Hidden Variables Read online

  "You and Lana can keep going for a while. I want to get these other images ordered, but I don't see any problem if you take notes of everything." Cramer stood up. "Tomorrow, we'll see if we can tap that same area, keep the hunt going and find out how it ends. Make sure you get enough sleep. I think we get better transfer if you are rested."

  He left abruptly, his mind already moving on to the next session of the experiment. Lana moved in and turned off the tape recorder. Her calm face had changed, become that of a tormented woman who cannot see any answer to a difficult problem.

  "Bayle, I can't go on pretending. It sounds trite, but it's a fact."

  "You said you were going to talk to him. Did you change your mind about that?" Bayle Richards did not sound particularly interested in her answer. His eyes were far away, still back in the mesh of alien memories.

  "Bayle, I can't face John." Lana sensed the separation but misunderstood the reason for it. "You know he can beat me down, he always could. Can you do it? If I try and talk to him now, he'll ignore me unless he thinks that you can affect his precious experiments by refusing to cooperate with him."

  "He can force me to."

  "No. He can force you to pretend to work with him, but he knows that he's at your mercy when it comes to the memories you say you have or don't have. That's your edge, Bayle."

  He looked at her uneasily. "What are you suggesting, Lana? What should I tell him?"

  "Make the bargain with him. You'll work with him to the end of the experiments with Old Pierre. But set your price for that."

  "And my price?" His voice was too cold, she did not think she was persuading him.

  "Your price is your freedom." Her voice dropped. "And mine. I could never win it from him without you helping. He's too strong for me."

  He shrugged. "What makes you sure there will be an end to the experiments? Suppose that he wants to go on with them forever?"

  "No. Not this experiment. You heard what John said, he thinks he has a key that will unlock all human history. There are another twenty preserved bodies scattered in Institutes around the world. If he wants to explore the past with them, he'll need to have other clones developed, give them consciousness from other Bayle Richards. When he does that, we'll be free. He won't care where you go when this experiment is over."

  He was quiet for a long time, so long that she thought he was not going to give any reply at all. His face was unreadable in the dim light.

  "All right," he said at last. "We need to know how long this is likely to go on, whatever happens after it. He has access to those other preserved bodies?"

  "He already made the arrangements. I helped him do it. Bayle"—she moved close to him, touching his head gently as though she was afraid that he would suddenly disappear into the shadows of the room—"when will you do it, Bayle?"

  "Tomorrow. Before the experiment. Don't worry, I'll do it. I don't want to stay in this place forever, when I could be out there in the world starting everything over with a decent body."

  "Both of us."

  He was silent again. Finally he shrugged. "I guess so. If John Cramer agrees. You're his wife. You ought to know him well, but if he says no, what do I do then?"

  She put her arms round him. "He won't say no." The words were more like a prayer than a statement. "He won't say no to you."

  * * *

  The images that John Cramer had requested from Paris had been scanned and transmitted overnight. Lana Cramer, hurrying back with them from the communications office of the hospital, found the lab already a scene of great activity when she arrived there. John Cramer was supervising the installation of a ceiling projector directly above the table where Bayle Richards would again lie during the information transfer from Old Pierre.

  "Over there, then get to the anesthetist station." Cramer's manner to her was cold and brusque. She placed the images on the side table, near the projector, and looked across to where Bayle was already connected to the multiple electrodes that would carry the signal for memory transfer. He was staring across at her.

  "Did you talk?" she mouthed to him. Her husband was bending over the casket that contained Pierre's body, but she dared not go across to Bayle.

  He nodded, and she gave him an exaggerated questioning look and a shrug of interrogation. He turned his thumb up, then down, and returned her shrug. John had listened, but he hadn't given any definite answer at all. She knew that reaction, the steady nodding of his head, then the sudden turn away or the switch of subject.

  "Ask him again later?" She mouthed her question, not sure how well Bayle was getting her meaning.

