Possible Tomorrows

by Groff Conklin (Ed. )

  Potterley brightened a bit “I knew it,” he said. “Even if they stop research in neutrinics there is no way the government can be sure that discoveries in other segments of science won’t reflect knowledge on neutrinics. So much for the value of centralized direction of science. I thought this long ago. Dr. Foster, before you ever came to work here.”

  “I congratulate you on that” said Foster, “but there’s one thing—”

  “Oh, never mind all this. Answer me. Please. When can you build a chronoscope?”

  “I’m trying to tell you something, Dr. Potterley. A chronoscope won’t do you any good.” (This is it Foster thought.)

  Slowly, Potterley descended the stairs. He stood, facing Foster, “What do you mean? Why won’t it help me?”

  “You won’t see Carthage. It’s what I’ve got to tell you. It’s what I’ve been leading up to. You can never see Carthage.” Potterley shook his head slightly. “Oh, no, you’re wrong. If you have the chronoscope, just focus it properly—”

  “No, Dr. Potterley. It’s not a question of focus. There are random factors affecting the neutrino stream, as they affect all sub-atomic particles. What we call the uncertainty principle. When the stream is recorded and interpreted, the random factor comes out as fuzziness, or “noise” as the communications boys speak of it The further back in time you penetrate, the more pronounced the fuzziness, the greater the noise. After a while, the noise drowns out the picture. Do you understand?”

  “More power,” said Potterley in a dead kind of voice.

  “That won’t help. When the noise blurs out detail, magnifying detail magnifies the noise, too. You can’t see anything in a sun-burned film by enlarging it can you? Get this through your head, now. The physical nature of the universe sets limits. The random thermal motions of air molecules sets limits to how weak a sound can be detected by any instrument the length of a lightwave or of an electron-wave sets limits to the size of objects that can be seen by any instrument It works that way in chronoscopy, too. You can only time-view so far.”

  “How far? How far?”

  Foster took a deep breath. “A century and a quarter. That’s the most”

  “But the monthly bulletin the Commission puts out deals with ancient history almost entirely.” The historian laughed shakily. “You must be wrong. The government has data as far back as 3,000 B.C.”

  “When did you switch to believing them?” demanded Foster, scornfully. “You began this business by proving they were lying; that no historian had made use of the chronoscope. Don’t you see why now? No historian, except one interested in contemporary history, could. No chronoscope can possibly see back in time further than 1950 undo: any conditions.”

  “You’re wrong. You don’t know everything,” said Potterley.

  “The truth won’t bend itself to your convenience either. Face it. The government’s part in this is to perpetuate a hoax.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  Potterley’s snubby nose was twitching. His eyes were bulging. He pleaded, “It’s only theory, Dr. Foster. Build a chronoscope. Build one and try.”

  Foster caught Potterley’s shoulders in a sudden, fierce grip.

  “Do you think I haven’t? Do you think I would tell you this before I had checked it every way I knew. I have built one. It’s all around you. Look!”

  He ran to the switches at the power-leads. He flicked them on, one by one. He turned a resistor, adjusted other knobs, put out the cellar lights. “Wait. Let it warm up.”

  There was a small glow near the center of one wall. Potterley was gibbering incoherently, but Foster only cried again, “Look!”

  The light sharpened and brightened, broke up into a light-and-dark pattern. Men and women! Fuzzy. Features blurred. Arms and legs mere streaks. An old-fashioned ground-car, nuclear but recognizable as one of the kind that had once used gasoline-powered internal-combustion engines, sped by.

  Foster said, “Mid-twentieth century, somewhere. I can’t hook up an audio yet so this is soundless. Eventually, we can add sound. Anyway, mid-twenties is almost as far back as you can go. Believe me, that’s the best focusing that can be done.”

  Potterley said, “Build a larger machine, a stronger one. Improve your circuits.”

  “You can’t lick the uncertainty principle, man, any more than you can live on the sun. There are physical limits to what can be done.”

