The Masks Of Time Part 5

"All right. The other thing you wanted?"

"We'd like you to serve on the committee that will guide Vornan-19 when he gets here."

"Me? Why?"

"You're a nationally known scientific figure a.s.sociated in the public's mind with time travel," said Kettridge. "Isn't that reason enough?"

"Who else is going to be on this committee?"

"I'm not at liberty to reveal names, even to you," Kralick told me. "But I give you my word that they're all figures whose stature in the scientific or scholarly world is equal to your own."

"Meaning," I said, "that not one of them has said yes yet, and you're hoping to bulldoze them all."

Kralick looked hurt again. "Sorry," I said.

Kettridge, unsmiling, declared, "It was our belief that by putting you in close contact with the visitor, you would find some means of extracting information from him about the time-travel process he employed.

We believed that this would be of considerable interest to you as a scientist, as well as of major value to the nation."

"True. I'd like to pump him on the subject."

"And then," said Kralick, "why should you be hostile to the a.s.signment? We've chosen a leading historian to find out the pattern of events in our future, a psychologist who will attempt to check on the genuineness of Vornan's story, an anthropologist who'll look for cultural developments, and so on. The committee will simultaneously be examining the legitimacy of Vornan's credentials and trying to get from him anything that may be of value to us, a.s.suming that he's what he says he is. I can't imagine any work that could be of greater significance to the nation and to humanity at this time."

I closed my eyes a moment. I felt properly chastened. Kralick was sincere in his earnest way, and so was Kettridge in his fast-talking though heavy-handed style. They needed me, honestly. And was it not true that I had reasons of my own for wanting to peer behind Vornan's mask? Jack had begged me to do it, never dreaming that it would be so easy for me to manage.

Why was I balking, then?

I saw why. It had to do with my own work and the minute possibility that Vornan-19 was a genuine traveler in time. The man who is trying to invent the wheel is not really eager to learn the details of a five-hundred-mile-per-hour turbine car. Here was I, piddling around for half a lifetime with my reversed electrons, and here was Vornan-19, telling tales of vaulting across the centuries; in the depths of my soul I preferred not to think about him at all. However, Kralick and Kettridge were right: I was the man for this committee.

I told them I would serve.

They expressed their grat.i.tude profusely, and then seemed to lose interest in me, as though they didn't plan to waste any emotion on someone who was already signed up. Kettridge disappeared, and Kralick gave me an office somewhere in the underground annex of the White House. Little blobs of living light floated in a tank on the ceiling. He told me that I had full access to the executive mansion's secretarial services, and showed me where the computer outputs and inputs were. I could make any phone calls I wanted, he said, and use any a.s.sistance I required in order to prepare my position paper on time travel for the President.

"We've arranged accommodations for you," Kralick told me. "You're in a suite right across the park."

"I thought I might go back to California this evening to wind up my affairs."

"That wouldn't be satisfactory. We have only seventy-two hours, you know, before Vornan-19 arrives in New York. We need to spend that time as efficiently as possible."

"But I had only just returned from vacation!" I protested. "I was in and out again. I need to leave instructions for my staff-to make arrangements for the laboratory-"

"That can all be done by phone, can't it, Dr. Garfield? Don't worry about the phone expense. We'd rather have you spend two or three hours on the line to California than lose all the time of having you make another round trip in the short time remaining."

He smiled. I smiled.

"All right?" he asked.

"All right," I said.

It was very clear. My options had expired the moment I had agreed to serve on the committee. I was now part of the Vornan Project, with no independent scope for action. I would have only as much freedom as the Government could spare, until this thing was over. The odd part was that I didn't resent it, I who had always been the first to sign any pet.i.tion attacking infringement of liberties, I who had never regarded myself as an organization man but rather as a free-lance scholar loosely affiliated with the University. Without a murmur I let myself be pressed into service. I suppose it was all a subliminal way of dodging the unpleasantness that awaited me when I finally did get back into my laboratory to struggle with my unanswered questions.

The office they had given me was cozy. The floor was bouncy sponge gla.s.s, the walls were silvered and reflective, and the ceiling was aglow with color. It was still early enough to call California and find someone in the laboratory. I notified the University proctor, first, that I'd been called into Government service. He didn't mind. Then I spoke to my secretary and said I'd have to extend my absence indefinitely. I made arrangements for staff work and for monitoring my pupils' research projects. I discussed the question of mail delivery and maintenance of my house with the local data utility, and over the screen came a detailed authorization form. I was supposed to check off the things I wished the utility to do for me and the things I did not. It was a long list:

Mow lawn.

Survey sealing and climateproofing.

Relay mail and messages Gardening.

Monitor storm damage Notify sales organizations.

Pay bills.

And so on. I checked off nearly everything and billed the service to the United States Government. I had learned something from Vornan-19 already: I didn't plan to pay a bill of my own until I was released from this job.

