The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  "But what was really going on, of course, was that a world was being shaped in which Nazi Germany was being built up specifically to destroy the Soviet Union," Anna said. "The situation that brought about the decline of the traditional oligarchies in this world—the one we're in right now— wouldn't be permitted to develop. Instead, a war would be fomented in which the Nazis and the Soviets would destroy each other, and a post-Hitler era would then evolve in which power and privilege would revert to those who considered it to be theirs by right."

  Ferracini raised his hand to halt her. "That's the part that I'm not clear about," he said. "Cassidy was talking about it when we were training back in England at that Navy school. Where was it?"

  "Portsmouth," Lamson supplied.

  "That's it. Anyhow, the way Cass figured it had to be was that no matter what you do, you can't change your own present. And none of the rest of us could find a fault in it. So, isn't it right?"

  "It's right," Scholder agreed.

  "So, surely the top guys here—the inside group that you talked about—must have known it, too. I mean, hell, they designed the machine and everything. But it doesn't make sense. Why would Overlord bother at all if nothing's gonna change their situation here in this world?"

  "It's very simple." Scholder replied. They create another world in which Hitler gets rid of Russia and sets up a system that's more suited to their tastes. Then they pack their bags, move in, and take over."

  Ferracini blinked. "Of course," he murmured. It really was as simple as that.

  "That's what the Nazi regime is there for," Scholder said. "Its end product was the world you came from."

  Ferracini nodded. "So what went wrong? Overlord never showed up with their suitcases."

  "After Russia was destroyed, and with the U.S. lagging, the Nazi leaders decided not to play ball," Scholder said.

  "Why should they? Why be janitors in someone else's world when you can grab it for yourself? They destroyed the link."

  And Ferracini's world had been the result. "Okay, I get that much," Ferracini said. "So where did Claud come into it?"

  Anna answered. "Claud infiltrated Pipe Organ by taking the place of a European playboy aristocrat who'd disappeared and changed his identity to elope with an heiress. He was curious and impetuous enough to get himself transferred through the system to see firsthand what was going on at the other end."

  "But getting back wasn't so easy," Ferracini guessed.

  "Exactly. Claud only got out of Hammerhead by killing and impersonating an SS guard," Anna said. "But to cut a long story short, he escaped from Germany to England, and got from there to the States. He landed there—in our world—in 1938."

  Scholder interjected, "He was from an alternate version of this world, you understand. And the world he went back to wasn't the same as the one we've just come from. Events were different in both. That's why he appeared in 1938, but this world links to our 1940."

  Ferracini massaged his brow. He didn't want to go into all that right now. But it would explain how Claud had been in Europe at that time, and how come he'd danced to Glenn Miller. "And he stayed through until '75, by which time he'd put the Proteus mission together," he completed.

  "With some help from Kurt, who was trapped in Germany when the Nazis destroyed the link," Anna said.

  "Claud made contact with me in the course of one of his espionage missions to Europe in the earlier years," Scholder said. "In fact, it was he who got me out, in 1955."

  "And you knew he was from the twenty-first century?"

  "Oh, yes," Scholder said. "With a job like that on our hands we had no room for keeping secrets from each other."

  "So, why didn't you tell the rest of us?" Ferracini asked.

  Scholder shrugged. "Claud wanted it that way. Psychological, I suppose. People on a team like ours—yourself, for instance—they like to think that the person they're working for is one of their own kind, not some kind of alien. Also, Claud didn't want to be regarded as a twenty-first-century superman. People who think they're working for supermen can rely on them too much, instead of pulling their weight. Personally, I think he did the right thing."

  "I reckon so, too," Cassidy said. Lamson nodded.

  "Okay," Ferracini said. "I'll go along with that. So, how much had you figured out by the time Proteus was organized? Did Claud know that nothing we did was going to make any difference to our world?"

  "No, I'm fairly sure he didn't," Scholder said. "I know I didn't, and the physics was my side of it."

  "But you had your suspicions," Ferracini pressed.

  "Yes, and we took precautions accordingly. It wasn't until we talked to Einstein that we knew for sure. I wasn't lying when I said I was a relatively junior scientist on the project here. You'll see for yourself if you meet the younger version of me who's wandering around somewhere. There were a number of big gaps in our knowledge. The time dilation effect, for example, came as a complete surprise."

  Ferracini shifted his weight to make his arm and shoulder more comfortable, wincing as he pulled it too sharply. "So we couldn't do anything for JFK and his people after all," he mused. "It seems a shame after everything they did."

  "Nothing that we did could have changed things," Scholder agreed. There was a curious note to his voice. Ferracini caught it and looked at him questioningly. Scholder went on, "However, we know that just before we left, they were in touch with somebody."

  Ferracini blinked. "Say, that's right. Who's to say what might have happened there?"

  "Very probably, we'll never know," Scholder said. "But maybe we can still create something better out of another world, which would have had no chance. And perhaps, in the process, we might enjoy a better future ourselves. And what's wrong with that?" He shrugged. "All we have to do now is get back to it without losing too much more time. It's the end of 1940 there already."

