Laying the Music to Rest

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “But why are you so sure they are coming?” I asked. “It seems to me that if they have time travel, they could send a group to a point right after she called them. Then they would be here and I wouldn’t.”

  Patrick smiled. “It’s too bad it doesn’t work that way. We would already have our people in place and defending the ship. I suppose the Seeders, the inventors of that”—he pointed at the floating, clear ship behind me—“could have mastered such exacting time manipulation. But to both us and the Lomax, it’s a totally new science. There are many, many limitations and complications. For example, to travel in time, you must not only move through time, but through a distance in space. And every mass has a general effect on the time and space around it.”

  “You mean a bed or a chair can affect time?” Marjorie asked. I could tell she was having trouble keeping from laughing. Alex had the same look of amusement on his face.

  “In a slight way,” Patrick said. “Everything is interrelated with everything around it. But it is the force of intelligence that has the greatest effect on the flow of time. That’s one of the major limitations. That’s why I am sure that the Lomax will not be able to send more than eight at us from your mirror. At least in the first wave.”

  “You’ve completely lost me,” I said. “Are you trying to say that intellect has an effect on time? And on time travel?”

  Patrick nodded. “All thought processes, whether from a house cat or from a scientist, affect the space and time around the entity. That factor alone creates incredible limitations. We can only arrive in your time at certain points and at certain times. And once a point is used, it cannot be reused.

  “The Lomax have the same restrictions. If they had a team ready when she contacted them, and assuming the location of the mirror is as remote as you say it is, then your friends will be facing a very hard fight within the next few hours. Possibly longer if the Lomax were not ready or had already used their present window to the time. However, on this end we have to assume that they will arrive during the next cycle. We need to be prepared.”

  “What about help from your people?” I asked. “Haven’t you been here longer?”

  Patrick nodded. “I was here first. But it took a lot of our resources to get Lawrence and Shara through. I don’t think we can realistically expect help this next cycle. And probably not for a cycle or two after that.”

  “And you’re convinced they will attack the people on this ship?”

  “Without a doubt,” Patrick said.

  “But why?” Marjorie said. “It makes no sense.”

  Patrick sighed. “Let me put it this way. The descendants of the people on this ship, and in a few other places like it, are the enemies of the Lomax. The Lomax figure if they can come back through time and kill the people in those groups, their enemies would be gone. There are time paradoxes involved that would take too long to explain, but in essence, that’s how it would work.”

  “That’s basically what Susan said. I suppose you’d do it too if you could?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Patrick said, looking straight at me without hesitation. “But so far our emphasis has been on defending our own as we find them.”

  Damned if I knew why, but I believed him. I still didn’t trust him, but I believed him. My instincts told me the best thing to do would be to step back and stay neutral. But with Fred and Constance right in the middle, it looked like I had to choose one side or the other. And if Patrick’s side was against those who were going to attack the lodge, then Patrick’s side I would join.

  “If we assume what you say is true,” Alex said, “then I assume we need to prepare for a fight. Do you want to draft other prisoners? Or what do you have in mind?”

  “I hate the thought of doing that,” Patrick said. “For obvious reasons. But I don’t see much choice. Unlike Susan, the next wave of Lomax is going to come through your mirror armed and ready to fight. And they’re going to cycle right with us.”

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t stop them before they come through.” I looked back at the blue-tinted ship.

  “That would be ideal,” Patrick said, “but I’m afraid impossible.”

  I studied the model of the Titanic floating in the blackness behind me. There was something about those tiny green globes and the transparent model ship that was bothering me. Why would anyone build a time machine like that? It was so perfectly accurate, it was as if I were actually looking at the real Titanic from a distance. I felt the annoying feeling that I was missing something. That the answer was obvious and right in front of me if only I was smart enough to see it.

  “Patrick,” I said, “help me with something for a moment.”

  Marjorie lightly touched my arm as Patrick moved over and stood beside her looking into the blackness at the ship. Alex stood and joined us.

  “You said Lawrence didn’t find any other machinery except this model. Right?”

  “We didn’t tear out any walls, but he was completely convinced there wasn’t any.”

  “Did he ever try touching the ship?”

  “There’s a field barrier just inside the panel. Reach forward and you can feel it.”

  I hesitantly reached toward the suspended ship until I felt a solid, invisible surface about six inches inside the panel. I ran my hand along it for a few inches and then pulled back. It felt like hard plastic, very smooth and slightly warm. Completely invisible.

  “Did Lawrence have a theory why points marking the people are green and the one marking the location of the model is white?”

  “None that he mentioned,” Patrick said.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why make a model of the ship? Hidden like this, it certainly wasn’t for show.”

  “Maybe it’s an actual picture,” Marjorie said. “Like some sort of movie.”

  Suddenly the nagging feeling that I was missing something was gone. Marjorie was right. It was more than a three-dimensional picture. Somehow, it actually was the Titanic floating there in front of us.

