Thrice upon a Time

by James P. Hogan

  The others agreed that Charles was right. They also decided to force adherence to his ruling by taking the machine out of service for a while. Cartland had been to Manchester to supervise final testing of components he had ordered some months previously, designed to enhance the machine's performance. First, they would enable larger blocks of information to be transmitted than the current limit of six characters at a time; second, they would increase the range from ten minutes to something on the order of a day. Cartland estimated that he would need seven to ten days to install them and test the modifications. The best time to do all this would be at once, which everybody accepted somewhat reluctantly. Then there would be no opportunity for yielding to flashes of inspiration or trying out premature ideas for probably over a week. By that time, they hoped, they would have recovered sufficiently from their initial intoxication to think rationally.

  As they were leaving the lab at the end of the afternoon, Murdoch turned to Charles and said jokingly, "What we ought to do is take the range up to a day right now. Then we'd be able to ask ourselves tomorrow what we'd decided to do. It'd save us all the hassle of having to figure it out from scratch."

  "That's precisely the kind of monkeying around I want to make damn certain we steer clear of until we know what the hell we're doing," Charles told him darkly.

  Chapter 7

  "Do you remember Lizzie Muir, Murdoch?" Charles asked. "We said hello to her in Edinburgh last time you were over… at that conference on plasma dynamics or whatever it was. Quite an attractive woman for her age… getting on for around fifty or so."

  "The physicist?" Murdoch said. "Something to do with the big fusion plant up on the coast. Burg-something… Burghead, wasn't it?"

  "Aye, Burghead. That's her. I think I'd like to bring her in on what we're doing here. She's done a lot of work on the kinds of things we were talking about this afternoon. I've known her for years. She's not the type who'd go blabbing her mouth off about it if we asked her to keep it under her hat for a while. Besides, she could be a big help."

  They were sitting with Lee and Cartland in a relaxed semicircle around the fire in the drawing room. It was late evening, a few days after the incident of the almost-broken jar. Since then Cartland had been fitting and testing the new components that he had brought back from Manchester, while Lee had worked with him on modifying the computer programs; Murdoch had been spending most of his time with Charles, reexamining the mathematical side of things.

  "What's Burghead?" Lee asked. He was sprawled full-length in the chair next to Murdoch, watching Maxwell turning somersaults over his feet in frenzied attempts to untie his shoelace. "Wasn't there something in the news a few months ago in the States about it?"

  "It's on the Moray Firth about forty miles north of here," Murdoch replied. "Big industrial complex, mainly petrochemicals, hydrogen electrolysis, and power generation. The news items were about the fusion plant they've been building there for the last few years—it's the world's biggest heavy-ion inertial system."

  "Working yet?" Lee asked, evidently interested.

  "Not yet," Charles supplied. "I think they're still testing parts of it. The last I heard was that it should go on-line sometime in the summer."

  "Seems a way-out place to build a fusion plant," Lee remarked.

  Cartland looked up from knocking the bowl of his pipe into an ashtray resting on the arm of his chair. "Don't judge the whole of Scotland by this part of it," he said. "The northeast was a boom area in the eighties with the off-shore oil. That was when all the refineries and petrochemicals sprang up, along with a few new generating plants to power it all—oil-fired, naturally. Then they found out that oil wasn't going to last as long as they'd thought it would."

  "Hence the fusion plant," Murdoch said.

  "Makes sense, I guess," Lee agreed.

  "The fusion plant itself is the result of a collaborative European effort," Charles told him. "It was funded and built by the European Fusion Consortium. You probably know about it. It includes the British, French, Germans, Italians… aw, and a few more. Lizzie Muir was in on all that when it was being planned and set up. She worked on fusion in Europe before the Consortium was formed."

  "So how did you get to know her?" Murdoch asked. "Bump into her at a conference somewhere?"

  "Och, no. I've known her from way back when I was in America. I was her tutor for a while at Stanford."

  "You're kidding."