  Ferracini stared out at the darkened hills beyond the compound and recalled how much he had once despised that world. Now he thought of it as his, and he missed it already. Like Claud and Scholder, he had lost the world that should have been his, and he had helped forge a new world. His place was there, and its future would be his future. He wondered what had happened there in the nine months that had gone by since the day at Weissenberg. Had anything that the mission had done led to any useful result at all? Or was that world, like his, destined to be overwhelmed anyway?

  CHAPTER 49

  AFTER EVERYTHING THE TEAM had been through, Winslade wasn't anxious to tell the rest of them that, despite the success of Ampersand, the link back to Hitler's Germany could be reestablished at any time. Indeed, he was loath to accept it himself.

  Just a day and a half after the assault at Weissenberg, the instruments at Pipe Organ were indicating that Hammerhead was up and running again, and signaling to be reconnected.

  "It was so obvious, and yet both of us missed it," young Winslade said as they stood among shiny equipment consoles and banks of indicator screens in the control room, watching the skeleton crew of operators who were monitoring events. "The Nazis had a spare set of parts somewhere to rebuild the machine. In fact, when you think about it, it's surprising they've taken even this long." After a day and a half in 2025, it would be January 1941, in the world at the other end.

  Winslade nodded, unable for once to conceal his feelings of bitterness and self-reproach. "There's no excuse. With something so vital, of course they would have insured themselves against any kind of an accident. Damn!"

  "And that's not all," young Winslade said. He hesitated. "Let's talk about it somewhere else." He led the way to the main doors and out to the elevators. A car arrived, and he selected ground, several levels up. "I've just been talking to General Forbes and Derrieaux, the vice chairman's aide," he resumed when the doors had closed. "It's by no means certain that we'll be able to keep this place shut down for very much longer."

  Winslade stared at him, horrified. "You can't be serious!"

  "I'm afraid I am—very serious
. There's a real, and growing, possibility that the operation here could be started up again—conceivably quite soon."

  "But how?" Winslade shook his head, unable for the moment to accept what he was hearing.

  "We underestimated them," young Winslade told him simply. "The power elites that still exist around the world have learned to keep a low profile, but they can still pull a lot of strings."

  They came out of the elevator and cleared the security area surrounding the access points down to the lower levels. From there, a wide corridor brought them to the lobby of the main surface building. "So what's happened?" Winslade asked as they came out into the night air and began walking slowly along a concrete path crossing the compound.

  "The real villains are coming out of the woodwork now." young Winslade replied. "You know the people I mean—quiet, but effective. Basically, they're setting a lot of international wheels in motion to protest what they claim is criminal interference in a state's internal affairs, illegal use of CIAF, bypassing of the international judiciary—you name it. And of course, they've got cronies in every office, lawyers slapping injunctions right and left already—the works. It could be a big problem."

  Winslade had recovered from his initial shock sufficiently to begin thinking more clearly again. "So what would that mean? They could delay everything indefinitely if they chose while they, what?—maneuvered the CN into allowing operations here to be resumed pending the outcome of an inquiry?" He nodded slowly to himself as the implication became clear. "Yes, of course. With a time dilation factor of two hundred, they'd only have to stall things for a short time here for their plans at the other end to mature. Then they transfer themselves through, sever the link, and are gone from this world long before the inquiry has established anything."

  "Precisely how I read it," young Winslade agreed. "In fact, a motion has already been put before the CN Emergency Cabinet calling for CIAF to be pulled out of here. That gives you an idea of how quickly the opposition is reacting."

  Winslade shook his head. "They can't get away with it," he protested. "It can't end like this. You know what's gone into this. There must be something we can do."

  "What would you do?" young Winslade asked.

  Winslade thought it over. "If they want an investigation, then let's give them one," he said at last. "But a genuine one, aimed at establishing the facts. We've got one thing they never bargained on—eight of us here who can testify from firsthand experience. What answer could Overlord come up with to that? We can prove what they're up to and expose their lies. If that much was made public, the CN would have to agree to an inquiry before they pulled CIAF out. That would be enough to keep Overlord's hands off the machine. That's what I'd do if I were you."

  Young Winslade smiled faintly at the choice of phrasing. "But remembering that you're you, is that really what you want?" he asked. "Do you really want to get dragged into the whole mess—international lawyers, committees, hearings, injunctions and counter-injunctions? Have you thought how long that could tie you up here? Even a few months would mean almost a lifetime in that other world. Everything you hoped to see there would be over, one way or another, long before you got back. All of the people you knew would be gone. And even if you agreed, would that be fair to the other people who came with you?"

  They stopped at the end of a line of CIAF transport aircraft, standing sleek and gray in the light from the floodlights. Winslade stared at the blackness of the forest beyond the perimeter fence and drew a long breath. "Yes, I know, I know. . . ." He sighed heavily. "But good God, we can't just stand aside and let it happen. You, in this world, you can't imagine what's at the end of that road—the destruction of everything that stands for decency and civilization. Terror as official policy. The enslavement of whole peoples. Genocide." He shook his head. "If staying here is what we have to do to stop it, then so be it."

