by Anthology
“After each collision, the chronar will return roughly half the number of years covered before, automatically gathering information each time. The geological and historical periods we expect it to touch are listed from I to XXV in your sheets; there will be more than twenty-five, naturally, before both balls come to rest, but scientists feel that all periods after that number will be touched for such a short while as to be unproductive of photographs and other material. Remember, at the end, the balls will be doing little more than throbbing in place before coming to rest, so that even though they still ricochet centuries on either side of the present, it will be almost unnoticeable. A question, I see.”
The thin woman in gray tweeds beside Culpepper got to her feet. “I—I know this is irrelevant,” she began, “but I haven’t been able to introduce my question into the discussion at any pertinent moment. Mr. Secretary—”
“Acting secretary,” the chubby little man in the black suit told her genially. “I’m only the acting secretary. Go on.”
“Well, I want to say—Mr. Secretary, is there any way at all that our post-experimental examination time may be reduced? Two years is a very long time to spend inside Pike’s Peak simply out of fear that one of us may have seen enough and be unpatriotic enough to be dangerous to the nation. Once our stories have passed the censors, it seems to me that we could be allowed to return to our homes after a safety period of, say, three months. I have two small children and there are others here—”
“Speak for yourself, Mrs. Bryant!” the man from Security roared. “It is Mrs. Bryant, isn’t it? Mrs. Bryant of the Women’s Magazine Syndicate? Mrs. Alexis Bryant.” He seemed to be making minute pencil notes across his brain.
Mrs. Bryant sat down beside Culpepper again, clutching her copy of the amended Security Code, the special pamphlet on the Brooklyn Project and the thin mimeographed sheet of paper very close to her breast. Culpepper moved hard against the opposite arm of his chair. Why did everything have to happen to him? Then, to make matters worse, the crazy woman looked tearfully at him as if expecting sympathy. Culpepper stared across the booth and crossed his legs.
“You must remain within the jurisdiction of the Brooklyn Project because that is the only way that Security can be certain that no important information leakage will occur before the apparatus has changed beyond your present recognition of it. You didn’t have to come, Mrs. Bryant—you volunteered. You all volunteered. After your editors had designated you as their choices for covering this experiment, you all had the peculiarly democratic privilege of refusing. None of you did. You recognized that to refuse this unusual honor would have shown you incapable of thinking in terms of National Security, would have, in fact, implied a criticism of the Security Code itself from the standpoint of the usual two-year examination time. And now this! For someone who had hitherto been thought as able and trustworthy as yourself, Mrs. Bryant, to emerge at this late hour with such a request makes me, why it,” the little man’s voice dropped to a whisper, “—it almost makes me doubt the effectiveness of our Security screening methods.”
Culpepper nodded angry affirmation at Mrs. Bryant who was biting her lips and trying to show a tremendous interest in the activities on the laboratory floor.
“The question was irrelevant. Highly irrelevant. It took up time which I had intended to devote to a more detailed discussion of the popular aspects of chronar and its possible uses in industry. But Mrs. Bryant must have her little feminine outburst. It makes no difference to Mrs. Bryant that our nation is daily surrounded by more and more hostility, more and more danger. These things matter not in the slightest to Mrs. Bryant. All she is concerned with are the two years of her life that her country asks her to surrender so that the future of her own children may be more secure.”
The acting secretary smoothed his black jumper and became calmer. Tension in the booth decreased.
“Activation will occur at any moment now, so I will briefly touch upon those most interesting periods which the chronar will record for us and from which we expect the most useful data. I and II, of course, since they are the periods at which the earth was forming into its present shape. Then III, the Pre-Cambrian Period of the Proterozoic, one billion years ago, the first era in which we find distinct records of life—crustaceans and algae for the most part. VI, a hundred twenty-five million years in the past, covers the Middle Jurassic of the Mesozoic. This excursion into the so-called ‘Age of Reptiles’ may provide us with photographs of dinosaurs and solve the old riddle of their coloring, as well as photographs, if we are fortunate, of the first appearance of mammals and birds. Finally, VIII and IX, the Oligocene and Miocene Epochs of the Tertiary Period, mark the emergence of man’s earliest ancestors. Unfortunately, the chronar will be oscillating back and forth so rapidly by that time that the chance of any decent recording—”
A gong sounded. The hand of the clock touched the red mark. Five of the technicians below pulled switches and, almost before the journalists could lean forward, the two spheres were no longer visible through the heavy plastic screen. Their places were empty.
“The chronar has begun its journey to four billion years in the past! Ladies and gentlemen, an historic moment—a profoundly historic moment! It will not return for a little while; I shall use the time in pointing up and exposing the fallacies of the—ah, federation of chronic sighers!”
Nervous laughter rippled at the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. The twelve journalists settled down to hearing the ridiculous ideas tom apart.
“As you know, one of the fears entertained about travel to the past was that the most innocent-seeming acts would cause cataclysmic changes in the present. You are probably familiar with the fantasy in its most currently popular form—if Hitler had been killed in 1930, he would not have forced scientists in Germany and later occupied countries to emigrate, this nation might not have had the atomic bomb, thus no third atomic war, and Venezuela would still be part of the South American continent.
