Timemaster

by Robert L. Forward

  "It is a big job, isn't it?"

  "Only the first of a lot of big jobs," Randy said confidently.

  Rose sighed. Never had she known a person with so much ambition and drive. Fortunately, the warpgates now allowed her to catch up with him occasionally.

  Randy had really been a good father and husband during the ten weeks they toured the Epsilon Eridani system. He had played with the kids and paid attention to her. She now realized that she had made the right choice of husband. Randy really loved them all.

  Yet she also had to admit that it wouldn't be long before he left them to go off exploring again. He had to. It was in his blood. For the same reason a mountaineer had to climb the cliffs to the mountaintop, Randy had to fly through space to the next planet ... "Because it's there."

  She sighed again. He certainly wasn't a perfect husband and father, but he was more than good enough. She snuggled closer to him and purred into his chest. He took her head in his muscular arms and gave her a squeeze.

  Chapter 8

  Timemaster

  "There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Epsilon Eridani planetary system ..." Randy intoned as he turned on the colorful, rapidly rotating, three-dimensional display. The six major planets orbited the star, while smaller moons orbited the four outer gas giants. The display was contained within a crystal sphere that sat on a small pedestal in the center of the conference table in the meeting room on the space station.

  All the senior executives and scientists in every division of Reinhold Astroengineering Company had been warped through to take part in the three-day planning session. Because the space station was not large enough yet for rotation to be applied, everyone was floating in their seats or hanging from some convenient handhold. Some of them hadn't been in space much, and were not very comfortable in free-fall.

  "We have opened up the gate to this new frontier," continued Randy. "Our job in the next three days is to come up with a long-range plan for turning this system into a commercially viable enterprise. We need to design and set up the transportation system, identify and develop the resources, and open up the land to settlers so we have future customers." Randy looked over at the tall figure of Bull Richardson. Bull looked sick. He had strapped himself tightly in his conference chair, and the chair was anchored firmly to the deck, but that hadn't helped much. Bull's skin was greenish-white, and his normally ugly red rash spots were a sickly yellow.

  "Since having transportation between the planets is an essential first step, I was going to call on you first, Bull," Randy said. "But if you'd like, I'll be glad to postpone your presentation until later."

  Randy began to think that having the meeting on the space station had been a mistake. At the lunch break, he would shift the meeting to Spacemaster and have Konstantin operate the ship at one gee during the sessions.

  "I think you'd better," Bull said through clenched teeth.

  "I'll give his presentation for him!" piped up a loud, shrill voice from a handhold up near the ceiling. "I've certainly heard it enough during his practice sessions at home."

  Randy looked up at Mary Lewis. She was obviously enjoying the free-fall environment, except that her large owl glasses kept drifting up off her perky nose and she kept jamming them back on. She fluttered down to where Bull could hand her his videodisk, then took it to the presenter's podium, where she stuck it in the slot and activated the wall screen.

  "Since the major center of commerce in the system is going to be the planet Rose," said Mary, starting Bull's presentation, "the first cable catapult center will be established there ..."

  IT WAS lunch break, and the attendees of the planning session were enjoying vegetable soup and sandwiches in the one-gee environment of Spacemaster. Most of the executives were seated at the large oak dining-room table, but a few had taken their sandwiches with them and were wandering around Randy's mansion in the sky, admiring the furniture, investigating the garden, or enjoying the warmth of the fireplace.

  "These are great sandwiches," said Steve Wisneski, his caterpillar mustache munching along a tuna-fish-on-white. "Especially the bread."

  "It's homemade bread," said Randy. "We don't have Wonder Bread factories here, so we have to struggle along like the old pioneers. Fortunately, grain keeps well in storage, so every few days Didit grinds up some fresh flour and bakes a loaf or two. The yeast is special—a new genetic strain."

  "This vegetable soup is great, too!" said Andrew Pope, slurping up the last from his dish and reaching for the steaming pot in the center of the table. "I think I'll have another bowl."