  “You’re lying. I won’t believe you. I—”

  A new voice sounded, raised shrilly to make itself heard. “Arnold! Dr. Foster!”

  The young physicist turned at once. Dr. Potterley froze for a long moment, then said, without turning, “What is it, Caroline? Leave us.”

  “No!” Mrs. Potterley descended the stairs. “I heard. I couldn’t help hearing. Do you have a tune-viewer here, Dr. Foster? Here in the basement?”

  “Yes, I do, Mrs. Potterley. A kind of time-viewer. Not a good one. I can’t get sound yet and the picture is darned blurry, but it works.”

  Mrs. Potterley clasped her hands and held them tightly against her breast. “How wonderful. How wonderful.”

  “It’s not at all wonderful,” snapped Potterley. “The young fool can’t reach further back than—”

  “Now, look,” began Foster in exasperation—

  “Please!” cried Mrs. Potterley. “Listen to me. Arnold, don’t you see that as long as we can use it for twenty years back, we can see Laurel once again? What do we care about Carthage and ancient times. It’s Laurel we can see. She’ll be alive for us again. Leave the machine here, Dr. Foster. Show us how to work it.”

  Foster stared at her and then at her husband. Dr. Potterley’s face had gone white. Though his voice stayed low and even, its calmness was somehow gone. He said, “You’re a fool!” Caroline said, weakly, “Arnold!”

  “You’re a fool, I say. What will you see? The past. The dead past Will Laurel do one thing she did not do? Will you see one thing you haven’t seen? Will you live three years over and over again, watching a baby who’ll never grow up no matter how you watch?”

  His voice came near to cracking, but held. He stepped closer to her, seized her shoulder and shook her roughly. “Do you know what will happen to you if you do that? They will come to take you away because you’ll go mad. Yes, mad. Do you want mental treatment? Do you want to be shut up, to undergo the psychic probe?”

  Mrs. Potterley tore away. There was no trace of softness or vagueness about her. She had twisted into a virago. “I want to see my child, Arnold. She’s in that machine and I want her.”

  “She’s not in the machine. An image is. Can’t you understand? An image! Something that’s not real!”

  “I want my child. Do you hear me?” She flew at him, screaming, fists beating. “I want my child.”

  The historian retreated at the fury of the assault crying out. Foster moved to step between when Mrs. Potterley dropped, sobbing wildly, to the floor.

  Potterley turned, eyes desperately seeking. With a sudden heave, he snatched at a Lando-rod, tearing it from its support, and whirling away before Foster, numbed by all that was taking place, could move to stop him.

  “Stand back!” gasped Potterley, “or I’ll kill you. I swear it” He swung with force, and Foster jumped back.

  Potterley turned with fury on every part of the structure in the cellar, and Foster, after the first crash of glass, watched dazedly.

  Potterley spent his rage and then he was standing quietly amid shards and splinters, with a broken Lando-rod in his hand. He said to Foster in a whisper, “Now get out of here!

  Never come back! If any of this cost you anything, send me a bill and I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay double.”

  Foster shrugged, picked up his shirt and moved up the basement stairs. He could hear Mrs. Potterley sobbing loudly, and, as he turned at the head of the stairs for a last look, he saw Dr. Potterley bending over her, face convulsed with sorrow.

  Two days later, with the school day drawing
to a dose, and Foster looking wearily about to see if there were any data on his newly-approved projects that he wished to take home, Dr. Potterley appeared (Mice more. He was standing at the open door of Foster’s office.

  The historian was neatly dressed as ever. He lifted his hand in a gesture that was too vague to be a greeting, too abortive to be a plea. Foster stared stonily.

  Potterley said, “I waited till five, till you were—May I come in?”

  Foster nodded.

  Potterley said, “I suppose I ought to apologize for my behavior. I was dreadfully disappointed; not quite master of myself. Still, it was inexcusable.”

  “I accept your apology,” said Foster. “Is that all?”

  “My wife has called you, I think.”

