Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

by Timothy Zahn

  His first stop was the corral behind his House. Fenced in by wire mesh attached to pipes, the four tricorns looked back disinterestedly as they munched on the rock and plants left there for them. The fence couldn't keep them in at night, of course, but with a supply of food nearby they tended to stay put even during musth, and the one or two who had broken out in the last month had always returned by sunrise. Collecting food for them was a pain—as was supplying the mineral pile near the mine to lure away the tricorns there—but it beat guard duty hands-down. And in the long run, it was much cheaper.

  Collecting his night things, Kendal stepped into the House. "Hi, House," he called.

  "Good evening, Kendal. Did you have a profitable day?"

  "Very. Will you be ready to start after I get my supper going?"

  "Certainly."

  We are, after all, what we eat, Kendal thought wryly—and if his theory was right, that was even more true of Houses. Their alien method of food absorption seemed to be gentler than its human equivalent, so much so that the Houses could evidently absorb intact the delicate and complex nucleic acids—or possibly even entire gray-matter nerve cells—of their prey. And as soon as enough had been absorbed.... Kendal wondered how many tricorns the House had had to eat before the unexpected light had dawned so long ago. Intact tricorns, that is—not ones whose brains had been fried by laser fire.

  Accidental intelligence? Something inside Kendal rebelled at the idea... and yet, why not? And hardly useless, even if it had been sorely lacking in purpose until now.

  Because there was one intriguing corollary to the theory. The Houses certainly had the necessary bulk to store great quantities of brain cells. If they were steadily fed, would their intelligence increase? And if so, was there any upper limit?

  Kendal didn't know, and of course didn't have the necessary equipment or know-how to perform rigorous tests. But there were more informal ways... and he was determined to learn whatever he could in the time remaining.

  The equipment was ready now. Looking up, Kendal nodded. "Okay, go ahead."

  The reply was immediate; the House knew this part well. "Pawn to king four," it said.

  Time Bomb

  I

  The bus station was stiflingly hot, despite the light evening breeze drifting in through the open door and windows. In a way the heat was almost comforting to Garwood as he stood at the ticket window; it proved the air conditioning had broken down much earlier in the day, long before he'd come anywhere near the place.

  Puffing on a particularly pungent cigar—the smoke of which made Garwood's eyes water—the clerk looked down at the bills in front of him and shook his head. "Costs forty-one sixty to Champaign now," he said around his cigar.

  Garwood frowned. "The schedule says thirty-eight," he pointed out.

  "You gotta old one, prob'ly." The clerk ran a stubby finger down a list in front of him. "Prices went up 'bout a week ago. Yep—forty-one sixty."

  A fresh trickle of sweat ran down the side of Garwood's face. "May I see that?" he asked.

  The clerk's cigar shifted to the other side of his mouth and his eyes flicked to Garwood's slightly threadbare sport coat and the considerably classier leather suitcase at his side. "If you got proper identification I can take a check or card," he offered.

  "May I see the schedule, please?" Garwood repeated.

  The cigar shifted again, and Garwood could almost see the wheels spinning behind the other's eyes as he swiveled the card and pushed it slowly under the old-fashioned grille. Getting suspicious; but there wasn't anything Garwood could do about it. Even if he'd been willing to risk using one, all his credit cards had fallen apart in his wallet nearly a month ago. With the rising interest rates of the past two years and the record number of bankruptcies it had triggered, there were more people than ever roundly damning the American credit system and its excesses. And on top of that, the cards were made of plastic, based on a resource the world was rapidly running out of and still desperately needed. A double whammy. "Okay," he said, scanning the rate listing. "I'll go to Mahomet instead—what's that, about ten miles this side of Champaign?"

  "Closer t' seven." The clerk took the card back, eying Garwood through a freshly replenished cloud of smoke. "Be thirty-six seventy-five."

  Garwood handed over thirty-seven of his forty dollars, silently cursing his out-of-date schedule. He'd cut things a little too fine, and now he was going to look exactly like what he was: a man on the run. For a moment he debated simply turning around and leaving, trying it again tomorrow on someone else's shift.