  "That's homemade, too," said Randy. "Those vegetables were fresh-picked this morning from the hydroponics garden. With Rose and the kids gone, we have a surplus."

  "Space travel is sure rough," said Anthony Guiliano, looking up from his corn-beef-on-rye to admire the fine crystal and china in the Chippendale cupboard and the solid-oak folding wall.

  "No fresh meat, though," Randy reminded him.

  His cuff-comp buzzed the arrival of a personal message and he bent his left hand down under the edge of the table to take a peek at the viewscreen. It was from the deep-space laser communication center on the space station.

  Since all normal communications went instantaneously through the warpgate directly to Earth, the usual function of the deep-space comm center was merely to transmit a laser beacon signal. In return it collected information on the position and relative motion of the distant laser beacon signals coming in over deep space from Sol, the various star systems that had already been visited, and the various spacecraft on their way to new star systems. The laser beacons, however, could also be used to send messages.

  "It's a message from C.C. Wong," said Randy. "I'll project it up on the living room view-wall." Randy worked his way through the seldom-used menus on his cuff-comp, and soon it was broadcasting the video message to the view-wall receiver.

  "I've finally arrived at UV Ceti on my way to Tau Ceti," said the image of C.C. Wong. "I'm afraid there's not much here, since the two stars in the system are so small ..."

  "That's the same message I got ten months ago," said Randy, slightly annoyed. He turned off the view-wall and picked up his soup spoon. As he lifted the spoon, he paused, suddenly perplexed.

  "Say!" he said. "How come that message got here so soon? He's over five light-years away. That message should have taken five years to get here, not ten months."

  "It's obvious," Steve said patronizingly. "The warpgate system from UV Ceti to Sol to Epsilon Eridani almost forms a time machine. The UV Ceti-to-Sol warpgate has a time jump of about minus four years, while the Sol-to-Epsilon-Eridani warpgate has a time jump of about plus eight and a half years. That means the net time jump between UV Ceti and Epsilon Eridani is plus four and a half years, while the normal space-time delay between the two stars is a positive five-point-three years. The difference is only eight-tenths of a year, or ten months."

  "If you say so ..." said Randy, not quite understanding.

  "Yep," said Steve, speaking up so everyone could hear. "If UV Ceti had been only one light-year closer to Epsilon Eridani, that laser beacon message from C.C. announcing his arrival at UV Ceti would have gotten here before people on Earth knew he had arrived."

  "That can't be right," Andrew interjected. "How could he arrive before he arrived?"

  "Because the system would be an automatic time machine," said Steve. He leaned over, pointed his soup spoon at Randy, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Y'know, if you would just take Spacemaster here and fly it one light-year closer to UV Ceti, then you could read electronic versions of the Wall Street Journal a week before it's printed back on Earth. I've been monitoring a couple of stocks, and ..."

  "No!" said Randy firmly, now annoyed with Steve. "I said it long ago and I'll say it again. I am not about to fool around trying to make a time machine until we know a lot more about these warpgates. I'll use them to make space commerce easier, but I'm not going to allow them to be used to meddle with
time."

  "OK, OK," said Steve, leaning back and taking the last bite of his tuna sandwich. As he chewed away, frustrated in his plans, his mustache wriggled furiously under his nose.

  THE AFTERNOON session of the planning meeting on Spacemaster was coming to a close. Anthony Guiliano of the Cable Transportation Group had just finished outlining his plan for setting up a cable-fabrication facility on Thorn, the small, carbonaceous chondrite moon orbiting Rose. The day would now finish with a presentation by Duncan Scott, president of the Triple-L subsidiary. He would discuss the plans for the electromagnetic launchers that were to be set up on Thorn as well as on Periwinkle, the small, innermost dirt planet around "Epsidani"—the nickname that had evolved for Epsilon Eridani.

