Timescape. Part 4

"I'm older now.""You could've said. Warned your mother"

"Rather you met her first."

''You, a scholar"She sighed. Her bag sWUng in long arcs as she waddied along, the slant of street lamps stretching her shadow. He decided she was resigned to it.But no: ''You don't know any Jewish girls in California?""Come on, Mom.""I'm not talking about you taking rumba cla.s.ses or something." She stopped dead. "This is your whole life."He shrugged. "First fnne. I'll learn.""Learn what? To be a something-else?""Isn't it a little obvious to be so hostile to my girl TIMESCAPE' 8 I.

friends? Not much a.n.a.lysis needed to understand that." '

"Your Uncle Herb would say--"

"Screw Uncle Herb. Hustler philosophy."

"Such language. If I should tell him what you said "

"Tell him I have money in the bank. He'll understand."

"Your sister, at least your sister's close to home."

"Only geographically."

"You don't know."

"She's slapping oil on canvas to cure her psychosis.

Yeah. Psycho Sis."

'"Don't."

"It's true."

,''You're living with her, yes?"

"Sure. I need the practice."

"Since your father died ..."

"Don't start with that." A cutting-off chop with his hand. "Listen, you've seen how it is: That's the way it'll stay."

"For your father's sake, G.o.d rest his soul ..."

"You can't--" He was going to finish push me around with a ghost and that was the way he felt, but he said, "know what I'm like now."

"A mother doesn't know?"

"Right, sometimes not."

"I tell you, I ask you, don't break your mother's heart."

"I'll do as I like. She's fine for me."

"She is... a girl who would do this, live with you without marriage---"

"I'm not sure what I want yet."

"And she wants what?"

"Look, we're finding out. Be reasonable, Mom."

''You throw up to me reasonable? That I should lie down and die and say nothing? I can't stay here and watch you two love birds cooing to each other."

"So don't watch. You have to learn who I am, Mom."

8 2 Gregory Ben ford'Your father would--" but she didn't finish. In the cool wan light she jerked erect. "Leave her." Her facewas rigid."No.""Then walk me to my bed."

When he returned to their bungalow Penny was reading Time and eating cashews. "How'd it go?" She tugged her mouth to one side wryly, wearily."You're not going to win the Susie Semite contest."' "I didn't think I would. Jesus, I've seen stereotypes before but ..."'Yeah. That dumb stuff of hers about Roth."

"That wasn't what it was about."

"No, it wasn't," he agreed.The next morning his mother phoned him from her motel. She was planning on spending the day-walking around town, seeing the sights. She said she did not want to take up his time at the University, so she would do it on her own. Gordon agreed that was probably best, since he had a busy day ahead; a lecture, a seminar, taking the seminar speaker to lunch, two committee meetings in the afternoon, and a conference with Cooper.He returned to the apartment later than usual that evening. He called her motel, but there was no answer.

Penny came home and they made supper together.

She was having some problems With her course work and needed to get in some reading. By nine o'clock they finished cleaning up and Gordon spread some of his lecture materials out on the dining room table to do some overdue grading. Around eleven he finished, entered the grades in his book, and only then remembered his mother. He called the motel. They said she had a "do not disturb" sign out and wanted no calls put through. Gordon thought of walking over and knocking on her door. He was s 3 tired, though, and resolved to see her first thing in the morning..He woke late. He had a bowl of shredded wheat while he looked over his lecttre notes in Cla.s.sical Mechanics, reviewing the steps in some of the sample problems he would work for the cla.s.s. He was putting the papers away in his briefcase when he thought of calling the motel. Again, she was out.By mid-afternoon his conscience was nagging him.

He came home early and walked over to the motel first thing. There was no answer to his knock. He Went around to ask at the desk and the clerk looked in the lit fie mail slot under her room number. The man fished out a white envelope and handed it to Gordon. 'Dr. Bernstein? Yes. She left this for you, sir.

She's checked out."Gordon tore it open, feeling numb. Inside was a long letter, repeating the themes of the alleyway in more detail. She could not understand how a son, once so devoted, could hurt his mother this way. She was mortified. It was morally wrong, what he was doing. Getting involved with a girl so different, living like that--a terrible mistake. And to do that for such a girl, such a styturtle of a girl! His mother was weeping, his mother was filled with worry for him.

