Thrice upon a Time

by James P. Hogan

  "I agree," Cuthrie said simply.

  "Fine, but there's a small problem," Cartland said. "Whatever you pick for an experiment will have to be a bit more significant than drawing crosses on pieces of paper, won't it? If you want to measure the goods and bads, it'll have to have effects that can be interpreted as good or bad… and to be sure about it, significant effects that can't be mistaken, which means it will affect the lives of lots of people." He looked challengingly around the table. "So now, who's willing to play God? Who would care to suggest an experiment and be responsible for its consequences?"

  A long silence ensued while the others exchanged helpless looks.

  There were no takers.

  Chapter 29

  The Right Honorable Kenneth Lansing, Prime Minister to the Crown, stood erect with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out over the stone balustrade of the Members' Terrace at the gray-green water of the Thames sliding slowly by beneath Westminster Bridge. He stood motionless for a long time, and then pivoted himself abruptly to face Cuthrie, who was watching and waiting in silence.

  "I don't like it, Graham," he declared. "The whole security aspect of it worries me. Too many people know about it already. First there's Ross and his crowd in Glenmoroch, then a whole bunch of Courtney's people at Burghead, and on top of that God only knows how many people in EFC. It's probably halfway around Europe by now, if the truth were known. I can't see any way now that the story can be contained."

  "I think you're right," Cuthrie replied in a worried voice. "It's more the EFC end that bothers me though. Courtney's people are only concerned with solving the reactor problem. And in Glenmoroch, Sir Charles is no fool. That other fellow there—Cartland—has a first-rate career record in the RAF; I don't think there's much to worry about as far as he's concerned either."

  "What about those two Americans?" Lansing inquired.

  "One of them is Ross's grandson," Cuthrie replied. "I've had a check done through a nameless friend at the Yard—brilliant academic record; nothing medically or psychologically abnormal; no police record, apart from something to do with a student prank about ten years ago; no strong political inclinations or affiliations; no debts or financial problems; very level-headed by all accounts; good relationships with his family, and especially strong ties with his grandfather. In short, a negligible risk."

  "And the other one?"

  "Generally the same kind of character. He was born in Japan, but that's of no significance; his father's a VP of a U.S. fusion corporation. The two of them were in business together until around the middle of last year… offering a kind of consulting service in plasma dynamics. Fulfilled all their contracts, paid their bills and taxes. They're both extremely individualistic, with an aversion to the more usual types of structured career environments—the last of the gifted, amateur entrepreneurs, perhaps… or maybe the first of the next breed."

  "Mmm… " Lansing frowned and rocked to and fro on his heels, keeping his hands clasped behind him. "You don't think that could be significant?"

  "I don't think so," Cuthrie said, shaking his head. "As I said a moment ago, I'm more worried about something leaking out through EFC, either at Burghead or, more likely, at the Brussels end."

  "Damn EFC!" Lansing muttered. "Why in God's name did Ross have to go telling them about it at all? Why couldn't he have brought it to us in the first place?"

  "He err… " Cuthrie faltered for a second, not quite knowing how to phrase an answer. "He had the end of the world to worry about… Didn't think it could wait."

  "End of the world… stuff and nonsense," Lansing growled. "Another damned individualist, if the truth were known. Always has been. He only came back to this country and shut himself up in that castle of his because the Americans wouldn't change the Defense Department to suit him. It must run in the family." He turned away to stare out across the river at the Albert Embankment on the far side, and then wheeled back again. "What does Courtney have to say about it?"

  "I talked to him this morning," Cuthrie said. "He insists that his only interest is to get Burghead operational as quickly as possible. If Ross has the know-how to help him do that, then he'll use it until somebody tells him he can't."

  "Did he give any reason for taking it straight to Brussels before he'd even consulted with us?" Lansing asked.

  Cuthrie raised his eyebrows and drew a long breath. "He said that he could hardly go inviting outside people into EFC's property and at EFC's expense without telling EFC why they're there and what they're doing. I ah… I think it was his polite way of reminding us that EFC runs Burghead, and we don't—in other words, to go to hell."

