“Say again, Mac?”
“Gillie, I’ve tried it. I landed in the middle of a riot.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I never kid. I damn near got trampled. There was a labor demonstration. At least that’s what it looked like. People carrying signs, making speeches. Just as I got there, a bomb went off. In the back of the crowd somewhere. Cops waded in, swinging sticks. It was pretty grim. But they had handlebar mustaches. And old-time uniforms.” He took a deep breath. “We were outside somewhere. In the street.” His eyes focused behind me. “Goddamnit, Gillie, I’ve done it. I was really there.”
“Where? Where were you?”
“Maybe it was the Haymarket Riot. I was on Jefferson Street, and that’s where it happened. I spent the day at the library trying to pin it down.”
“The Haymarket Riot? Why would you go there?”
“I was trying to get to the Scopes Monkey Trial.” He shrugged. “I missed, but what difference does it make?” His eyes gleamed. “I’ve done it.” He swept up a half-full beer can and heaved it across the lab. “I have goddamn done it!”
“Show me,” I said.
He smiled. My pleasure. “That’s why you’re here. How would you like to see Our American Cousin on the night?”
I stared at him.
He handed me another Coors—it was mine that had gone for a ride—stepped over a snarl of cables, turned on a couple of computers and opened a closet. Status lamps glowed, and columns of numbers appeared on the monitors. “You’ll need these.” He tossed me some clothes. “We don’t want to be conspicuous.”
“I think I’d prefer to see him at Gettysburg.”
“Oh.” He looked annoyed. “I could arrange that, but I’d have to recalibrate. It would take a couple of days.” The clothes were right out of Gone With the Wind. He produced a second set for himself.
“I don’t think they’ll fit,” I said.
“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” He jabbed at a keyboard. A legend appeared on one of the monitors: TEMPORAL INTERLOCK GREEN. “The heart of the system.” He indicated a black box with two alternately flashing red mode lamps. “It’s the Transdimensional Interface. The TDI.” He put a hand on the polished surface. “It synchronizes power applications with field angles—”
I let him talk, understanding none of it. I was an old friend of McHugh’s, which is why I was there. But I was no physicist. Not that you had to be to understand that the past is irrevocable. While he rambled on, I climbed reluctantly into the clothes he provided.
The twin lamps blinked furiously, slowed, changed to amber, and came gradually to a steady, bright green.
“The energy field will be established along the nexus,” he said. “We should arrive about a mile and a half outside D.C., at nine in the morning, local time. That’ll allow us to have dinner at the Congress Inn and travel to the theater at our leisure.”
His fingers danced across the keyboard. Relays clicked, and somewhere in the walls power began to build. A splinter of white light appeared in the center of the torus. It brightened, lengthened, rotated. “Don’t look at it,” McHugh said. I turned away.
“You ready?” he asked.
I was pulling on a shoe. “I guess.”
The floor trembled. Windows rattled, a few index cards fluttered off a shelf, a row of black binders fell one by one out of a bookcase. “Any second now, Gillie.”
The general clatter intensified until I thought the building would come down on us. It ended in a loud electrical bang and a burst of sunlight. I could smell ozone. McHugh threw up an arm to shield his eyes. A final binder tottered and crashed. Then a blast of wind knocked me off my feet and across the mustard-colored divan. I went down in a hurricane of printouts, pencils, paper clips, and beer cans. Everything was being sucked into the torus. A chair fell over and began to slide across the floor. Windows exploded; the curtains flapped wildly. I grabbed hold of the divan.
A rectangular piece of clear sky appeared in the torus and began to expand. Everything not bolted down, books, index cards, monitors, you name it, was being blown through. “Got to find a better way to do this,” McHugh shouted. He almost went too.
My senses rotated. I was looking straight down. Like out of a plane. I watched the stream of Mac’s belongings drop toward a forest far below. A river ran through the forest. And in the distance, I could see green and gold squares of cultivated land. Something with feathers flapped in through a window, squawking, banged into a wall, and went out through the nexus.
