by Trevor Hoyle
The air had become slightly chill. The moon was now a brilliant slice of melon, perfectly clear and hard-edged against the night.
‘Did you know it was the Americans who made the first atomic bomb?’ Oria said. She was back in the mid-Twentieth, still seeking the roots of emotional response.
‘So much for their reverence for natural living things.’
‘The first nuclear detonation took place on the 16th July, 1945 in New Mexico in the United States.’
‘I hope that isn’t going to be the subject of your next historical reconstruction,’ Queghan said, and saw the gleam of a smile in the darkness. He still refused to believe there was anything seriously wrong with her.
Oria moved against him. How much was real and how much a jaded simulation? It was an uncharitable thought but one he couldn’t dismiss. The accumulation of emotional debris that had built up over the aeons was like a log-jam in the mind; too many memories to accommodate within a single human brain. They were the most advanced of their species and had to carry the total collective consciousness of the race. It was a crushing burden.
‘The Director wants me to talk to the CENTiNEL people. I shall have to visit the Tempus Control Laboratory.’
‘How long will you be away?’
‘Not more than a week via the Field. Possibly two or three months on your time-scale.’
‘It isn’t your job to go. Karve should send a physicist or go himself.’
‘He’s an old man. A trip through the E.M.I. Field wouldn’t do his cardiovascular system any good, even if they kept him in hyper-suspension. And in any case it is my job; the call of duty.’
‘What you mean is you’re itching to go into space again, and you’ll also be away from me for a while.’ But she said this with no rancour and it suddenly came to Queghan why, in spite of everything, they had stayed together all these years: he loved the woman, and if he had thought of looking into her mind he would have seen that she loved him.
*
The Tempus satellite Control Laboratory orbiting in the inertial frame of reference Theta2 Orionis in M.42 was the deepest thrust into the void, a lonely outpost on the furthermost edge of manned exploration. It was uncomfortably, almost dangerously close to the Temporal Flux Centre x-ray designation 2U0525-06.
From a distance the satellite appeared as a glittering six-pointed star, each of the arms a thousand metres in length, accommodating experimental laboratories, stimulose vegetable gardens, living space and recreational areas. Whenever he saw it poised against the star-filled backdrop Queghan felt the hairs rise on his spine that a man-made artefact could possess such awesome beauty. He became very aware of fragile mankind out here in dimensionless space, a soft-bodied bipedal primate gazing out at the universe like a child from its crib.
The transit shuttle docked and Queghan was greeted by the satellite Commander, Aldrin Laurence, a man with a large frame and a full dark beard streaked with grey. He ran Tempus as the old sea-masters had commanded the clippers, a mixture of rigid discipline tempered with paternal benevolence. It was a psychological tightrope he had to tread, a delicate balance to keep his crew and the scientific community in peaceable equilibrium. Out here there was nowhere to escape to; you had a job to do and it was the one hold on any sort of normality, the purpose that made life sane and bearable. And not far away – a few million miles – the unavoidable fact of all their lives: the inescapable presence of the Temporal Flux Centre, the datum point of infinite spacetime curvature where every law of physics was not only broken but twisted and distorted beyond comprehension.
During the first quarter-period Queghan stowed his belongings, took a nap, ate a light meal and acclimatized himself to the satellite’s weak gravity. It usually upset his stomach so that while he continually felt the need to empty his bowels he was unable, when the time came, to perform the function. Karla Ritblat had prescribed some pills which helped to alleviate the predicament, but it remained rather distressing until his body had adjusted itself.
The CENTiNEL people were glad to see him. They were glad to see anybody. Johann Karve had outlined the purpose of Queghan’s visit to the project leader, Professor Max Herff, and the first thing Herff said, even before Queghan had stepped through the door into the laboratory, was to express disappointment that a mythographer, ‘so accustomed to working in minus time, should feel it necessary to arrive before he departed’.
