Time Bomb and Zahndry Others Part 17

Fine. Where else, then, could he have gotten money from? His own bank accounts? It was too obvious a possibility to have been missed, but Davidson keyed for it anyway. Sure enough, there was no evidence of large withdrawals in the months previous to his abrupt departure from Backdrop. He went back another year, just to be sure. Nothing.

Behind him, the door squeaked open, and Davidson turned to see a young man with major's oak leaves on his jumpsuit step into the room. "Major Davidson, I presume," the other nodded in greeting. "I'm Major Lyman, data coordinator for Backdrop Security."

"Nice to meet you," Davidson nodded, reaching back to shake hands.

"Colonel Bidwell told me you've been co-opted for the Garwood birdhunt," Lyman continued, glancing over Davidson's shoulder at the computer screen. "How's it going?"

"It might go better if I had more information on Garwood's activities at Backdrop," Davidson told him.

"As it is, I've got barely one paragraph to cover two years out of the man's life*the two most important years, yet."

Lyman nodded. "I sympathize, but I'm afraid that's per the colonel's direct order. Apparently he thinks the full records would give you more information about what Backdrop is doing than he wants you to have."

"And Backdrop is doing something he doesn't want anyone to know about?" Davidson asked.

Lyman's face hardened a bit. "I wouldn't make vague inferences like that if I were you, Major," he said darkly. "You wouldn't have been allowed to just waltz into the Manhattan Project and get the whole story, either, and Backdrop is at least as sensitive as that was."

"As destructive, too." Davidson held a hand up before Lyman could reply. "Sorry*didn't mean it that way. Remember that all I know about this whole thing is that Garwood can use it to wreck cars and cigarettes.

"Yeah*the walking time bomb, I hear you dubbed him." Lyman snorted under his breath. "It's hoped that that... side effect, as it were... can be eliminated. Hoped a lot."

"Can't argue with that one," Davidson agreed. So his description of Garwood as a walking time bomb was being circulated around Backdrop. Interesting that what had been essentially a throwaway line would be so widely picked up on. He filed the datum away for possible future reference. "You think Garwood can help get rid of it if we find him?"

Lyman shrugged. "All I know is that my orders are to find him and get him back. What happens after that is someone else's problem. Anyway... my office is down the hall in Room One Fifty*let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks."

Lyman turned to go, then paused. "Oh, by the way... if your computer seems to go on the blink, don't waste time fiddling with it. Just call Maintenance and they'll take care of it."Davidson frowned. "Computers go on the blink a lot around here?"

The other hesitated. "Often enough," he said vaguely. "The point is, just tell Maintenance and let them figure out whether to fix or replace."

"Right."

Lyman nodded and left, and Davidson turned back to his terminal. So computers were among the modern conveniences subject to attack by the Garwood Effect... and it reminded Davidson of something else he'd planned to try.

It took a few minutes of searching, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a list of maintenance records, going all the way back to Backdrop's inception two years ago. Now, with a little a.n.a.lysis...

An hour later he straightened up in his chair, trying to work the cramps out of his fingers and the knot out of his stomach. If ever he'd needed confirmation of Garwood's story, he had it now. The amount of wrecked equipment coming up from the offices and experimental areas to Maintenance was simply staggering: computers, all kinds of electronic equipment, plastic-based items*the list went on and on. Even the physical structure of Backdrop itself was affected; a long report detailed instance after instance of walls that had been replastered and ceilings that had had to be sh.o.r.ed up. That it was a result of Backdrop's work was beyond doubt: a simple a.n.a.lysis of the areas where damage had occurred showed steadily increasing frequency the closer to the experimental areas one got. To the experimental areas, and to Garwood's office.

And the a.n.a.lysis had yielded one other fact. The damage had been slowly increasing in frequency over the two years Garwood had been with Backdrop... until the point three months back when he'd left.

After that, it had dropped nearly to zero.

Which meant that Garwood hadn't been lying. He was indeed at the center of what was happening.

A walking time bomb. Davidson felt a shiver run up his back. If Garwood remained at large... and if the Garwood Effect continued to increase in strength as it had over the past two years...

With a conscious effort he forced the thought from his mind. Worry of that sort would gain him nothing.

Somewhere, somehow, Garwood had to have left a trail of some sort. It was up to Davidson to find it.

He fumbled for a cigarette, swore under his breath. Leaning back in his seat again, he closed his eyes. I am James Garwood, he told himself, dragging his mind away from the irritations of nicotine withdrawal and willing his thoughts to drift. I'm in hiding from the whole world. How exactly *exactly*have I pulled it off?

