Thrice upon a Time (12 page)

Elizabeth had been listening intently throughout with her fingers pointed together in front of her mouth and her dessert standing untouched before her. "Opinion on what, Charles?" she asked. "Your last point or the whole business?"

"The whole 'reset model' that we've been discussing," Charles replied.

Elizabeth brought her arms down to her sides and paused for a moment to collect her words. "I think you're on the right track," she said at last. "As you say, that explanation does account for the observed facts, as extraordinary as it sounds, and for the time being at least I'd be completely at a loss to suggest even the beginnings of any alternative. However, there are two things that bother me about it as it stands.

"The first is that the model is
static,
at least if we forget for the moment about being able to send signals up and down the continuum. By that I mean that future events are predefined by the patterns that exist in the threads. The future is already determined but unknown, and is just waiting to be consciously experienced. There's no scope for human decision, free will, and chance. I don't like that. I believe that those things are real and important."

"I agree," Lee tossed in. "I can't buy that they're just illusions either."

"But I never said that," Charles protested. "Take the incident with the jar. That was something that had every appearance of chance about it, and the event was changed. That says to me very clearly that such things are not permanently and unalterably predetermined."

"I know," Elizabeth said. "But the model doesn't explain it. According to the model you described, that event was always written into the timeline until the signal was sent back to change it, which means that only a machine like yours can alter the thread pattern. So was the whole of human history and evolution before that simply a playing out of a fixed script? I can't believe that, Charles. The model has to show how such things as chance could operate before you built your machine, and at present it doesn't."

"I agree with you," Charles said at once. "And I've no answer to give. What's your second problem?"

"Maybe another way of saying the same thing," Elizabeth said. "The experiment with the jar, for example, seemed to indicate that the people in a particular universe did manage to alter their own past. But the model still doesn't explain that fully; it only half explains it."

"How's that?" Murdoch asked, looking surprised. "I thought we covered it okay."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Let's imagine somebody decides to change something in his past, in other words something he remembers," she said. "So he sends a signal back that resets the timeline and remains imprinted upon the fabric of the new timeline that it creates instead. Because of information contained in the signal, the something that was to be changed is changed, and the new somebody who is formed on that timeline perceives nothing that requires changing. Hence our original premise—that he began by deciding to change something—becomes untenable. So how and
when
did the signal ever come to be sent to begin with? Or to be a little more specific, how did the people who sent the signal about the jar manage not to receive the signal when they were at the time you were at when you received it? Either a signal was or was not received at that time. If it was, why didn't they receive it; if it wasn't, how did you?"

Murdoch swung his head round to look at Charles. Charles thought for a while and nodded slowly. "She's right," he murmured.

"In the model, causes and effects remain as we would normally define them," Elizabeth went on. "But instead of being simply related in sequence along a unidirectional timeline, they exist on a complicated loop that takes place in time. The loop makes the whole thing an impossible situation, at least it does if the loop is postulated as a permanent feature of the model like the threads. It can't be always there, but the model doesn't explain how it can come and go."

"You mean the model needs to be dynamic," Cartland said.

Elizabeth nodded decisively. "Yes, dynamic. That was what I meant when I said I was bothered about it being static as it is." She picked up her spoon at last and looked at Charles before returning her attention to her meal. "As I said, I think you're on the right track. But we need to add something that will give free will and random influences a chance to operate—something that injects an
element of uncertainty
into the whole process. The loops must be allowed to appear and disappear dynamically."

"Something like a quantum dynamics of spacetime," Murdoch remarked.

"Yes, something very much like that," Elizabeth agreed. "We need to extend quantum uncertainty, or something very like it, throughout the whole continuum of universes. When the model includes that, I think it will be getting extremely close indeed."

On Saturday morning they ran tests to try out a few ideas that had occurred to Charles. In the course of the experiments they communicated several more times with future versions of themselves who they did not subsequently evolve into. Although these tests were simple in nature and far removed from the rigorous experiments that Charles was planning, they seemed to support the general form of the model discussed over dinner the night before. The experience of witnessing evidence of a small part of the universe being wiped out and re-formed into something else was still strange to say the least, but by lunchtime, such being the adaptability of human nature, it was no longer disconcerting.

The range of the machine had by then been extended to twenty-four hours as Charles and Cartland had predicted, and some of the signals coming in were from well beyond the ten-minute limit that had previously been the maximum. To avoid the possibility of missing anything that might be important, they decided to leave the machine switched on and running permanently, thus establishing an always-open "line" to receive and record automatically anything that the inhabitants of the universes ahead of them in time might have to say. Since the message capacity had also been extended well beyond the previous six-character limit as part of the modifications, there was now room to accommodate significant amounts of information from the mysterious future universes.

Elizabeth decided, without much coercion, to extend her stay until Sunday night. This gave Murdoch and Lee an opportunity to make a trip into Kingussie, the town about fifteen miles away where they had turned off the Perth-Inverness road on their way from Edinburgh, something they had been wanting to do for over a week but had put off. Murdoch had made up a list of things he needed that were not available in the village, and Lee wanted to buy some warmer clothing; he had not taken full account of the Scottish winter before leaving California. After lunch, therefore, they bade farewell for the afternoon and left Charles, Cartland, and Elizabeth to continue yet another seemingly interminable discussion in the library. They stopped in the vestibule just inside the main doors to put on their coats. Fascinating though the work was, the thought of taking a break was nice, and they were in high spirits.

