The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  Jack focused closely on him, his eyes narrowing. “Wait a minute. Did you just say what I think you said?”

  “I think so.”

  Jack threw up his hands in frustration, distributing the remaining lechón throughout the Cunningham’s cockpit. “Goddammit! Free will’s what makes us human!”

  “Guess again,” Nick said, fighting to contain his mirth. “Don’t make Dr. IQ take back the Mars Bars. Seriously, after you’ve lived with the thought for a few days, you won’t know the difference. Think about it this way; if all of time wasn’t permanently in place, how could we travel in it?”

  A deep sigh rose up from the center of Jack’s being. “OK,” he said, avoiding Nick’s eyes as he picked pork fragments from the car’s dashboard and tossed them out the window. “What’s the deal with Linda and Pete?”

  “They’ll be returning to Miami from Dallas, VFR, no flight plan, when Pete decides to set a course for Bisque instead. They pick you up there and immediately take off, no refueling necessary. Then you’ll go with them for two or three days to a nearby landing site that I’ve arranged.”

  “And JFK’s dead at this point.”

  “Right. As of 1 p.m. Friday, November 22.”

  “Did they catch any of the people who did it?”

  “Nope. They got a guy, Oswald, who didn’t do it and charged him with two murders, of JFK and a Dallas policeman, a guy named Tippit, who was part of the crew that was responsible for getting Oswald out of the country, then doing away with him and getting rid of the body. He’d have been The Assassin Who Got Away, acting on the orders of Fidel Castro.”

  “But something’ll happen on Pete’s and Linda’s flight, too, won’t it? He wouldn’t just decide on a whim to come back to dear old Bisque.”

  “That’s right. He’ll be coming to Bisque to get you. I’ll put that idea in his head. He’ll expect you to be there. Your part in this is to get your uncle to keep the airport open for the air taxi flight that you’ve arranged. No refueling necessary. Pete taxies up the ramp, I open the Albatross’s hatch, you hop in and you’re off, with effusive thanks to Gene Debs, to Miami.”

  “Except we won’t be going to Miami, will we?”

  “Nope,” Nick said. “Let’s save the rest of the details until we’re airborne out of Bisque.”

  “Suits me; I need to chew this ‘free will’ thing over for a while before I start thinking about how whatever the hell you’re getting us into fits with that.”

  Nick shot Jack a low-intensity version of his trademark grin. “Moi? Not I, Jackie; for the moment, let’s call it Providence.”

  STORMRON3’s Leading Chief, the squadron’s senior enlisted man, often referred to Maurice “Mo” Callahan as a “throwback,” and he meant it as a compliment. An Air Controlman (Early Warning) First Class (ACW1), Callahan, a bachelor, hadn’t achieved his present rank by being insensitive to the moods of those senior to him. Previously a Boatswain’s Mate, he’d wasted very little time changing rates as a Second Class Petty Officer when it became clear that the BM1 rating was frozen, and likely to remain that way for some time. For a career sailor, a rate change of any kind can be a tricky undertaking. Getting approval to move from a “deck rating” to a technical one involved timing, aptitude and occasional butt-kissing, and he’d held his nose and done what was necessary to move up. As an ACW1, he continued to maintain the erect posture and fastidious uniform standards that had served him well as a Boatswain’s Mate. He rarely needed to employ any but the least-sulfurous Bronx-tinged epithets to produce results from sailors serving under him.

  As the Leading Petty Officer of STORMRON3’s navigation office, Callahan now felt the need to venture a word of concern to LTJG Mason relative to his present state of health. With any other officer, he’d just go by the book and keep his mouth shut. But Callahan liked Mr. Mason (for whom his private mental reference was “the kid”), in addition to the customary respect that he accorded all officers. He appreciated the way he ran the office (which was to let Callahan handle things until there were major decisions to be made). He also shared a passion for motorcycles with him, frustrated for the moment by the Naval Station’s limitation of two-wheeled motorized transport to motor scooters, for which neither of them had any respect whatever. In any case, right now Mr. Mason looked like hell. Whatever he’d had for lunch, Callahan thought, sure as shit must’ve gone down sideways. “Ah, excuse me, Mr. Mason.”

