by Anthology
“How did the subject of the vial come up?” “He was going on about the wonders of the primitive world, how amazing it is, how lucky we are. And he said something like how there were people back home who’d pay small fortunes for some of the specimens that were just disappearing into labs and museums. That’s how he put it. Disappearing.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I could use a small fortune.”
The door to sick bay opened, and Sal Shelton stood framed by it. “May I come in?”
“Sal,” Morrow said, “who do we know with a tattoo on his neck?”
Phil Morrow, Sal Shelton, and a Marine staff sergeant waited with Rob Brinkman on the helicopter deck, watching as the pilot did his walkaround. Brinkman swore softly and said, “J can’t believe it.”
“Payne’s the only guy we’ve got here,” Morrow said, “with a tattooed neck. And he’s a mycologist.”
“Well, Phil, you’ve got to bring him in. We want to keep this affair as quiet as possible, of course. But I’m afraid no matter how things turn out, there’re going to be serious repercussions. Up til now, our scientists’ve been able to work without anybody looking over their shoulders. Now, because some dumb rating thought he’d make a little extra money on the side-”
“It doesn’t mean cracking down on everyone who has a legitimate interest—”
Brinkman heaved a great unhappy sigh. “Obviously, it’s possible to have a legitimate interest and an illegitimate angle at the same time. Payne’s a fine paleomycologist. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.”
“You know,” said Sal, “I’ve always been amused—if only rather bitterly amused—by the popular notion that scientists are somehow insusceptible to the seven deadly sins. Some of the best people I know are my fellow scientists. A few of the worst people I know are also my fellow scientists—fakers, plagiarists, outright thieves, at least one wife-beater, and those are just the best among the worst. The crème de la slime, if you will. I know, or know of, scientists who were just out and out lawbreakers, who should have gone to prison. But somehow didn’t, because the scientific community closed ranks. Oh, they didn’t get off scot-free. They stopped being invited to conferences, couldn’t get their papers published because nobody could be sure they weren’t plagiarists or hadn’t faked their findings. But they were never publicly shamed. Nobody stepped up to them and said, ‘Thank you for making us all look like total shits.
The pilot waved to them. Morrow said to Sal, “Are you sure you want to come along?” and she answered, “I’ve got something to say to Doctor Payne, and I may not get another chance.” Brinkman nodded a goodbye, and the two scientists and the Marine staff sergeant boarded the helicopter. The beat of the rotor increased, the machine tugged itself away from the deck, and the ship fell away below. It was late afternoon, and the Paleozoic sea stretched to the horizon in three directions, the Paleozoic landscape to a line of low, eroded mountains in the fourth. Nobody spoke. The Marine staff sergeant watched curiously as the helicopter swing high above neat rows of tents and Quonset huts, lifted over the bare stony ridge overlooking the base camp, and pointed its nose purposefully toward the west. Morrow, studying the staff sergeant, was fascinated by the holstered gun at the man’s side. He knew the Navy, being the Navy, must have weapons even here, but he could not recall having noticed them before this. He stole a glance at Sal Shelton, seated next to him. She had her arms crossed, her chin sunk upon her chest, and glared out the open hatch at the Paleozoic world as though she hated it.
After about twenty minutes in the air, the helicopter descended toward a small camp pitched beside the turbid river that drained the region. The pilot set the helicopter down carefully upon a level patch of shingle about fifty yards from the camp, and Sal Shelton, Phil Morrow, and the Marine staff sergeant climbed out. A man came out of the tent and stood watching them as they crunched toward him across the shingle.
There was a sign in front of the tent that said keep off the grass. Cute, Morrow thought, botanist humor. There was no grass in this world, no flowering plants at all. There were barely any plants, period.
“Dr. Payne, I presume,” Morrow said to the man.
“Yes.” Payne looked puzzled. He matched the description the prisoner on the ship had given: a tattoo of interlocked crescent-shaped designs adorned the left side of his neck, creeping into the hairline behind his ear.
