“ ‘Sounds of strong men struggling with a word,’ ” Cleve murmured. They were both fond of quotation; but it took Lanroyd a moment to place this muzzily as Belloc. “Because the power source doesn’t have to be external. We’ve been developing the internal sources. How can I regularly beat you at craps?”
“Psychokinesis,” Lanroyd said, and just made it.
“Exactly. But nobody ever thought of trying the effect of PK power on temporomagnetic fields before. And it works and the Hasselfarb Equations don’t apply!”
“You’ve done it?”
“Little trips. Nothing spectacular. Tiny experiments. But—and this, old boy, is the damnedest part—there’s every indication that PK can rotate the temporo-magnetic stasis!”
“That’s nice,” said Lanroyd vaguely.
“No, of course. You don’t understand. My fault. Sorry, Peter. What I mean is this: We can not only travel in time; we can rotate into another, an alternate time. A world of If.”
Lanroyd started to drink, then abruptly choked. Gulping and gasping, he eyed in turn the TV set, the window stickers and Cleve. “If. . .” he said.
Cleve’s eyes made the same route, then focused on Lanroyd. “What we are looking at each other with,” he said softly, “is a wild surmise.”
From the journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Mon Nov 12 84: So I have the worst hangover in Alameda County, & we lost to UCLA Sat by 3 field goals, & the American Party takes over next Jan; but it’s still a wonderful world.
Or rather it’s a wonderful universe, continuum, whatsit, that includes both this world & the possibility of shifting to a brighter alternate.
I got through the week somehow after Black Tue. I even made reasonablesounding non-subversive noises in front of my classes. Then all week-end, except for watching the game (in the quaint expectation that Cal’s sure victory wd lift our spirits), Stu Cleve & I worked.
I never thought I’d be a willing lab assistant to a psionicist. But we want to keep this idea secret. God knows what a good Am Party boy on the faculty (Daniels, for inst) wd think of people who prefer an alternate victory. So I’m Cleve’s factotum & busbar-boy & I don’t understand a damned thing I’m doing but—
It works.
The movement in time anyway. Chronokinesis, Cleve calls it, or CK for short. CK . . . PK . . . sound like a bunch of executives initialing each other. Cleve’s achieved short CK. Hasn’t dared try rotation yet. Or taking me with him. But he’s sweating on my “psionic potential.” Maybe with some results: I lost only 2 bucks in a 2 hour crap game last night. And got so gleeful about my ps pot that I got me this hangover.
Anyway, I know what I’m doing. I’m resigning fr the County Committee at tomorrow’s meeting. No point futzing around w politics any more. Opposition Party has as much chance under the Senator as it did in pre-war Russia. And I’ve got something else to focus on.
I spent all my non-working time in politics because (no matter what my analyst might say if I had one) I wanted, in the phrase that’s true the way only corn can be, I wanted to make a better world. All right; now I can really do it, in a way I never dreamed of.
CK . . . PK . . . OK!
Tue Dec 11: Almost a month since I wrote a word here. Too damned magnificently full a month to try to synopsize here. Anyway it’s all down in Cleve’s records. Main point is development of my psionic potential (Cleve says anybody can do it, with enough belief & drive—wh is why Psionics Dept & Psych Dept aren’t speaking. Psych claims PK, if it exists wh they aren’t too eager to grant even now, is a mutant trait. OK so maybe I’m a mutant. Still . . .
Today I made my first CK. Chronokinesis to you, old boy. Time travel to you, you dope. All right, so it was only 10 min. So nothing happened, not even an eentsy-weentsy paradox. But I did it; & when we go, Cleve & I can go together.
So damned excited I forgot to close parenth above. Fine state of affairs. So:)
Sun Dec 30: Used to really keep me a journal. Full of fascinating facts & political gossip. Now nothing but highpoints, apptly. OK: latest highpoint:
Sufficient PK power can rotate the field.
Cleve never succeeded by himself. Now I’m good enough to work with him. And together . . .
