The Depths of Time

by Roger MacBride Allen

  “No, sir. Not at all. We’re—we’re lost in the future.”

  One hundred twenty-seven years! Koffield suddenly realized that his hands were trembling. Would Marquez think that the shock of his news had caused it, or would he simply put it down to postcryo reaction? Koffield himself wasn’t sure which it was.

  One hundred twenty-seven years. Gone. His entire world utterly and irrevocably gone. Again. Stranded in the future for the second time. How was a man supposed to react to news like that?

  There was no way, of course. And that was the way Koffield chose. No reaction at all. That was the best. “All right,” he said calmly. “Clearly we have some thinking to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marquez said, vague disappointment in his voice.

  Koffield looked at the man in mild surprise. Had Marquez somehow imagined that all one needed to do was wake Anton Koffield so that he could solve all problems with a wave of his omnipotent hand? There was much to be said for having a reputation, but there were limits. Still and all, Marquez’s reaction was to be preferred to some of the others Koffield had inspired.

  One hundred twenty-seven years—maybe, just maybe, he had outlived his reputation. There were lots of old sayings to the effect that there was a bright side to everything. Perhaps they were true after all.

  “Very well,” Koffield said. Suddenly the note of calm confidence in his voice was not quite as false as it had been a moment before. “Let’s get me cleaned up, then get a look at the future.”

  It was a few minutes before Koffield felt strong enough to walk unassisted. When he did, Marquez walked him down the corridor and showed him to his cabin. “Refresh yourself, Admiral,” he told Koffield as he opened the cabin hatch and gestured for his guest to step in. “Take as much time as you need. I will be in the command center whenever you are ready.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Koffield said. “I won’t be long.” He stepped into the cabin and shut the hatch behind him with a distinct sense of relief. He needed a shower and a meal, of course—but he also, desperately, needed to collect his thoughts.

  Koffield stripped out of the thin gown he had worn in the cryo chamber, opened the cabin’s refresher unit, stepped in, and powered up the pressure shower. The jets of hot water seemed nearly strong enough to push him back against the opposite wall of the compartment. It felt good. My first shower in over a century, Koffield thought. I bet I really need it. The weak little joke was no doubt as old as timeshaft transport, if not older, but it cheered him up a trifle all the same.

  Anton Koffield was not a particularly impressive physical specimen at the best of times, and times had not been good for him, even before entering cold sleep. He had entered the cryocan in a state of near exhaustion from overwork. The effort needed to complete his research in time for departure, the desperate urgency of his mission, and plain, old-fashioned fear of what he had found had combined to leave him completely drained. After the further stress of cryosleep, he was verging on the cadaverous. His cheeks were hollowed, his skin drawn tight.

  The outer layers of dead skin disintegrated in cryosleep, turning into a grimy and unpleasant powder that covered the entire body and itched like the devil. He leaned into the jets of water and scrubbed as hard as his still-rubbery arms would let him.

  Clearly the first step was to establish, to his own satisfaction, exactly what their situation was. Accepting reality was one thing, but there were also such things as confirming important data and gathering supporting data. Anton Koffield had faith enough in Marquez to believe him, but not so much faith that he did not want to verify it all. Trusting unconfirmed information was a shortcut to getting killed.

  And, no doubt, Captain Marquez, being no fool himself, was more than eager to have Koffield check his work. The good captain would be delighted if Koffield found an error, but Koffield had no realistic hope of that and doubted that Marquez did either.

  Hurry could kill them too. Fresh out of cryosleep—if fresh was the word—no one was ever in any condition to do precise work. He stepped from the shower, dried himself, and pulled underclothes and a pair of coveralls out of the cabin’s storage locker. He pulled on the clothes and extracted a quickmeal module from the cabin’s galley unit.

  He folded the refresher unit back into one bulkhead of the tiny cabin and pulled table and chair down from the opposite bulkhead. He activated the meal module and waited for the unit to heat the food. His shifted uncomfortably on the chair. His coveralls were tight under the shoulders, and the fabric seemed awfully scratchy. His skin was always oversensitized after cryosleep. A faint odor clung to the cloth of the coveralls, a musty, damp smell that put him in mind of mold and the cellar under his grandfather’s house outside Berlin. Did that house still stand, a hundred twenty-seven years since he had last seen it? No, it was over two hundred years now. He had been time-stranded again, cut adrift from even the weak and tenuous roots he had set down eight decades before, after the Upholder disaster.

  The meal module chimed, signaling that his food was heated. He opened the module and looked at the meal inside. There was nothing readily identifiable. A bowl of thick brownish-grey liquid that might be soup or stew, some beige-looking stuff that might be mashed-potato substitute, and some sort of green puree.

  No doubt it was all edible, and nourishing, and precisely what the diet specialists knew he would need after cryosleep, but none of that made it appetizing. Of course, the dieticians made the postcryo meals bland and soft on purpose, to avoid overworking jaw muscles that hadn’t moved for decades, or overstimulating the senses of taste and smell after they had gone unused for just as long. Still, considering he was about to have his first food in over a century, it was something of a perverse accomplishment to sit down to a meal and not wish to eat it.