The land was unbroken by highways or automobile traffic. But I saw a familiar white dome, gleaming in the sunlight.
“Gillie—!” He jabbed wildly in the direction of the dome. “Look. I told you—”
“Mac,” I howled. “What the hell’s going on?”
“We’re here, goddamnit. Now what do you say?” He laughed and his eyes watered. He didn’t seem to notice that the only thing between him and oblivion was the desk he was hanging onto.
“We must be at ten thousand feet, Mac. How do I close it?” He couldn’t hear me. But I spotted what looked like the main power cord. I picked it up and yanked it out of the wall.
“You got one thing right,” I told him as the windstorm subsided. “We were about a mile and a half from D.C. Straight up.”
“Ready?” He stood beside the TDI. It was about two weeks after the first attempt.
“Should we wear seatbelts?”
He grinned. Very much the man in charge. “Have your little joke. But the adjustments will work. Don’t worry. We’ll be at ground level this time.” The twin mode lamps on the TDI went to green.
“Same destination?”
“Of course.” He hovered over the computer. “Ready?”
I nodded, positioning myself near the divan.
He touched the keyboard and this time a piece of darkness appeared in the torus. I tightened my grip. We got the electrical effects again and the ozone. And the sudden intoxicating bite of salt air. The strong winds were gone. “Caused by the difference in air pressure,” he said. “All we had to do was get to ground level.”
It was night on the other side of the torus. A lovely evening, broad dark sea, blazing constellations, and a lighthouse. A quarter moon floated just above the horizon. McHugh strolled over to the torus and stood gazing out across the scene. Surf boomed, and a line of white water appeared. “I guess we missed D.C.,” he said.
I felt spray.
A large wave roared into the room. McHugh howled and ran for the computer. Water boiled around the walls, tossed the furniture about, smashed the windows. And shorted the power.
The hole collapsed.
“Here we go.” Mac gave me a thumbs up. “This time we’ve got it right.” There was no smile now, just jaws set and steely eyes straight ahead.
Everything was bolted down. The lab had been cleared of all furniture and nonessentials. I wondered whether we hadn’t been lucky. What would have happened if the torus had opened in the depths of the ocean? Or under ten thousand feet of rock? “Mac,” I said, “maybe we should forget it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean it. I get the feeling somebody’s trying to tell us something.”
McHugh pulled on his waistcoat and bent over a display. “Systems fully charged. We’re all set, Gillie. You want to do the honors?”
Reluctantly, I walked over to the TDI, looked at him, looked at the torus. Looked at the keyboard. It was a new computer. He was trying to be casual, but it only made him look more rattled.
I pushed the button.
This time we got ground-level summer. Green meadows stretched toward a nearby line of wooded hills. Goldenrod, thistles, and black-eyed susans covered the fields. Afternoon heat invaded the lab. The air conditioner kicked in with a thump.
“At last.” McHugh gazed through the hole. “Eighteen sixty-five.” For a long time he didn’t move. “Now, listen, Gillie: the nexus will close ten minutes after w
e go through. But it will open for ten minutes every twelve hours until someone shuts it down. Okay? Make sure you remember where we are. In case you have to find your own way back.”
Without another word he stepped through. His image flickered, as if in a heat wave. On the other side, he raised a fist in triumph and gazed around. “Come on, Gillie.” He produced a bottle and two glasses, filled them, and held one out for me.
I hesitated.
“It’s okay,” he said.
I stepped across. The air got warm. It was thick with the drowsy buzz of insects. I took the glass. “To you, Mac.”
McHugh loosened his tie. “To the Creator, who has given us a universe with such marvellous possibilities.”
The afternoon smelled vaguely of sulfur. I took my vest off. We stood in a valley on an open field enclosed by wooded ridges. The sky was hazy and dark. Nearby a flag fluttered from a wooden gate. Occasional farm buildings were enclosed by fences and stone walls. I saw a wagon in one of the farmyards. A dirt road wandered through the center of the valley.