  "I am not. It was in the eighties, just after your father moved from New York to California… around the time you were born, in fact. She'd got her doctorate at Edinburgh and come over to Stanford on a research fellowship." Charles stared into the fire and stroked his beard absently as he thought back. "Aye… That was where she met her husband, Herman… German chappie. They're still together… Live in a nice place just outside Elgin, up on the river Lossie." His eyes twinkled faintly about something, but he said nothing more.

  "I must get Herman out on a golf course when this wretched weather clears up," Cartland murmured. "We've been saying we'll have a round some day ever since I came here, and we still haven't done anything about it."

  Charles nodded abruptly to himself as if he had just made up his mind about something. "That's what we'll do," he declared. "We'll ask Lizzie to come down here for a day or two; there'll be lots to talk about." He looked across at Cartland. "She'll not believe any of it until she sees it for herself. When do you think we'll have the machine running again?"

  "It's going slowly, but we're getting there," Cartland said. "Lee's a big help. He must have learned to talk in binary before English."

  "What do you say then?" Charles asked. "Next Thursday perhaps?"

  "Make it Friday," Cartland suggested. "Then she can stay on for the weekend if she wants to. It'll give us an extra day too."

  "I'll call her right away then," Charles said. He leaned across the arm of his chair and lifted an ancient sound-only telephone from the lowermost of the bookshelves by the fireplace.

  Lee raised his eyebrows in surprise. "No pictures? I didn't think anybody still used those."

  Charles glanced up at him as he tapped the word MUIR into the array of miniature touchpads on the instrument and held the handset to his ear. "Have you ever had to answer one of those damn vi-sets when you were in your bathtub?" he asked.

  "No problem," Lee said, shrugging. "You just cut the video. It's—"

  Charles held up a hand for quiet as somebody came on the line. "Hello," Charles called into the phone. "Is that you, Lizzie?… Charlie Ross… Fine, of course. And how are Herman and the family?… Good… Really?… That's wonderful. Look, I—... Yes… Yes… Good ..." He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and muttered something while he raised his eyes momentarily toward the ceiling. The sound of indistinct chattering continued to come from the earpiece. Suddenly he said in a stronger voice, "Och, will ye stop witterin', woman. I've something important to tell ye." Murdoch grinned. Lee shifted his feet and winced audibly as Maxwell clung on through his sock. "Liz, how would you like to come down to Storbannon and spend a day or two with us? Ted and I have made some progress on the work we've been doing here. I'd like you to see it. I think you'd find it rather interesting… Oh, not now. It'd take far too long. That's why I'd like you to come down… I thought maybe next Friday… No, next Friday. You could stay over until the Saturday perhaps… Yes… I told you. I think you'll find it interesting… Very… Aye, I do… Well, go and see what he says then." Charles looked up at the faces listening around him. "Gone to ask Herman," he explained.

  "What does Herman do?" Lee asked Murdoch.

  "I don't know," Murdoch said. "I've never met him."

  "He used to develop computer algorithms," Cartland said. "Now he writes books about it. You'd get along fine with him, Lee."

  "Will he be coming here too?" Lee asked.

  Cartland shook his head. "Shouldn't think so. He was in the middle of another book last time I spoke to him. He gets a bit antisocial at times like that. El
izabeth told me once she thinks he's going to write a book one day called How to Lose Friends and Not Be Influenced by People." Then Charles began talking into the phone again.

  "It's all right, is it? Good… glad to get rid of you, is he? I see… " He chuckled at something. "You tell him from me that I'm way past being interested in any o' that nonsense… Disappointed be damned! Oh, and there's something else. We've got a couple of visitors here with us. Do you remember my grandson who I introduced you to in Edinburgh once?… Aye, Murdoch. He's over again. He's got a friend with him this time, the one I told you about… Yes." Charles looked up at Lee unconsciously as he listened to something. "Oh, a big chappie with red hair… " He frowned suddenly and raised his voice. "He's just another American. God damn it woman, what else do you want me to say? He's sitting right here… I know you're only teasing… I am not getting huffy… Nonsense… Very good. So we'll see you next Friday. Around noon it is then, for lunch."

