Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

by Timothy Zahn

  Garwood nodded, wishing he knew exactly what the man was saying. Was he offering to help Garwood escape again should that become necessary? "I'll remember," he promised. "You're going to be here for awhile, then?"

  Davidson smiled wryly. "They let me out on a tight rein to go after you, Doctor. That doesn't mean they want me running around loose with what I know about Backdrop. I'll be on temporary duty with the security office, at least for the foreseeable future." He paused halfway through the act of turning back toward the door. "Though I don't suppose the term 'foreseeable future' has quite the same meaning as it used to, does it?"

  Without waiting for an answer, he nodded and left. No, it doesn't, Garwood agreed silently at the closed door. It really doesn't.

  He thought about it for a long minute. Then, with a shiver, he turned back to his papers.

  —

  One by one, the leads faded into blind alleys... and two months later, Garwood finally admitted defeat.

  "Damn you," he muttered aloud, slouching wearily in his chair as far away from his terminal as space permitted. "Damn you." An impotent curse hurled at the terminal, at the program, at the universe itself. "There has to be a way. There has to be."

  His only answer was the vague and distant crash of something heavy, the sound muffled and unidentifiable. A piece of I-beam from the ceiling, he rather thought—the basic infrastructure of Backdrop had started to go the way of the more fragile plaster and electronics over the past couple of weeks. Saunders had spent much of that time trying to invent correlations between the increase in the destruction with some supposed progress in Garwood's mathematical work, and he'd come up with some highly imaginative ones.

  But imaginative was all they were... because Garwood knew what was really happening.

  Perversely, even as it blocked his attempts to find a safe method of time travel, the universe had been busily showing him exactly how to transform his original equations into actual real-world hardware.

  It was, on one level, maddening. He would be sitting at his typewriter, preparing a new set of equations for the optical scanner to feed into the computer, when suddenly he would have a flash of insight as to how a properly tuned set of asynchronous drivers could handle the multiple timing pulses. Or he'd be waiting for the computer to chew through a tensor calculation and suddenly recognize that an extra coil winding superimposed on a standard transformer system could create both the power and the odd voltage patterns his equations implied. Or he'd even be trying to fall asleep at night, head throbbing with the day's frustrations, and practically see a vision of the mu-metal molding that would distort a pulsed magnetic field by just the right amount to create the necessary envelope for radiating plasma bursts.

  And as the insights came more and more frequently—as a working time machine came closer and closer to reality—the environment inside Backdrop came to look more and more like a war zone.

  Across the room the terminal emitted a raucous beep, signaling the possibility of parity error in its buffer memory. "Damn," Garwood muttered again and dragged himself to his feet. Eventually he would have to tell Saunders that his last attempts had gone up in the same black smoke as all the previous ones, and there was nothing to be gained by putting it off. Picking up his hardhat, he put it on and stepped out of his office.

  The corridor outside had changed dramatically in the past weeks, its soothing pastel walls giving way to the stark metallic glitter of steel shoring columns. Senses alert for new ripples in the floor beneath him as well as for falling objects from above, he set off toward Saunders's office.

  Luck was with him. The passages were relatively clear, with only the minor challenge of maneuvering past shoring and other travelers to require his attention. He was nearly to Saunders's office, in fact, before he hit the first real roadblock.

  And it was a good one. He'd been right about the sound earlier; one of the steel I-beams from the ceiling had indeed broken free, creating a somewhat bowed diagonal across the hallway. A team of men armed with acetylene torches were cutting carefully across the beam, trying to free it without bringing more down.

  "Dr. Garwood?"

  Garwood focused on the burly man stepping toward him, an engineer's insignia glittering amid the plaster dust on his jumpsuit collar. "Yes, Captain?"

  "If you don't mind, sir," the other said in a gravelly voice, "we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't hang around here any longer than necessary. There may be more waiting to come down."