  He nodded, then lay back on the table. She would have to wait until this session was over for details—there was no chance that they would be coming from John, and his stony look made her fear the worst.

  "Sedation patterns again, same as yesterday," he ordered, abruptly standing up from his position by the casket. "We're set up today so that we can throw scenes for Bayle's inspection while the experiments are still going on. We'll have to bring him in and out of contact with Pierre while that's being done, but I believe we have that degree of control now. Tell me when you are getting first signal transfer."

  Lana forced her attention to the control console and watched the pattern of brain waves that was crawling across the oscilloscope. It was establishing itself even quicker than last time, the resonances building between Bayle's brain and Old Pierre's.

  "It ought to get easier and easier," Cramer had told her when she expressed surprise at the ease of contact. "Don't forget their brains are structurally identical. It's not like trying to establish contact between two dissimilar objects. When these experiments are over, we ought to have sucked out most of Pierre's useful memories. It ought to be a bigger challenge when we leave the Cro-Magnons and try it with Neanderthalensis and Habilis. I've located well-preserved specimens of both of them."

  Put that way, all the complex experiments that had led to Bayle's links with Old Pierre sounded easy and natural. Lana comforted herself with that thought as the transfer signal strength grew on the screen.

  "Don't like smell." The words came suddenly from the figure on the table. "Bad smell. Like the others." Bayle Richards' hand moved convulsively, grasping at something by his side. "Will have to fight again, beat the others to the horns."

  "He's still on the trail," said Cramer softly. "I've edited the images that came in from Paris. Keep the transfer rate high until I tell you, then push it right down. I want him to look at one of the images."

  Lana nodded. Cramer seemed to be the same as yesterday, but she knew from long experience that her own ability to read his emotions was negligible. At least the experiment was going well, that suggested he would be in a good mood later.

  "Others ahead," said the figure on the table. Was it Bayle Richards at the moment, or was he no more than a vessel for Old Pierre's memories? "Must fight the others, can't go back without food. Cold, need food."

  "Northern France still glaciated." Cramer sounded pleased. "I couldn't understand yesterday, when he said it was hot. Makes more sense for him to feel cold today."

  "See many ahead of us. They are not the People, they are others. We get ready, move towards them. Bad place to fight ahead, not covered."

  "Now." Cramer gestured across to Lana. "Cut the transfer for the moment, I want to try and get a fix on where he is."

  As the signal switched from mildly sedating to stimulating, Cramer flashed a scene onto the ceiling above Richards' unconscious form.

  "Bayle." The eyes flickered open, then closed again. "Bayle, look up there. Do you recognize that scene? Is it one that you've just looked at?"

  The eyes flickered open again, stared up at the color image. Bayle Richards shuddered.

  "That's it. That's where we are heading, where the others are. Danger, I think there's danger."

  "Shall I cut the connection?" Lana sat with her hand poised over the switch that would inhibit all transfer from Pierre to Bayle.

  "
No." John Cramer's voice was full of some strange satisfaction. "I know what's happening, it's all right. Put him back to full transfer, let's keep this going."

  "But what's the scene you showed him?" Lana, poised over the dials, had a poor view of the ceiling display.

  "I'll tell you later." He looked at her impatiently. "Lana, get that signal back up now. We'll lose transfer, and that would ruin everything."

  Automatically she responded to the command in his voice and turned on the full signal again. Bayle Richards jerked spasmodically, strained his head around him.

  "See them now, they see us. Go forward now, must win and follow the horns. We all go forward together."

  He had begun to pant, his deep chest filling to its maximum capacity beneath the covering sheet.

  "John, what's happening?" She could hear the deep grunt of effort coming from the man on the table. "Shall I cut the signal?"

  "No." John Cramer had moved to her side, leaning over the control panel. "Keep it like that, maximum transfer rate. I'll tell you when to change it."