  He allowed himself a small smile. Well, what could he expect? The food had been in cold storage as long as the coveralls, as long as he himself. He took the fork out of its compartment on the side of the module and began shoveling the nutritious glop into his mouth, eating mechanically, experiencing no more pleasure than would a machine taking on fuel, paying no attention to what he ate.

  They were in trouble, very serious trouble. The situation was far more complicated and dangerous than Marquez could even suspect. There were wheels within wheels, hidden opportunities, and pitfalls. He continued to feed himself as he tried to work it all through, his mind as far removed from his body as it had been on first awaking from cryo.

  Still thinking over the situation, he finished up his joyless repast as quickly as possible. He stood, folded up the table and chair, and put the meal module into the cleanup bin. He needed to go forward, see what Captain Marquez had found out.

  Except that Marquez did not, could not, know the half of it. Koffield had already reached out for the handle to the cabin door when he forced himself to stop, to consider.

  Anxious as he was to go forward to the control center and get a look at the data firsthand, it was starting to dawn on him that so doing might be a mistake. He made himself sit back down and consider. Think it through. Consider it as a chess game, and try to think at least a few moves ahead.

  One hundred twenty-seven years was a long time in human terms. Things got lost, or forgotten, or thrown away. Even if his preliminary warning, sent on the Chron-Six, had gotten through and gotten .to the proper people, could they have acted on it? Would they have?

  In a cold, rational analysis, there was no argument that could be raised against his data. But who would abandon a planet based on nine pages of obscure formulae? Koffield had known the data itself would not be enough the day he had sent off his preliminary findings on board the Chron-Six. That was why he had booked passage on the Dom Pedro IV in the first place, so that he could speak for the data, work to see that it was read and understood.

  Unless she had been lost in transit as well, the Chron-Six had arrived at Solace 127 years ago, and she had delivered his data. What had happened then? Had his preliminary report changed the hi
story of this and other worlds—or had it been lost and forgotten? Was it enshrined in a place of honor in the archives, or had it never been set down in the public record?

  What sort of planet was waiting for them, out ahead of the DP-IV? Marquez had told him nothing about the state of the planet itself, but had merely reported the bald fact that it was there.

  He, Koffield, at this exact moment, had no knowledge whatsoever concerning the state of the planet. That might well prove to be an important point.

  There seemed to be three broad possibilities.

  One—he had been right, and they had listened, tested his data, seen it to be true, and abandoned the planet. If so, the DP-IV was now entering an all-but-lifeless star system, littered with abandoned equipment and populated only by the descendants of the inevitable lunatics who refused to leave their space habitats, and whatever motley crew of vermin and microbes had found some way of surviving on the planet’s surface. It was unlikely, but possible.

  Two—they had lost, ignored, disbelieved, disproved, or suppressed his data, and events had proved his theory wrong. In which case the DP-IV was about to arrive on the garden planet that DeSilvo and all his experts had predicted. The advanced terraforming procedures had been triumphant, and Solace was a paradise, and he, Koffield, was either totally forgotten or else remembered as a figure of fun.

  Or, three—he had been right, and they had ignored his work at the time, and long since forgotten it, and there was a planet full of people dying out there. Given human nature, the third option seemed by far the most likely.

  In that case—in that case he might well need some proof that he had made his predictions 127 years in the past, and that he had made them before he had any way of knowing what sort of shape Solace was in.

  He stood up and found the intercom set in the usual place, mounted on the bulkhead just inside the hatch. After a moment or two, he figured out how to hail the command center and did so. The captain answered almost at once. “Marquez here. What is it, Admiral Koffield?”

  Just for a moment, Koffield found himself wondering how Marquez had known who was calling. Then he smiled to himself. Who else could it have been? He wasn’t going to get far thinking ahead in this chess game if he couldn’t think any more clearly than that. “Captain, I’m sorry to call you back here this way, but I have thought of something that needs doing, and it needs to be recorded and witnessed. I can’t tell you more than that just now. Could I ask you to come back to my quarters, and to bring a longwatch camera and a secured container—one large enough to hold a cryosleep personal pack.

  “Admiral, there are a number of ship’s systems I haven’t done checks on since arrival. I really do have a lot of work to—”

  “This is important, Captain.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I can’t tell you until after it’s done.”

  “Then why should I—”

  “I apologize for not explaining everything now,” Koffield said, smoothly cutting in, “but there was a rule of thumb in my old investigative outfit that the most objective witness was the one who knew the least and saw the most—and I need you to be objective.”

  The line was silent for a moment, and then Marquez spoke, making no effort to keep the puzzlement and annoyance out of his voice. “I am not in the mood for games, Admiral, and I don’t have time for them. Your rank doesn’t entitle you to give me orders on my own ship.”

  “I know, Captain. But my guess is you know enough about me.to know I likewise have little time for games. But if you can take ten minutes of your time to witness something, there is at least a chance that you will be helping to save lives, a great many lives, on Solace.”

  “I can’t quite see how that could be possible,” Marquez replied, the disbelief plain in his voice.

  “But it is, Captain, I assure you,” said Kof field. “It is. I’ll be happy to explain after the fact. Please.”