  Garwood glanced at the ceiling, stomach tightening within him as he recognized the all-too-familiar message beneath the other's words. It wasn't so much interest in his, Garwood's, safety as it was concern that the cloud of destruction around him might wind up killing one of the workers. Briefly, bitterly, Garwood wondered if this was how Jonah had felt during the shipboard storm. Before he'd been thrown overboard to the whale... "I understand," he sighed. "Would you mind passing a message on to Dr. Saunders when you have the chance, then, asking him to meet me at my office? My phone's gone out again."

  "A lot of 'em have, Doctor," the engineer nodded. "I'll give him the message."

  Garwood nodded back and turned to go—

  And nearly bumped into Major Davidson, standing quietly behind him.

  "Major," Garwood managed, feeling his heart settle down again. "You startled me."

  Davidson nodded, a simple acknowledgment of Garwood's statement. "Haven't seen you in a while, Dr. Garwood," he said, his voice the same neutral as his face. "How's it going?"

  Garwood's usual vague deflection to that question came to his lips... "I have to get back to my office," he said instead. "The workmen are worried about another collapse."

  "I'll walk with you," Davidson offered, falling into step beside him.

  Davidson waited until they were out of sight of the workers before speaking again. "I've been keeping an eye on the damage reports," he commented in that same neutral tone. "You been following them?"

  "Not really," Garwood replied through dry lips. Suddenly there was something about Davidson that frightened him. "Though I can usually see the most immediate consequences in and around my office."

  "Been some extra problems cropping up in the various machine and electronic fabrication shops, too," Davidson told him, almost off-handedly. "As if there's been some work going on there that's particularly susceptible to the Garwood Effect."

  Garwood gritted his teeth. The Garwood Effect. An appropriate, if painful, name for it. "Saunders has had some people trying to translate what little he and the rest of the team know into practical hardware terms," he told Davidson.

  "But they don't yet know how to build a time machine?"

  "No. They don't."

  "Do you?"

  Again, Garwood's reflex was to lie. "I think so," he admitted instead. "I'm pretty close, anyway."

  They walked on in silence for a few more paces. "I'm sure you realize," Davidson said at last, "the implications of what you're saying."

  Garwood sighed. "Do try to remember, Major, that I was worrying about all this long before you were even on the scene."

  "Perhaps. But my experience with scientists has been that you often have a tendency toward tunnel vision, so it never hurts to check. Have you told anyone yet? Or left any hard copies of the technique?"

  "No, to both."

  "Well, that's a start." Davidson threw him a sideways look. "Unfortunately, it won't hold anyone for long. If I'm smart enough to figure out what the increase in the Garwood Effect implies, Saunders is certainly smart enough to do the same."

  Garwood looked over at Davidson's face, and the knot in his stomach tightened further as he remembered what the other had once said about Saunders using hypnosis against him. "Then I have to get away again before that happens," he said in a quiet voice.

  Davidson shook his head. "That won't be easy to do a second time."

  "Then I'll need help, won't I?"

  Davidson didn't reply for several seconds. "Perhaps," he said at last. "Bu
t bear in mind that above everything else I have my duty to consider."

  "I understand," Garwood nodded.

  Davidson eyed him. "Do you, Doctor? Do you really?"

  Garwood met his eyes... and at long last, he really did understand.

  Davidson wasn't offering him safe passage to that mythical wilderness Garwood had so often longed for. He was offering only to help Garwood keep the secret of time travel out of Saunders's grasp. To keep it away from a world that such a secret would surely destroy.

  Offering the only way out that was guaranteed to be permanent.

  Garwood's heart was thudding in his ears, and he could feel sweat gathering on his upper lip. "And when," he heard himself say, "would your duty require you to take that action?"

  "When it was clear there was no longer any choice," Davidson said evenly. "When you finally proved safe time travel was impossible, for instance. Or perhaps when you showed a working time machine could be built."

  They'd reached the door to Garwood's office now. "But if I instead proved that the probability-shift effect would in fact keep a working time machine from actually being built?" Garwood asked, turning to face the other. "What then?"