  “Patrick,” I said, “did Lawrence mention that he thought this was a projection of the actual ship?”

  “I think that was one of the angles he was working at. Why?”

  “Let’s assume that’s exactly what it is. Why would someone build such a thing? To what purpose? From what’s going on and what you tell me, it seems obvious that whoever set this all up were masters of the use of time. Why have something like this and no time-travel machinery? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I agree,” Patrick said. “It doesn’t.”

  “It doesn’t,” I said, “unless you look at that white light as the hookup through time to a main power source.”

  “What difference would that make?” Alex asked.

  “A great deal,” I said. “If that is the connection to the main source, what would be the only thing that might come in handy on this side?”

  “A control panel,” Patrick said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I would wager that those green globes represent some sort of time field around each of us. The same field that gives us such a shock when we touch a regular passenger or that makes the clothes and glasses we touch invisible. And that they are all green because everything is working fine.”

  “You mean,” Marjorie said, “that each of those globes is a switch?”

  “Possible,” Patrick said. “It would be logical that the builders would set up a way to send undesirables back. They wouldn’t want the actual devices on board for fear of discovery, but a control panel makes sense. It would be safer.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “But what good would that be if you can’t reach it?” Marjorie asked.

  “Did Lawrence say anything about the field barrier being a protective screen?”

  “Just the opposite,” Patrick said. “He thought the barrier was part of whatever held the model ship in place.”

  “So there should be something that is used to reach through the barrier. Obviously Lawre
nce didn’t find anything like that.”

  “True,” Patrick said. “But I don’t think he was looking along those lines.”

  “Looking for what?” Marjorie asked.

  I shrugged. “Damned if I know what it would be. But it’s probably something so obvious we don’t see it. Something used to activate that control panel.”

  “Excuse me,” Alex said as both Patrick and I turned and started scanning the small room. “But I don’t understand what you mean by control panel. I cannot see how it would be possible that this model ship could control anything.”

  I looked at Alex and suddenly had a very clear realization of how far the human race had advanced in the last eighty years. How could I explain a control panel to a man who had never seen an airplane, let alone a computer? Obviously he had heard stories about such things, but he had never had the chance to sit in an automobile or gaze in at the cockpit of an airplane.

  “Have you been into this ship’s wheelhouse?” Patrick asked.

  “A few years back,” Alex said.

  “That’s the room from which they steer the ship,” Patrick said. “Correct?”

  Alex nodded.

  “But the entire ship isn’t in that room,” Marjorie said. “The wheels and the instruments in there are only the controls. That’s what Doc is saying this model ship is. A control.”

  “But I don’t understand how it could be,” Alex said.

  “I’m not so sure either,” Patrick said. “But remember one thing about advancing technologies. The more complex the device, the simpler it looks.”

  Alex stared at the beautiful ship floating in the blackness. “So what are we looking for?”

  “Something to press a few buttons with,” I said.

  “You know,” Marjorie said. “If what you said is right, then wouldn’t the builders put whatever they needed close by and in plain sight?”

  “You might think so,” Patrick said. “But where?”

  “My father used to stick the house key inside the molding right by the doorbell,” Marjorie said. “My mother always hated that.” Marjorie stuck her head slightly inside the panel and then looked to her right. “How about this?”

  With an audible click, she pulled a thin glass rod from inside the partition and held it up in the light of the room. It was four feet long, not more than a quarter inch in diameter, and tapered to a dull point on one end. It reminded me of the rods my mother used to have hanging from her drapes. “Always use the pull rods,” she used to say. “Because your hands are dirty and it costs money to clean drapes.”

  Marjorie handed the rod to Patrick and then looked back inside the panel where she found it. “There are two more of them here,” she said. “They all look the same.”

  “Leave them,” Patrick said. “I can’t believe Lawrence didn’t find this.”

  “Too obvious,” I said. “And like you said, he wasn’t looking.”

  “So what’s it for?” Alex asked.

  “Maybe to press buttons,” Patrick said. He turned and slowly stuck the rod at the model ship. The point of the stick reached the barrier and he hesitated for a moment. “Feels like I’m poking something very soft,” he said. “I’m sure I can get it through.”

  “Don’t until we figure out what we want to do,” I said. “You might start something that can’t be stopped and we want to at least have a plan ready.”

  He nodded and pulled the rod back. He leaned it in the corner of the room and then turned around. He was smiling. “It just might work.”

  I nodded. “If I touch it to my green ball in there.”

  “And you want to go?”

  “I need to warn my friends. If that stick works, we might be able to stop your Lomax friends on the other side before they reach here. If nothing else, we can take the mirror and run like hell.”

  “I’m going with you,” Marjorie said.

  “I doubt if it will work that way,” Patrick said. “Lawrence figured that each of us here is tied to the original devices that sent us. I’m afraid if we do get that to reverse somehow, then you would return to where you started.”

  “You mean the same time and everything?”

  “I doubt that,” Patrick said. “The cycles here are set up to parallel real time. You’d go back to whatever device sent you.”