But his mother knew what sort of a boy he was. He would not change his mind easily. So she was going to leave him alone. She was going to let him come to his senses on his own. She would be all right. She was going up to Los Angeles to see her cousin Hazel, Hazel who had three fine children and who she hadn't seen in seven years. From Los Angeles she would fly back to New York. Maybe in a few months she could come and visit again. Better, he should come home for a time. See his friends at Columbia.

Come visit people in the neighborhood; they would be overjoyed to see him, the big success of the block.

Until then, she would be writing him and hoping. A mother always hopes.

8 a Gregory Ben fordGordon put the letter in his pocket and walked home. He showed it to Penny and they talked about it for a while and then he resolved to put it in the back of his mind, to deal with his mother later. These things usually cured themselves, given time.

CHAPTER NINE.

1998.

"WELL, WHERE THE h.e.l.l IS HE?" RENFREW EXploded.

He paced up and down his office, five steps each way.Gregory Markham Sat quietly, watching Renfrew.

He had meditated for half an hour this morning and felt relaxed and centered. He looked beyond Renfrew, out the big windows the Cav sported as the prime luxury item in its construction. The broad fields beyond lay flat and still, impossibly green in the first rush' of summer. Cyclists glided silently along the Coton footpath, bundles perched on their rear decks. The morning air was already warm and lay like a weight. Blue shrouded the distant spires of Cambridge and ringed the yellow sun that squatted over the town. This was the blissful fraction of the day when there seemed an infinite span of time before you, Markham thought, as though anything could be accomplished in the sea of hushed minutes that stretched ahead.

8 Gregory Ben fordRenfrew was still pacing. Markham stirred himself to say, "What time did he say he'd be here?""Ten, d.a.m.n it. He set out hours ago. I had to call his office about something and I asked if he was still there. They told me he'd left very early in the morning, before the rush hour. So where is he?""It's only ten past," Markham pointed out reasonably.''yes, but h.e.l.l, I can't get started until he gets'here.

I've got the technicians standing by. We're all set.

He's wasting everybody's time. He doesn't care for this experiment and he's making it hard on us.""You got the funding, didn't you? And that equipment from Brookhaven.""Limited funds. Enough to keep going, but only just. We'll need more. They're strangling us. You know and I know that this may be the only chance of pulling us out of the hole. What do they do?--make me run the experiment on a shoestring and then that .sod doesn't even care enough to show up on time to watch it.""He's an administrator, not a scientist. Sure, the funding policy does seem short-sighted. But look, the NSF won't send anything more without more pressure.

They're probably using it for something else.

You can't expect Peterson to work miracles."Renfrew stopped his pacing and stared at him. "I suppose I have made it rather obvious that I don't like him. I hope Peterson himself isn't aware of it or it might turn him against the experiment."Markham shrugged. "I'm sure he knows. It's clear to anyone you two have different personality types, and Peterson's no fool. Look, I can talk to him, if you want--I will, in fact. As to you turning him off the experiment--tripe. He must be used to being disliked.

I don't suppose it bothers him at all. No, I"

think you can count on his support. But only partial support. He's trying to cover all his bets and that means spreading support pretty thin."Renfrew sat down in his swivel chair. "Sorry if I'm 8 ?.

a bit tense this morning, Greg." He ran thick fingers through his hair. "I've been wbrking evenings as well as days--may as well use the light--and I'm probably tired. But mainly I'm frustrated. I keep getting noise and it scrambles up the signals."A sudden flurry of subdued activity in the lab caught their attention. The technicians who had been casually chatling a minute before were now looking purposeful and prepared. Peterson was threading his way across the lab floor. He came to the door of Renfrew's office and nodded curtly to the wo men."Sorry I'm late, Dr. Renfrew," he said, offering no explanation, "Shall we start on it right away?"As Peterson turned towards the lab again, Markham noticed with mild surprise the caked mud on his elegant shoes, as though he had been walking in ploughed fields.

It was 10:47 a.m. Renfrew began tapping slowly on the signal key. Markham and Peterson stood behind him. Technicians monitored other output from the experiment and made adjustments."It's this easy to send a message?" Peterson asked.

