Thrice upon a Time

by James P. Hogan

  "And Wallace said it happened on August 12," Murdoch mused. "That gives us late August or early September for the viruses showing up in California. Those are the dates that Fennimore and Waring asked me about."

  "Exactly. It all fits."

  "And I can see why somebody would want to smokescreen the whole subject by giving it a new codename," Murdoch said. "There was too much risk of loose talk getting out that linked QX-37 with viruses. Once that happened, people would have figured out the rest in no time at all."

  Cartland moved away from the fireplace and perched himself on the arm of the chair opposite Murdoch. "Well, at least it looks as if we've got an idea of what's behind it all now," he said. "But I can't see that it's going to help much. The machine downstairs can't change anything. It can't change QX-37 going up in the first place, because that happened over two years ago, and there wasn't any machine at Storbannon at all then. What else can we do—send a message to God instead, to change the orbit of the Perseids?"

  "No… " Murdoch said, sounding thoughtful. "But maybe it could do something else… " He sank back in the chair and lapsed into silence for a few seconds while Cartland watched curiously. "Fennimore has to be part of a research group that's been working on the quiet for the best part of nine months," Murdoch said. "That vaccine that they're about to administer in California can't have been developed in the last week or two. They must have known what kinds of viruses were being bred up on that satellite. In fact they probably knew early on which strains had been released because they probably picked them up from atmospheric samples even before anything had reached the West Coast at all. So they've probably had something like eight months to work on it. But suppose they'd known in January—after the machine here was working—what they know now! Suppose that the data on how to make the vaccine were to be sent back to then! Don't you think that might change things?"

  "Good Lord!" Cartland's voice trailed away in astonishment. Then as he thought about it, his look of amazement changed to a frown. "I'm not so sure it would," he said. "I mean, yes—it might protect anybody who hadn't caught the virus by January, but from what Anne told you, nobody was catching it in January. The people who are going down like flies now all caught it last September… people like Lee, for instance. How could it help them? The only people it could help are the ones who are picking it up right now because the virus has come out of gestation and become communicable. If the vaccine was available a month ago, a mass-inoculation might have prevented a second wave from spreading, but how could it stop the first wave? The victims of that have been carrying it since September. What can the machine do for people like Lee?"

  "It might not be as hopeless as that, Ted," Murdoch insisted. "How much do you know about viruses? Can an antidote neutralize a virus that's already in the system, but which hasn't become active yet? If it can, and if Fennimore and company's vaccine works that way, then maybe there's a chance."

  Cartland nodded slowly as he listened. "It's possible, I suppose," he mused in a faraway voice. Then he looked up and threw out his hands. "I don't know, old boy. Not my department. Maybe we've reached the point where we have to talk to Charles about it. He shouldn't have any problem getting his friends in London to sit up and take notice when we tell him what we know now."

  They told Charles the whole story first thing the next morning. Charles immediately called Cuthrie, who promptly got in touch with Lansing. In the middle of the afternoon, Cuthrie called back to say that certain departments were already in touch with their American counterparts, but that nothing concrete had filtered back to him yet. Meanwhile the latest reports were that the inoculation program in California had been begun in haste. The number of confirmed cases had topped fifteen thousand in that state alone, and there could be no further disguising of the fact that something serious was happening.

  The inoculations were stopped less than twenty-four hours later; by that time, 811 of the people treated had died from severe neural disorders.

  The disease became known as omnisclerosis californians. In a stormy session of Congress, the U.S. Secretary for Health faced accusations that ranged from incompetence to criminal irresponsibility. The President declared Northern California a disaster area, and tens of thousands fled the state as alarm spread and rumors multiplied.

  During the nine months that had passed since September, the gestating virus had been taken by carriers to thousands of other points around the world. Since the beginning of May, when the symptoms became visible, a medical task-force at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva had been carefully following the pattern of these scattered outbreaks, and making detailed plans to check further spreading by means of the U.S.-produced vaccine when it became available. With the sudden withdrawal of the vaccine, the plans collapsed in ruins. The world was left without any defense to offer. When this became public knowledge, which would surely be only a matter of time after the disaster in California, the real trouble would begin.