  "But if what the scientists suspect is correct, then a virtual infinity of universes exists in which it happens anyway," young Winslade pointed out. "So, you manage to alter the outcome in one of them. What does it matter? A big number minus one is still a big number. What have you accomplished?"

  Winslade nodded distantly. "Yes, I remember—I used to be very analytic and calculating about such things. But it is true that you change as you get older, you know. I don't know if it's for the wiser, but I like to think it is. You're saying that it's pointless to try and change one world for the better if you can't change all of them. But by the same logic, you could argue that it's pointless for people to change themselves for the better if it doesn't change the whole world. Is kindness pointless because it doesn't wipe out all the unkindness everywhere? Is it pointless to save a life because others die anyway? Or to educate one child because others remain ignorant? I think not. Winslade paused and listened for a moment to the chirping and clacking of the night insects in the forest. "I'd say it's more the other way around. It's the small things that matter. The personal things in life are what decide if it was worthwhile. Leave all the universal truths and cosmic principles to philosophers and mystics. Those are the things that don't matter."

  "I was hoping you'd say something like that," young Winslade said. "You see, we came to very much the same kind of conclusion."

  Winslade turned, uncertain of what that meant. "We?"

  "Myself, some of the senior CIAF people here, and a number of the scientists who were unaware of Pipe Organ's true purpose. We believe that you and the people with you have done enough without getting mixed up in this world's problems. You've all carried your share. Now it's time for us to pick up ours."

  "You sound as if you're offering something," Winslade said. "What?"

  "We can send you back," young Winslade replied, his voice low and serious now as he came to the point that Winslade realized he had been building up to all along. "Now, unofficially, while CIAF still controls this place. You've done enough to give that world you've told us about its chance to save itself. And you, too, should be given your own chance along with it—all of you."

  Winslade turned fully to regard his younger self in the light from the floodlights behind them. "You'd do that—on your own authority? You'd go that far?"

  "Yes. It's no more than you people have risked already. We've discussed it at length, and we all feel the same."

  It was too good an offer to refuse. Winslade wasn't about to make things tougher by going through the motions of having to be persuaded. He nodded. "I'm grateful, very grateful. When did you have in mind?"

  "We estimate two days to finalize the preparations," young Winslade said. "The legal squabbling ought to give us that long."

  "Another two days. That's going to mean quite a jump at the other end."

  "I know. But also, Payne's still quite weak, don't forget. I checked with the doctors, and they're not very happy about moving him before then."

  Winslade exhaled a long breath. "Very well. Then the only thing left to worry about is the possibility of Overlord regaining control of Pipe Organ."

  A grim look came into young Winslade's eyes. "That will not be the case," he promised. "We—the group here that I mentioned—have agreed that, regardless of whatever legal machinations might be attempted, the Nazi connection will not be restored. We are resolved to make such an eventuality impossible—permanently. That is our pledge to you.

  Winslade gave him a penetrating look. "And what of the consequences?"

  "They're part of the share that it's our turn to pick up in this world," young Winslade told him.

  CHAPTER 50

  ALBERT EINSTEIN GOT UP from the desk in his cluttered office on the first floor of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton and went to the window to rest his eyes. Three years had gone by since the Institute had moved, in 1939, from temporary premises on the university campus to the new building of Fuld Hall. He preferred it out here amid the peaceful New Jersey surroundings of woodlands, meadows, and farms—all so different from the dreadful things that were happening everywhere now, it
seemed. In Russia, the Germans had reached the Caucasus; the Japanese had taken the East Indies, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia, and were poised on India's border; Rommel was driving the British back into Egypt again. He wondered if civilization could survive it all.

  He filled his pipe and looked back at the blackboard on the wall behind his desk, covered with symbols and equations representing his latest attempt to make some impression on the problem that had defied all his efforts since those momentous months in late 1939. Somehow, he knew, there was a way of constructing a unified representation of the superficially independent concepts of space, time, force, particle, and field that the symbols represented; and in that representation would lie the key to understanding how transfers between the many worlds implied by quantum-mechanics were possible. He had tantalizing glimpses of parts of the picture—special relativity unified space with time, and mass with energy; general relativity revealed gravitation as a manifestation of the geometry of spacetime. But the grand unification that he sensed intuitively, and which the physicists of at least one twenty-first-century world had succeeded in formulating, still eluded him. Sometimes he wondered if he would spend the remainder of his years grappling with it.

  A tap sounded at the door. "Ja?" Einstein looked around and ambled back from the window.

  His secretary poked her head inside. "Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Einstein, but Dr. Fermi is on the telephone from Chicago," she said. Einstein wouldn't have a phone in his own office. "He insists it can't wait, I'm afraid. He sounds awfully excited."

  "Ah, so, it can't wait, eh? Well, we'd better see what it is."

  Back in the spring of 1940, after months had gone by without word of either the soldiers who went into Germany or the people who disappeared into the Gatehouse machine, President Roosevelt had decided that the West would have to rely on its own resources to defend itself. Accordingly, he had ordered all work on trying to comprehend the physics abandoned, and for the scientists involved to focus on a concerted A-bomb program instead. To this end the National Defense Research Committee had been formed under Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institute, which took over coordinating responsibility for nuclear fission research.