"Simple Morse," Markham said."I see, to maximize the chances of its be'mg decoded.""d.a.m.n!" Renfrew suddenly stood up. "Noise level has increased again."Markham leaned over and looked at the oscilloscope face. The trace danced and jiggled, a scaered random field. "How can there be that much noise in a c,h.led indium sample?" Markham asked.Christ, I don't know. We've had trouble like this all along.""It can't be thermal.""Transmission is impossible with this going on?"

Peterson put in."Of course," Renfrew said irritably. "Broadens the tachyon resonance line and muddles up the signal."

s Gregory Ben ford''hen the experiment can't work?""b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, I didn't say that. There's just a holdup. I'm sure I can find the problem."A technician called down from the platform above. "Mr. Peterson? Telephone call, says it's urgent.""Oh, all right." Peterson hastened up the metal stairway and was gone. Renfrew conferred with some technicians, checked readings himself, and fret-ted away several minutes. Markham stood peering at the oscilloscope trace."Any idea what it could be?" he called to Renfrew."Heat leak, possibly. Maybe the sample isn't well insulated from shocks, either.""You mean people walking around the room, that sort of thing?"Renfrew shrugged and went on with his work.

Greg rubbed a thumbnail against his lower lip and studied the yellow noise spectrum on the green oscilloscope screen. After a moment he asked, "Have you got a correlator you could use on this rig?"Renfrew stopped for a moment, thinking. "No, none here. We have no use for one.""I'd like to see if there is any structure we could bring out of that noise."'/ell, I suppose we could do that. Take a while to scrounge up something suitable."Peterson appeared overhead. "Sorry, I'm going to have to go to a secured telephone. Something's come up." Renfrew turned without saying anything.

Markham dimbed the stairway."I think there will be a delay in the experiment, anyway.""Ah, good. I don't want to return to London just yet, without seeing it through. But I'll have to talk to some people on a confidential telephone line. There's one in Cambridge. It will probably take an hour or "Things are that bad?""Seems so. That large diatom bloom off the South TIMESCAPE.American coast, Atlantic side, appears to be expand-ing out of control.""Bloom?""Biologist's word. It means the phytoplankton are coming to terms with the chlorinated hydrocarbons we've been using in fertilizer. But there's something more to this one. The technical people are scrambling to find out how this case differs from the earlier, smaller effects on the ocean food chain.""I see. Can we do anything about it?"'"I don't know. The Americans have some controlled experiments in the Indian Ocean, but I gather progress is slow.""Well, I won't keep 'you from the telephone. I've got something to work on, an idea about John's experiment.

Say, do you know the Whim?""Yes, it's in Trinity Street. Near Bowes & Bowes."

"I'll probably need a drink and some food in an hour or so. Why don't we meet there?"

* "Good idea. See you round midday."

The Whim was packed with undergraduates. Ian Peterson pushed his way through a crowd near the door and stood for a moment trying to get his bearings.

The students near him were pa.s.sing jugs of beer over each other's heads and some spilled on him. Peterson took out a handkerchief and wiped it off with distaste. The students had not noticed. It was the end of the academic year and they were in boisterous spirits. A few were already drunk. They were talking loudly in dog Latin, a parody of some official function they had just attended."Eduardus, dona mihi plus beerus!" shouted one.

"Beerus? 0 Deus, quid dicit? Ecce sanguinus barbarus!" another declaimed."Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!" the first speaker responded in mock contrition. "But what's beer in b.l.o.o.d.y Latin?"Several voices answered. "Alum!" "Vinum barbar- 9 o Gregory Ben fordic.u.m!" "Imbibius hopius!" There were shouts of laughter. They thought they were being very witty.

One of them, hiccuping, slid gently to the floor and a.s.sed out. The second speaker raised his arm above im and solemnly intoned. "Requiescat in pace. Etlux perpetua something or other."Peterson moved clear of them. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the comparative gloom after the brightness of Trinity. On the wall a ,ellowed poster announced that some menu items were discontinued--temporarily, of course. In the center of the pub a large coal range popped and hissed. An hara.s.sed cook presided over it, s.h.i.+fting pans from smaller rings to larger ones and back. Whenever he lifted a pan from one of the rings, a glow of light from inside the range momentarily lit his hands and perspiring face, so he abruptly loomed like an earnest, orange ghost. Students at tables around the stove called encouragement to him.Peterson made his way across the crowded eating section, tkrough blue curls of pipe smoke layering the air. The acrid tang of marijuana reached him, mingled with the odors of tobacco, cooking oil, beer and sweat. Someone called his name. He peered around until he saw Markham in a side booth."It's chancy finding anyone here, isn't it?"