“The traitorous Shayson and his illegal federation extended this hypothesis to include much more detailed and minor acts such as shifting a molecule of hydrogen that in our past really was never shifted.
“At the time of the first experiment at the Coney Island Subproject, when the chronar was sent back for one-ninth of a second, a dozen different laboratories checked through every device imaginable, searched carefully for any conceivable change. There were none! Government officials concluded that the time stream was a rigid affair, past, present, and future, and nothing in it could be altered. But Shayson and his cohorts were not satisfied: they—”
I. Four billion years ago. The chronar floated in a cloudlet of silicon dioxide above the boiling earth and languidly collected its data with automatically operating instruments. The vapor it had displaced condensed and fell in great, shining drops.
“—insisted that we should do no further experimenting until we had checked the mathematical aspects of the problem yet again. They went so far as to state that it was possible that if changes occurred we would not notice them, that no instruments imaginable could detect them. They claimed we would accept these changes as things that had always existed. Well! This at a time when our country—and theirs, ladies and gentlemen of the press, theirs, too—was in greater danger than ever. Can you—”
Words failed him. He walked up and down the booth, shaking his head. All the reporters on the long, wooden bench shook their heads with him in sympathy.
There was another gong. The two dull spheres appeared briefly, clanged against each other and ricocheted off into opposite chronological directions.
“There you are.” The government official waved his arms at the transparent laboratory floor above them. “The first oscillation has been completed; has anything changed? Isn’t everything the same? But the dissidents would maintain that alterations have occurred and we haven’t noticed them. With such faith-based, unscientific Brooklyn Project viewpoints, there can be no argument. Pe
ople like these—”
II. Two billion years ago. The great ball clicked its photographs of the fiery, erupting ground below. Some red-hot crusts rattled off its sides. Five or six thousand complex molecules lost their basic structure as they impinged against it. A hundred didn’t.
“—will labor thirty hours a day out of thirty-three to convince you that black isn’t white, that we have seven moons instead of two. They are especially dangerous—”
A long, muted note as the apparatus collided with itself. The warm orange of the corner lights brightened as it started out again.
“—because of their learning, because they are sought for guidance in better ways of vegetation.” The government official was slithering up and down rapidly now, gesturing with all of his pseudopods. “We are faced with a very difficult problem, at present—”
III. One billion years ago. The primitive triple tribolite the machine had destroyed when it materialized began drifting down wetly.
“—a very difficult problem. The question before us: should we shllk or shouldn’t we shllk?” He was hardly speaking English now; in fact, for some time, he hadn’t been speaking at all. He had been stating his thoughts by slapping one pseudopod against the other—as he always had . . .
IV. A half-billion years ago. Many different kinds of bacteria died as the water changed temperature slightly.
“This, then, is no time for half measures. If we can reproduce well enough—”
V. Two hundred fifty million years ago. VI. A hundred twenty-five million years ago.
“—to satisfy the Five Who Spiral, we have—”
VII. Sixty-two million years. VIII. Thirty-one million. IX. Fifteen million. X. Seven and a half million.
“—spared all attainable virtue. Then—”
XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. Bong—bong—bong bongbongbongongongngngngggg . . .
“—we are indeed ready for refraction. And that, I tell you, is good enough for those who billow and those who snap. But those who billow will be proven wrong as always, for in the snapping is the rolling and in the rolling is only truth. There need be no change merely because of a sodden cilium. The apparatus has rested at last in the fractional conveyance; shall we view it subtly?”
They all agreed, and their bloated purpled bodies dissolved into liquid and flowed up and around to the apparatus. When they reached its four square blocks, now no longer shrilling mechanically, they rose, solidified, and regained their slime-washed forms.
“See,” cried the thing that had been the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. “See, no matter how subtly! Those who billow were wrong: we haven’t changed.” He extended fifteen purple blobs triumphantly. “Nothing has changed!”
BRUCK IN TIME
Patrick McGilligan
The sound of gunfire zinged all around Bruck as he splashed across the knee-deep shallows, pretending to be heavily burdened by the pack he was carrying on his back. It wasn’t heavy at all. He toted some kind of weapon that was jammed or broken or something. Again and again he pointed it at the enemy on the opposite bank, and every once in a while one of the blue suits fell over—but it wasn’t because of his weapon, which only made bang noises and fired puffs of smoke.
Everyone shouted and screamed—nothing distinct or intelligible—it was all one loud roar punctuated by gunfire and cannon explosions. Bruck waved his useless weapon in the air excitedly, yelling “Double knuckles!” for some reason he couldn’t explain, when he accidentally swung his rifle into the face of the gray suit galloping through the water next to him, knocking him into a daze. The soldier sank to his knees before pitching forward with his eyes rolling up.
Bruck plunged ahead in seeming slow motion, blood spattering him from all around and running dark red in the water. He slipped on some rocks that were blood-slick. But none of it was his blood. He was unhurt and in fact barely winded as he reached the opposite shore, and, joined by a mass of others close around him, slammed into a wall of blue suits, cursing and punching and grappling.