‘Rather mundane, I agree,’ Queghan replied. ‘But I thought that showing my arse before you saw my face might lead to some misinterpretation.’
‘How do you know we would have noticed?’ said one of Herff’s colleagues, a tall slender woman with a languid face and dark somnolent eyes; at no time during his stay did he ever see her upright – she was either leaning against something or lounging in a chair with her legs in the air.
Herff introduced him to the senior personnel and they quickly got down to the business of discussing the latest CENTiNEL report. Queghan had hoped for a clue that might shed some light on the recalcitrant mu-meson readings but the physicists were as baffled as he and Karve had been. Professor Herff, whose gentle manner, rumpled appearance and rimless spectacles reminded Queghan of a friendly family doctor, repeated that the figures made no apparent sense – ‘unless we’re prepared to accept Karve’s notion of the interactions taking place in minus time, wherever that is.’
‘If you have an alternative suggestion, Professor, I’d be happy to hear it.’ Queghan looked round at everyone. ‘Karve didn’t propose his hypothesis for its novelty value; at least it’s worth investigating.’
‘How do we go about it?’ the tall languid woman, Dr Zander, asked him. ‘Did Director Karve say how we should conduct the experiment? CENTiNEL is based in this spatio-temporal continuum, not in some mythical nether world. I should have thought astrophysics and not metaphysics was our line.’
Herff said, ‘We’re not going to start all that, are we? Queghan didn’t make the trip from Earth IVn to engage in a debate on scientific demarcation.’
‘My apologies,’ Dr Zander said, though she didn’t sound apologetic or contrite.
Queghan pressed on. He wasn’t going to get involved in that sterile argument. ‘Karve bases his theory on proemptosis. The idea is that the mu-mesons are being affected by time displacement so that there appears to be a discrepancy between the actual and the apparent rates of decay. On this side of the spatio-temporal interface we are observing the mirror-image of an event taking place on the other side.’
‘The other side being minus time,’ Max Herff said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Untouched by human hand,’ Dr Zander said laconically.
Queghan chose to ignore this, though the sweat of mounting irritation prickled his shoulders and made the back of his neck damp. ‘Quantum theory tells us that when a particle and its anti-particle equivalent collide the result is instantaneous annihilation with a tremendous release of energy, mainly in the form of light.’
One of the other scientists said, ‘That’s the current theory behind the quasars, a super collision of matter and anti-matter releasing vast amounts of radiation.’
‘However, it’s conceivable that under certain circumstances the particle and anti-particle can coexist – those circumstances being prevalent in the vicinity of a Temporal Flux Centre. If this is possible, and were to happen, a matter/anti-matter interface would be set up.’ He glanced round the circle of faces. ‘What I remember of quantum theory is rather sketchy, but one thing I’ve never forgotten is what would happen if we could isolate anti-particles and hold them for a controlled period in stasis—’
He became aware that Professor Herff was gazing at him with a peculiar expression on his face; it almost seemed as if he were about to break down and weep. Herff said:
‘You do know what you’re suggesting?’
‘Yes,’ Queghan said soberly. ‘The ultimate energy source: the anti-matter bomb.’
Dr Zander laughed. It was a dead and hum
ourless sound amongst the banks of instrumentation, the grey cyberthetic consoles, the ticking meters. ‘I see now why you’re a mythographer. Anti-protons and anti-neutrons held in stasis – impossible.’
‘I don’t like to use that word if I can help it,’ Queghan said, conjuring up a pleasant smile for her benefit. She was an attractive woman but he felt like striking her.
‘Now let’s pursue this,’ Herff said, hunching forward, his hands clasped between his knees. ‘Anti-particles isolated for a controlled period: very well, quantum theory says it’s feasible, so for the moment we’ll accept that. But how do you account for the aggregation of anti-matter at a given spatio-temporal coordinate? That would seem to suggest a deliberate and systematic rationalization of energy and matter – that I find hard to take.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Queghan said. ‘Somebody here has already mentioned quasars. We’re not sure what they are but they’re quite definitely the most concentrated source of energy in the observable universe. And we know they exist.’