Peterson said as he sat down."I was just ordering. Lots of salads, aren't there?

And plates full of c.r.a.ppy carbohydrates. There doesn't seem to be much worth eating these days."Peterson studied the menu. "I think I may have the tongue, though it's incredibly expensive. Any kind of meat is just impossible."'fi(es, isn't it." He grimaced. "I don't see how you can eat tongue, knowing it came out of some animal's mouth.""Have an egg, instead?"Markham laughed. "I suppose there's no way to turn. But I think I'll splurge and have the sausages.

That should do up my budget pretty nicely."

o !The waiter brought Peterson's ale and Markham'sMackeson 'fitout. Peterson took a big swallow.

"They allow marijuana here, then?"Markham looked around and sniffed the air.

"Dope? Sure. All the mild euphorics are legal here, aren't they?""They have been for a year or two. But I thought by social convention, if there's any of that left, one didn't smoke it in public places.""This is a university town. I expect the students were smoking it in public long before it was legalized.

Anyway, if the government wants to distract people from the news, there's no point in requiringthem to do it only at home," Markham said mildly.

"Ummm," Peterson murmured.Markham stopped his Mackeson stout short of his mouth and looked at him. "You're being noncommittal.

I guessed right, then? The government had that in mind?""Let's say it was brought up.""What's the Liberal government going to do about these drugs that increase human intelligence, then?""Since I moved up to the Council I haven't had a great deal of contact with those problems.""There's a rumor the Chinese are way ahead on them.""Oh? Well, I can scotch that one. The Council had an intelligence report on precisely that point last month.""They gather intelligence on their own members?"

"The Chinese are formal members, but--well, look, the problems of the last few years have been technical. Peking has enough on its hands without meddling into subjects where they have no research capability.""I thought they were doing well."Peterson shrugged. "As well as anyone can with a billion souls to care for. They're less concerned with foreign matters these days. They're trying to slice up precisely equal portions of an ever-diminis.h.i.+ng pie."

9 2 Gregory Ben ford"Pure communism at last.""Not so pure. Equal slices keeps down unrest due to inequality. They're reviving terraced farming, even though it's labor-intensive, to get food production up. The opiate of the ma.s.ses in China is groceries.

Always has been. They're stopping use of energy-intensive chemicals in farming, too. I think they're afraid of side effects.""Such as the South American bloom?""Dead on." Peterson grimaced. "Who could've foreseen--?"From the crowd there came a sudden, rattling cry.

A woman surged up from a nearby table, clutching at. her throat. She was trying to say something. Another woman with her asked, "Elinor, what is it?

Your throat? Something caught?"The woman gasped, a rasping cough. She clutched at a chair. Heads turned. Her hands went to her belly and her face pinched with a rush of pain. "I--it hurts so--" Abruptly she vomited over the table. She jerked forward, hands clutching at herself. A stream of bile spattered over the plates of food. Nearby patrons, frozen until this moment, frantically spilled from chairs land backed away. The woman tried to cry out and instead vomited again. Gla.s.ses smashed to the floor; the crowd moved back. "He elp!" the woman cried. A convulsion shook her. She tried to stand and vomited over herself. She turned to her companion, who had retreated to the next table. She looked down at herselL eyes glazed, and pressed her palms to her belly. Hesitantly she stepped back from the table. She slipped suddenly and crashed to the floor.Peterson had been shocked into immobility, as had Markham. As she fell he leaped to his feet and dashed forward. The crowd muttered and did not move. He leaned over the woman. Her scarf was tangled about her neck. It was twisted and sour with puke. He yanked at it, using both hands. The fabric ripped. The woman gasped. Peterson fanned the air o3 around her, creating a breeze. She sucked in air. Her eyes fluttered. She stared up at him. 'It ... it hurts*.. SO ...".Peterson scowled up at the surrounding crowd.

"Call a doctor, will you? b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l?