  Lansing turned a brighter shade of pink behind his white moustache and emitted an indignant "Hrmph!"

  "Well, we can't really push the big corporations around any more these days, Ken," Cuthrie pointed out. "I'm fairly certain that Courtney is acting as a policy mouthpiece for Brussels. As soon as they found out about what Ross had stumbled on and when they realized how potent it was, they practically insisted that Ross bring the British Government in on it. Why did they do that? As I see it, they were taking out insurance to make sure that they would come through in a good light later: Nobody would be able to accuse them of attempting to keep the whole thing under wraps and impede the communication of fundamental scientific knowledge for commercial gain. They're making sure that their respectable image will still be shining and bright at the end of it. What they're telling us through Courtney is that they're only minding their own business; the further issues that the whole thing raises is our problem."

  Lansing narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment. "No… " he said slowly. "I think there's more to it than that. This is too big for them not to want to be in on it. They're worried in case we clamp down on Ross with the Official Secrets Act or something and block their private information-channel through Burghead. That's why they want a clean record of having played it straight. If we do anything like that now, EFC will go running straight to the Consortium governments and use them as a lever to get the information instead. Then they would be able to point fingers at us for trying to block the spread of scientific information, sabotaging a European-funded project for reasons of national self-interest, and all kinds of things like that. They've set it up rather nicely. If we leave Burghead and Ross alone, EFC will benefit, but it will be us, not them, who'll look bad when the lid eventually comes off. If we put out feelers through the diplomatic grapevine to get the other Consortium governments involved, then EFC will still be in the club. The Consortium governments could hardly cut EFC out of it when it was EFC who had done the correct thing and brought the governments in on it in the first place, could they? Either way they've guaranteed themselves a leading place in developing whatever kind of technology comes out of it." Lansing fell silent and began pacing slowly along the terrace.

  Cuthrie fell into step beside him. "I agree that we can't clamp down on Ross or pull the rug out from under Burghead now," he said. "Things have gone too far. In the long run it would be bound to backfire on us. There'd be an almighty row. I'd even go as far as to say it could lose us a seat on the Federation, if the Federation ever gets set up. If it came to the crunch, Europe could get along without Burghead for a while if it had to, but we couldn't."

  They reached the end of the terrace and turned to retrace their steps. Other members of the House were beginning to appear through the doors leading into the Parliament buildings, catching a breath of air before the commencement of the next session.

  At last Lansing said, "Supposing for the sake of argument that we did try to hush things up and keep it to ourselves for the time being. What would EFC do?

  "I thought we'd already agreed on that," Cuthrie said, shrugging and sounding slightly surprised. "They'd protest to the Consortium governments."

  "And what would the Consortium governments do?"

  "Well… I suppose we'd hear about it through the diplomatic channels to begin with. If we chose not to play ball, I suppose t
hey'd take it further and begin recruiting allies… probably the Americans. They'd put the squeeze on us from Washington."

  "And suppose that it went the other way," Lansing said. "We get together with the Consortium governments and try to cut EFC out. What would happen then?"

  "In that case EFC would go to the Americans," Cuthrie replied. "Not openly, mind you, but I'd stake a million to one that it wouldn't be long before the Americans knew what was going on… probably as a result of a contrived leak through the U.S. fusion community."

  "So either way it's out of the bag, isn't it," Lansing mused. "The EFC knows about it already, the Consortium governments are bound to find out about it whatever happens if they don't know already, and unless we allow ourselves to be pulled up and down on strings held by EFC, the Americans will be in on it too… and probably a few more before very long."

  "It looks like it, Ken," Cuthrie agreed glumly. "EFC would prefer to be part of a small club, I'm sure, but they won't hesitate to make the club bigger if there's no other way for them to stay in."

  "And then what?" Lansing asked.