“Dr. Payne,” Morrow said, “I am placing you under arrest for smuggling and related charges. You have the right to remain silent. If you do not choose to remain silent—”
“What? What’s this all about? This must be some kind of mistake.”
Morrow ignored the objection and finished reciting the list of the accused’s rights. Payne seemed too surprised to resist as the Marine staff sergeant puled his arms behind his back and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. Finally he managed to say, “There must be some mistake.”
Morrow gave him a tight smile. “Remember that big Navy boat anchored in the bay at Stink-town? There’s a scared swabbie on board there who’s in the brig. He knows he’s in deep ca-ca and thinks somebody else ought to be there to keep him company.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Smuggling biological specimens.”
“What do I know about smuggling?”
“They didn’t even have to use the rubber hose on him. They looked real mean at him, and he split wide open and out came his guts. Also a description of yourself. He’s facing dishonorable discharge and serious prison time. You’re looking at no more lecture and conference circuit, no more awards—and serious prison time. Even without the prison time, you’ll never be able to get so much as a job teaching General Science One-oh-one in Podunk.”
“Are you feeling well? You talk like a lunatic.”
“Yes, I am feeling well,” Morrow said, “and probably I am a lunatic. But that’s beside the point. The point is, your sponsor, whoever he may be, can’t or doesn’t want to come to the Paleozoic himself, so he’s having the Paleozoic brought to him, a tiny little bit at a time. Spores, DNA, air samples, soil samples. A little contraband specimen each time one of his people comes through the hole. He has to rely on human accomplices to actually go into Paleozoic time, though. No robot, however perfectly fashioned, is going to pass the physical. So he has to hire people to bribe other people who probably bribed someone else.”
The Marine staff sergeant began to push Payne, not roughly but firmly, toward the waiting helicopter. Morrow and Shelton fell in behind, and Sal said, with such bitterness in her voice that Morrow was startled, “Thank you so much, Dr. Payne.”
After a moment, Payne said, sullenly, “What for?”
“I started out in vertebrate paleontology. Absolutely loved dinosaurs, ever since I knew what a dinosaur was. Back then, in graduate school, I drew a lot of comments from invertebrate paleontologists. There’s no money in dinosaurs, they said. Study invertebrates, get a job in oil geology, make big money. Money didn’t tempt me, though. What finally tempted me was the spacetime anomaly. As soon as I heard there was this hole into Paleozoic time, I decided, I’m going. This was such a great thing, such a wonderful thing—if I believed in supernatural stuff I’d call this a miracle. And I wanted to be part of it. I figured, there may not be dinosaurs, but there’re plenty of other fascinating critters. I was in my fifties by then, but I did the necessary retooling, and here I am. And now—” she flung out a hand, taking in land and sky with the gesture “—it’s spoiled. Thanks to you and the people working with you and whoever all of you were working for.
This is the end in Eden. Sin has entered the garden.”
THE END OF THE EXPERIMENT
Peter Clines
“Jon!” Chris launched herself over the threshold and into his arms. He returned the hug, and everyone pretended not to notice that she hung on just a bit longer than he did. Jon reached around the perky blonde to shake Will’s hand. Sylvester clapped him on the back in a man
ly way as he walked past and Tom just gave their host a smile over the double-stack of pizza boxes.
Jon guided them all past the wall of family photos and into his flat. It wasn’t a huge place by normal standards, but for a grad student living alone it was gigantic. Sylvester slid a stack of physics books across the coffee table to make space for the pizzas Tom was setting down. Will flopped into a well-worn easy chair. Chris grabbed the opener from the little fridge before rolling over and onto the couch.
Tom opened the top box for a moment and bent his bald head, taking a deep sniff of cheese, garlic, and hot oil. “So where the hell have you been, mate?”
“Working,” said Jon, cracking open a beer. “Working on what may be the greatest invention of all time.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Better than the tri-fection bong we built last year?”