  Jack looked up at him with a vacant stare. “What’s up, Mo?”

  Callahan attempted to conceal the shock he felt when he saw the Lieutenant’s face. Here’s a normally very happy guy, he thought, who looks like he just saw a ghost. “Are you feeling OK, sir?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “Well, sir, I’m no Corpsman, but you really don’t look OK. Why don’t you secure a little early today and check in with the Flight Surgeon? Looks like you might be coming down with something.”

  Jack dropped his gaze down to his desktop for a moment, then looked up at Callahan again. “Thanks, Mo, I believe I will. No sense spreading something around the squadron. Didn’t realize it showed. Call me if anything comes up; I imagine I’ll be in my quarters in an hour or so.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Jack took the office door that opened on the south corridor, avoiding the Operations area and the door to the wardroom, making it down the hangar’s front stairwell and to his car without running into anyone. He slid into the seat with a sigh of relief; high-voltage apprehension was cascading through his bloodstream, and the last thing he felt like doing was carrying on idle chitchat. All he knew was that if he didn’t figure out a way to deal with Nick’s latest information, he’d need more help than he could get from any Flight Surgeon.

  Jack wasn’t fully awake for nearly an hour after willing himself to get up and start to make head or tail of what was going on. He’d lucked into a ride in the Plexiglas nose of a NAS Jacksonville-based P2V patrol aircraft within a couple of hours of signing out on leave, but had no such luck at the NAS JAX ops desk with anything headed to the New York area. His Delta flight into LaGuardia touched down at just past 5 a.m. Nick had explained the necessity of New York’s being included in his itinerary, saying, “When the Albatross doesn’t show up at Tamiami, Pete and Linda’s clients’re going to want to talk to you about what happened to the flight, and what you know about it. As soon as they find out that you took leave shortly before JFK was shot, their antennae’ll be fully extended. You’ll need a good reason for taking leave at that particular time, and I think that the best possible one is a Thanksgiving visit with your parents and friends in New York. I’ll hazard a guess that the Bishop twins would give you an alibi for the period You’ll be spending with Linda, Pete and me. Who in New York could lend you a car for five days or so?”

  “It’d have to be Hap; nobody else that I know in New York has one, but he has two or three.”

  “Better give him a call and nail it down. He’d probably buy your story that you have a little assignation set up in the Hamptons; no doubt your Mom would too. Then, if it comes down to actually accounting for those five days, instead of having been out on the Island you’ll have been with the Bishops. You’ll have actually been there both before and after your Bisque run, so people in their neighborhood will have seen you.”

  Hap had been more than happy to provide Jack with wheels, an almost-new 1964 Plymouth Barracuda V-8, resplendent in metallic gold. He’d heard Serena speculating about Jack’s involvement with Mrs. Luce, and handed Jack the car keys with a conspiratorial grin and a backslap-cum-shoulder massage. After a tiring but pleasant interlude with the Bishop girls, Jack dropped the Barracuda’s speedometer cable to eliminate the telltale 2000 miles or so that he’d be driving it, and they dove into the Holland Tunnel, Bisque-bound.

  As was usual when he drove any distance alone, Jack’s thoughts drifted among the circumstances that had shaped his life thus far. They came quickly in succession at times, reminding him most of the kaleidoscopic q
uilts that the country ladies at the Hamm County Curb Market proudly displayed for sale. But all of them together couldn’t stand up to the situation into which he headed on this gray, grit-drizzling twentieth of November, 1963. The warm air from the Barracuda’s heater seeped down through his jacket and the T-shirt he’d slept in, releasing potent but pleasant eau de Diana/Dolores. It took him swiftly back to the canopied king-size bed that they’d shared during his short stay at their place on East 64th. Aside from Terry Marsh, he thought, who’s no doubt Mrs. Lawyer Gump by now, and more recently Lulu, whose love I’d like to return, Diana and Dolores are the nearest to girlfriends my own age that I’ve ever had. If Rick and I had any goddam sense, we’d marry them and retire, maybe write a book or two about what happens to a couple of Bisque boys when they venture into the outside world.