  A deliberately annoying buzz came from the cuff-comp under Randy's sleeve, and Randy peeked at the telltale. It was an urgent message from Alan Davidson back on Earth. He got up from the conference table and slipped into the kitchen.

  "FIRST LET me assure you that they are not hurt badly," started Alan's video image on the small screen.

  Randy's heart skipped a beat. Rose and the kids must have been in an accident.

  "As William, your chauffeur, was driving Rose and the children back from the airport, the limousine was hit by an antitank rocket," Alan reported.

  "My God!!!" gasped Randy.

  "The rocket penetrated the driver's compartment and William was killed instantly. Fortunately, last year I purchased you a new limousine with an armored passenger compartment. Rose and the children are only suffering from shock, bruises, and temporary deafness."

  "It was those murderous Animal Rescue terrorists, wasn't it!" shouted Randy furiously, his voice carrying into the living room. The lecturing voice of Duncan Scott stopped.

  "I'm going to kill Oscar Barkham!" Randy shouted even louder.

  "Oscar wasn't there," said Alan. "He has been in Washington, D.C., for the past few weeks. The governor of New Jersey appointed him to the U.S. Senate to finish out the term of Senator Black, who died last month. Oscar seems to be as shocked as you are, and has ordered the police to clear all the protestors off his estate as soon as they have captured the killers."

  "Have they found them yet?" asked Randy.

  "They got away through a hole in the fence leading to the main highway. It was obviously well planned, with a getaway car waiting for them. That's the trouble with these terrorist groups. They strike at innocent people and they're too smart, too small, too dedicated, and too mobile to find and capture easily. If only I had been given some warning that they were going to strike—I could have taken precautions."

  Randy's furious face turned grim as he thought.

  "I'm going to give you that warning," he vowed menacingly. He turned off the cuff-comp and walked out of the kitchen into the now-silent living area of Spacemaster.

  "Steve?" said Randy softly as he entered the room, his face full of rage and determination.

  "Yes, Mr. Hunter?" replied Steve, for once awed by his diminutive boss.

  "Tell me about time machines." Randy sat down once again in his special chair at the head of the table. "Specifically, I want to be able to foretell what someone is going to do in the future, before it happens, so I can do something about it."

  "Well ..." started Steve, his mustache twisting furiously as he tried to think of the best way to explain the problem. "The time machines we can make using warpgates don't quite work that way ..." Randy glared at him. "However ..."

  "SO, TO sum up," said Steve much later, "you can't change the past. But the word 'past' now has a multiple meaning. It not only means the past you have just lived, but any past you can observe through a time machine that looks into the future. If you get a newspaper from next week and read that you were killed by a terrorist or bought the wrong stock, then next week you will be killed by a terrorist or buy the wrong stock."

  "But suppose I call the police ... or tell my broker not to buy the stock?" persisted Andrew Pope. His logical engineering training had been rejecting all that Steve had been trying to tell them.

  "Next week the newspaper will say you were killed by a terrorist or you bought the wrong stock," Steve repeated. "Something will happen to make sure that the future past is not changed. The terrorist will slip by the police, the stockbroker will get your order wrong, or it could be the newspaper got the wrong information, and what is printed is not true."

  "But those are such low-probability events," complained Andrew.

  "Once time machines exist, no event is low probability if it is needed to make the past consistent," said Steve. "The simplest example I know of is called the Moravec Paradox Box. It consists of a simple inverting amplifier and a timegate between the future and the past. In an inverting amplifier, if you feed a logical 'zero' into the input, after a short time delay it produces a logical 'one' at the output, and vice versa. In the Paradox Box, the output of the amplifier is fed into the future end of the timegate, while the past end of the timegate is fed into the input of the amplifier.

  "Now suppose we assume there is a 'zero' applied to the input of the amplifier. A 'one' will appear at the output. The 'one' goes into the timegate at the future end. The 'one' comes out the timegate in the past sometime earlier. The 'one' then goes into the input and creates the paradox, since we assumed there was a 'zero' at the input."