The buildings, the fields, the road, were all empty.
I fell in beside McHugh and we started to walk, in no particular direction. “Where is everybody?” I asked.
He ignored the question.
I mopped my brow. “It must be July or August. It’s certainly not April.”
He nodded, but he was satisfied to have arrived somewhere. Anywhere.
“It’s quiet,” he said.
The landscape was vaguely familiar, I had seen these ridges before.
Behind us, the torus hovered, McHugh’s computer-laden lab vivid against the rolling hills. “Maybe,” I said, “we should go back.”
He removed his jacket. “You go back if you want to, Gillie.” He fished his watch out of a pocket, looked at the sun, and shrugged. “Let’s make it three o’clock.” He set and wound the time piece.
I looked at the flag. It was the national colors, and I was trying to count stars when McHugh’s breathing changed. He was staring over my shoulder, back toward the torus, toward the line of hills behind it.
“What’s wrong, Mac?”
His lab still floated serenely in the afternoon.
“The woods,” he said. “Behind the nexus.”
Gray shadows moved among the trees. The sun struck metal.
My God. “What’s going on?” asked McHugh. “Where are we?”
A bugle call split the afternoon.
A line of men came out in oiled precision. Bayonets gleaming. And a second line. And a third. They wore gray uniforms.
Drums rolled. The troops wheeled smartly into line and started quickstep toward us.
Behind them, on the hilltops, a gun roared. Something screamed overhead. I watched it tear across the sky and explode on the opposite ridge. And I got a good look at the standards. “Son of a bitch, Mac. It’s the 24th Virginia.”
I watched them coming up behind the torus. They maintained drill order, accompanied by officers with drawn swords on horseback. They seemed unaware of the device, which I suspected was invisible from the rear. There were thousands of troops.
I was getting a bad feeling. “Over there,” I said. “The 7th Virginia. And up the line will be the 11th. My God.” I was overwhelmed by the majesty of it. “You’re right, Mac. We’re here. Son of a bitch.”
“Gillie, we’re where?”
More missiles tore overhead. A long orchestrated crescendo shook the top of the ridge that had been hit a moment before. More projectiles raced in the opposite direction. “Down!” I screamed and threw myself on my belly and covered my head.
Moments later the ground erupted. Holes were blown in the ranks of the advancing men. Others hurried to fill the spaces. “This is Kemper’s Brigade,” I said. Mac was staring at me, not comprehending. “You’ve been dumped on again, Mac.” I was getting to my feet. “We’ve got to get away from here.”
The cannons were deafening. A gap was torn in the line of advancing troops, but they came on. Silent. Relentless. Into the jaws. Their generals didn’t understand yet that war had changed. That you could no longer charge fixed positions.
“Stay down,” screamed McHugh. “We’ll wait it out.”
“No. We can’t wait this one out. We’ve got to get back before the hole closes.”
“You’re crazy. You’ll get killed.”
“Mac, we won’t survive out here. You know what that is back there? It’s Seminary Ridge.”
McHugh was close to my ear but he had to shout anyway. “So what?”
“Pickett’s Charge. We’re in the middle of Pickett’s Charge.”
We got back moments before a cannonball roared into the lab, blew three walls apart, collapsed the front porch, and nailed Harvey Keating’s Toyota, which was parked in his driveway.
The equipment was in ruins again.
Nevertheless, McHugh was exultant. “You see? It does work.”
“Mac, you’ve made four attempts now. All four have been disasters.”
“But we’re learning. We’re getting better. You have to expect a few problems.” He looked at me for reassurance. “We know how to travel.”
“That’s what scares me.” I pointed at the wreckage. “What are the odds against accidentally arriving at the exact time and place of a major event?”
He shrugged. “Slim, I would think.”
“You’ve done it twice.”