When I had tidied up my personal affairs, I put through a call to Arizona. Shirley answered. She looked taut and edgy, but she seemed to loosen a little when she saw my face on her screen. I said, "I'm in Washington."

"What for, Leo?"

I told her. She thought I was joking at first, but I a.s.sured her that I was telling the truth.

"Wait," she said. "I'll get Jack."

She walked away from the phone. The perspective changed as she retreated, and instead of the usual head-and-shoulders view the screen showed me the tiny image of all of Shirley, a three-quarters view.

She stood in the doorway, back to camera, leaning against the doorframe so that one ripe globe of a breast showed under her arm. I knew that government flunkies were monitoring my call, and it infuriated me that they should be getting this free view of Shirley's loveliness. I moved to cut off the vision, but it was too late; Shirley was gone and Jack was on screen.

"What's this?" he asked. "Shirley said-"

"I'm going to be talking to Vornan-19 in a few days."

"You shouldn't have bothered, Leo. I've been thinking about that conversation we had. I feel d.a.m.ned foolish about it. I said a lot of, well, unstable things, and I never dreamed that you'd drop everything and go running off to Washington to-"

"It didn't exactly happen that way, Jack. I got drafted to come out here. Vital to national security, that sort of thing. But I just wanted to tell you that as long as I'm here, I'll try to help you in what you discussed."

"I'm grateful. Leo."

"That's all. Try to relax. Maybe you and Shirley need to get away from the desert for a while."

"Maybe later on," he said. "Let's see how things work out."

I winked at him and broke the contact. He wasn't fooling me at all with his feigned cheeriness. Whatever had been boiling and bubbling inside him a few days ago was still there, even though he was trying to apologize it away as foolishness. He needed help.

One more job, now. I opened up the input and started to dictate my position paper on time-reversal. I didn't know how much copy they wanted, but I figured that it didn't really matter. I began to talk. A bright dot of green light danced along the ground-gla.s.s screen of the computer's output, typing out my words as I spoke them. Working entirely from memory and not bothering to summon from the data tanks the texts of my own publications, I reeled off a quick, nontechnical precis of my thoughts on time-reversal. The gist of it was that while time-reversal on the subatomic level had already been achieved, it did not in terms of any physical theory I understood seem possible for a human being to travel backward in time and arrive at his destination alive, regardless of the power source used to transport him. I bolstered this with a few thoughts on acc.u.mulative temporal momentum, the extension of ma.s.s into an inverted continuum, and the annihilation of antimatter. And I wound it up by concluding in almost those words that Vornan-19 was plainly a fake.

Then I spent a few moments contemplating my glowing words in the vibrant but temporary green gleam on the screen. I brooded on the fact that the President of the United States, by executive decision, had chosen to look upon Vornan-19's claims as convincing ones. I pondered the efficacy of telling the President to his face that he was party to a fraud. I debated whether to forfeit my own integrity for the sake of keeping the top man's conscience from twinging, and then I said to h.e.l.l with it and told the computer to print what I had dictated and transfer it to the Presidential data files.

A minute later my personal copy bounced out of the output slot, typed, justified on both margins, and neatly st.i.tched. I folded it, put it in my pocket, and called Kralick.

"I'm finished," I said, "I'd like to get out of here, now."

He came for me. It was very late afternoon, which is to say it was a bit past midday on the time system my metabolism was accustomed to, and I was hungry. I asked Kralick about lunch. He looked a little puzzled until he realized the time-zone problem. "It's almost dinnertime for me," he said. "Look, why don't we go across the street and have a drink together, and then I'll show you to your suite in the hotel.

Then I can arrange some dinner for you, if that's all right. An early dinner instead of a late lunch."

"Good enough," I told him.

Like Virgil in reverse, he guided me upward out of the maze beneath the White House, and we emerged in the open air at twilight. The city had had a light snowfall while I had been underground, I saw. Melting coils were humming in the sidewalks, and robot sweepers drifted dreamily through the streets, sucking up the slush with their long greedy hoses. A few flakes were still falling. In the shining towers of Washington the lights glittered like jewels against the blue-black afternoon sky. Kralick and I left the White House grounds by a side gate and cut across Pennsylvania Avenue in a knight's move that brought us into a small, dim c.o.c.ktail lounge. He folded his long legs under the table with difficulty.

It was one of the automatic places that had been so popular a few years back: a control console at each table, a computerized mixologist in the back room, and an elaborate array of spigots. Kralick asked me what I'd have, and I said filtered rum. He punched it into the console and ordered Scotch and soda for himself. The credit plate lit up; he pushed his card into the slot. An instant later the drinks gurgled from the spigots.

"Drink high," he said.

"The same."

I let the rum slip down my gullet. It went down easily, landing on no solid food to speak of, and began to infiltrate my nervous system. Shamelessly I asked for a refill while Kralick was still unwinding himself on his first. He tossed me a thoughtful look, as if telling himself that nothing in my dossier had indicated I was an alcoholic. But he got me the drink.