  Chapter 35

  Graham Cuthrie, bareheaded and wearing a light tan trenchcoat over a dark-blue suit, stood near one end of the Customs barrier in the Arrivals section of Number Three Terminal at Heathrow Airport, London, watching the lines beginning to form as the passengers began trickling through from the Boeing just in from San Francisco. Next to him was Desmond Sawyer, a young official from the U.K. Ministry of Health, and standing behind them were two uniformed policemen and a girl dressed in the blue-and-white of British Airways. A British Immigration officer was standing slightly apart from the group.

  A minute or so went by. Then a tall, gray-haired, gaunt-faced man, carrying a black briefcase and accompanied by an attractive, dark-haired girl, detached from the throng coming through from the arrivals gate.

  Sawyer touched Cuthrie's arm and indicated with a nod of his head. "That's him. He's seen us."

  "Who's the girl with him?" Cuthrie inquired.

  "Her name's Patterson. She's a doctor… works with Waring up at Burghead. She went along to help out," Sawyer replied. Cuthrie nodded.

  The two arrivals drew up facing the reception committee, and Sawyer stepped forward a pace to greet them. "This is Sir Giles Fennimore, and this, I presume, is Dr. Patterson," he said. He glanced at Fennimore. "I take it you know the Minister, Sir Giles, even if you haven't met—Graham Cuthrie." A few seconds of brief handshaking and cursory formalities followed. The Immigration officer unlocked a gate in the barrier and beckoned them through. The two policemen and the British Airways girl stood aside to let them pass and then followed, watched by a mixture of curious stares and a few dirty looks from the regular passengers standing in line at the other gates farther along.

  Fennimore looked up at the large clock high on the wall above the center of the Customs Hall. "You'll be lucky to make it," he said to Anne as the group began walking briskly toward one of the exits. "The Geneva flight leaves in eight minutes." Anne looked inquiringly at the British Airways girl.

  "It's under control," the girl told her. "We've got a car waiting at a side door to take you across to the terminal, and you'll be escorted through to the plane. The pilot has orders to hold takeoff until you're on board." Anne nodded. One of the policemen took the bag that she was carrying as she struggled to keep up with the airline girl.

  Behind them, Fennimore, Cuthrie, and Sawyer fell back a few paces. "What happened?" Sawyer asked. "The prototype batch that was tested on the volunteers gave no adverse side effects. What went wrong?"

  "It's all been a gross exaggeration," Fennimore said, keeping his voice low. "One production batch from one plant in New Jersey was incorrectly processed. Every shipment of that batch has been traced. There's nothing wrong with the rest. It's inexcusable that it happened, but the time-pressure of the whole thing has been impossible. Nobody knew for certain what the gestation period would be. For all that anyone at WHO knew in September, it could have been starting by Christmas."

  "What?" Cuthrie muttered in amazement as he listened. "There's nothing wrong
with it? Are you saying that the vaccine could be used safely?"

  "I'm certain of it," Fennimore told him. "But it won't make any difference now. Everybody's panicking. They'd never allow it to be used again now, no matter what anybody tells them. Even if they did, the public wouldn't accept it again. It's too late."

  The group stopped at the mouth of a corridor that led off from the main concourse.

  "This is where we leave you," the airline girl announced. "The car for Dr. Patterson is outside the next exit. Your plane is that way." She pointed along the corridor. "The policemen will go with you to the pad."

  Fennimore glanced at Cuthrie as the policeman who had been carrying Anne's bag passed it to the Immigration officer. "There's an RAF jet waiting for us," Cuthrie explained. "We're going straight on up to Scotland. We thought you'd be in a better position to report back to London after you've had a chance to talk to Ross yourself."