III.

...times e to the gamma one t.

Garwood circled the last equation and laid down the pencil, and for a minute he gazed at the set of equations he'd derived. It was progress of a sort, he supposed; he had gotten rid of the gamma zero factor this time, and that was the one the computer had been having its latest conniption fits over. Maybe this time the run would yield something useful.

Or maybe this time the d.a.m.n machine would just find something else to trip over.Garwood gritted his teeth. Stop it! he ordered himself darkly. Self-pity was for children, or for failures.

Not for him.

Across the tiny efficiency apartment, the computer terminal was humming patiently as it sat on the floor in the corner. Easing down into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor, Garwood consulted his paper and maneuvered his "remote arm" into position. The arm was pretty crude, as such things went: a long dowel rod reaching across the room to the terminal with a shorter one fastened to it at a right angle for actually hitting the keys, the whole contraption resting on a universal pivot about its center. But crude or not, it enabled him to enter data without getting anywhere near the terminal, with the result that this terminal had already outlasted all the others he'd used since fleeing Backdrop. He only wished he'd thought of this trick sooner.

Entering the equations was a long, painstaking job, made all the more difficult by having to watch what he was doing through a small set of opera gla.s.ses. But finally he hit the return key for the last time, keying in the simultaneous-solutions program already loaded. The terminal beeped acknowledgment, and with a grunt Garwood got stiffly back into his chair. His stomach growled as he did so, and with a mild shock he saw that it was ten-thirty. No wonder his stomach had been growling for the past hour or so. Getting up, rubbing at the cramps in his legs, he went over to the kitchen alcove.

To find that he'd once again let his supplies run below acceptable levels. "Blast," he muttered under his breath, and snared his wallet from the top of the dresser. There was a burger place a few blocks away that might still be open... but on the other hand, his wad of bills was getting dangerously thin, and when this batch was gone there wouldn't be any more. For a moment he studied the terminal's display with his opera gla.s.ses, but the lack of diagnostic messages implied that nothing immediate and obvious had tripped it up. Which meant that it would probably be chugging away happily on the equations for at least another half hour. Which meant there was plenty of time for him to skip the fast food and walk instead to the grocery store.

The overhead lights were humming loudly as Garwood started across the store's parking lot, and for a moment he fantasized that that he was out in some exotic wilderness, circled by giant insects made of equal parts firefly and cicada. Out in the wilderness, away from Backdrop and the curse that hounded him.

It might come to that eventually, he knew. Even if he was able to continue eluding the searchers Saunders had scouring the area, he still couldn't stay here. His carefully engineered sublet would last only another five weeks, his dwindling bankroll dropping near zero at about the same time. Leaving him a choice between surrender and finding a job.

Both of which, he knew, really boiled down to the same thing. Any job paying enough for him to live on would leave a trail of paper that would bring Saunders's people down on him in double-quick time. Not to mention the risk he would present to the people he'd be working with.

He grimaced. A walking time bomb, that Intelligence major*Davidson*had dubbed him.

A part of Garwood's mind appreciated the unintended irony of such a characterization; the rest of it winced at the truth also there.

The grocery store, not surprisingly, was quiet. Wrestling a cart that seemed determined to veer to the left, he went up and down the aisles, picking out his usual selection of convenience foods and allowing his nerves to relax as much as they could. There were probably some people somewhere who truly disliked supermarkets and the efficient long-term storage of food that made them possible; but if there were, thenumber must be vanishingly small. As a result, grocery stores were near the top of the short list of places where Garwood could feel fairly safe. As long as he stayed away from the cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia, he could be reasonably certain that nothing would break or crumble around him.

He collected as many packages as he estimated would fit into two bags and headed for the checkout.

There, the teen-aged girl manning the register*or possibly she was a college student; they all looked equally young to him these days*gave him a pleasant smile and got to work unloading his cart. Listening to the familiar beep of the laser scanner, Garwood pulled out his wallet and watched the march of prices across the display.

The cart was still half full when a jar of instant coffee failed to register. The girl tried scanning it four times, then gave up and manually keyed the UPC code into her register. The next item, a frozen dinner, was similarly ignored. As was the next item... and the next... and the next...

"Trouble?" Garwood asked, his mouth going dry.

"Scanner seems to have quit," she frowned, tapping the gla.s.s slits as if trying to get the machine's attention. "Funny*they're suppose to last longer than this."

"Well, you know how these things are," Garwood said, striving for nonchalance even as his heart began to pound in his ears.

"Yeah, but this one was just replaced Sat.u.r.day. Oh, well, that's progress for you." She picked up the next item and turned back to her register.