  Cuthrie thought for a second. "Then they'd all start building their own machines," he said. "Oh, God! Can you imagine the chaos with a half-dozen of the damn things all working against each other?"

  "Only because each one would know that the others were building them," Lansing said. His voice became thoughtful, as if thoughts that had been forming in his mind for a while were at last coming to the surface. "They'd all be paranoid with suspicion of each others' motives because none of them would ever know for sure what the rest were up to. And that would all be because they had been kept in the dark to begin with. But… on the other hand, if they were all in on it from the very start… " He stopped abruptly and stood with a strange expression on his face.

  Cuthrie stared for a moment and then gasped as he realized what Lansing was driving at. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "Surely you're not suggesting—"

  "Why not?" Lansing demanded. "Why wait for them to grab a share in it? If they're going to get a slice anyway, let's give it to them and capitalize on being magnanimous. Let's preempt the whole bloody lot of them—EFC, the Consortium gang, the Americans, and whoever's in line after that. We will contact the Consortium governments through the usual channels just as EFC are moralizing that we should, but while we're at it we'll include the U.S., the Commonwealth, the Japanese… the Soviets too. Why not?"

  "What? All of them? You can't be serious!" Cuthrie gasped as if Lansing had suddenly taken leave of his senses.

  "Why not?" Lansing repeated. "Then we'd beat all of them at their own game."

  "But don't you realize the defense implications that something like this could have?" Cuthrie protested. "We can't make a present of it to the Soviets and God alone knows who else."

  "And do you realize the consequences if something like this were allowed to become a defense issue?" Lansing countered. "That's the real risk. The only safe alternatives are total security or no security. Anything in between would be disastrous. It's already too late to hope for the first, so we must go all-out to insure the second before anybody has time to cultivate any vested interests. You said yourself earlier that this could affect the whole world. So let's make it the world's… and let the world decide how it wants to use this knowledge." He walked over to the balustrade and braced his arms along the top to stare out across the river. Cuthrie joined him, still looking somewhat shaken at the Prime Minister's suggestion.

  "Don't look so worried, Graham," Lansing said in a more jovial voice. "Think of it—possibly the most potent scientific breakthrough in history. And we, this country, will have given it to the world, freely, of our own choosing, and without duress. What a precedent to launch whatever follows from it! Think of the prestige. I'm sure we'll be able to get far more of a return one way or another than we ever did from peddling a few barrels of oil to the Consortium mob." He turned and clapped Cuthrie heartily on the shoulder as a new thought struck him. "And if something goes wrong somewhere, then from what you say, we can always send a message back to somewhere and change it, hah-hah, hah-hah, hah-hah!"

  "It looks worse than it is. The edges are a bit torn, but it's clean and that's the main thing." She swabbed a few final traces of clotted blood from around the gash in Murdoch's right arm, and straightened up to replace the bowl of surgical alcohol on the cart by the chair on which he was sitting. "The binding compound will hold it without stitches, and the diffusive shot should stop any infection. How did you do it?"

  "In the Reactor Building," Murdoch replied. "Some idiot kicked a cover-plate off a catwalk thirty feet up. A foot closer and it would have been my head."

  "Weren't you wearing a hard-hat?"

  "Err… no."

  "Tut tut." She shook her head reproachfully and moved the cart away.

  Murdoch watched as she unloaded the tray she had been using into the sterilizer, then glanced at the nurse who was sitting at a desk nearby with her back to them. He wished the nurse would go away and find something to do elsewhere, but she seemed to have sprouted roots. "Your name's Anne, isn't it?" he said, looking back.

  "That's right. You must remember it from the Bull."

  "You've got a good memory," Murdoch complimented. "You remembered Maxwell too."

  "Maxwell?"

  "The kitten. That's his name—James Clerk Maxwell. My grandfather called him that."

  Anne closed the sterilizer and moved over to a sink to rinse her hands. Then she placed a lint dressing and a bandage roll on another tray. "I take it you're staying here with your grandfather for a while," she said. "Is he something to do with EFC?"