  But that would mean spending another night in Springfield. And with all the Lincoln memorabilia so close at hand...

  "Bus's boarding now," the clerk told him, choosing one of the preprinted tickets and pushing it under the grille. "Out that door; be leavin' 'bout five minutes."

  Gritting his teeth, Garwood picked up the ticket... and as he withdrew his hand, there was a sudden crack, as if someone had fired a cap pistol.

  "Damn kids," the clerk growled, craning his neck to peer out his side window.

  Garwood looked down, his eyes searching the ledge inside the ticket window grille. He'd heard that particular sound before... and just inside the grille, near where his hand had twice reached, he saw it.

  The clerk's ashtray. An ashtray once made of clear glass... now shot through by a thousand hairline fractures.

  The clerk was still looking through his window for the kid with the cap pistol as Garwood left, forcing himself to walk.

  —

  He half expected the police to show up before the bus could leave, but to his mild surprise the vehicle wheezed leisurely out of the lot on time and headed a few minutes later onto the eastbound interstate. For the first few miles Garwood gave his full attention to his ears, straining tensely for the first faint sound of pursuing sirens. But as the minutes crawled by and no one showed up to pull them over, he was forced to the conclusion that the clerk had decided it wasn't any of his business.

  The thought was strangely depressing. To realize that the latest upswing in the "not-me" noninvolvement philosophy had spread its rot from the polarized coasts into America's heartland bothered Garwood far more than it should have. Perhaps it was all the learned opinions he'd read weighing upon him; all the doomsayings about how such a national malaise could foreshadow the end of democracy.

  Or perhaps it was simply the realization that even a nation full of selfish people didn't make a shred of difference to the cloud of destruction surrounding him.

  Stop it! he ordered himself silently. Self-pity... Taking a deep breath, he looked around him.

  He'd chosen his third-row seat carefully—as far from the bus's rear-mounted engine as he could reasonably get without sitting in the driver's lap, and well within the non-smoking section. His seatmate... He threw the kid a surreptitious look, confirmed that his first-glance analysis had been correct. Faded denim jeans and an old cotton shirt. That was good; natural fibers held up much better than synthetic ones, for the same reason that plastic had a tendency to disintegrate in his presence. Reaching a hand under his jacket, Garwood checked his own sweat-soaked polyester shirt for new tears. A rip at his right shoulder lengthened as he did so, and he muttered a curse.

  "Don't make 'em like they use'ta, do they?"

  Startled, Garwood turned to see his seatmate's smile. "What?" he asked.

  "Your shirt," the kid explained. "I heard it rip. Guys who make 'em just get away with crapzi, don't they?"

  "Um," Garwood grunted, turning away again.

  "You headed for Champaign?" the kid persisted.

  Garwood sighed. "Mahomet."

  "No kidding!—I grew up there. You, too, or are you just visiting?"

  "Just visiting."

  "You'll like it. Small place, but friendly. Speaking of which—" he stuck out his hand. "Name's Tom Arnold. Tom Benedict Arnold, actually."

  Automatically, Garwood shook the proffered hand. Somewhere in the back of his head the al
arm bells were going off.... "Not, uh, any relation to...?"

  "Benedict Arnold?" The kid grinned widely. "Sure am. Direct descendant, in fact."

  An icy shiver ran up Garwood's back, a shiver having nothing to do with the bus's air conditioning. "You mean... really direct?" he asked, dropping the other's hand. "Not from a cousin or anything?"

  "Straight shot line," Arnold nodded, the grin still in place. He was watching Garwood's face closely, and Garwood got the distinct impression the kid liked shocking people this way. "It's nothin' to be 'shamed of, you know—he did America a lot more good than he did bad. Whipped the Brits at Saratoga 'fore goin' over on their side—"

  "Yes, I know," Garwood said, interrupting the impromptu history lesson. "Excuse me a second—washroom."