“Much better.”
“Liar! Nothing short of cold fusion could beat that.”
“Better be worth it,” said Sylvester, popping the cap off his own bottle. “Professor Herbert’s going to give you the sack if you skip any more of your undergrad classes. Doesn’t look good, his only Yank being AWOL for so long.”
“It’s worth it,” Jon assured them. Five bottles chimed against each other over the pizza. “You guys are still covering for me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, and he’s noticed,” said Tom. “Which means you’d better get a move on before he gives us the sack us as well.”
“So,” said Chris, “what is the mysterious it you’ve been working on, then?”
“Everyone have at least two beers first. This is a lot easier to deal with if you’ve got a buzz going.”
Tom’s lips twisted. “Does this mean we’re not watching a movie?”
“No movie,” said Jon. “Beer and talking.”
“I thought we were going to see a movie,” grumbled Tom. He drowned his sorrow with another swig of beer.
“Can we eat,” said Sylvester, “or will that upset your master plan somehow?”
“I’ll just toss out the warning that I was sick to my stomach for a while when I figured this whole thing out.”
The first box flipped open and five slices of pizza slid off onto five plates. Tom grabbed an extra slice while Chris reached for a packet of hot peppers. They worked their way through the first pizza and into the second six-pack, talking about tutoring jobs and papers that needed grading and bad campus bands. Jon bit his tongue for almost an hour.
At last he couldn’t contain himself any longer and leaped back to his feet. “Okay, boys and girl,” he said. “Now that you’ve all got some food and alcohol in you, we’re going to have a history lesson, then show and tell, and then finish up with physics class.”
“Do we get to play doctor at breaktime?” asked Chris. She batted her eyes at Jon and gave her lips a flirty lick.
“You should be so lucky,” said Will with a smirk.
“So should you,” she snapped.
Jon clucked his tongue at them. “First,” he said, “the history lesson.” His voice took on the same tones he used when giving lectures to the undergrads. “Who knows what used to stand here?”
Tom glanced around. “The couch was there, wasn’t it? When you had the telly over there.” He pointed to the far wall.
“At this address,” clarified Jon. “What used to be on this spot?”
Chris glanced around. “It’s a converted warehouse, isn’t it? They made lots of them into flats back in the ’80s.”
“Further back.”
“My family used to live right over in Richmond,” said Sylvester. “Most of this area was flattened during the Blitz. Pretty sure it was all just houses before then.”
“Correct,” said Jon. “And records are damned spotty from back then, let me tell you. The house that was on this spot was vacant for almost thirty years, and there’s almost no record of the person who lived in it before then. I know it was a bachelor who was an amateur scientist, that’s about it.”
It was Tom’s turn to smirk again. “How d’you know that?”
Jon grabbed a slice of mushroom pizza. “I had to research around it, if that makes sense. A lot of the actual records are gone, but there were a few professional men who lived in this area. A doctor, a psychologist, the local mayor. A lot of them kept journals that make off-hand references to the man who lived in the house here. It was that social obligation of the time, gentlemen meeting every week for drinks and cigars and hours of talking.”
“Not at all like today,” grinned Sylvester, raising his bottle. They all toasted again.
“So who was he?” Chris said.
“I don’t know.” Jon shrugged. “Like I said, spotty records. Can’t find any direct trace of him.”
“Is that what you were doing when I saw you at the Hall of Records?” asked Will. “A few weeks back, when we ran into each other that time?”
“Right. The house was owned by a Mr. Smythe out in Kent, but leased to the same gentleman for twenty-five years. In fact, it looks like he wasn’t even living there for the last nine. He’d just paid up in advance.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Again, no one knows. A couple of the journals even mention their acquaintance being absent. After a few months, they all assume he moved away, perhaps to America, and that’s that. What few signs there are of him completely vanish from the record. And the house stood empty until it got hit by a bomb in 1941.”