He picked a simple one. Purely at random, when he thought we were ready. We’d knocked off work & had some scrambled eggs. 1 egg was a little bad, & the whole mess was awful. Obviously some alternate in wh egg was not bad. So we went back (CK) to 1 p m just before Cleve bought eggs, & we (how the hell to put it?) we . . . worked. Damnedest sensation. Turns you inside out & then outside in again. If that makes sense.
We bought the eggs, spent the same aft working as before, knocked off work, had some scrambled eggs . . . delicious!
Most significant damned egg-breaking since Columbus!
Sun Jan 20 85: This is the day.
Inauguration Day. Funny to have it on a Sun. Hasn’t been since 57. Cleve asked me what’s the inaugural augury. Told him the odds were even. Monroe’s 2d Inaug was a Sun . . . & so was Zachary Taylor’s 1st & only, wh landed us w Fillmore.
We’ve been ready for a week. Waited till today just to hear the Senator get himself inaugurated. 1st beginning of the world we’ll never know.
TV’s on. There the smug bastard is. Pride & ruin of 200,000,000 people.
“Americans!”
Get that. Not “fellow Americans . . .”
“Americans! You have called me in clarion tones & I shall answer!”
Here it comes, all of it. “. . . my discredited adversaries . . .” “. . . strength, not in union, but in unity . . .” “. . . as you have empowered me to root out these . . .”
The one-party system, the one-system state, the one-man party-systemstate . . .
Had enough, Stu? (Hist slogan current ca 48) OK: let’s work!
Damn! Look what this pencil did while I was turning inside out & outside in again. (Note: Articles in contact w body move in CK. For reasons cf Cleve’s notebooks.) Date is now
Tue Nov 6 84: TV’s on. Same cheerful commentator:
“. . . Yessir, it’s 1 of the greatest landslides in American history. 524 electoral votes from 45 states, to 69 electoral votes from 5 states, all Southern, as the experts predicted. I’ll repeat: That’s 524 electoral votes for the Judge . . .”
We’ve done it. We’re there . . . then . . . whatever the hell the word is. I’m the first politician in history who ever made the people vote right against their own judgment!
Now, in this brighter better world where the basic tenets of American democracy were safe, there was no nonsense about Lanroyd’s resigning from politics. There was too much to do. First of all a thorough job of party reorganization before the Inauguration. There were a few, even on the County and State Central Committees of the Free Democratic Republican Party, who had been playing footsie with the Senator’s boys. A few well-planned parliamentary maneuvers weeded them out; a new set of by-laws took care of such contingencies in the future; and the Party was solidly unified and ready to back the Judge’s administration.
Stuart Cleve went happily back to work. He no longer needed a busbarboy from the History Department. There was no pressing need for secrecy in his work; and he possessed, thanks to physical contact during chronokinesis, his full notebooks on experiments for two and a half months which, in this world, hadn’t happened yet—a paradox which was merely amusing and nowise difficult.
By some peculiar whim of alternate universes, Cal even managed to win the UCLA game 33—10.
In accordance with the popular temper displayed in the Presidential election, Proposition 13, with its thorough repression of all academic thought and action, had been roundly defeated. A short while later, Professor Daniels, who had so actively joined the Regents and the Legislature in backing the measure, resigned from the Psychology Department. Lanroyd had played no small part in the faculty meetings which convinced Daniels that the move was advisable.
At last Sunday, January 20, 1985, arrive
d (or, for two men in the world, returned) and the TV sets of the nation brought the people the Inaugural Address. Even the radio stations abandoned their usual local broadcasts of music and formed one of their very rare networks to carry this historical highpoint.
The Judge’s voice was firm, and his prose as noble as that of his dissenting or his possibly even greater majority opinions. Lanroyd and Cleve listened together, and together thrilled to the quietly forceful determination to wipe out every last vestige of the prejudices, hatreds, fears and suspicions fostered by the so-called American Party.
“A great man once said,” the Judge quoted in conclusion, “‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Now that a petty and wilful group of men have failed in their effort to undermine our very Constitution, I say to you: ‘We have one thing to destroy. And that is destruction itself!’ ”
And Lanroyd and Cleve beamed at each other and broached the bourbon.
From the journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Sun Oct 20 85: Exactly 9 mos. Obstetrical symbolism yet?