  Fennimore nodded but looked dubious. He looked at Anne and managed a tired shadow of a smile. "Well, Anne, it seems that neither of us are being given time for our feet to touch the ground. Thank you for your help; it has been invaluable. Good luck with the WHO people. Make sure they get the true facts before any of this hysterical nonsense catches up with you."

  "I'll do my best," she said. "Do you know where you'll be if I need to get in touch?"

  "Desmond's office will know," Fennimore said. "But don't worry about it. I'll be calling you anyway."

  Anne turned and walked away, accompanied by the Immigration officer and the girl. Fennimore, Cuthrie, and Sawyer began following the two policemen along the corridor toward a door marked NO EXIT.

  "So what exactly is it that's causing the problem?" Cuthrie asked Fennimore. "Desmond here said earlier that it seems to be a single strain that was rugged enough to survive the burnup—a mutant of the multiple-sclerosis virus. Is that correct?"

  Fennimore nodded. "It was a mutant strain to begin with. We had a vaccine fully developed by February. But when the first actual cases appeared, some yielded strains that had been further mutated beyond anything that was ever engineered on Centurion—probably by high-altitude cosmic rays. We had to modify the vaccine in a hurry and revise the manufacturing directions. That must have been how the mistake was made in the New Jersey plant. There simply wasn't enough time."

  One of the policemen opened the door and ushered them through to the outside. They were in a small, walled-off area of the airport that contained an assortment of ground vehicles and aircraft. To one side of the space, in the center of a clear area, a VTOL jet bearing RAF roundels was standing with engines already running and heat-shimmers dancing around its exhausts. The passenger door was open and an airman in flying tunic was waiting at the bottom of the extended access steps.

  "So what happened in New Jersey?" Sawyer asked as they hurried across the expanse of concrete toward the plane.

  "Two steps were inverted in the purification cycle," Fennimore told him. "A molecular structure formed in an intermediate reaction was not broken down as it should have been. When the vaccine was injected, the molecules selectively blocked the sodium ion-channels through the walls of the nerve fibers. Instead of administering an antidote, we were administering a lethal neural toxin."

  "My God!" Cuthrie breathed, horrified.

  Nothing more was said while they boarded the aircraft and sat down in the comfortably upholstered passenger cabin. The airman who had been waiting for them closed the door and then went forward to join the pilot, leaving the cockpit door open behind him. The voices of the pilot and Heathrow Control came floating through.

  "Hello, Control. This is Air Force Oscar Baker 270. Our passengers are aboard, and we're ready for takeoff. Request immediate clearance, please."

  "One moment Oscar Baker. Control calling TWA 635. Come in, please."

  "Trans World 635 answering. What's up? We're ready to go."

  "Hold takeoff until further instructions, 635. We have an RAF priority."

  "Roger. 635 holding."

  "You are cleared for immediate takeoff, Oscar Baker. Turn onto bearing two-eight-five at ten thousand feet. Switch to channel four and lock AFCS to Luton beacon."

  "Wilco. Oscar Baker taking off now."

  The engine note rose and became more insistent, and seconds later the airport buildings were falling away outside the cabin windows. Fennimore sank back into the soft leather folds of his seat and closed his eyes with a grateful sigh. "Heavens, I don't know, Cuthrie," he murmured. "If this goes on much longer, I'll be permanently deformed into the shape of an airplane seat. I don't think I've slept in two days." Cuthrie smiled faintly but said nothing.

  Fennimore relaxed with his eyes closed for half a minute or so, and then hauled himself into an upright posture with a shake of his head and a few blinks. "Now," he said, looking across at both Cuthrie and Sawyer. "What's all this nonsense about some kind of time machine somewhere in Scotland? Who is this crank Ross? I hope you realize how unfortunate this could be if it turns out to be a waste of time."