  There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence before Marquez answered, a silence that could have meant a great many things. “Well, if ignorance makes a man objective, I guess I will be, because I don’t know a damn thing. It’ll take a few minutes to collect the equipment from stores. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT Heisenberg’s Suitcase

  From the look on Marquez’s face when Koffield opened the cabin hatch, Koffield could see that he had come down more than a peg or two in Marquez’s estimation. Never mind. There were other things more important than the captain’s good opinion. “Thank you for coming, Captain,” said Koffield. “If you could bring the longwatch camera and the secured container in here, we can begin.”

  “Whatever you say, Admiral,” Marquez replied as- he carried the equipment in. It was plain from his tone of voice that he was humoring Koffield.

  “I know all this seems foolish, Captain. I’ll bet you’re wondering if I’m all the way back from cryosleep yet.”

  Marquez shrugged as he set the container down on the deck. “Some people are a little out of it for the first day or so after. Revival jag, they call it. Makes them act a little strange.”

  “I assure you, I’m not one of them. There’s a reason for all this, and I’ll explain it in just a few minutes. But for now—please activate the longwatch camera and place it where it will be able to see both of us.”

  “All right,” Marquez said, still plainly far from convinced. He pulled the table open, started the camera, and set it down.

  The camera was a standard unit, a rounded oblong black block, about ten by four by four centimeters. It had a lens stuck in one end, and a folding tripod and two or three kinds of built-in clamps attached to the base.

  Longwatch cameras had on switches, but no off. Once they started sight-and-sound recording, they could not be stopped by any means, short of destroying the camera itself. They simply kept recording for a standard year, no matter what, and then shut themselves off. Though the camera itself could not be stopped once started, it was possible to access the stored sound and imagery from the holographic molecular memory whether or not the camera was still recording. The camera recorded infrared as well as visual light. Darkness was no shield against it. Marquez glanced at his wrist data watch. “Camera activated at approximately day 223, hour 4, minute 16, second mark— ten—in standard year 5339,” Marquez said, following the standard procedure for activating a longwatch. “Time coordinates approximate, due to equipment failure. Time as given derived from planetary positional fix. The camera is in Admiral Anton Koffield’s cabin aboard the Dom Pedro IV, Captain Felipe Henrique Marquez commanding. Captain Marquez speaking. The ship is at present approximately two-point-three billion kilometers from the planet Solace,, approaching the planet from planetary system north on a course exactly perpendicular to the planet’s orbital plane.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Koffield said. He faced the camera and let it get a good look at him. “I am Anton Koffield, inactive-duty rear admiral in the Chronologic Patrol.” He turned toward Marquez and thought for a moment. It was important that he phrase his questions in as neutral a fashion as possible. If this recording was used as evidence at some future date, it might well be vitally important to demonstrate that he had not led the witness. Strange to think in such terms. What sort of group, exactly, was going to see this record? he wondered. A scientific peer-review board? A commission of inquiry? A court-martial? A competency panel convened to determine if he, Koffield, were insane? All of them, perhaps. Assuming there was anyone left alive to staff any such groups in the first place. “Captain, you revived me from cryosleep, did you not?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “When?”

  Marquez shrugged, a bit petulantly, and glanced at his datawatch again. “Let’s see. I started the procedure about six hours ago. You came fully awake about ninety minutes ago, and were strong enough to leave the revival chamber about an hour ago.”

  “What did you do once I was strong enough?”

  “I led you to this cabin. Mostly you
were able to walk on your own, but I gave you some help.”

  “What did I do when I got here?”

  Marquez looked at Koffield with something close to suspicion. “You said you were going to shower, dress, and eat. That’s what most people do, and by the look and the—ah—smell of you, that’s what you did. But I closed the hatch on you as soon as I delivered you and went forward to the control center. I have no way of knowing what else you did.”

  “Perhaps you do,” Koffield said. “If this ship operates anything like a Chronologic Patrol ship, there is an automated event recorder that logs virtually every mechanical and electronic action on board, from main engine firing down to what hatches are open and shut, and air-mix and temperature readings in every compartment. The logs are quite useful in confirming maintenance, monitoring environmental systems, reconstructing accidents, and so on.”

  “Sure, the DP-IV has an event recorder. But the log file was wiped clean when I came out of stasis. Nothing on it about our trip here.”

  “But has it been operating normally since our arrival?”

  “So far as I know.”

  “Please consult the log now and report on hatch status and voice and data communications from this cabin for the last six hours.”

  “Whatever you say,” Marquez said, his tone of voice teetering on the edge of insolence. He operated the controls on his datawatch, linking it to the ship’s computers and pulling up the information he wanted. “According to this, the hatch has only been opened twice—for thirty seconds at 0309 hours, and for forty-two seconds at 0413. No data communications via the terminal, and the voice-comm system was used just once, at 0402.”

  “Interpret, please.”

  Marquez looked puzzled. “Well, I guess, in other words, I led you here, you shut the hatch on me, and it didn’t open again until I came back and you opened it for me. And except for calling me to come here a few minutes ago, you didn’t use the voice-comm system, and you didn’t use the data system at all.”