Thrice upon a Time

by James P. Hogan

  "We don't really know for sure. We're helping Grandpa with some of his work for a while. Oh, this is Lee, who's over with me from the States. And this is Anne, who we've just bumped into… or rather our cat did."

  "My pleasure," the manager said as they nodded in turn. "I've only known Sir Charles since he came back to Scotland, you understand. A grand man he is… a grand man. Remember me to him when you get back—Andrew McKenzie from Kingussie, tell him. He'll know who you mean."

  "We sure will," Murdoch promised. He inclined his head in the direction of his AmEx card, still protruding from the slot in the terminal. "Are you finished with that?" McKenzie extracted the card, thrust it back into Murdoch's hand, and stabbed his finger at a button on the panel beside the screen. The word VOID appeared superposed in red across the details being displayed.

  Murdoch started to protest, but McKenzie brushed the words aside with a brisk wave of his hand. "I'll not listen, and that's the end of it," he declared. His voice left no room for argument. "I'm Pamela McKenzie's uncle, you see. It's the least I can do for the Rosses of Glenmoroch."

  Murdoch and Lee exchanged puzzled looks. "Sorry, I'm not with you," Murdoch said. "Who's Pamela McKenzie, apart from being your niece?"

  "Oh, I see. They didn't tell you about that, eh." McKenzie nodded to himself. "Ask somebody to tell you about it when you get back to Storbannon. Ask them to tell you about Pamela McKenzie."

  They all left the store together and stopped to deposit Anne's packages in her car, a fairly new-looking Audi lowline, silver-blue metallic with black trim, which turned out to be parked just a few spaces ahead of Murdoch's. Then they found a quaint olde-worlde tea house tucked away in one of the side-streets off the main thoroughfare, and were soon settled at a secluded corner table with a heaped plate of sandwiches and currant buns, while a subdued background of Strauss polkas played cheerfully from somewhere among plant pots and timber beams up near the ceiling.

  Her name was Anne Patterson. She was originally from Dundee but had spent many of her earlier years at school in England, which accounted for her almost complete lack of a Scottish accent. As Murdoch listened to her speaking at greater length, however, he began to detect a slight lilt that added an undertone of texture to her voice that made her even more fascinating. She was single and lived alone. Nairn was a pleasant little town, she found, with plenty of variety to offer without being so large as to become overpowering. Furthermore it was conveniently close to where she worked—the fusion plant at a place called Burghead, about forty miles farther north, as a junior doctor and assistant to the Head of the Medical Department.

  "Burghead!" Murdoch exclaimed when she told them this. "Can you beat that? The world gets smaller every day."

  "Do you know it, then?" Anne asked, sounding slightly surprised.

  "We know of it," Lee said.

  Murdoch passed on. "Do you know somebody there called Muir—Dr. Elizabeth Muir?"

  "Of course. She's very well known there. She's the Principal Physicist. I take it she's an acquaintance of yours."

  "She's an old friend of my grandfather's. In fact she's staying with us for the weekend right now. Incredible, isn't it."

  Lee shook his head disbelieving. "It seems like nobody can move in this country without bumping into somebody they know. That oughta keep a guy on the straight and narrow."

  "They all seem to know Murdoch's grandfather anyway," Anne remarked. "Sir Charles, wasn't it?" She said it matter-of-factly, without any trace of deference or awe. This at once made Murdoch feel more at ease, and he was certain she had done it intentionally; he wanted to he just Murdoch Ross, not the grandson of somebody famous.

  "Yes," Murdoch replied, in a way that he hoped was off-hand but not enough so to sound careless. Anne continued looking at him over the rim of her cup, her eyebrows half raised. In one expression she was able to convey that she was naturally interested but didn't want to appear inquisitive. "He's a scientist," Murdoch went on. "A theoretical physicist. He spent most of his life in the U.S.A. which is how I come to be an American. He retired about three years ago and moved back to Scotland."