Maybe I shd’ve seen it then, at this other inauguration. Read betw the lines, seen the meaning, the true inevitable meaning. Realized that the Judge was simply saying, in better words (or did they sound better because I thought he was on My Side?) what the Senator said in the inaugural we escaped: “I have a commission to wipe out the opposition.”
Maybe I shd’ve seen it when the Senator was arrested for inciting to riot. Instead I cheered. Served the sonofabitch right. (And it did, too. That’s the hell of it. It’s all confused . . .)
He still hasn’t been tried. They’re holding him until they can nail him for treason. Mere matter of 2 constitutional amendments: Revise Art III Sec 3 Par 1 so “treason” no longer needs direct-witness proof of an overt act of war against the U S or adhering to their enemies, but can be anything yr Star Chamber wants to call it; revise Art I Sec 9 Par 3 so you can pass an ex post facto law. All very simple; the Judge’s arguments sound as good as his dissent in U S vs Feinbaum. (I shd’ve seen, even in the inaug, that he’s not the same man in this world—the same mind turned to other ends. My ends? My end . . .) The const ams’ll pass all right . . . except maybe in Maine.
I shd’ve seen it last year when the press began to veer, when the dullest & most honest columnist in the country began to blather about the “measure of toleration”— when the liberal Chronicle & the Hearst Examiner, for the 1st time in S F history, took the same stand on the Supervisors’ refusal of the Civic Aud to a pro-Senator rally—when the NYer satirized the ACLU as something damned close to traitors . . .
I began to see it when the County Central Committee started to raise hell about a review I wrote in the QPH. (God knows how a Committeeman happened to read that learned journal.) Speaking of the great old 2-party era, I praised both the DAR & the FDR as bulwarks of democracy. Very unwise. Seems as a good Party man I shd’ve restricted my praise to the FDR. Cd’ve fought it through, of course, stood on my rights—hell, a County Committeeman’s an elected representative of the people. But I resigned because . . . well, because that was when I began to see it.
Today was what did it, though. 1st a gentle phone call fr the Provost—in person, no secty—wd I drop by his office tomorrow? Certain questions have arisen as to some of the political opinions I have been expressing in my lectures . . .
That blonde in the front row with the teeth & the busy notebook & the D’s & F’s . . .
So Cleve comes by & I think I’ve got troubles . . . !
He’s finally published his 1st paper on the theory of CK & PK-induced alternates. It’s been formally denounced as “dangerous” because it implies the existence of better worlds. And guess who denounced it? Prof Daniels of Psych.
Sure, the solid backer of #13, the strong American Party boy. He’s a strong FDR man now. He knows. And he’s back on the faculty.
Cleve makes it all come out theological somehow. He says that by forcibly setting mankind on the alternate if-fork that we wanted, we denied man’s free will. Impose “democracy” against or without man’s choice, & you have totalitarianism. Our only hope is what he calls “abnegation of our own desire”— surrender to, going along with, the will of man. We must CK & PK ourselves back to where we started.
The hell with the theology; it makes sense politically too. I was wrong. Jesus! I was wrong. Look back at every major election, every major boner the electorate’s pulled. So a boner to me is a triumph of reason to you, sir. But let’s not argue which dates were the major boners. 1932 or 1952, take your pick.
It’s always worked out, hasn’t it? Even 1920. It all straightens out, in time. Democracy’s the craziest, most erratic system ever devised . . . & the closest to perfection. At least it keeps coming closer. Democratic man makes his mistakes—& he corrects them in time.
Cleve’s going back to make his peace with his ideas of God & free will. I’m going back to show I’ve learned that a politician doesn’t clear the hell&gone out of politics because he’s lost. Nor does he jump over on the winning side.
He works & sweats as a Loyal Opposition—hell, as an Underground if necessary, if things get as bad as that—but he holds on & works to make men make their own betterment.
Now we’re going to Cleve’s, where the field’s set up . . . & we’re going back to the true world.
Stuart Cleve was weeping, for the first time in his adult life. All the beautifully intricate machinery which created the temporomagnetic field was smashed as thoroughly as a hydrogen atom over Novosibirsk.