  As soon, that is, as we exorcised our compulsions to harbor in our hearts women whose own hearts are committed elsewhere. Putting Trisha and Linda behind us, forever, may be asking more than either of can lay on the table. And hell, I can’t even talk to Rick about Linda without opening up the whole Moses/Pete/Linda grab bag, admitting that I’ve been lying through my teeth to him about it for years. Now that I think about Pete, our role model from the time he rolled into Bisque as Moses Kubielski, we should look to his example again. When Mom refused to divorce Dad and marry him, giving me the step-dad of my dreams, he turned his back on her and went on with his life. He reconnected with Linda, whom he’d put through Johns Hopkins before he turned his back on her mother, the alcoholic. Is he destined to be with her? Am I?

  Sliding into bed after a quick shower, he’d slept fitfully until well into the afternoon. Daylight Saving Time had expired a couple of weeks back, and the sun was headed toward the treetops beyond the lake as he headed that way with a fresh cup of coffee, the crisp fall air helping to revive him.

  All of Chez Mose’s outdoor furniture having been put away in his absence, Jack leaned once again on the well-worn shooting table, awaiting Nick’s arrival. Halfway through his coffee, he heard him call his name, but not from close by, as had always been the case. “Jack.” The sound triggered a minor echo. Nick was standing on the swimmers’ raft in the middle of the lake. As Jack answered his wave, Nick stepped off the raft and trotted across the water, then upslope to the shooting table. He’d foregone his invariably natty attire for a FlxAir flying coverall, on which its wearer bestowed a certain nattiness of its own. “Greetings, flyboy,” he said with a purposeful grin that Jack couldn’t remember having ever seen before. “Mind if we go inside? It was a mite chilly out there.”

  They sat on the living room couch, large Ballantine and sodas near to hand. “Day after tomorrow,” Nick said, “Linda and Pete will pick up three members of the Kennedy assassination team at Lake Lavon, just outside Dallas. During their return to Miami, the assassins open the plane’s after hatch to dump the weapons that were used that day into the deep waters of the Gulf. When Linda goes aft to investigate the turbulence caused by the open hatch, the assassin who’s messing around with a mini-missile launcher that’s been integrated into an umbrella accidentally shoots her. She’s dead in less than a minute.”

  Jack’s face turned ash-gray. “What?”

  “Wait,” Nick said, his right hand raised. “Remember the MiniFlx. I use its data to bring her back, as good as new. Better, actually.”

  “So she’s alive!”

  “Alive now, alive then, and dead for just a couple of minutes, until Pete gets her secured in one of the bunks. She’ll have a bit of marginal brain damage, which I’ll fix, along with some other touchups. I’ll tell you more about that later, but let’s go on. Pete, as you might imagine, is enraged when the lead assassin tells him what happened. Maybe it’s the way he tells it; in any case, he pulls the aircraft’s nose up some forty degrees, sending everybody into the tail ass over teakettle. Then he levels off and lets the assassins have it with bursts from a MAC-10. Now everybody’s dead, and he brings Linda forward and puts her in a bunk, which is when I bring her back.”

  “But Pete hasn’t seen you, has he?”

  “No, he hasn’t. And that’s a bit of a problem; how do I show up on the airplane, particularly after all that’s happened, without scaring hell out of him? I decided to do it through his headset; I hope you’ll excuse me, but I’ll use your voice.”

  “Well…

  “I felt sure that you wouldn’t. You’ll be pleased to know that it works. Pete’ll have so much bouncing around inside his head that a radio call from you will be welcome relief. I’ll collapse your and my history into a short paragraph, then tell him that a good-looking fellow with a sharp mustache, clad in a FlxAir flight suit, will soon be riding in the copilot’s seat. I don’t usually manifest in a form that tolerates touch, because it’s a hell of a lot more trouble, but in this case I have to be able to shake his hand. After I do, I’ll ask him to engage the autopilot and come back aft to the bunk where Linda will be. When she opens her eyes and smiles at him, he’ll be fully on board with the idea of my being there, with no reservations whatever. I’ll then suggest that he take up a heading for Bisque Municipal Airport, where we’ll be picking you up. Then we’ll head for a safe destination nearby.”