  "He sounds very interesting. What kind of work does he do now?"

  "Oh… private research. Particle phenomena… connected with communications mainly."

  "You must be physicists too then," Anne said, shifting her eyes from Murdoch to Lee then back again. "You told Mr. McKenzie that you were over here helping him with his work."

  "I guess we are… sort of," Lee said with a shrug.

  "Sort of?"

  "By inclination anyhow," Murdoch said. "But the world only seems to have room for graybeards, bomb-freaks, and aspiring executives. So what can you do?"

  "I see," Anne said simply. Murdoch had the feeling that she did see—exactly; there was no need to explain further. "So what do you do?" she asked. "Apart from kidnap kittens."

  "For the last couple of years we've been on our own," Murdoch told her. "I suppose a theoretical consultancy would be the best way to describe it. We think about other people's problems for a price, and maybe solve them for a bigger price."

  "That's one way of getting paid without being owned by anybody, I suppose," Anne remarked. Her radar was uncanny. Again there was no need to elaborate; she already understood all there was to be said. "Who's looking after the business while you two are over here?" she asked.

  "Actually we pretty well wrapped it up about six months ago," Murdoch said. "We were looking at some other possibilities in New York when my grandpa asked us to come over." He shrugged and showed his empty palms. "So here we are."

  "No plans for what happens next?"

  "Guess not. It all depends on the winds and the tide." Murdoch refilled his cup from the pot of tea that had come with the sandwiches.

  "How about you?" Lee asked her. "Where do you plan on going after Burghead? Anything in particular in mind?"

  Anne emitted an almost inaudible sigh and shrugged, more with her eyebrows than her body. "I'm hoping to qualify as a specialist in nuclear medicine while I'm there. After that? I don't know. I might go abroad somewhere… America possibly."

  "No ties here at all, huh?" Lee said.

  "Not really."

  "What about your folks in Dundee?" Murdoch asked.

  "Oh, I left there a long time ago. We get along well enough, but"—she paused just long enough to avoid sounding indelicate—"we really don't have all that much in common. They're content enough in their own kind of world, if you know what I mean." She made it a plain statement of fact with no attempt at any implied apology; at the same time, her eyes asked why there should be any.

  She was another odd-one-out of the family, Murdoch realized. They were all three of them the same: Three young people adrift on life with supplies for a voyage of eighty-odd years, but with no port singling itself out on the charts as an obvious destination. The major trade routes were well marked, but exactly what the trade was that took place at their ends was obscure. Eighty years of battling storms could be a long time to spend discovering that a cargo was valueless.

  They talked for a while longer about nothing in particular. Anne's manner throughout was pleasant and not unfriendly, but there was a mild, vaguely defined reserve beneath her conversational exterior—a studied aloofness that seemed to define an invisible boundary of familiarity beyond which strangers were not invited. Murdoch was too intrigued by her to allow her to walk out of his life as suddenly as she had walked in, but at the same time he sensed a need for caution. So, when at last the time came for them to leave, he forced his voice to remain casual and said simply, "We'll all have to get together again sometime. Would you like us to give you a call if we wind up near Nairn?"

  "You could," Anne replied. It was simply a statement of the fact. "My number's in the directory. It's the only Patterson with Anne spelled in full." As she spoke, Murdoch watched for any hint of eagerness in her response, but her expression and her eyes gave away nothing. It made her all the more fascinating, and he won
dered for a moment if it was deliberate. And then he remembered that he had already decided she was the kind of person who never uttered a word or made a gesture that wasn't deliberate.

  The sun had dipped behind banks of sullen, wet-looking clouds that were moving in from the west by the time they topped the pass on the shoulder of Ben Moroch and began the descent into the glen. Lee was idly watching the road ahead while Maxwell perched unsteadily on his shoulder, hypnotized by the views sliding past the window. Every now and again Lee turned his head to study Murdoch, who had been unusually quiet all the way from Kingussie.