Will tried to cut in, but their host waved the interruption aside and continued on. “Now,” Jon said, “show and tell.” He smiled again and darted across the room to his workbench. He opened a drawer, pulled out something wrapped in black fabric, and unfolded the cloth as he carried it back to his friends.
Chris cooed at the sight of it. “What is it? It’s beautiful.”
The thing across his palm was an oversized Christmas ornament, a glittering framework of metal the size of a small shoe. He shifted his hands, settled the little apparatus on top of the stack of books next to the pizza boxes, and the others bent in to examine the small device.
At the heart of it was a small seat carved from wood, almost a saddle, and before it was a tiny console, barely two inches across, decorated with levers of what looked like glass and bone. A horizontal bar, like a throttle, stretched across the middle of the console, and the iridescent material gave it a blurry appearance, as if it were somehow unreal. Stiff wires of silver and brass criss-crossed around the saddle and the controls, forming an egg-shaped lattice.
Tom glanced up from the apparatus. “Is this what you’ve been working on all this time?”
“Sort of, yeah,” said Jon.
“Is that gold, all those spirals?”
“Yeah.”
“Real gold?”
Their host nodded.
“How’d you afford this thing?” asked Chris. “It must’ve cost a bundle.”
“We’ll get to that in a bit.”
Sylvester reached out a hand but couldn’t bring himself to touch it. He flexed his fingers twice, stretching the tips out an inch from the curved wires. “It’s got a charge,” he commented, watching the hair on his knuckles rise.
“Oh, yes,” said Jon.
“Is it powered or just static electricity?”
“We’ll get to that in a bit, too.
Chris hadn’t brought herself to touch the model yet either, but her nose was a hair from the metal latticework. Her bangs were hovering in the cloud of static electricity. “This is really amazing,” she said, giving Jon an approving glance.
He smiled again. He was all smiles tonight. “Now, finally, physics class.” He took a drink from his own beer, followed it with a bite of the pizza slice he hadn’t touched yet, and then another sip. “Let’s talk about time travel.”
A groan danced across the group, with a few smiles. “Hang on,” said Tom. “I need to use the loo before we start the debate.” He slipped the empty bottle back into the six-pack and marched across the flat.
&n
bsp; “Time travel,” repeated Jon when his friend returned. “A fine group of minds like this one must have a few thoughts on it.”
“I thought David Tennant was the best Doctor Who ever,” said Chris.
“Agreed,” said Will. They tapped their bottles across the table and drank.
Sylvester reclined on the couch. “Time travel’s possible, but it’s only possible in that air-turning-into-gold way.”
“Which really means it’s not possible,” said Tom, drying his hands on his pant legs. He dropped back on the couch, bouncing Chris into the air. “It’s just a trick of the math, not real physics.”
Chris shrugged. “Isn’t all physics just a trick of math?”
“No, that’s statistics,” said Will with a smile. They all laughed and clinked their bottles again.
“Seriously, though,” said Jon, “saying it isn’t possible means gravity isn’t possible, and I think we all agree on gravity, yes?”
Chris snapped her fingers. “What about a Tipler cylinder?”
“Exactly,” said their host. “Tipler proved it’s entirely possible to build a time machine. We just don’t have the engineering know-how to do it right now.”
“Hawking says time travel is bollocks,” emphasized Tom, “even with Tipler cylinders.” He pulled the last beer and popped the cap.
“Hero of Alexandria was the most brilliant man of his age,” said Jon. “A certified genius who thought the steam engine was just a useless toy for kids.”
“Point being?”
“Almost every credible physicist will tell you there’s nothing in physics that says time travel can’t happen,” said their host. “They just don’t know any practical way of making it happen and they don’t like the implications. Two hundred years ago they said powered flight was impossible. Then they said man could never go faster than the speed of sound. Hell, sixty years ago you needed a computer the size of a gymnasium just to do addition.”