  Stepping into the aisle, he went to the small cubicle at the rear of the bus. He waited a few minutes, then emerged and found an empty seat four rows behind the kid. He hoped Arnold wouldn't take it too personally, though he rather thought the other would. But he couldn't afford to take the chance. Benedict Arnold's victory at Saratoga had been a pivotal factor in persuading France to enter the war on the rebels' side, and Garwood had no desire to see if he had the same effect on living beings that he had on history's more inanimate descendants.

  The afterglow in the sky behind them slowly faded, and as the sky darkened Garwood drifted in and out of sleep. The thought of the boy four seats ahead troubled his rest, filling his dreams with broken ashtrays and TV sets, half-melted-looking car engines and statues. After a while the bus stopped in Decatur, taking half an hour to trade a handful of passengers for an equally small number of others. Eventually they left; and back out in the dark of the prairie again, with the stars visible above, he again drifted to sleep....

  The sound of the bus driver's voice jolted him awake. "...and gentlemen, I'm afraid we're having some trouble with the engine. Rather than take a chance on it quitting straight out before we get to Champaign, we're going to ask you to transfer to a bus that's being sent up from Decatur. It ought to be here in just a few minutes."

  Blinking in the relative brightness of the overhead lights, Garwood joined the line of grumbling passengers moving down the aisle, a familiar knot wrenching at his stomach. Had it been him? He'd been far enough away from the engine—surely he had. Unless the effective distance was increasing with time... Forcing his jaw to unclench, he stepped carefully down the bus's steps, hoping desperately it was just a coincidence.

  Outside, the only light came from a small building the bus had pulled alongside and from one or two dim streetlights. Half blind as his eyes again adjusted, Garwood took two tentative steps forward—

  And came to an abrupt halt as strong hands slipped smoothly around each arm.

  "Dr. James Garwood?" a shadowy figure before him asked quietly.

  Garwood opened his mouth to deny it... but even as he did so he knew it would be useless. "Yes," he signed. "And you?"

  "Major Alan Davidson; Combined Services Intelligence. They miss you back at your lab, Doctor."

  Garwood glanced past the husky man holding his right arm, saw the line of passengers goggling at him. "So it was all a set-up?" he asked. "The bus is okay?"

  Davidson nodded. "A suspicious clerk in Springfield thought you might be a fugitive. From your description and something about a broken ashtray my superiors thought it might be you. Come with me, please."

  Garwood didn't have much choice. Propelled gently along by the hands still holding his arms, he followed Davidson toward the lighted building and a long car parked in the shadows there. "Where are you taking me?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  Davidson reached the car and opened the back door; and it wasn't until he and Garwood were in the back seat and the other two soldiers in front that the major answered the question. "Chanute AFB, about fifteen miles north of Champaign," he told Garwood as the car pulled back onto the interstate and headed east. "We'll be transferring you to a special plane there for the trip back to the Project."

  Garwood licked his lips. A plane. How many people, he wondered, wished that mankind had never learned to fly? There was only one way to know for sure... and that way might wind up killing him. "You put me on that plane and it could be the last anyone ever sees of me," he told Davidson.

  "Really?" the major asked politely.

  "Did they tell you why I ran out on the Project? That the place was falling down around my ears?"

  "They mentioned something about that, yes," Davidson nodded. "I really don't think you have anything to worry about, though. The people in charge of security on this one are all top notch."

  Garwood snorted. "You're missing the point, Major. The lab wasn't under any kind of attack from outside agents. It was falling apart because I was in it."

  Davidson nodded. "And as I said, we're going to have you under complete protection—"

  "No!" Garwood snapped. "I'm not talking about someone out there gunning for me or the Project. It's my presence there—my physical presence inside Backdrop—that was causing all the destruction."

  Davidson's dimly visible expression didn't change. "How do you figure that?"

  Garwood hesitated, glancing at the front seat and the two silhouettes there listening into the conversation. Major Davidson might possibly be cleared for something this sensitive; the others almost certainly weren't. "I can't tell you the details," he said, turning back to Davidson. "I—look, you said your superiors nailed me because of a broken ashtray in Springfield, right? Did they tell you anything more?"