  "Regards," Cartland sang out.

  "Ted sends his regards," Charles repeated. "Aye, to Herman too. Tell him he's welcome if he changes his mind and feels like a break… Well, you never know… You too, Lizzie. Bye now." He replaced the telephone on the bookshelf with a sigh.

  "Some woman," Lee commented.

  "Oh, that's just her way," Charles said. "She likes to tease a little now and then, but she's not so bad at all really. She has a good head on her shoulders, and that's what matters."

  Suddenly the stand, coal tongs, shovel, brush, and poker that formed the hearth set collapsed with a loud metallic crash. Maxwell streaked out from underneath the heap of wreckage, dashed under the nearest armchair, and about-faced to survey his latest accomplishment. Charles looked on dourly as Murdoch leaned forward to pick up the pieces. After a few seconds he stroked his beard thoughtfully and said, "Do you think, Ted, that when you've got the machine up and running, we could find a way of erasing that animal into some other poor, unsuspecting universe?"

  Chapter 8

  By the time they sat down to dinner, early in the evening of the Friday just over a week later, Elizabeth Muir appeared to have recovered from the shock of having a lifetime's unquestioned beliefs demolished before her eyes. The notion of being able to send information or any type of causal influence backward through time was something that she, as a physicist, had always dismissed out of hand. The whole of physics was based on the observation that causes never worked backward. If causality reversal was allowed, physics couldn't work. That physics did work said causality reversal was a myth. Therefore it could never be demonstrated. In the course of the afternoon, she had been obliged to rethink a lot of her convictions. She was still a long way from having answers to the things she had seen, but at least it no longer showed so much.

  The meal was served in what had once been part of the banquet hall of the original manor house, which had since been partitioned off to form the less spacious but more serviceable formal dining room. It was a high-ceilinged, stately room with walls paneled in dark oak that extended to its hammer-beam roof, affording a suitably dignified setting for the cut glass and gleaming silver that had been laid out for the occasion. Forty-odd years of living in America had made not one scrap of difference to the habits that Charles had formed in his youth, and he appeared in a dinner jacket with black tie; the others conceded as far as dark, conventional ties with white shirts. Elizabeth, knowing Charles's whims, wore a long, satiny, purple dress that she had brought for evening wear.

  Murdoch had met her only briefly during his last visit to Scotland, and his recollection of her had been vague, but in the course of the afternoon he had come to appreciate what Charles had meant when he described her as attractive for her age. Her hair was neatly styled in waves that held just a hint of orange, and her figure, though thickening slightly at the hips and bust, would not have dismayed a girl twenty years her junior. But what made her attractive had nothing to do with things physical; it was more her composure, and the elegant way in which she managed to speak and carry herself. Many women try vainly to cling to youth and glamor until long past the years when the effort becomes self-defeating; others, like Elizabeth, draw more from life than life can draw from them and learn how to work with nature, allowing girlish good looks to give way to something more subtle and far more enduring. Such women mature gracefully, but they never grow old. If he ever did get married, Murdoch couldn't help thinking as he watched Elizabeth across the dinner table, he hoped it would be to a wife about whom he would be able to think the same things when she was about to enter her second half-century.

  For propriety's sake the conversation made token reference to such things as where Lee was from and what he had done, the progress of the trials at Burghead, and Charles's experiences in America; but the events of the afternoon were bubbling too near the surface to be contained for long. Soon Elizabeth was describing the aspect of her own work that had led Charles to suppose that she might have something of value to contribute to the task ahead.

  "When I was working in France, I was part of a group looking into theories of entropy states and the general thermodynamics of plasmas. The natural rate of entropy increase in a closed system defines the flow of what is perceived as time. We were trying to develop a better insight to the synchronization between apparently uncoupled systems, in other words to explain how time manages to flow at the same rate in different parts of the universe; for example, how does a nuclear reaction inside a star 'know' how fast the same reaction is taking place inside another star or perhaps in a laboratory? Why do they all keep in step? It seemed to us that there was something that had simply been accepted as fact and taken for granted for too long." She paused to pick up her knife and fork to resume eating.