  “Yes, she has.”

  “She has been quite hysterical. She told me she had but I couldn’t be quite sure—”

  “She has called me.”

  “Could you tell me . . . would you be so kind as to tell me what she wanted?”

  “She wanted a chronoscope. She said she had some money of her own. She was willing to pay.”

  “Did you . . . make any commitments?”

  “I said I wasn’t in the manufacturing business.”

  “Good,” breathed Potterley, his chest expanding with a sigh of relief. “Please don’t take any calls from her. She’s not. . . quite—”

  “Look, Dr. Potterley,” said Foster. “I’m not getting into any domestic quarrels, but you’d better be prepared for something. Chronoscopes can be built by anybody. Given a few simple parts that can be bought through some etherics sales-center, it can be built in the home work-shop. The video part, anyway.”

  “But no one else will think of it beside you, will they? No one has.”

  “I don’t intend to keep it secret”

  “But you can’t publish. It’s illegal research.”

  “That doesn’t matter any more, Dr. Potterley. If I lose my grants, I lose them. If the University is displeased, I’ll resign. It just doesn’t matter.”

  “But you can’t do that!”

  “Till now,” said Foster, “you didn’t mind my risking loss of grants and position. Why do you turn so tender about it now? Now let me explain something to you. When you first came to me, I believed in organized and directed research; the situation as it existed, in other words. I considered you an intellectual anarchist Dr. Potterley, and dangerous. But for one reason or another, I’ve been an anarchist myself for months now and I have achieved great things.

  “Those things have been achieved not because I am a brilliant scientist. Not at all. It was just that scientific research had been directed from above and holes were left that could be filled in by anyone who looked in the right direction. And anyone might have if the government hadn’t actively tried to prevent it.

  “Now understand me. I still believe directed research can be useful. I’m not in favor of a retreat to total anarchy. But there must be a middle ground. Directed research can retain flexibility. A scientist must be allowed to follow his curiosity, at least in his spare time.”

  Potterley sat down. He said, ingratiatingly, “Let’s discuss this, Foster. I appreciate your idealism. You’re young. You want the moon. But you can’t destroy yourself through fancy notions of what research must consist of. I got you into this. I am responsible and I blame myself bitterly. I was acting emotionally. My interest in Carthage blinded me and I was a fool.”

  Foster broke in. “You mean you’ve changed completely in two days? Carthage is nothing? Government suppression of research is nothing?”

  “Even a fool like myself can learn, Foster. My wife taught me something. I understand the reason for government suppression of neutrinics now. I didn’t two days ago. And understanding, I approve. You saw the way my wife reacted to the news of a chronoscope in the basement. I had envisioned a chronoscope used for research purposes. All she could see was the personal pleasure of returning neurotically to a personal past, a dead past. The pure researcher, Foster, is in the minority. People like my wife would outweigh us.

  “For the government to encourage chronoscopy would have meant that everyone’s past would be visible. The government officers would be subjected to blackmail and improper pressure, since who on earth has a past that is absolutely dean. Organized government might become impossible.”

  Foster licked his lips. “Maybe. Maybe the government has some justification in its own eyes. Still, there’s an important principle involved here. Who knows what other scientific advances are being stymied because scientists are being stifled into walking a narrow path? If the chronoscope becomes the terror of a few politicians, it’s a price that must be paid. The public must realize that science must be free and there is no more dramatic way of doing it than to publish my discovery, one way or another, legally or illegally.” Potterley’s brow was in a perspiration, but his voice remained even. “Oh, not just a few politicians, Dr. Foster. Don’t think that. It would be my terror, too. My wife would spend her time living with our dead daughter. She would retreat further from reality. She would go mad living the same scenes over and over. And not just my terror. There would be others like her. Children searching for their dead parents or their own youth. We’ll have a whole world living in the past. Midsummer madness.”