Many gray suits stumbled back into the water with long gleaming blades stuck through their bodies. The soldier running closest to him suddenly clutched his head, dropping his bugle. He was very young, like most of the soldiers. Bruck caught a glimpse of the soldier’s face clamped under a gray cap—startled blue eyes, lanky blond hair. The soldier careened away, head spurting blood. Bruck had a curious flash; he recognized the blond soldier as one who had died yesterday too.
Now the bullet zinging and cannonfire faded into the distance, replaced by loud clanging swords and the close clash of grunting and wheezing bodies. The yelling had almost died out. Epithets and groans were more common. Across a brown field the gray and blue armies met and mingled and fought against each other in a furious commotion. The air was filled with smoke and dust.
A veteran mercenary, Bruck felt his bloodlust stir as he swung his empty rifle like a sword, effectively clearing a path before him as a wide-eyed enemy lurched aside rather than face a seeming berserker. Bruck sniffed the air joyously, frowning to realize that although surrounded by dead and dying he missed a familiar scent.
The smell of death.
That was about a minute before the battle and everything else stopped.
If only he could remember. He was a fighter, he remembered that much, a damn good fighter who had fought in hundreds of battles. The details escaped him. The memories seeped away. Well, memories didn’t mean much to soldiers anyway. If a soldier lives long enough for memories, the saying went, he’s lived too long.
In his time, which was long ago and somewhere else, he would sign on for any campaign, any war, any fight, if paid in good coin. He had even fought, on occasion, without payment of any kind, because fighting is what he did and sometimes the fight was more interesting than the pay. Sometimes he just didn’t care about the pay.
He was best at fighting with his knife and his sword. That certainly felt like the truth of what he remembered. But he was also growing accustomed to new and unusual weapons.
The last thing he remembered plainly was he had been drinking in his favorite tavern, the Bull’s Bollocks. The place was crowded with rowdy patrons, shouting and laughing and singing. Bruck had been drinking at a table alone for some time, watching the chaos and merriment swirling around him with increasingly glazed eyes. People tended to give him a wide berth, noting his bare muscled arms, the weapons slung at his waist, and the apparent glowering expression on his face.
In fact, Bruck was in a buoyant mood. He had been paid well for a raiding party across the border just last week. Someone had to be taught a lesson. Bruck and other mercenaries had torched a barn and house. A foolish man had come running out of the burning barn, waving a knife. He ran straight into Bruck’s sword.
The sour mead came in huge bubbling pitchers at the Bull’s Bollocks, and the serving girl knew to keep them coming. Bruck was on his sixth or seventh pitcher when the tall barrel-chested stranger came over and asked if he would care to join him as his partner at the gaming table. Bruck didn’t mind at all—indeed he liked the fact that the tall barrel-chested stranger had picked him out of the crowd in such a friendly fashion. He took to the stranger right away for some reason, as though they were kindred warriors. Something about the way the fellow winked at him every time he said something, but also just spoke with his eyes when he wasn’t saying anything at all, like they were old friends in on a conspiracy. The stranger, who was dressed in peculiar clothes that were soft and formfitting, brought Bruck to a gaming table in the back where a pair of men waited.
They looked to be brothers. The one Bruck took to be the younger had narrow eyes and a pockmarked face. He nodded suspiciously at the newcomer. The older brother had curly red hair and a bristly beard the same hue; he glared at Bruck, making an impatient gesture. Bruck took his weapons off and sat down.
The three had been drinking and playing games for hours. The tall barrel-chested stranger said he had been win
ning steadily. But his previous partner had quit and gone home to his wife. Bruck ordered a round of pitchers, and they opened up a new game.
Bruck remembered all of that, and the tall barrel-chested stranger winking at him as they started up the game, and the brother with red curly hair and bristly beard still glaring at him.
That was how many days . . . weeks . . . months ago?
Funny how often the battles were between blue and gray suits. The first time Bruck had fought on the side of the blue suits, and then a month or so later he had worn a gray suit. Only about a week ago he found himself outfitted for action in a blue suit, and just yesterday there he was, yet again, charging across the river in his gray suit.
Gray suits, blue suits. It didn’t matter to him what uniform he wore.
Different types of fighting each time, of course. Climbing hills. Slogging through swampy forests. Little hand-to-hand skirmishes. Big sprawling noisy battles.
Gray, blue. Didn’t matter.
Bruck was brooding over a beer as he sat, people watching with the Marquis in the Bar None. The place was loud with electrified music and crowded with folk jumping up and down and wiggling rhythmically. It maybe was Bruck’s tenth beer. Piss weak beer, and it came in so many types and colors he couldn’t keep track of the choices. He sure did miss The Bull’s Bollocks, as much as he could recall of it anyway.
This was the Marquis’ favorite place. The Marquis was not a real marquis, but that was the name he used when introducing himself to women at the Bar None. Bruck stared at the Marquis, who was staring at some of the dancing women, his eyes riveted. The Marquis liked to boast about all the wars and battles he had fought in, and women liked to listen. He had the look of a fighter, strong and tough like the tall barrel-chested stranger, but it was mainly a look.