The Prometheus Project

by Steve White

  We finally found him, after what were probably fewer hours than it seemed at the time. He was in a gallery-like space that was evidently a kind of office suite, looking out through broad windows over the Sanctuary's terraced approach, beyond which the slow dawn of Khemava was breaking over the desert. We rolled him over—remember, this was low gravity—and tried to arouse him, using every ploy our limited knowledge of his species' physiology suggested.

  Our amateurish ministrations must have had some effect. He came around before his colleagues, despite his advanced age.

  "Have you contacted the authorities?" were his first words. They came out of our earpieces in the same imperturbable computer-generated voice as always, even though he was speaking in the rustling croak that was his equivalent of a whisper.

  "No," said Chloe. "We didn't know how."

  "Of course you didn't." With an alarmingly visible effort, Khorat heaved himself upright from where he'd lain sprawled across his cushions. He tottered over to a console and began making connections and talking to various uniformed Delkasu.

  "It is probably just as well you were not able to reach any law enforcement agencies," he observed after cutting the last connection. "There will of course be questions, which I will need to deal with. This touches on extremely sensitive matters."

  "Yeah, we know," I said shortly. I'm not a morning person, and hunger never improves my disposition.

  The translator must have conveyed the hard flatness of my tone, for Khorat stopped what he was doing and turned the unreadable regard of his enormous eyes on us.

  "We talked to Novak before she and her Tonkuztra allies left, Khorat," Chloe explained.

  "And she told you . . . ?"

  "Everything."

  Something seemed to crumple up inside the old Ekhemar. He closed his eyes tightly as though in physical pain, and from deep in his throat came a low sound that my earpiece did not translate.

  "Khorat?" said Chloe, alarmed. "Are you all right?"

  "Quite." Khorat seemed to take command of himself. "There is much to do. We must awaken as many of my fellows as possible before the security forces arrive. We must also return the two of you to your quarters, as your presence here is not generally known and would be awkward to explain."

  "Yeah, sure," I nodded. "Not for the world would we cause trouble. But Khorat . . . after the cops are gone, we're going to have a long talk."

  "A long, frank talk," Chloe amplified.

  I heard a rustling Ekhemasu sigh. "Very well. You have my word on it. But at present, there is need for haste."

  * * *

  We spent a boring time as Delkasu officials and their Ekhemasu flunkies swarmed over the Sanctuary. What Khorat had told us about their regard for native Ekhemasu religious sensibilities must have been true, for they stayed away from areas the Medjavar told them were off-limits—like the area where our quarters were located. It even made sense, I reflected. The Medjavar were the victims in this crime. What reason would they have to withhold information?

  Finally, the investigators departed and Khorat conducted us to his office. It was a smaller version of the suite we'd found him in, spacious to our eyes but probably the Ekhemasu equivalent of the stereotypical small, book-lined, pipe-smoke-smelling study of some equally stereotypical professor. Except that it was pretty much open to other similar offices; the Ekhemasu, descendants of herd animals, didn't altogether share our human ideas of privacy. But the three of us were alone.

  "What did you end up telling them?" I asked Khorat, as Chloe and I settled gingerly onto the cushions that had to serve in the absence of human-adapted furniture. "I mean, about what this raid was aimed at?"

  "Nothing. We insisted we had no idea what could possibly motivate such an act. I could tell they were not satisfied. But they will still pursue their investigation vigorously. A crime involving violation of air traffic regulations is one which the imperial authorities take seriously, however vague its motive. And they will enjoy the full—if covert—cooperation of the Osak gevroth, who will be livid over a Tosava intrusion on a planet they consider part of their turf." (My respect for the translator software went up yet another notch.) "But it will all come to nothing, of course. They will know nothing of what is involved. Nor may they be told."

  Chloe leaned forward in a way that was oddly beseeching. "Khorat, help me understand this. Novak told us that this is all about the secret of . . . well, of time travel." She gave a nervous little laugh, as though desperately inviting Khorat to share her amusement at something so ludicrous, and beseeching him to explain to us what Novak had really meant.