"I can't say I'll be sorry to get out into some fresh air," Murdoch said. "It looks like a nice day for a drive."

"Suits me," Lee agreed.

Murdoch moved ahead and swung open one of the heavy wooden doors. He paused and drew in a deep lungful of air. "Mmm, smells nice and fresh. Blue sky again at last."

"Watch it doesn't give you oxygen poisoning," Lee said, pausing just behind him to light a cigarette. Murdoch grinned and went on down the steps while Lee stood there for a second to draw the cigarette into life in his cupped hand, at the same time holding the door partly open with his elbow. Down near the floor behind him, an inquisitive black-and-white face poked itself from between Charles's overshoes and the umbrella stand. Lee pocketed his lighter and let the door go to close as he began following a few paces behind Murdoch. Maxwell squeezed through the gap just before the door closed and tumbled unsteadily down the steps a few feet behind Lee's heels. The cat reached the car just as the door slammed above its face, and stood in the snow peering up with wide, bewildered eyes.

"All set?" Murdoch asked as Lee settled down in the seat beside him.

"Sure. How will we be for time? I figure maybe I could use a pint of that Scottish beer."

"No problem," Murdoch said as he started the engine. "I've only got a few—" He frowned suddenly. "Hell!"

"What's up?"

"We should have told Mrs. Paisley we might be a bit late. I'd better go back inside and fix it."

"I'll do it." Lee swung himself out of the car and headed back toward the steps, leaving the car door half open. Murdoch sat back to wait, and after a few seconds switched on the radio. The music was enough to mask the scratching noises of Maxwell scrambling in at the bottom of the passenger's door and worming his way under the seat toward the back of the car. A minute later Lee reappeared, climbed in, and closed the door.

"Okay," he said. "She'll leave us some sandwiches."

"Great. Let's go," Murdoch answered.

The car turned out of the forecourt and disappeared into the curve of the driveway, between the snow-crusted trees.

Kingussie was a quaint little town straddling what had been the main Perth-to-Inverness road before the opening of the bypass fifteen years before had rescued it from the automobile invasion of the twentieth century. Since then Kingussie had reverted to a picturesque jumble of narrow streets, haphazard buildings, and a few church spires that made a convenient stopping-off place for travelers on the nearby throughway to have a meal, shop for souvenirs, or simply browse along the main street's parade of shopfronts displaying everything from tartan plaids and Scottish woolens to skiing and mountain-climbing equipment.

The main street was busy with Saturday-afternoon shoppers making the best of the fine weather when Murdoch and Lee slowed to a halt just ahead of an empty space in the line of vehicles parked by the sidewalk. Murdoch backed the car into the space and cut the engine.

"They don't exactly have a surplus of parking lots in this town," Lee observed, looking around.

"What would you pull down to make some more?" Murdoch asked him.

"Mmm, okay, point taken. Where to first?"

"Well, if you still want a beer, why don't we do that now. Then we won't have to carry lots of junk all over town. There's a place you'd like just around the corner, all oak beams and stuff. Must be three hundred years old."

"Sounds fine."

Murdoch climbed out into the road and closed the car door. Lee opened the door on the other side, then paused for a moment to check his pockets for the list of things he needed to buy. In a flash, Maxwell slipped out and vanished between the underside of the car and the curb. A few seconds later his nose poked out from behind the rear wheel as he surveyed the strange world of people and movement flowing by in front of him.

There was a lamppost near the edge of the sidewalk just a few feet from where the car was parked. Its base was hexagonal, and a crumpled ball of paper had lodged against one of the corners, carried there by the breeze. The ball of paper fluttered nervously in delicate equilibrium while a trillion molecules of air played thermodynamic roulette to decide the issue. Maxwell watched, his eyes widening slowly. The ball teetered precariously for an instant longer, then broke free from the lamppost and tumbled across the sidewalk.

Maxwell's first pounce missed by an inch. A split-second later he had gathered himself again and was streaking in pursuit after the erratically rolling ball as it veered into the doorway of one of the shops.

Murdoch was halfway around the car when a startled shriek, coinciding with an ear-rending S-Q-U-A-W-K, stopped him dead in his tracks. At the same time Lee, who was just straightening up from closing the door on the other side of the car, spun around. They were just in time to see a girl who was coming out of one of the shops with an armful of packages stumble over something and drop most of the bags. The bundle of fur that disentangled itself from her feet and fled into the crowd was unmistakable.

"Oh, shit!" Murdoch said miserably.

"Jesus, it's Maxwell!" Lee yelled. "He's taken off! Check the damage, Doc. I'll go get him." With that he plunged away into the throng, plowing a swath through the ranks of startled onlookers.

"What is it, Maggie?" a woman wailed in a high-pitched voice to her companion.

"They're Americans, I think" was the reply.

"Och, aye." A man nodded dourly to his wife, as if that adequately explained all.

It had all happened so quickly that the girl was still staring at the wreckage around her feet, and had made no move to recover the bags. Murdoch walked over and squatted down to begin collecting the spilled contents. He groaned inwardly at the sounds of tinkling glass that came from several of the boxes and paper bags, and braced himself for a tirade of abuse from above. But none came. Instead the girl squatted down opposite him and began gathering the rest of the items with calm, unhurried composure.

"Gee, I—I don't know what to say," Murdoch stammered. "We didn't even know he was there. Here, I'll take that. Oh hell, this one sounds like bad news."