The ambulance had departed. The Whim staff were busy mopping up. Most of the patrons ,were gone, driven off by the stench. Peterson came back from the ambulance, where he had followed, making sure the attendants had a sample of her food."What did they say it was?" Markham asked*

"No idea. I gave them the sausage she'd been eating.

The medic said something about food poisoning, but those weren't any poisoning symptoms I've ever heard about.""All we've been hearing about impurities--""Maybe*" Peterson dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "Could be anything, these days."Markham sipped meditatively on his stout. A waiter approached bearing their food. "Tongue for you, sir," he said to Peterson, placing a platter. "And sausage here."Both men stared at their meals. "I think ..."

Markham began slowly."I agree," Peterson followed up briskly. "I believe we'll be skipping these. Could you fetch me a salad?"The waiter looked dubiously at the plates. "You ordered this.""So we did. Surely you don't expect us to choke it down after what's just happened, do you? In a restaurant like this?""Well, I dunno, the manager, he says--""Tell your manager to watch his raw materials or I'll b.l.o.o.d.y well have this place closed down. Follow me?""Christ, no reason to--"

9, 'ust tell him that. And bring my friend here another stout."When the Waiter had backed away, obviously unwilling to confront either Peterson or the manager, Markham murmured, "Great. How'd you know I'd prefer another stout?""Intuition," he said with weary camaraderie.

They had both had more drinks when Peterson said, "Look, it's Sir Martin who's really the technical type on the British delegation. I'm a nonspecialist, as they call it. What I want to know is, how in h.e.l.l do you get around this grandfather paradox bit? That fellow Davies explained about the discovery of tachyons right enough, and I accept that they can travel into our past but I still can't see how one can logically change the past."Markham sighed. "Until tachyons were discov-'ered, everybody thought communication with the past was impossible. The incredible thing is that the physics of time communication had been worked out earlier, almost by accident, as far back as the 1940s.

Two physicists named John Wheeler and Richard Feynmann worked out the correct description of light itself, and showed that there were two waves launched whenever you tried to make a radio wave, say.""Two?""Right. One of them we receive on our radio sets.

The other travels backward in time the 'advanced wave,' as Wheeler and Feynmann called it.""But we don't receive any message before it's sent."Markham nodded. "True but the advanced wave is there, in the mathematics. There's no way around it. The equations of physics are all time-symmetric.

That's one of the riddles of modern physics. How is it that we perceive time pa.s.sing, and yet all the equa- o t.i.tns of physics say that time can run either wa)5 forward or baclward?""The equations are wrong, then?""No, they're not. They can predict anything we can measure--but only as long as we use the 'r.e.t.a.r.ded wave,' as Wheeler and Feynmann called it.

That's the one that you hear through your radio set.""Well, look, surely there's a way to change the equation round until you get only the r.e.t.a.r.ded part.""No, there isn't. If you do that to the quations, there's no way to keep the r.e.t.a.r.ded wave the same.

You must have the advanced wave.""All right, where are those baCkward-in-time radio shows? How come I can't tune into the news from the next century?""Wheeler and Feynmann showed that it can't get here.""Can't get into this year? I mean, into our present time?""Right. See, the advanced wave can interact with the whole universe---it's moving back, into our past, so it eventually hits all the matter that's ever born.

Thing is, the advanced wave strikes all that matter before the signal was sent."'q(es, surely." Peterson reflected on the fact that he was now, for the sake of argument, accepting the "advanced wave" he would have rejected only a few moments before."So the wave hits all that matter, and the electrons inside it jiggle around in antic.i.p.ation of what the radio station will send.""Effect preceding a cause?""Exactly. Seems contrary to experience, doesn't it?""Definitely.""But the vibration of those electrons in the whole rest of the universe has to be taken into account. They in turn send out both advanced and r.e.t.a.r.ded. waves.

It's like dropping two rocks into a pond. They both 9 6 Gregory Ben ford send out waves. But the two waves don't just add up in a simple way."

"They don't? Why not?"

'They interfere with each other. They make a crisscross network of local peaks and troughs. Where the peaks and troughs from the separate patterns coincide, they reinforce each other. But where the peaks of the first stone meet the troughs of the second, they cancel. The water doesn't move."

"Oh. All right, then."