  "Quite a gal," Lee remarked at last after an exceptionally long silence.

  "Uh huh."

  "Classy. Don't see a lot of that around these days."

  "Uh uh."

  Lee studied his fingernails for a second, then said, "Just imagine, the world's biggest heavy-ion fusion plant. You don't get a chance to see that every day."

  "Lee, what are you talking about?"

  "Oh, just a thought… It occurred to me that if you happen to know the Principal Physicist of a place like that, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to get yourself a tour." He paused as Murdoch's head swung round sharply, then went on in a matter-of-fact voice, "Especially for people who are physicists themselves, and even more especially if they happen to have worked on fusion."

  "You're right," Murdoch said. "We've got a lot of work to do, but, aw hell… everybody has to have a break once in a while. We ought to talk to Elizabeth."

  "Yeah. Just what I was thinking," Lee agreed, nodding his head slowly.

  Chapter 10

  Virtually any scientifically conducted experiment can, at least ideally, be reduced to two broad steps: first, determining the variables that affect the outcome of the experiment; second, setting up conditions such that one of the variables at a time may be altered while the rest are kept constant. From the data obtained in this way the experimenter can, with luck, begin constructing a picture of which variables matter, in what way and to what degree they matter, and which don't.

  In the case of the proposed time-communication experiments there were essentially three variables to be considered: the data content of the signal sent, the instant in time that the signal was sent from, and the instant it was sent to. An additional complication was that all three of these factors were themselves consequences of decisions made at some point or other in somebody's mind; exactly when, and in what manner, the results of such decisions became accessible to observation was something that was still far from clear.

  To simplify as far as possible the task of differentiating the effects of all these influences, the team agreed upon a schedule of tests that fell into two broad phases. Each phase would consist of transmitting a series of signals containing data of a particular type: phase one, determinate data; phase two, randomly generated data. For the first series of tests, the signals sent would comprise the results of complex algorithms run on the computer. These results would thus be effectively determined from the moment the schedule was fixed and long before the tests actually came to be performed; because of the complexity of the algorithms selected, however, nobody would have any way of knowing in advance what the results would be. The second series of tests would use signals that advised the outcomes of events decided randomly, such as random-number generating programs run on the computer, tossings of coins, or arbitrary choices and decisions made on the spur of the moment by the people involved. By combining the results of these tests, the team hoped to make at least a start in finding out more about the role played by the elusive elements of chance and free will.

  That covered the data content of the signals, but still left the two other variables that had been singled out for investigation: the times of transmission and reception. To isolate the effects of these, the team decided to divide each of the phases into two groups of tests, with one of the quantities being varied and the other held constant in each group. The first group in each of the phases would comprise tests to study the effect of varying the transmission time of a signal. The computer would wait for an incoming signal from the future, determine the moment in time from which it had been sent, add one second to that time, and then transmit a different signal after the one-second-extended period had elapsed. This process should, the team reasoned, generate a whole series of loops back, all ''aimed at'' the same instant in the past but transmitted from a series of points advancing progressively at one-second increments into the future. Then they would repeat the whole procedure, but this time with the loops shortening by one second with each repetition instead of lengthening. After that, for the second group of each phase, they would go through the whole thing again, this time keeping the time of transmission constant and varying the time of reception.

  To eliminate, or at least minimize, the human element, the team agreed to adhere rigidly to the schedule once it had been worked out in detail, regardless of what took place thereafter. Also, to avoid the risk of unnecessary complications, they made a rule forbidding any further dialogues with past or future selves, or the transmitting of anything at all that was not specified in the schedule. The matter was already complicated enough.

  The computer would be programmed to record every measurable quantity relating to every test. Then analysis would begin of the data left imprinted on the final timeline preserved at the end of it all. From this analysis the team hoped to gather more clues to assist them untangle which events were erased by what and under what conditions, and thus gain more of an insight to the workings of the strange mechanics that governed the feedback loops through time.