I knew he wouldn’t quit, though. He bought more equipment and went back to work. “Making improvements,” he told me. A few weeks later he was ready to try again, and he issued another invitation. “I want to say hello to Custer.” I told him no thanks. He was disappointed in me.
But hell, I can take a hint.
So I wasn’t too surprised when his newspapers started piling up. I waited a couple of days before breaking in.
The house was empty.
In the lab, his equipment was intact. Except for the TDI: A stone-tipped feathered arrow jutted from its polished black surface. It had lodged right between the mode lamps.
DEAD IN THE WATER
Immortality?” I asked.
Armistead shook his head. “No. Not immortality. The child would not live forever. Nothing lives forever. He, or she, would be subject to accident, war, act of God, even a sufficiently unpredictable virus.” He looked at me across the vast expanse of his desk and refilled his coffee cup. “Are you sure you won’t have some, Catherine?”
“No. None, thank you. Please go on.”
“All I can promise is that he would have a far stronger immune system than you or I, and that his cells will continue to divide indefinitely. Which is to say he will not age. His body will not betray him. At least at any time within the foreseeable future.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Armistead would have been a man of amiable appearance. He reminded her of her father, white hair that refused to lie flat, warm brown eyes, genuine smile. His large ears and tendency to bob his head for emphasis suggested her Bassett hound, Toby. Yet the circumstances were most certainly not ordinary. Jeremy Armistead had it within his power to grant the most extraordinary boon.
“How much?” I asked.
He opened a folder but didn’t look at it. “The program is partially underwritten by the Foundation or it would cost a great deal more than it does.” He inhaled, glanced out through his French windows at the parking lot, where TV trucks recorded demonstrators carrying signs warning that Project Sunrise was an affront to Man and God. “One hundred thousand,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a bargain.”
It was a lot of money. But we could manage it. “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s not unreasonable. If it works. What sort of guarantee is there?”
“Unfortunately I can assure you only that we’ll use appropriate methods. That there will be no negligence.” He looked puzzled. “What sort of guarantee would you wish?”
“That at fifty he will still look twenty-five.”
“Mrs. Cumberland, I’ll be honest with you. W
e’re just now beginning to use this method with humans. The technique has worked quite well with a number of mammals, and we can see no reason it will not work equally well with children. We could have waited and not made it available until we’d tried it out on some test subjects, but in that case you’d have to be patient for several decades. We have produced more than six hundred children so far, they have all tested as we expected, and none has shown any indication of defects or unexpected side effects. Of course, it is still very early in the process.”
Outside, there was a burst of profanity.
He looked steadily at me. “We can’t offer a formal guarantee of success. But it will work.”
It was all very new to me, a concept I’d never thought much about until I’d watched a Biolab representative on the Morley Pinkston show earlier that month. Hal didn’t like the idea much when I suggested we look into it. And I didn’t know how I felt. But two of our neighbors buried a six-year-old recently, dead of an unpronounceable disease of the central nervous system.
“No. It wouldn’t have happened to one of our children,” Armistead said when I brought it up. “We don’t know of any pathogens that would constitute a threat to our infants. Assuming of course that no one would deliberately introduce a hefty supply directly into the bloodstream. I wouldn’t want to mislead you.”
“No. Of course not.”
“There are limits to what we can achieve.”
“Yes. I understand.” The light in the windows was becoming gray. It was going to rain. “But the child would be sterile.” He nodded. “There’s no choice in the matter. It’s part of the licensing agreement we have with the authorities. Population being what it is, and so forth. If people are going to stop dying, we must think about birth rates.”
I nodded.
“After all,” he continued, “those who benefit by the procedure must be willing to act responsibly.”
My child would never know what it meant to have a child of his own. How would he—she—react to that? What would he think of me?
“However, your offspring would have superior physical and mental capabilities. We would also, uh, tweak the happiness gene. Barring mistreatment in the natural environment, he would be far more stable emotionally than the average person, and consequently more able to deal with his, ah, differences.” He looked down at the folder. “You have no children, is that correct?”
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 56