‘Very well. As Riemann said, quasars could be the result of a collision between matter and anti-matter, we’re not certain, but whatever causes them they do seem to be naturally-occurring phenomena, not planned or directed by …’
‘An alien intelligence?’ Queghan looked at Dr Zander but she didn’t rise to the bait. She was watching him closely and he couldn’t read her expression. ‘Not once, in all these years of exploration, have we made contact with any other intelligent life-form. Naturally we’re expecting them to be humanoid, to have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and, if male, a five o’clock shadow. Isn’t it more likely that they’re in a form we don’t recognize as life, crystalline perhaps, or gaseous, or even sub-nuclear? Mankind is a biological accident, a freak life-form that just happened to evolve on a cosy planet near a friendly sun. I’d find it much more credible, if I were writing the scenario, to make my life-forms more in keeping with the organic structure of the universe I was constructing – matter and energy in their constituent parts. And that applies equally to anti-matter existing in minus time. It’s arrogant pigheaded chauvinism to believe otherwise.’
‘A self-aware intelligence composed of anti-matter,’ Herff said, tasting the sound of it.
‘Not necessarily. The intelligence could be of our universe, using anti-matter as an energy source, either for constructive or destructive purposes.’
‘The anti-matter bomb,’ Dr Zander said. She was vaguely amused. ‘The ultimate weapon.’
As if suddenly waking up to the notion Herff said, ‘If there was an intelligent life-form composed of sub-atomic particles – mu-mesons, leptons, hadrons, whatever – it couldn’t find a more efficient energy source than anti-matter, providing it could exercise proper control.’
‘Particles controlling other particles,’ Queghan said. ‘It doesn’t sound so very different from people controlling other people.’
Riemann said, ‘But for what purpose? Any of this might be feasible, it’s more or less implied by accepted quantum theory, but that still leaves the question Why? What is it trying to achieve?’
‘Do you suppose a protoplasm can comprehend our world?’ Queghan said. ‘Does it even know that we exist? And supposing it did know, how could it communicate with us? We’re in the position of a protoplasm in relation to a life-form composed of sub-nuclear particles. Perhaps it knows that we exist, just as we know the protoplasm exists, but its means of communication are beyond our senses and our technology. How do we begin to communicate with something that lives in space, that can travel between galaxies at lightspeed, whose time-scale is measured at one extreme in thousand billionths of a second and at the other in millennia, that can pass through solid matter as though it was a hazy patch of mist? How can we ask the purpose of a life-form so alien to our own that its presence is only apparent as a trace on a photographic plate? You might just as well ask that chair you’re sitting on if it believes in the existence of God.’
‘Is this how mythographers spend their time?’ Dr Zander inquired dryly.
‘Do you mean inventing fictions?’
‘No, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to be clever at your expense.’
‘You’re not?’ It was Queghan’s turn to be sardonic.
‘I’m intrigued at the way the mind of a mythographer works.You seem to attack a problem in several different directions and on a number of levels simultaneously.’
‘I take that as a compliment.’
‘It wasn’t meant as criticism.’
‘If you mean that mythographers can provide the questions but not the answers I’d have to agree; the only sense I trust is my instinct.’
‘So you’ve brought the questions along and it’s up to us to find the answers?’ Dr Zander said, lounging in her chair.
‘Not the best of bargains I agree,’ Queghan said. ‘I don’t even know where to start looking. But at least you have the Particle Accelerator; one or two of the answers might be lurking there.’
‘If we knew what we were looking for.’
Max Herff said, ‘I don’t know if my instinct is in as good a working order as Queghan’s, but I suggest we set up a program of anti-particle investigation. If we can locate an inverse shift in radioactive decay which corresponds to the mu-meson findings it would at least be an indication that we’re heading in the right direction. Where we go after that I haven’t a clue.’