  "Which proves that time machines cannot exist," said Andrew.

  "I'm not done yet, Andy," said Steve, waggling his finger at his supervisor. "If the positive time delay through the amplifier is larger than the negative time jump of the timegate, then what we have is an oscillator. A 'zero' goes into the input, turns into a 'one' two microseconds later, jumps back through the timegate by one microsecond, and the 'one' replaces the 'zero' one microsecond after the 'zero' was applied. We have an oscillator. As the magnitude of the timegate negative time jump approaches the amplifier positive time delay, the frequency of the oscillation increases to infinity. The average output is then neither 'zero' nor 'one' but the normally impossible 'one-half.' If you want to look at it from a quantum-mechanical point of view, the output of the amplifier is a mixed state of the 'zero' state and the 'one' state."

  "I think I'm beginning to see ..." said Randy, a puzzled frown still on his face.

  "Let me try to explain it another way," Steve suggested. "In quantum mechanics, electrons in an atom can only occupy certain orbits around the nucleus. Those allowed orbits are those where the wave function of the electron just fits into the orbit an integral number of times so the beginning of the wave function matches the end of the wave function. If it were otherwise, a point on the orbit would correspond to two different values of the wave function. Since this situation is not self-consistent, that orbit is not allowed.

  "In general, if a wave function has a certain value in one region of spacetime, then the value of the wave function at some other region is determined by the path between those two points. Once a timegate exists, there are two paths, one through the timegate and one through normal space. If the paths have different lengths, then there could be two values of the wave function in the second region. However, the only wave functions that are allowed to exist are those that produce the same value in the second region, even though, a priori , that wave function would have a very low probability of existing." He paused. "When timegates exist, things become likely that would otherwise be nearly impossible."

  "I still think it's crazy!" said Andrew, shaking his head.

  "You're beginning to talk like Steve used to," chided Randy, who had been listening eagerly. He leaned back in his chair and started to fiddle with the row of diamond studs climbing his right ear. "Tell me, Steve," he said, "if I can't change the past, then how can I use a time machine to at least avoid unpleasant futures, like my family getting killed by terrorists?"

  "Think of it as a telescope," said Steve. "Before telescopes, Viking raiders could sneak up and attack a town when it was unprepared. After telescopes were invented, they allowed the
townspeople to see the Vikings coming at a great distance, and that gave them time to organize the defense of the town."

  "So it isn't a cure-all," Randy mused. "You've got to be constantly keeping an eye out for potential problems, and set things in motion to counteract those potential problems. But once you have observed something happen, you can't 'unhappen' it."

  "But you can take advantage of something you know will happen in the future," said Steve. "In my plans to beat the market, I was going to look up the prices of the various shares in the financial pages I obtained from the future and compare them with the present prices on Wall Street. I would tell my broker to buy a few shares of the stocks that were presently low in price, and sell them again when they were high."

  "You could make a killing that way," said Andrew.

  "Not really," said Steve. "If I bought too many shares, I would just raise the price of the stocks to where I didn't make any net profit."

  "I'm sure the Securities Exchange investigators would also find a way to apply insider trading laws to the transactions," Randy scolded. "But that's interesting ... If everybody had a time machine and had access to future issues of the Wall Street Journal, then everybody would be trying to do the same thing, buy low and sell high."

  "And the market would stabilize itself," said Steve. "No wild swings in prices."

  "The stock market would finally become what it is supposed to be, a convenient and efficient method for people with excess money to supply working capital to businesses," said Randy. "All the present problems with the market are due to people with get-rich-quick personalities trying to use it as a substitute for gambling." He leaned back in his chair and thought for a while. "If that's what time machines will bring to the world—stability and order and sensibleness—then perhaps they aren't such a bad thing after all ..."

  "I can't be sure of that," Steve warned. "We still don't understand the theory well enough in detail to be sure there won't be some catastrophic problem."