  Murdoch was on his way through the dining room to rejoin the others in the library when he stopped for a moment to gaze out through the window overlooking the rear courtyard. It was around midafternoon on Sunday. The steady drizzle that had arrived during the night had continued unabated through the day to turn the snow covering the ground into a sea of dreary, watery slush. Behind him, Robert and Morna were preparing the table for dinner later that evening.

  "Looks lousy out," Murdoch threw back over his shoulder. "I think I've figured out why the Scots are crazy."

  "And why would that be?" Robert's voice asked from somewhere behind him.

  "They're descended from crazy ancestors. Who in their right minds would have settled in a mess like this?"

  "Well, if it's crazy we are, then you're no better yourself," Morna declared. "You're as much a Scot at heart as Sir Charles, American mother or not."

  A few seconds passed. "Are the others still talking in the library?" Robert asked. "Ye've all been at it since first thing this morning, and through most of yesterday too. There must be something very important happening. Mr. Cartland seemed very excited about something at breakfast, I noticed."

  "Nothing that'll change the world," Murdoch replied. He turned his back to the window and moved nearer the center of the room. "It's starting to look as if some things might work the way Grandpa's theories have been predicting for a while. Ted's just excitable by nature. I don't expect any revolutions." As he said it, Murdoch had the fleeting thought that, if things worked out the way he was beginning to suspect they might, one day that last sentence could well qualify as the biggest lie told in history.

  "There was something I meant to ask you," Murdoch went on, more to change the subject than anything else. "Who is Pamela McKenzie?"

  "Have you not heard about her?" Morna asked, sounding surprised. "I'd have thought Sir Charles would have told you. There, isn't that just like him to go not mentioning a word of it." Murdoch looked inquiringly at Robert.

  "She's a young lass from just outside of Kingussie who was working here at Storbannon for a while last winter," Robert said. He shook his head grimly. "Oh, last winter was a bad one, and that's for sure. A lot of snow we had. Some of the passes up in the hills were closed for weeks."

  "Yes?" Murdoch said.

  "Pamela was taken sick all of a sudden… something quite serious inside, it was. They got her to the hospita
l just outside of Kingussie, but then a storm broke out so they decided to operate there instead of taking her up to Inverness. She started hemorrhaging, I'm told, and they needed to get some kind of special blood sent down in a hurry. The ambulances were grounded so they sent it down in a police car, but the road from Inverness was so bad that it was touch-and-go whether or not it would get through. But anyhow it did, and everything turned out well." Robert paused from laying out the silver and looked up. "It was only afterward we found out that Mr. Cartland had talked to his RAF friends in the base up at Lossiemouth and arranged for them to have an all-weather rescue team standing by ready to pick up an extra supply from Inverness and bring it down to Kingussie if the police didn't make it. He tried to make out as if it was nothing at all, but there are a lot of folk around here who'll not forget in a hurry what he did."

  "I see ... " Murdoch said slowly. "That explains a lot."

  "Where did you hear about Pamela?" Morna asked. "She's been gone from Storbannon a while now."

  "We were talking to a guy in Kingussie who said he was her uncle."

  "Oh, that'll be Andy McKenzie, I'll be bound," Robert said. "Runs the glassware shop on the high street."

  "That's him. Bald head. Wears glasses."

  "Was that where you had the accident with that wee devil of a kitten then?" Morna asked.

  "That's right. When McKenzie found out where we were from, he wouldn't—" Murdoch's voice broke off as he heard the library door open and a sudden flood of voices pour into the hallway outside. "Excuse me," he said. "I'd better go see what's happening."

  The others were just coming out to stretch their legs and break for coffee.

  Elizabeth caught sight of Murdoch and detached herself from the group to walk over to him. "Change of plan," she announced. "Your wicked grandfather has persuaded me to stay for dinner. I'll be leaving afterwards instead."

  "Unless he's managed to talk you into making it a week by then," Murdoch said with a grin.