  "But, John, what's he doing." She looked again at the groaning figure on the table. "He doesn't seem to be walking, and look at his arms moving. Do you know what's going on?"

  Struck by a sudden thought, she pushed her chair away from the console and leaned far back, looking up at the scene on the ceiling projector. She screamed as soon as she saw the flat plain with its sparse cover of grass and sedges.

  "John! That's the salt marsh where Old Pierre was found. If Bayle is there now, it means that he'll—"

  She screamed again and threw herself at the control panel. John Cramer was there before her. As the figure on the table thrashed and gargled, the sounds coming from his throat suddenly agonized and blood-clogged, Cramer held the transfer rate switch open to full maximum. He was too strong for Lana to get near it, even though she struggled desperately. The sound from the table took on a new and more terrible urgency.

  * * *

  He came awake in one piece, his muscles flexing him upright at the same time as his eyes opened to the flat white light. Although he was lying up high, he instinctively rolled down to the floor, reaching up to his head to tear away the uncomfortable attachments to his bare scalp.

  Naked, he crouched low and looked around him. He had been brought here without the comforting presence of stone axe and spear, without the cheering smells and sounds of the People. The smells that filled his nostrils now were alien and menacing. In front of him, two others struggled together, not seeming to see him at all or to detect his scent. Before they could attack, he had leapt forward to strike hard at the base of the neck, first the man, then the woman. To his surprise, they both crumpled unconscious to the level floor of the white cave.

  He bent over and sniffed more closely at the man. Certainly alien, not of the People. With one efficient movement he snapped the neck, then bit the jugular vein to reach the blood. It had been many days since he remembered eating, but for some reason his hunger was satisfied almost at once. He dropped the man's body to the floor, surprised by the peculiar skins that seemed to cover it.

  The woman's scent was different. She was not of the People, but it was good to mate outside the People. If he could find his way out of the strange cave, he would take the white-haired woman with her strange mixed smell back with him to the Home. But he wondered if he would find his way Home. If he had been ended in the marsh—his last memory was of the spear in his throat—then he must make a new life for himself here, in the After-Life. First he must possess the woman, to show that she belonged to him.

  He knew how to be patient. Looking around the new cave, he squatted next to her on the floor and waited for her to wake. Already her eyelids were moving. It would not take long now.

  AFTERWORD: FOREFATHER FIGURE.

  Here is a flat, unequivocal statement: I believe that time travel into the past is impossible.

  I know that it is one of the standard themes of science fiction, but I still can't swallow it. Stories built around backward time travel are fantasies, embellish them how you will. It's not that such stories violate a law of physics—that happens all the time, whenever we have a new theory. What bothers me is that time travel to the past breaks laws of logic, and that's a far more serious matter. If once we agree that we can throw out logic we have nothing left at all—not even confidence that logic can be rejected, since the basis for rejection must itself depend on some form of logical argument.

  Why do I insist that time travel breaks laws of logic? It's that old "grandfather paradox", the one that says if you could send material or information into the past you could arrange for your own grandfather to be killed before your father was conceived. Thus you could not be born, and so you could not kill Grandpa. Simple, and irrefutable. All the parallel universe or trick endings (he wasn't your grandfather at all) or infinite time loops that people have used in stories are attempts to wriggle out of the paradox. Not one of them makes a minor dent in it.

  So?

  So a few months ago Eleanor Wood sent me an announcement that Fred Saberhagen was looking for stories about time travel, for an anthology. A SPADEFUL OF SPACE-TIME. It was clear that she knew nothing of my aversion to time travel stories. There was no way I could write anything for the anthology, I was sitting down to write and tell her so, and then . . .

  In one sense, time travel is more than possible—it is inevitable. We do it with every passing second. Would a story about forward time travel be cheating, not really a time travel story at all? Only, I would argue, if the reader feels cheated.

  MOMENT OF INERTIA

  "Now," said the interviewer, "tell us just what led you to the ideas for the inertia-less drive."