  "He's no crank, I assure you," Cuthrie said. "He's probably as accomplished in his field as you are in yours… Nobel Prize winner for physics, no less. He's been working privately in his own lab for a couple of years, but before that he did most of his stuff in the States. In fact he lives near a place called Glenmoroch, not far from Burghead. I believe he's been to Burghead several times, doing some consulting work for EFC to help solve the reactor trouble they've been having there. He works with an ex-RAF technical wizard called Cartland and a couple of young Americans, one of them his grandson. They're both from California; in fact the other one was one of your early Burghead cases."

  "Ross?… Americans? ... " Fennimore repeated slowly. He jerked his head around sharply. "Is the other one called Walker?"

  "Yes, he is as a matter of fact," Cuthrie replied. "You've met him then, obviously."

  "I happened to be at Burghead on the day Walker was admitted," Fennimore said. "And I've met Ross too… the younger one, that is."

  "Well?" Cuthrie challenged. "Did he strike you as the kind of person who'd waste his time messing around with a bunch of cranks?"

  "I'm afraid I really can't recall all that much about him," Fennimore confessed. "Too much has happened since then, or maybe I'm just tired." He paused to think for a few seconds, then shook his head. "But… changing the past… Really, it's too absurd for words. To be honest with you, Cuthrie, the only reason I'm here at all is that the Prime Minister literally insisted through the Ministry. If you want my personal opinion, I've never heard such hogwash."

  "Maybe you'll change your mind when you've talked to Ross yourself," Cuthrie replied.

  "You sound very sure of yourself," Fennimore commented. "Do you really believe they can do anything like that? How can you, in your position?"

  "I have to," Cuthrie said simply. "I've seen them do it."

  "Pah! And I've seen some clever conjurors too," Fennimore declared. "And it wouldn't be the first time that one has fooled a panel of reputable scientists. Scientists are good in their own specialties, but they're simply not experienced in detecting deliberate fraud; Nature is often complex, but never dishonest."

  "Yes, and the rest," Cuthrie replied. "And Ross isn't one of them. Let's wait and see how you feel about it a couple of hours from now."

  Chapter 36

  Sir Giles Fennimore sat in an armchair in the library at Storbannon, staring with dazed eyes at the things written on the pieces of paper that he had brought with him from the lab. Sawyer, looking equally bemused, was sitting to one side of him while Cuthrie watched impassively from where he was standing with his back to the hearth. Charles, Cartland, and Murdoch looked on from various other points around the room. At last Fennimore looked up and found his voice.

  "I still can't believe this," he said, looking at Charles. "You can assure me that this is genuine? It really isn't some kind of trick?"

  "You don't have to take my word for it," Charles replied. "Enough of Graham's
people have been here and gone through it all." He held up a hand as if to stifle a protest. "I know what you're thinking—good scientists have been taken in before. But aside from that, do you think I'd play cheap tricks at a time like this? If the circumstances were different, then aye, I might be tempted. But with things as they are, I'd hardly stoop to raising any hopes just for the fun of it. In short: Yes, the machine is genuine."

  Fennimore looked from Charles to Cartland and then to Murdoch, as if seeking confirmation in their faces. He was even more drawn than when Murdoch had seen him at Burghead, and his eyes seemed to harbor a permanent haunted look. Since the day before his departure to the United States, he had aged ten years.

  "That device downstairs really can alter the past?" Fennimore whispered.

  "Haven't the trivial things we've shown you proved that?" Charles asked. "We've been doing exactly that for the last two hours."

  Fennimore looked down again at the papers in his hand, and cast his mind back over the things he had seen in the lab. By this time he was too weary for further rounds of questions, answers, and reasons. "What is your proposal?" he asked simply.

  "Earlier on, we asked you if the vaccine would neutralize a virus that was already resident in the body in its gestating state," Charles answered. "You said that it would."

  "That is correct," Fennimore confirmed.

  Charles nodded and continued, "Murdoch has proposed a solution to the complete problem—change the whole timeline all the way back to January. He wants complete details of how to prepare the vaccine sent back to then. Then, hopefully, the inhabitants of that universe will be able to take timely action to protect not only the people who are at risk now, in June, but also those who, in this universe, are already victims of the active virus, and therefore incurable."