“That was Winograd leading them, wasn’t it?” Lanroyd’s voice came out oddly through split lips and missing teeth.
Cleve nodded.
“Best damn coffin-corner punter I ever saw. . . Wondered why our friend Daniels was taking such an interest in athletes recently.”
“Don’t oversimplify, old boy. Not all athletes. Recognized a couple of my best honor students . . .”
“Fine representative group of youth on the march . . . and all wearing great big FDR buttons!”
Cleve picked up a shard of what had once been a chronostatic field generator and fondled it tenderly. “When they smash machines and research projects,” he said tonelessly, “the next step is smashing men.”
“Did a fair job on us when we tried to stop them. Well . . . These fragments we have shored against our ruins . . . And now, to skip to a livelier maker for our next quote, it’s back to work we go! Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! Need a busbar-boy, previous experience guaranteed?”
“It took us ten weeks of uninterrupted work,” Cleve said hesitantly. “You think those vandals will let us alone that long? But we have to try, I know.” He bent over a snarled mess of wiring which Lanroyd knew was called a magnetostat and performed some incomprehensibly vital function. “Now this looks almost ser-vicea—” He jerked upright again, shaking his head worriedly.
“Matter?” Lanroyd asked.
“My head. Feels funny . . . One of our young sportsmen landed a solid kick when I was down.”
“Winograd, no doubt. Hasn’t missed a boot all season.”
Perturbedly Cleve pulled out of his pocket the small dice-case which seemed to be standard equipment for all psionicists. He shook a pair in his fist and rolled them out in a clear space on the rubbage-littered floor.
“Seven!” he called.
A six turned up, and then another six.
“Sometimes,” Cleve was muttering ten unsuccessful rolls later, “even slight head injuries have wiped out all psionic potential. There’s a remote possibility of redevelopment; it has happened . . .”
“And,” said Lanroyd, “it takes both of us to generate enough PK to rotate.” He picked up the dice. “Might as well check mine.” He hesitated, then let them fall. “I don’t think I want to know . . .”
They stared at each other over the ruins of the machinery that would never be rebuilt.
“ ‘I, a stranger and afraid . . .’ ” Cleve began to quote.
“In a world,” La
nroyd finished, “I damned well made.”
One-Way Trip
PROLOGUE
“Twenty years from the discovery of lovestonite before anyone finds a practical use for it; and it takes an artist to do it!” Emigdio Valentinez smiled the famous smile which the gossip writers called melancholy—or occasionally wistful—but which meant nothing more than simply a smile.
“Yeah, I know. That’s swell. You got a nice set-up for tinkering here. ” Stag Hartle glanced around indifferently at the today literally Pacific Ocean and at the undulant dunes of sand, empty save for his two-seater copter. “You got fun out here. ”
“Fun?” Valentinez smiled down at the curious object in his hand, a mirror in shape, but made of what looked like dark glass and surrounded with a complex of coils and tubes. “I suppose it is fun to do what you are fitted for—in my case to solve an age-old problem of art by a twenty-year-old discarded problem of science. ”
“Yeah,” said Stag Hartle. “But that ain’t all you’re fitted for, and you know it. O.K., so you paint the greatest self-portrait ever painted. Who cares? The people, they’ve seen your famous smile plenty of times on the air, and that’s enough for them. But if you’d come back to Sollywood and do the sets for S.B. s epic on Devarupa—”
Valentinez interrupted him with three short sentences. “I do not like designing sets. I do not like the notion of an epic on Devarupa. I do not like Mr. Breakstone. ”
“Hold on, Mig. Climb down out of the stratosphere and be a human being. Think of the pleasure you can give people with solly sets that’d never see one of your paintings. Think of—” He lowered his voice to a seductive rasp, “S.B. said in confidence, mind you, and I shouldn’t be telling you a word of this, but S.B. said he was willing to listen to any reasonable proposition. And when he says reasonable, Mig, I’m telling you he means unreasonable. How’s about five thousand credits a week?”
Valentinez released a button on his gadget, turned it over, and contemplated the other side with satisfaction. “No, ” he said quietly.
The Compleat Boucher Page 35