  She was young and vulnerable-looking, and I think that was what saved her from a hot reply. As it was, McAndrew just shook his head and said quietly—but still with feeling—"Not the inertia-less drive. There's no such thing. It's a balanced drive."

  She looked confused. "But it lets you accelerate at more than fifty gee, doesn't it? By making you so you don't feel any acceleration at all. Doesn't that mean you must have no inertia?"

  McAndrew was shaking his head again. He looked pained and resigned. I suppose that he had to go through this explanation twice a day, every day of his life, with somebody.

  I leaned forward and lowered the sound on the video unit. I had heard the story too often, and my sympathies were all with him. We had direct evidence that the McAndrew drive was anything but inertia-less. I doubt if he'll ever get that message across to the average person, even though he's most people's idea of the "great scientist," the ultimate professor.

  I was there at the beginning of the whole thing. In fact, according to McAndrew I was the beginning. We had been winding our way back from the Titan Colony, travelling light as we usually did on the inbound leg. We had only four Sections in the Assembly, and only two of them carried power kernels and drive units, so I guess we massed about three billion tons for ship and cargo.

  Halfway in, just after turnover point, we got an incoming request for medical help from the mining colony on Horus. I passed the word on to Luna Station, but we couldn't do much to help. Horus is in the Egyptian Cluster of asteroids, way out of the ecliptic, and it would take any aid mission a couple of weeks to get to them. By that time, I suspected their problem would be over—one way or another. So I was in a pretty gloomy mood when McAndrew and I sat down to dinner.

  "I didn't know what to tell them, Mac. They know the score as well as I do, but they couldn't resist asking if we had a fast-passage ship that could help them. I had to tell them the truth, there's nothing that can get out there at better than two and a half gee, not with people on board. And they need doctors, not just drugs. Luna will have something on the way in a couple of days, but I don't think that will do it."

  McAndrew nodded sympathetically. He knew that I needed to talk it out to somebody, and we've spent a lot of time together on those Titan runs. He's working on his own experiments m
ost of the time, but I know when he needs company, too. It must be nice to be a famous scientist, but it can be lonely travelling all the time inside your own head.

  "I wonder if we're meant for space, Mac," I went on—only half-joking. "We've got drives that will let us send unmanned probes out at better than a hundred gee of continuous acceleration, but we're the weak link. I could take the Assembly here up to five gee—we'd be home in a couple of days instead of another month—but you and I couldn't take it. Can't you and some of your staff at the Institute come up with a system so that we don't get crushed flat by high accelerations? A thing like that, an inertia-less drive, it would change space exploration completely."

  I was wandering on, just to keep my mind off the problems they had out on Horus, but what I was saying was sound enough. We had the power on the ships, only the humans were the obstacle. McAndrew was listening to me seriously, but he was shaking his head.

  "So far as I know, Jeanie, an inertia-less drive is a theoretical impossibility. Unless somebody a lot brighter than I am can come up with an entirely new theory of physics, we'll not see your inertia-less drive."

  That was a pretty definitive answer. There were no people brighter than McAndrew, at least in the area of physics. If Mac didn't think it could be done, you'd not find many people arguing with him. Some people were fooled by the fact that he took time off to make trips with me out to Titan, but that was all part of his way of working.

  If you deduce from this that I'm not up at that rarefied level of thought, you're quite right. I can follow McAndrew's explanations—sometimes. But when he really gets going he loses me in the first two sentences.

  This time, his words seemed clear enough for anyone to follow them. I poured myself another glass of ouzo and wondered how many centuries it would be before the man or woman with the completely new theory came along. Sitting across from me, Mac had begun to rub at his sandy, receding hairline. His expression had become vacant. I've learned not to interrupt when he's got that look on his face. It means he's thinking in a way that I can't follow. One of the other professors at the Penrose Institute says that Mac has a mind that can see round corners, and I have a little inkling what he means by that.