‘What temperatures are you operating at?’ Queghan asked.
‘Ten billion degrees,’ said Riemann.
‘Can you go higher?’
‘We could,’ Riemann said cautiously. ‘It might create problems with the Dyson Electromagnetic Sphere. The Sphere is holding the Temporal Flux Centre in equilibrium by means of a one-million-volt field. A major increase in temperature could upset the balance.’ He looked uncertainly at Max Herff.
‘How high do you want to go?’ Herff said.
‘One thousand billion degrees.’
There was an absolute stunned silence. Riemann laughed nervously and it turned into a fit of choking. Dr Zander said, ‘The impossible we can do right away. Miracles take a little longer.’
‘One thousand billion?’ Herff said. He had the crinkled weeping look on his face again.
‘That would seem to be the region if we’re chasing the antimatter equivalents to the mu-mesons,’ Queghan said. ‘At temperatures above one thousand billion degrees we get the entire range of hadronic particles and their anti-matter companions.’
There was a further silence while everyone adjusted their mental horizons to the power of 1012.
Finally Riemann ventured to say, ‘We could do it by raising the energy component to correspond to that temperature. That’s the only way I can see.’
Dr Zander smiled. It was a genuine smile, if rather bemused. ‘When you have a hunch,’ she said to Queghan, ‘you sure do have a hunch.’
5
Shades of Deadly Night
Pouline deGrenier sat alone in the darkened office. Through the curved panel to her left she could see the flickering display of lights in the laboratory: symmetrical patterns of red, green, orange and magenta glowing momentarily in sequence and then going out, glowing, going out as in some mysterious and inexplicable ritual. Now and then came the faint whirr of a timing device followed by the subdued click of a circuit-breaker disconnecting itself according to predetermined plan.
There’s something satisfying about machines (this was the thought preoccupying her); care for them and see to their needs and they won’t let you down. It was a good feeling to know they were working selflessly, tirelessly, through the night, keeping temperature, pressure, saline content and the other vital processes within the safety parameters. Alert for the merest hint of trouble.
She wondered, in a detached sort of way, what need it was fulfilling – in her. Was it that she had control, that the machines were docile obedient slaves willing to do anything she asked? Did everything, in the end, come down to the ego’s insati
able driving greed for self-assertion, for power, for the right to indulge itself at the expense of other people, other things, everything not of the ego itself?
I’m not an ambitious woman, she thought, I’m really not. I want the project to be a success, I want to see it work as it was meant to work, but I don’t seek the power that Karla Ritblat has made the absolute reason for living. She craves it like a drug. Nothing must stand in her way, and if something does, it must be swept aside regardless of human feeling. But wasn’t Karla Ritblat in the process destroying the point of her work, its essential purpose and meaning? Scientific achievement didn’t operate in a vacuum, it wasn’t an end in itself. Its purpose, surely, was to advance humanity, to provide knowledge that would ultimately be of benefit to mankind, to make human beings more aware of their humanness. Karla Ritblat, in losing sight of this, might just as well have been one of the machines in the Psycho-Med Faculty, as cold and bloodless and detached as an electroencephalogram.
Pouline deGrenier shuddered. I mustn’t become like that. I’m alive, I want to live, I want to love a man and have babies. Without these things what is the point in being a woman?
She touched her breasts and felt the faint stirring of quickening response. Her body was seeping fluid and she was both excited and ashamed of herself. Is it possible … could I invent a machine to make love to me? she wondered, and at once smiled at the absurdity of the idea. It was also rather sad – she knew this too – that a healthy woman in the prime of nubility should entertain such thoughts.
‘You’re short of only one thing, Pouline deGrenier,’ she told herself aloud, with mock sternness, ‘and that’s a good fucking.’
The sound of her own voice startled her. She glanced round: was someone out there in the shadowed laboratory, listening to her? She almost made herself believe that there was – a man undoubtedly, a secret lover spying on her, watching her face and reading her thoughts.