  "No." Murdoch shook his head. "He's a theoretical physicist who's doing some work for Dr. Muir's people. We—that is, myself and the pal of mine you've seen—are helping out. We're in the same line."

  "I see," she said. "Arm out." Murdoch held out his arm. Anne bent close to him, placed the dressing over the wound, and began winding the bandage round with quick, nimble fingers. Her nearness and fragrance were making him sweat.

  "Do you live around here?" he asked, keeping his voice low in an attempt to exclude the nurse from the conversation.

  "Nairn… about fifteen miles away."

  She wasn't wearing a ring, he noticed. Maybe doctors didn't when they were working. Oh, to hell with it.

  "What do people do after work in Nairn?" he asked. "Or maybe on Saturdays?"

  "Oh… you'd be surprised." She caught his eye for a second and held it in mock reproach. Her mouth was twitching in a hint of a smile that seemed calculated to keep him guessing. Murdoch sensed that all he had to do was play the next ten seconds exactly right. A sudden excitement surged through him as he realized that he was on the easy home straight.

  "ANNE… " The voice called out suddenly from the other side of a half-open office door at the far end of the room. It sounded reedy for a man's, almost shrill. A moment later, the man himself appeared in the doorway. He had overgrown, frizzy hair, and was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles halfway down his thin, pointed nose; his white coat ranked him as another doctor, probably the one Anne worked for, Murdoch guessed. He appeared irritated. "Anne," he said again. "I've got the Health Authority woman on my line about that RCM req. that you put through. She's querying some figures in the specification. Come and have a word with her, will you. I can't talk to her about this electronics gibberish."

  "I'll be right there," Anne said. "Just tidying up Mr. Ross's arm."

  "Oh, Nurse Reynolds can finish that off. Come and get this wretched woman off my phone."

  Anne secured the bandage with an adhesive pad and smoothed it down. "The wound's quite deep," she said quickly to Murdoch. "You should try and rest it for a while. We'll put the arm in a sling for a few days to keep it out of action." She turned to the nurse, who had risen from the desk and moved over toward them. "Could you fix Mr. Ross up with a light sling, please. Also arrange for him to come back for us to have another look at it in a week's ti
me." With that she disappeared through into the office, and the door closed. The sign on it read DR. M.J. WARING. Murdoch glowered at it, hoping that his stare could focus malevolence on the man that the name symbolized—a somewhat impractical attempt at voodoo.

  "It's really none of my business, but I couldn't help overhearing," the nurse whispered as she positioned a narrow band of black material around his neck. "I think you'll be lucky if you're not wasting your time."

  Murdoch scowled at her. "How come?"

  "I believe she's already going out with someone. She's the kind that tends to keep to one at a time, if you know what I mean."

  "Big guy, red face… looks like a prize-fighter?"

  "Yes. You know him then?"

  "I've seen him around." Murdoch sighed resignedly. He looked at the nurse again. She was slightly on the plump side, but quite pretty with bright, blue eyes and blonde curls beneath her cap. "What are you doing on Saturday?" he asked on impulse.

  "Tied up, I'm afraid. I've got to go to a wedding."

  "Oh, really? Whose?"

  "Mine, actually."

  Murdoch decided it just wasn't one of his days.

  Lee was sprawled on a seat in the waiting room outside, browsing through a magazine, when Murdoch left the clinic. He looked up, tossed the magazine aside, and hauled himself to his feet.

  "How's the arm? Didn't they amputate?"

  "It's okay. It wasn't as bad as it looked; a lot of it was just blood and skin. It looks as if you'll be doing all the driving for a day or two though."

  "Still feel sick?" Lee asked as they walked out into the corridor and turned in the direction of the elevators.

  "No. That's worn off now. They gave me something to get rid of the nausea."

  They stopped in front of one of the elevators, and Lee pressed the call button.

  "So… " Lee said after a few seconds. "Was she there?"

  Pause.

  "Yes." Murdoch continued to stare blankly at the doors in front of him.