"Vornan has gone on to Hamburg," Kralick said abruptly. "He's studying night life along the Reepersbahn."

"I thought that was closed down years ago."

"They run it as a tourist attraction, complete with imitation sailors who come ash.o.r.e and get into brawls.

G.o.d knows how he ever heard of it, but you can bet there'll be a fine brawl there tonight." He glanced at his watch. "It's probably going on now. Six hours ahead of us. Tomorrow he's in Brussels. Then Barcelona for a bullfight. And then New York."

"G.o.d help us."

"G.o.d," said Kralick, "is bringing the world to an end in eleven months and-what is it?-sixteen days?"

He laughed thickly. "Not soon enough. If He'd do the job tomorrow, we wouldn't have to put up with Vornan-19."

"Don't tell me you're a crypto-Apocalyptist!"

"I'm a cryptoboozer," he said. "I started on this stuff at lunchtime and my head's spinning, Garfield. Do you know, I was a lawyer once? Young, bright, ambitious, a decent practice. Why did I want to go into the Government?"

"You ought to punch for an antistim," I said guardedly.

"You know, you're right."

He ordered himself a pill, and then, as an afterthought, ordered a third rum for me. My earlobes felt a little thick. Three drinks in ten minutes? Well, I could always have an antistim too. The pill arrived and Kralick swallowed it; he grimaced as his metabolism went through the speedup that would burn the backlog of alcohol out of it. For a long moment he sat there shivering. Then he pulled himself together.

"Sorry. It hit me all at once."

"Feel better?"

"Much," he said. "Did I say anything cla.s.sified?"

"I doubt it. Except you were wishing the world would end tomorrow."

"Strictly a mood. Nothing religious about it. Do you mind if I call you Leo?"

"I'd prefer it."

"Good. Leo, look, I'm sober now, and what I'm saying is the straight orbit. I've handed you a lousy job, and I'm sorry about it. If there's anything I can do to make your life more comfortable while you're playing nursemaid to this futuristic quack, just ask me. It's not my money I'll be spending. I know you like your comforts, and you'll have them."

"I appreciate that-ah, Sanford."

"Sandy."

"Sandy."

"For instance, tonight. You came in on short notice, and I don't suppose you've had a chance to contact any friends. Would you like a companion for dinner . . . and afterward?"

That was thoughtful of him. Ministering to the needs of the aging bachelor scientist. "Thanks," I said. "but I think I'll manage by myself tonight. Get caught up with my thoughts, get coordinated to your time-zone-"

"It won't be any trouble."

I shrugged the matter aside. We nibbled small algae crackers and listened to the distant hiss of the speakers in the bar's sound system. Kralick did most of the talking. He mentioned the names of a few of my fellow members of the Vornan committee, among them F. Richard Heyman, the historian, and Helen McIlwain, the anthropologist, and Morton Fields of Chicago, the psychologist. I nodded sagely. I approved.

"We checked everything carefully," said Kralick. "I mean, we didn't want to put two people on the committee who had had a feud or something of that sort. So we searched the entire data files to trace the relationships. Believe me, it was a job. We had to reject two good candidates because they'd been involved in, well, rather irregular incidents with one of the other members of the committee, and that was a disappointment."

"You keep files on fornication among the learned?"

"We try to keep files on everything, Leo. You'd be surprised. But anyway we put a committee together, finally, finding replacements for those who wouldn't serve, and replacements for those who turned up incompatible with the others on the data check, and arranging and rearranging-"

"Wouldn't it have been simpler to write Vornan off as a hoax and forget about him?"

Kralick said, "There was an Apocalyptist rally in Santa Barbara last night. Did you hear about it?"

"No."

"A hundred thousand people gathered on the beach. In the course of getting there they did two million dollars worth of property damage, estimated. After the usual orgies they began to march into the sea like lemurs."

"Lemmings."

"Lemmings." Kralick's thick fingers hovered over the bar console a moment, then withdrew. "Picture a hundred thousand chanting Apocalyptists from all over California marching stark naked into the Pacific on a January day. We're still getting the figures on the drownings. Over a hundred, at least, and G.o.d knows how much pneumonia, and ten girls were trampled to death. They do things like that in Asia, Leo.

Not here. Not here. You see what we're up against? Vornan will smash this movement. He'll tell us how it is in 2999, and people will stop believing that The End Is Nigh. The Apocalyptists will collapse.

Another rum?"

"I think I ought to get to my hotel."

"Right." He uncoiled himself and we went out of the bar. As he walked around the edges of Lafayette Park, Kralick said. "I think I ought to warn you that the information media know you're in town and will start to bombard you with interview requests and whatnot. We'll screen you as well as we can, but they'll probably get through to you. The answer to all questions is-"