  Davidson hesitated, then shook his head. "No."

  "It broke because I came too close to it," Garwood told him. "There's a—oh, an aura, I guess you could call it, of destruction surrounding me. Certain types of items are especially susceptible, including internal combustion engines. That's why I don't want to be put on any plane."

  "Uh-huh," Davidson nodded. "West, you having any trouble with the car?"

  "No, sir," the driver said promptly. "Running real smooth."

  Garwood took a deep breath. "It doesn't always happen right away," he said through clenched teeth. "I rode the bus for over an hour without anything happening, remember? But if it does happen with a plane, we can't just pull off the road and stop."

  Davidson sighed. "Look, Dr. Garwood, just relax, okay? Trust me, the plane will run just fine."

  Garwood glared through the gloom at him. "You want some proof?—is that what it'll take? Fine. Do you have any cigarettes?"

  For a moment Davidson regarded him in silence. Then, flicking on a dim overhead dome light, he dug a crumpled pack from his pocket.

  "Put a couple in my hand," Garwood instructed him, extending a palm, "and leave the light on."

  Davidson complied with the cautious air of a man at a magic show. "Now what?"

  "Just keep an eye on them. Tell me, do you like smoking?"

  The other snorted. "Hell, no. Tried to give the damn things up at least twenty times. I'm hooked pretty good, I guess."

  "You like being hooked?"

  "That's a stupid question."

  Garwood nodded. "Sorry. So, now... how many other people, do you suppose, hate being hooked by tobacco?"

  Davidson gave him a look that was half frown, half glare. "What's your point, Doctor?"

  Garwood hesitated. "Consider it as a sort of subconscious democracy. You don't like smoking, and a whole lot of other people in this country don't like smoking. A lot of them wish there weren't any cigarettes—wish these cigarettes didn't exist."

  "And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride," Davidson quoted. He reached over, to close his fingers on the cigarettes in Garwood's palm—

  And jerked his hand back as they crumpled into shreds at his touch.

  "What the hell?" he snapped, practically in Garwood's ear. "What did you do?"

  "I was near them," Garwood said simply. "I was near them, and a lot of people don't like smoking. That's all there is to it."

  Davidson was still star
ing at the mess in Garwood's palm. "It's a trick. You switched cigarettes on me."

  "While you watched?" Garwood snorted. "All right, fine, let's do it again. You can write your initials on them this time."

  Slowly, Davidson raised his eyes to Garwood's face. "Why you?"

  Garwood brushed the bits of paper and tobacco off his hand with a shudder. Even after all these months it still scared him spitless to watch something disintegrate like that. "I know... something. I can't tell you just what."

  "Okay, you know something. And?"

  "No ands about it. It's the knowledge alone that does it."

  Davidson's eyes were steady on his face. "Knowledge. Knowledge that shreds cigarettes all by itself."

  "That, combined with the way a lot of people feel about smoking. Look, I know it's hard to believe—"

  "Skip that point for now," Davidson cut him off. "Assume you're right, that it's pure knowledge that somehow does all this. Is it something connected with the Backdrop Project?"

  "Yes."

  "They know about it? And know what it does?"

  "Yes, to both."

  "And they still want you back?"

  Garwood thought about Saunders. The long discussions he'd had with the other. The even longer arguments. "Dr. Saunders doesn't really understand."

  For a moment Davidson was silent. "What else does this aura affect besides cigarettes?" he asked at last. "You mentioned car engines?"

  "Engines, plastics, televisions—modern conveniences of all kinds, mainly, though there are other things in danger as well. Literally anything that someone doesn't like can be a target." He thought about the bus and Tom Benedict Arnold. "It might work on people, too," he added, shivering. "That one I haven't had to find out about for sure."

  "And all that this... destructive wishing... needs to come out is for you to be there?"

  Garwood licked his lips. "So far, yes. But if Backdrop ever finishes its work—"