  Cartland nodded from the other side of the table. "I met a couple of chaps when I was in Hamburg a few years ago who said they were mixed up in something very similar," he said. "They were from the big physics research institute there. Otto… Gauerlick, or something like that, one of them was. Can't remember the other. Ever hear of him?"

  "Otto Gauerlicht!" Elizabeth exclaimed delightedly. "Yes, from the Wien Institute. He worked with us for a while before the Consortium was formed. How on earth did you come to meet him?"

  "It was just before I left the RAF," Cartland replied. "I did quite a bit of touring around Europe… liaison on spacecraft designs and so on. I got to know Otto through somebody at Farben who worked on propellants. Amazing, isn't it."

  "The world gets tinier," Elizabeth agreed. "Anyway, where was I? To cut a long story short, we ended up by deriving a set of mathematical expressions that interrelated entropy functions, quantum energy-states, and spacetime coordinates of quantum events. In particular, certain variables that could be interpreted as time and energy turned out to be covariant."

  "You mean there was some kind of equivalence relationship?" Lee asked, sounding surprised.

  "Not quite," Elizabeth answered. "But you could almost think of it that way. It meant that the universe could be represented by an ensemble of 'events,' each characterized by a set of energy states and spacetime numbers; nothing more. And in such a representation of the universe, conservation of mass-energy did not hold; it was replaced by a conservation of the product of that quantity with spacetime. By means of mathematical transforms, it was possible to transform one universe into another in which either quantity varied inversely with the other. If you made all the spatial variables constant, the spacetime functions reduced to pure time; so you could transform energy to time or vice versa. We had no idea what that meant, but it was fun playing games with the equations."

  "You're kidding," Lee said. "I've never heard of anything like that. They don't seem similar in any respect at all. There just isn't anything in common."

  "That was why I said it wasn't really correct to call it an equivalence relationship," Elizabeth said. "What it seemed to say was that energy could be extracted from the universe, which is where conventional conservation breaks down, and injected into another versio
n of that universe in which the time coordinates of all the 'events' were shifted by some amount. The more energy you transformed, the greater the time-shift would be." She looked around the table and shook her head in wonder. "If that was interpreted as taking place within the same universe, it seemed to say that energy could be transferred through time. We couldn't see any physical significance in it at all, and dismissed the whole thing as a theoretical curiosity like tachyons and negative mass. And that's what I've always believed—until I saw the machine downstairs."

  "Elizabeth showed me some of the mathematics a while ago," Charles commented. "I realized then that some of the expressions could be identified with parts of my own work. That was why I thought she'd be rather interested in what we're doing."

  "Rather interested?" Elizabeth echoed. "Charles, that must be the biggest understatement to date in this century. I'm overwhelmed, fascinated… completely hooked, to use our guests' parlance. In fact I'm even presumptuous enough to assume that I'm part of the team now. I am, aren't I, Charles? You wouldn't keep me in the dark about what happens next now that you've shown me this much. You wouldn't dare."

  "Och, you don't have to tell me that at all," Charles replied, raising his eyebrows. "It would be more than my life's worth and I know it." He stopped eating and placed his knife and fork down. His expression at once became more serious. "Of course you're part of the team now, Liz. I'm certain you could be a big help in making sense out of this whole thing. I'm assuming we'll be seeing a lot more of you down here now, whenever you can find some free time."

  "Well, I'm glad we see eye to eye on that, Charlie Ross. You'd have been in trouble if you'd said anything else." Elizabeth paused to give her mood a second or two to adjust to Charles's tone, then went on, "Very well, where do we go from here? What are your thoughts, Charles? Don't tell me you haven't been turning a few speculations over in your head in the last week."