  "Then it's not a working time machine, is it?" Davidson countered.

  Garwood took a deep breath. "Major... I want a working time machine built even less than you do. Believe me."

  "I hope so," Davidson nodded, his eyes steady on Garwood's. "Because you and I may be the only ones here who feel that way... and speaking for myself, I know only one way to keep your equations from bringing chaos onto the world. I hope I don't have to use it."

  A violent shiver ran up Garwood's back. "I do, too," he managed. Turning the doorknob with a shaking hand, he fled from Davidson's eyes to the safety of his office.

  To the relative safety, anyway, of his office.

  For several minutes he paced the room, his pounding heart only gradually calming down. A long time ago, before his break from Backdrop, he'd contemplated suicide as the only sure way to escape the cloud of destruction around him. But it had never been a serious consideration, and he'd turned instead to his escape-and-research plan.

  A plan which had eventually ended in failure. And now, with the stakes even higher than they'd been back then, death was once again being presented to him as the only sure way to keep the genie in the bottle.

  Only this time the decision wasn't necessarily going to be his. And to add irony to the whole thing, Davidson's presence here was ultimately his own fault. If he hadn't skipped out of Backdrop six months ago, the major would never even have come onto the scene.

  Or maybe he would have. With the contorted circular logic that seemed to drive the probability-shift effect nothing could be taken for granted. Besides, if Davidson hadn't caught him, perhaps someone less intelligent would have. Someone who might have brushed aside his fears and forced him onto that airplane at Chanute AFB. If that had happened—if the effect had then precipitated a crash—

  He shook his head to clear it. It was, he thought bitterly, like the old college bull sessions about free will versus predestination. There were no answers, ever; and you could go around in circles all night chasing after them. On one hand, the probability-shift effect could destroy engines; on the other, as Davidson himself had pointed out, it logically shouldn't be able to crash a plane that Garwood himself was on...

  Garwood frowned, train of thought breaking as a wisp of something brushed past his mind. Davidson... airplane...?

  And with a sudden flood of adrenaline, the answer came to him.

  Maybe.

  Deep in thought, he barely noticed the knock at the door. "Who is it?" he called mechanically.

  "Saunders," the other's familiar voice came through the panel.

  Garwood licked his lips, shifting his mind as best he could back to the real world. The next few minutes could be crucial ones indeed.... "Come in," he called.

  "I got a message that you wanted to see me," Saunders said, glancing toward the terminal as he came into the room. "More equipment trouble?"

  "Always," Garwood nodded, waving him to a chair. "But that's not why I called you here. I think I may have some good news."

  Saunders's eyes probed Garwood's face as he sank into the proffered seat. "Oh? What kind?"

  Garwood hesitated. "It'll depend, of course, on just what kind of latitude you're willing to allow me—how much control I'll have on this—and I'll tell you up front that if you buck me you'll wind up with nothing. Understand?"

  "It would be hard not to," Saunders said dryly, "considering that you've been making these same demands since you got here. What am I promising not to interfere with this time?"

  Garwood took a deep breath. "I'm ready," he said, "to build you a time machine."

  VI

  Within a few days the Garwood Effect damage that had been occurring sporadically throughout Backdrop's several fabrication areas jumped nearly eight hundred percent. A few days after that, repair and replacement equipment began to be shipped into the complex at a correspondingly increased rate, almost—but not quite—masking the even more dramatic flood of non-damage-control shipping also entering Backdrop. The invoice lists for the latter made for interesting reading: esoteric electronic and mechanical equipment, exotic metals, specialized machine tools for both macro and micro work, odd power supplies—it ran the entire gamut.

  And for Davidson, the invoices combined with the damage reports were all the proof he needed.

  Garwood had figured out how to build his time machine. And was building it.

  Damn him. Hissing between his teeth, Davidson leaned wearily back into his chair and blanked the last of the invoices from his terminal screen. So Garwood had been lying through his teeth all along. Lying about his fears concerning time travel; lying about his disagreements with Dr. Saunders; lying about how noble and self-sacrificing he was willing to be to keep the world safe from the wildfire Garwood Effect a time machine would create.