  “My grandmother’s hand mirror,” Marjorie said. “I wonder where it’s at now.”

  Patrick checked his watch. “We’ve got about three and a half hours left until the next cycle. We’ve got to be setting up some sort of defense.”

  “I agree,” I said. “And I think I need to get back to my friends and set up something there. How far away can instruments track the mirror?”

  Patrick shrugged. “If it’s one of the early ones, maybe a few miles away. The newer ones you almost have to be holding. That’s why we can’t find them.”

  “If I’m in time, maybe we can get that mirror hidden.”

  “That would stop them as effectively as anything,” Patrick said. “Give my people a chance to get here.”

  I picked up the thin glass rod. It felt unnaturally light in my hands. And like the barrier, it felt slightly warm.

  “I’ll be going along,” Alex said. “If I understood you right, I can because I came through the same mirror.”

  “I’d rather have the help on this side,” Patrick said.

  “I’m sure Marjorie will be able to talk to whoever you might need. As you said, it would be advantageous to stop them before they get here.”

  “I agree,” I said. “With Alex, there would be five of us on the other side. Almost a fair fight if your estimates are right and if it comes down to that. We should at least be able to slow them down.”

  Patrick shook his head, but didn’t say anything more as I turned toward the model ship floating in the blackness. It was so incredibly beautiful, I wanted to stop and stare. But the large knot building in my stomach told me I’d better keep on if I was going to do anything at all. I’d been stupid enough to get here in the first place, at least I could be smart enough to try to get back.

  I punched the pointed end of the rod slowly at the ship. It hit the barrier and I felt as if I were pushing it into a soft pillow. It took a little more pressure, but not much. Slowly, the forward resistance disappeared, but it still felt as if I had the rod stuck in a thick vat of pudding.

  “I’m through the barrier,” I said.

  I eased the rod toward the ship. The closer it got, the longer and thinner the rod looked, as if I were holding on to a very long pole that got smaller off into the distance. I pulled it back a few inches and the rod shortened by fifty feet.

  “Amazing,” Patrick said. “It must be an actual dimensional projection of the entire ship.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “We are actually seeing the ship,” Patrick said. “Or at least everything that is involved with the time field around us.”

  “So when I go poking at that, I’m going to also be poking at us?”

  “In a sense, that’s right.”

  “Does that change anything?”

  Patrick shook his head. “It shouldn’t. I think you’re right in that it’s an advanced control panel. You won’t actually be touching any physical matter. Only the time fields around them.”

  “So if I touch the green globe that represents me, it might send me back?”

  “Makes as much sense as anything else.”

  “What happens if it takes him out of the cycle?” Alex asked. “Turns him into a passenger?”

  “I don’t know,” Patrick said. “It might, but I doubt that the builders of this would want to introduce people who don’t belong on the Titanic into the flow of history. There would be far too many complications and possible repercussions.”

  “I don’t like it,” Marjorie said. “We don’t know what might happen and it seems foolish to take such a chance.”

  I glanced at Marjorie. I could see and feel her concern. But to me it seemed worth the chanc
e, just as making the dive and going through the mirror in the first place had been worth it. If Fred and Constance were truly in danger and this was the best chance of helping them, then I was going to take it.

  I lightly touched her arm. I wanted to give her a big hug, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned back to face the model ship. “I think everyone should move over to the other side of the room in case my hand isn’t too steady. I’ve got an awful small button to try to push.”

  “Damn it,” Marjorie said. “I wish you wouldn’t.” She hesitated for a moment, then moved across the room to the far wall.

  “Remember white hair,” Patrick said as he followed Marjorie over to the other side of the room. “All the Lomax have white hair. They wear it proudly and never cover or dye it. They are uniformly strong and quick. Be very very careful.”

  I nodded. Alex moved over and stood beside me.

  “You might want to get out of the way in case this blows up or something.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m going back, also. After eighty years here, I really am not bothered by the risk.”

  “Good luck, folks,” I said. I gave Marjorie a half-smile. I was going to miss her.

  I eased the rod toward the ship. By the time I had two feet of the rod’s four-foot length inside the barrier, it looked as if I were controlling a hundred-foot-long pole. Only I could still very clearly see the end of the rod, almost as if it were magnified.

  I expected to feel resistance when I touched the side of the ship, but there was none.

  Slowly, making very sure not to get the rod anywhere near the two other green balls beside mine and Alex’s, I eased the rod through the side of C deck and toward the white light. I could clearly see the distinction between all of the globes. With two hands holding the stick as steady as I could, I eased the stick toward the glowing green globe that represented me.

  As I touched it, I almost half expected to feel a real touch on my shoulder. Or maybe a shock. But there was no actual feeling. My green globe turned a bright, glowing red, like a warning light. I pulled the rod straight back out of the barrier, leaned it against the wall and waited, holding my breath. Any second I expected to have the blackness sweep over me and then find myself back in the lodge.