  Instead, the great dark eyes remained expressionless. So did the voice in our earpieces, as he snuffed out Chloe's hope. "Yes. I see there is no point in denials. It is now time for you to learn the whole story.

  "It dates back to shortly after the Delkasu conquest. Actually, I must go even farther back than that, to our beginnings as a race and our fundamental orientation as a culture.

  "First of all, you must understand that we are not particularly good tool users." Khorat held up one of his strange, clumsy-looking hands, so oddly at variance with his race's overall look of highly evolved gracefulness. "Not nearly as good as the Delkasu. Not even as good as you. Your single opposable thumb is a far more efficient arrangement."

  "But," said Chloe, puzzled, "you colonized this system, and—"

  "Oh, yes, we can do anything you or even the Delkasu can do. It just takes us longer . . . especially in that particular case. Given our species' body mass, interplanetary colonization using reaction drives was a problem whose solution required thousands of years, not hundreds. Only the incentive of this system's potential wealth induced us to do it at all."

  "But," I argued, "surely your natural tool-using equipment didn't matter after you'd developed cybernetic technology to do it for you."

  A smile entered Khorat's voice. "I am reminded of your culture's folk saying about a certain avian life-form and its egg. You see, before we could reach the stage of robotic manipulators, we first had to painfully work our way through all the earlier levels of technology. By that time, our feet were set on a pathway rather different from those of most tool-using races."

  "With the help of the Medjavar." I knew I probably wasn't succeeding in keeping the sourness out of my voice.

  "No doubt." Khorat was serene. "I am sure that this is the real reason we were as successful as we were; we were simply guiding the culture in the direction it was predisposed toward in any case. Also, unlike you or the Delkasu, we never experienced total war, with its pressure toward a certain kind of technological development, requiring a certain kind of mind-set.

  "You already know some of the consequences. We never discovered the secret of interstellar travel, for example. And our entire material culture has a somehow anachronistic look in your eyes." ("Retro" hadn't become part of the slang yet, so the translator didn't have it.) "At the same time, we advanced into fields of which you are barely aware, and which you would regard as branches of philosophy rather than science."

  "Like the ultimate nature of time," Chloe stated levelly.

  The Ekhemar didn't have eyebrows to raise, but that was the effect. "You are very perceptive. Yes . . . that, and the kind of dimensional shifting whereby the flow of time can, within a strictly delimited locality, be reversed.

  "So matters stood when the Delkasu arrived—the first Delkasu, a couple of your centuries before Sakandri incorporated them, and us, into his empire." Khorat began to look uncomfortable. "You may recall what I said about the Medjavar's attitude toward the Delkasu. For the most part, the rest of the Ekhemasu shared it. But there were exceptions, especially in those early days. You see, one of our oldest and most primal terrors was that of meat-eating animals endowed with high intelligence and superior technology. Even after it became clear that the Delkasu did not think of us as a food source—and, indeed, were revolted by the concept of sentient meat-animals—the old fantasy still took a while to release i
ts hold on us. One of those who never escaped its grip was a great scientist named Imhaermekh. His loathing of the Delkasu caused him to pervert his genius into a monomaniacal quest for a way to expel them from our system. His researches led him deeper and deeper into the realms of dimensional physics, for he saw with extraordinary clarity that the only way historical inevitability can be fought is by changing history itself." Khorat subsided into a brooding silence. Chloe and I waited with all the patience we could muster, for even I had the sensitivity to recognize a being struggling to overcome agonizing embarrassment.

  Finally, Khorat spoke. "Like most individuals who want a thing badly enough, Imhaermekh finally achieved it. He never actually sent an Ekhemar back in time, but he succeeded in sending inanimate objects back into the recent past—they appeared seconds before the experiments. He had to be stopped." The artificial voice trailed off into silence again.

  I like to flatter myself that I'm not a total clod. Still, as you may have noticed by now, my sensitivity has limits.

  "Well, Khorat," I began hesitantly, "what was the big deal? I mean, the Medjavar had already been suppressing dangerous technological innovations for thousands of years, right? So why was this any different?"