  And Davidson, that supposedly expert reader of people, had fallen for the whole act like a novice investigator.

  Firmly, he shook the thought away. Bruised pride was far and away the least of his considerations at the moment. If Garwood was building a time machine...

  But could he in fact build it?

  Davidson gnawed at the inside of his cheek, listening to the logic spin in circles in his head. Garwood had suggested more than once that the Garwood Effect would destroy a time machine piecemeal before it could even be assembled. Had he been lying about that, too? It had seemed reasonable enough at the time... but then why would he and Saunders even bother trying? No, there had to be something else happening, something Garwood had managed to leave out of his argument and which Davidson hadn't caught on his own.

  But whatever it was he'd missed, circumstances still left him no choice. Garwood had to be stopped.

  Taking a deep breath, Davidson leaned forward to the terminal again and called up Backdrop's cafeteria records. If Garwood was working around the clock, as Davidson certainly would be doing in his place... and after a few tries he found what he was looking for: the records of the meals delivered to the main assembly area at the end of Backdrop's security tunnel. Scanning them, he found there had been between three and twelve meals going into the tunnel each mealtime since two days before the dramatic upsurge in Garwood Effect damage.

  And Garwood's ordering number was on each one of the order lists.

  Davidson swore again, under his breath. Of course Garwood would be spending all his time down the tunnel—after their last conversation a couple of weeks ago the man would be crazy to stay anywhere that Davidson's security clearance would let him get to. And he'd chosen his sanctuary well. Down the security tunnel, buried beneath the assembly area's artificial hill, it would take either a company of Marines or a medium-sized tactical nuke to get to him now.

  Or maybe—just maybe—all it would take would be a single man with a computer terminal. A man with some knowledge of secur
ity systems, some patience, and some time.

  Davidson gritted his teeth. The terminal he had; and the knowledge, and the patience. But as for the time... he would know in a few days.

  If the world still existed by then.

  VII

  The five techs were still going strong as the clocks reached midnight, but Garwood called a halt anyway. "We'll be doing the final wiring assembly and checkout tomorrow," he reminded them. "I don't want people felling asleep over their voltmeters while they're doing that."

  "You really expect any of us to sleep?" one of the techs grumbled half-seriously.

  "Well, I sure will," Garwood told him lightly, hooking a thumb toward the door. "Come on, everybody out. See you at eight tomorrow morning. Pleasant dreams."

  The tech had been right, Garwood realized as he watched them empty their tool pouches onto an already cluttered work table: with the project so close to completion they were going to be too wired up for easy sleep. But fortunately they were as obedient as they were competent, and they filed out without any real protest.

  And Garwood was alone.

  Exhaling tiredly, he locked the double doors and made his way back to the center of the huge shored-up fabrication dome and the lopsided monstrosity looming there. Beyond it across the dome was his cot, beckoning him temptingly... Stepping instead to the cluttered work table, he picked up a screwdriver set and climbed up through the tangle of equipment into the seat at its center. Fifteen minutes later, the final connections were complete.

  It was finished.

  For a long minute he just sat there, eyes gazing unseeingly at the simple control/indicator panel before him. It was finished. After all the blood, sweat, and tears—after all the arguments with Saunders—after the total disruption of his life... it was done.

  He had created a time machine.

  Sighing, he climbed stiffly down from the seat and returned the screwdrivers to their place on the work table. The next table over was covered with various papers; snaring a wastebasket, he began pushing the papers into it, tamping them down as necessary until the table was clear. A length of electrical cable secured the wastebasket to a protruding metal plate at the back of the time machine's seat, leaving enough room for the suitcase and survival pack he retrieved from beneath his cot. Two more lengths of cable to secure them... and there was just one more chore to do. A set of three video cameras stood spaced around the room, silent on their tripods; stepping to each in turn, he turned all of them on.