  “I hope it’ll be safe. They probably won’t announce that the flight’s missing; I doubt that a flight plan was ever filed. But the CIA’ll saturate the Gulf with search and rescue aircraft, if for no other reason than to be sure everybody’s dead.”

  “That’s true,” Nick said, but they sure as hell won’t find us, however much they search.”

  “How can you be so sure, if it’s close to Bisque?”

  “Well, it’s what people usually call a UFO. Sleep well tonight, Pops, for tomorrow we travel.”

  “We do? Where?”

  “I think that it’s time you saw what it’s like where I come from.”

  Jack made no effort to hide his astonishment. “You do, huh? How’s that gonna work?”

  “Simply put, you ride my coattails. I read your essence- the scientists of this era refer to it as the human genome- store it as subquantum data, and attach it to my own. Our shared DNA makes it easier. It’s the only way, at least so far, that time travel into the future’s been done. The past, of course, is a piece of cake.”

  “I get it. You’re simply returning to your point of origin and...”

  “Dragging you along as part of me,” Nick interrupted. “Maybe one day we’ll get lucky, and someone from the family farther down the line’ll get curious the way I did, and let us hitch a ride on him- or her.”

  “OK. You’re going to copy my- genome? And I’m going to zip into the future with you. What happens to the physical me that stays here?”

  “What I’ll copy is your data. And nothing happens to the physical you. You can go about your business as if you weren’t on my coattails at all. You will also, with a bit of concentration, be able to see everything that your data-copy’s seeing in 4231. Because the sub-quanta of your body are inextricably entangled with those of your data-copy, neither distance, time nor space can break the communication link.”

  Beetling his brows, Jack said, “Well, goddam, sonny-boy, we’ll be skatin’ through the cosmos good and proper, won’t we? As far as the copying process goes, do you have to put me to sleep or anything?”

  “Nope; copying just now completed.”

  “Well, buddy, here we are, 5000 feet over Chicago and Lake Michigan. Do you like this altitude?”

  “Yeah, this is good for right now. I know it’s in the right place relative to the Lake, but that sure as hell’s no city; just a town, and not a real big one. No Sears Tower, and so forth.”

  “Yeah, no more than 5-6000 people in the whole state of Illinois,” Nick observed. “And less than 200,000 in the continental US. And notice the air directly over the town. See any pollution?”

  “No, nothing. Not even any smoke.”

  Nick chuckled. “Since nobody produces any combustion beyond the occasional fireplace
log, it stands to reason. It’s all done these days by fusion, electrogravitics and some electricity here and there.”

  “No cars, huh?”

  “Nope. Not in the strict sense. Plenty of personal transportation, in the form of electrogravitic vehicles. You’ll particularly like the straddlers, the ones you can ride like a motorcycle. These days, people travel long distance by teleportation, unless they’re on a vacation tour. Same thing with freight; not nearly as much stuff gets moved around anyway, since production can usually be done locally, if not in a person’s individual UPF.”

  “UPF?”

  “Universal Production Facility. Think of it as a garage, which is about the size of an average UPF, inside of which most anything can be produced- anything that can fit inside, of course.”

  “More sub-quantum stuff.”

  “Most of the everyday stuff’s taken care of at the quantum level. But it’s made the world a different place. Remember what Sartre said about Hell?”

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “‘Hell,’ he said, ‘is other people.’ so in the ensuing years between your time and mine, society’s arrived at a solution to the problem that Sartre was dramatizing; something close to the ideal solution for populating the world, with a very generous dose of technology making it feasible. In 4231, people do pretty much exactly as they please, and the world turns out to be a pretty nice place, once you’ve eliminated metropolises, airports and seaports as they once existed. And they’re smart; people in general surpass the geniuses of your time by a couple orders of magnitude, too. When you combine incredible intelligence with no population pressure you get...”

  “Paradise?” Jack ventured.

  “Of a sort. There’s still plenty to do, in the sense of galactic exploration and defending the planet from external hazards- asteroids, comets, things like that- and there are many times the number of people on Earth out there in the galaxy, pioneering in essentially the same way that human beings have always done. My personal preference, as I’ve indicated, was to pursue physics here on the home planet, and to pioneer in quite a different way.”