  Khorat gave me a somber regard. "Influence, manipulation, concealment, suppression . . . yes, we are no strangers to these things. But only once in our entire history have we resorted to murder."

  "Imhaermekh?" Chloe breathed.

  "He had to be stopped," Khorat repeated, as much to himself as to us. Then he spoke more briskly. "The saying that 'the end justifies the means' is, of course, nothing but self-serving rationalization. But when an end assumes an importance that is universal in scope, debate about means becomes irrelevant."

  Chloe spoke earnestly. "Khorat, I don't doubt your sincerity. But . . . but . . . time travel? The notion involves so many impossibilities I hardly know where to begin. First of all, it violates the conservation laws of physics."

  "How so?"

  "Suppose a, uh, time machine goes back to the year X. When it appears out of nowhere in that year, it's adding matter to the universe."

  "But," Khorat explained, "the same amount was subtracted in the year in which it departed. The sum matter/energy total of the universe must, indeed, remain constant. But that total may balance out over time. The problem of 'extra matter' which worries you does not exist if the temporal dimension is taken into account."

  "But," Chloe insisted doggedly, "even if that's true, what about relativity? Anything traveling backwards in time would be traveling faster than infinity!"

  "Yeah," I put in. "Talk about swimming against the tide."

  Khorat looked bewildered, and I belatedly recalled that his race, and their language, had developed on a planet with no moon, and hence no tides in its small landlocked seas. He pulled himself together, though.

  "It is difficult to explain. You must understand that time travel depends on transposing one's vehicle to a dimension isolated from the time-flow of our own." I sensed that this was the translator software's inadequate best effort at expressing concepts for which English simply lacked the terminology. "Under these conditions, travel into the past is relatively easy. It involves simply separating oneself from the continuum. You are not so much traveling as standing still and letting the time-flow pass you by, leaving you farther and farther behind in the past." Khorat visibly struggled to express himself. "To borrow the terminology of spaceflight, think of it as 'going into free fall.'

  "However, while it is easy in terms of energy requirements, it is not fast. Most certainly it is not instantaneous. This is an image from your world's popular culture of which you must disabuse yourselves."

  "How do you know about our world's popular culture?" I demanded sharply.

  "I have made it my business to inform myself of it since it became obvious that the Tosava gevroth had found a buyer among your people. I soon discovered that time travel is a familiar fictional device . . . and that your writers have many misconceptions about it.

  "A significant amount of subjective time must be spent inside a field which allows large material constructs to enter the dimensions of which I have spoken. And time inside that field passes at the same rate as in the outside universe; there is no equivalent of 'relativistic time dilation.' The apparent length of the voyage is directly linked to how far back one wishes to go."

  "Novak said something about going back to our early Industrial Revolution," Chloe mused. "About a hundred and fifty of our years. Her idea is to get forced-draft technological advancement started so early that by the time the Delkasu arrive we'll be in a position to deal with them as equals. She also mentioned the possibility of going back even farther than that, to periods about five hundred years in the past, or even twenty-five hundred. But she said there were 'practical problems' with going back that far."

  "There are indeed, in terms of sheer tediousness. Even her plan of going back a hundred and fifty years will involve a somewhat lengthy journey. Exactly how lengthy is difficult to know, as the amount of subjective time that passes inside the field is dependent upon which dimension the ship has been shifted into. There are more than one, you see. As a general proposition, the more difficult they are to access, the shorter the time that must be spent in them. The information at Novak's disposal . . ." Khorat stopped himself, clearly not wanting to pursue the subject. "But that is another matter. For now, suffice it to say that her objective is attainable."

  "But . . ." Chloe sought to rally her thoughts. "All right: let's suppose you're right, and that time travel is technically achievable, despite all the physical laws it seems to violate. That still leaves the philosophical objections to it. It destroys the whole concept of causality! If you go back and change the past in such a way as to foreclose the possibility of your own existence—shoot your own grandfather in his boyhood, say—then where did you come from in the first place?"