  Foster said, “Moral judgments can’t stand in the way. There isn’t one advance at any time in history that mankind hasn’t had the ingenuity to pervert. Mankind must also have the ingenuity to prevent. As for the chronoscope, your delvers into the dead past will get tired soon enough. They’ll catch their loved parents in some of the things their loved parents did and they’ll lose their enthusiasm for it all. But all this is trivial. With me, it’s a matter of an important principle.” Potterley said, “Hang your principle. Can’t you understand men and women as well as principle? Don’t you understand that my wife will live through the fire that killed our baby? She won’t be able to help herself. I know her. She’ll follow through each step, trying to prevent it She’ll live it over and over again, hoping each time that it won’t happen. How many times do you want to kill Laurel?” A huskiness had crept into his voice.

  A thought crossed Foster’s mind. “What are you really afraid she’ll find out, Dr. Potterley? What happened the night of the fire?”

  The historian’s hands went up quickly to cover his face and they shook with his dry sobs. Foster turned away and stared uncomfortably out the window.

  Potterley said after a while, “It’s a long time since I’ve had to think of it. Caroline was away. I was baby-sitting. I went in to the baby’s bedroom mid-evening to see if she had kicked off the bedclothes. I had my cigarette with me. I smoked in those days. I must have stubbed it out before putting it in the ashtray on the chest of drawers. I was always careful. The baby was all right. I returned to the living room and fell asleep before the video. I awoke, choking, surrounded by fire. I don’t know how it started.”

  “But you think it may have been the cigarette, is that it?” said Foster. “A cigarette which, for once, you forgot to stub out?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to save her, but she was dead in my arms when I got out”

  “You never told your wife about the cigarette, I suppose.” Potterley shook his head. “But I’ve lived with it.”

  “Only now, with a chronoscope, he’ll find out. Maybe it wasn’t the cigarette. Maybe you did stub it out Isn’t that possible?”

  The scant tears had dried mi Potterley’s face. The redness had subsided. He said, “I can’t take the chance. But it’s not just myself, Foster. The past has its terrors for most people. Don’t loose those terrors on the human race.”

  Foster paced the floor. Somehow, this explained the reason for Potterley’s rabid, irrational desire to boost the Carthaginians, deify them, most of all disprove the story of their fiery sacrifices to Moloch. By freeing them of the guilt of infanticide by fire, he symbolically freed himself of the same guilt.

  So the same fire that
had driven Potterley on to causing the construction of a chronoscope was now driving him on to its destruction.

  Foster looked sadly at the older man. “I see your position, Dr. Potterley, but this goes above personal feelings. I’ve got to smash this throttling hold on the throat of science.”

  Potterley said, savagely, “You mean you want the fame and wealth that goes with such a discovery.”

  “I don’t know about the wealth, but that, too, I suppose. I’m no more than human.”

  “You won’t suppress your knowledge?”

  “Not under any circumstances.”

  “Well, then—” and the historian got to his feet and stood for a moment, glaring.

  Foster had an odd moment of terror. The man was older than he, smaller, feebler, and he didn’t look armed. Still—

  Foster said, “If you’re thinking of killing me or anything insane like that, I’ve got the information in a safety-deposit vault where the proper people will find it in case of my disappearance or death.”

  Potterley said, “Don’t be a fool,” and stalked out.

  Foster closed the door, locked it, and sat down to think. Re felt silly. He had no information in any safety-deposit vault, of course. Such a melodramatic action would not have occurred to him ordinarily. But now it had.

  Feeling even sillier, he spent an hour writing out the equations of the application of pseudo-gravitic optics to neutrinic recoding, and some diagrams for the engineering details of construction. He sealed it in an envelope and scrawled Ralph Nimmo’s name over the outside.

  He spent rather a restless night and the not morning, on the way to school, dropped the envelope off at the bank, with appropriate instructions to an official, who made him sign a paper permitting the box to be opened after his death.

  He called Nimmo to tell him of the existence of the envelope, refusing querulously to say anything about its contents.

  He had never felt so ridiculously self-conscious as at that moment.