another three blocks to where he had left his car.

  As he drove away, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the unregistered cell phone he had used to call Welken earlier that day. He hit redial while he merged with traffic streaming toward the freeway.

  On the fourth ring, he heard the explosion.

  Robbins took a roundabout way home. As he drove he cracked open the cell phone and yanked out the memory chips. When he reached the Washington Avenue Bridge he slowed a bit as he approached midspan, checked the rearview mirror—empty—then cracked a window and flung the rest of the phone into the muddy waters of the Mississippi.

  Back at his house, Robbins pulled the car into the garage and waited for the garage door to whump shut before getting out. He hurried to his basement workroom, closed the door, and spilled the contents of his coat pockets on to the table.

  From a locked gun cabinet he drew out the Nikon. Switching it on, he flipped through the images, then magnified one until he could read the alphanumerics written on the page. He set the camera on the edge of the table, LCD panel toward him, glowing bluishly.

  He paused for a moment to admire the time machine, so out of place in the everyday clutter of mundane things that surrounded him. He picked it up, turning it this way and that in the dim light, considering for a moment the delicious power he held. Not just the power of the device, but the power of choice. Chuck had guided him to this moment, and had told him what to do next. But what if he didn't? Could he change the plan even now, a year before yet five years after it had been launched?

  The moment passed. He had his instructions, and if he couldn't trust himself, who could he trust? He consulted Welken's manual, quickly configuring the machine. He double-checked the settings, then checked them again. Satisfied, he carefully keyed in the 23-digit spacetime coordinate glowing so cheerfully from the Nikon. Then he picked up a rubber band, strapped the manual to the awkward little block, took a deep breath, and activated it.