  "Novak mentioned," I recalled, "a possibility that it might not change the future, but rather create a parallel time track—"

  "She is wrong," Khorat interrupted me bluntly.

  "Uh, Khorat, that is something our thinkers have speculated about. The idea that all possible outcomes of any given interaction are equally valid, mathematically speaking, and—"

  "Then they are wrong," Khorat stated with even greater finality. "You must accept my word on this. As I said earlier, our civilization has explored the basic nature of reality more deeply than yours. The theory of many parallel time tracks is an ingenious intellectual construct. But in fact there is only the one linear reality, in which there is only the one actually realized outcome to each interaction."

  "Well, then," declared Chloe, almost angrily, "we're back to the 'Grandfather Paradox' I mentioned earlier. If the universe that produced Novak never comes into existence, how can she have gone back and—?"

  "That, too, is a fallacy. A time traveler really can murder his grandfather—a meat-eater's concept if ever there was one!—because his own existence is a product of a reality which preexists the one which his own time-meddling creates after he dimension-shifts back into phase with the normal universe and begins affecting it."

  "I'm getting a headache," I complained.

  Chloe ignored me. "But Khorat, assuming that Novak carries out her plan, what happens to the reality we ourselves are living in? And when does whatever-it-is happen?"

  A transcendent somberness seemed to radiate from every detail of Khorat's expression and posture, until it filled the room. "I will attempt to answer those questions in reverse order. To repeat, subjective time spent in temporal transit passes at the same rate as it does in the outside universe. Novak must return to Earth, prepare her ship—"

  "You used the word 'ship' before," I interrupted.

  "Yes. Time travel will only work in proximity to a spinning body of planetary mass. But for any number of reasons it is quite impractical on the actual surface of such a planet. Therefore, a 'time machine' must be a space vehicle in
orbit. But to continue: Novak must make her preparations, then make the actual temporal journey, and land on Earth in the year of her arrival. Whether or not her plans succeed is immaterial; her mere arrival would, in itself, be an event of such magnitude as to immediately begin altering history. So at that moment, in terms of her own subjective existence and ours—"

  "Blooey," I said, wondering how the translator would render that.

  "I doubt if there will be any noise," said Khorat, confirming my opinion of his sense of humor. "I do not know, and cannot visualize, what will happen to us. But I can find no theoretical basis for assuming our continued existence. From our standpoint, I imagine our consciousness will simply stop."

  After a while, Chloe felt a need to break the silence in the room. "Uh, Khorat, what you're saying has some disturbing theological implications. I mean, most of our religions assume that the consciousness—the 'soul,' as they put it—survives after death, either by entering into an afterlife or by being reincarnated into another life-form."

  "Yes, we ourselves have devised religions with similar beliefs. I myself am an agnostic—which has always struck me as the rational position on the subject, whereas atheism is a particularly breathtaking form of arrogance. But in the eventuality we are contemplating, the question becomes almost moot."

  "You're taking this very calmly, Khorat," I observed.

  "If I give such an impression, it is because my own personal survival, and the survival of my familiar world, is a trivial matter compared to the truly serious consequences of Novak's meddling in matters of which she has no understanding."

  "The truly serious consequences?" Chloe echoed faintly.

  "Consider: in the world that Novak will create, time travel will belong to the realm of the possible. Even if she retains enough sanity to destroy the knowledge of how she did it, it will not matter in the long run, for the possibility will be common knowledge." Khorat studied us gravely. "One thing I have learned about your species in the course of my studies: if humans know for a certainty that a thing can be done, they will not rest until they have devised a way to do it. And there will be plenty of others with motives as strong as Novak's or Imhaermekh's for changing history—causes as compelling, and grievances as intense. So even if she succeeds in bringing about the kind of world she wants, she will have doomed that world in the long run. This will happen again . . . and again . . . and again. And beyond a certain point, theory suggests that the very fabric of ultimate reality will begin to fray, and unravel. The consequences are literally incalculable, for they lie beyond the capacity of any finite mind to grasp.