Almost unwillingly, Garwood bent over and peered into the gla.s.s. Behind it, the laser scanner was dimly visible. Looking perfectly normal... No, he told himself firmly. No, it's just coincidence. It has to be.

n.o.body hates laser grocery scanners, for G.o.d's sake. But even as he fought to convince himself of that, a horrible thought occurred to him.

Perhaps it was no longer necessary for anyone to hate laser grocery scanners directly. Perhaps all it took now was enough people hating the lasers in self-guided weapons systems.

A dark haze seemed to settle across his vision. It had started, then; the beginning of the end. If a concerted desire to eliminate one incarnation of a given technology could spill over onto another, then there was literally nothing on the face of the earth that could resist Garwood's influence. His eyes fell on the packages of frozen food before him on the counter, and a dimly remembered television program came to mind. A program that had showed how the root invention of refrigeration had led to both frozen foods and ICBMs...

The girl finished packing the two paper bags and read off the total for him. Garwood pulled out the requisite number of bills, accepted his change, and left. Outside, the parking lot lights were still humming their cicada/firefly song. Still beckoning him to the safety of the wilderness.

A wilderness, he knew, which didn't exist.

The bags, light enough at the beginning of the walk, got progressively heavier as the blocks went by, and by the time he reached the door to his apartment house his arms were starting to tremble with the strain.

Working the outside door open with his fingertips, he let it close behind him and started up the stairs. A young woman was starting down at the same time, and for an instant, just as they pa.s.sed, their eyes met.

But only for an instant. The woman broke the contact almost at once, her face the neutral inward-lookingexpression that everyone seemed to be wearing these days.

Garwood continued up the stairs, feeling a dull ache in the center of his chest. The "not-me" generation.

Everyone encased in his or her own little bubble of s.p.a.ce. So why should I care, either? he thought morosely. Let it all fall apart around me. Why am I killing myself trying to take on decisions like this, anyway? Sounders is the one in charge, and if he says it'll work, then whatever happens is his responsibility. Right?

The computer had finished its work. Setting the bags down, Garwood dug out his opera gla.s.ses again and studied the display. The machine had found three solutions to his coupled equations. The first was the one he'd already come up with, the one that had started this whole mess in the first place; the second was also one he'd seen before, and found to be mathematically correct but non-physical. The third solution...

Heart thudding in his ears, Garwood stepped to the table and reached to the ashtray for one of the loose cigarettes lying there. The third solution was new... and if it contained the build-in safeguard he was hoping to find...

He picked up one of the cigarettes. Squeezing it gently between thumb and fingertips, he gazed at the formula through his opera gla.s.ses, letting his eyes and thoughts linger on each symbol as he ticked off the seconds in his mind. At a count of ten he thought he felt a softness in the cigarette paper; at twenty-two, it crumbled to powder.

Wearily, he brushed the pieces from his hand into the garbage. Twenty-two seconds. The same length of time it had taken the last time... which meant that while it wasn't getting any worse, it wasn't getting any better, either.

Which probably implied this was yet another walk down a blind alley.

For a moment he gazed down at the cigarettes. A long time ago he'd believed that this field contained nothing but blind alleys*had believed it, and had done all he could to persuade Saunders of it, too. But Saunders hadn't believed... and now, Garwood couldn't afford to, either. Because if there weren't any stable solutions, then this curse would be with him forever.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped over to the counter and began unloading his groceries. Of course there was a stable solution. There had to be.

The only trick would be finding it before his time ran out.

IV.

"Well," Davidson said, "at least he's staying put. I suppose that's something."

"Maybe," Lyman said, reaching over Davidson's shoulder to drop the report back onto his desk. "A broken laser scanner is hardly conclusive evidence, though."

"Oh, he's there, all right," Davidson growled, glaring at the paper. His fingertips rubbed restlessly at the edge of his desk, itching to be holding a cigarette. d.a.m.n Saunders's stupid rule, anyway. "He's there.

Somewhere."

Lyman shrugged. "Well, he's not at any hotel or motel in the area*that much is for sure. We've got taps on all his friends around the country, checking for any calls he might make to them, but so far that's come up dry, too.""Which means either he's somehow getting cash in despite the net, or else he's been holed up for nearly three weeks without any money. How?"

"You got me," Lyman sighed. "Maybe he had a wad of cash buried in a safe deposit box somewhere in town."

"I'd bet a couple of days' salary on that," Davidson agreed. "But any such cash had to come from somewhere. I've been over his finances four times. His accounts have long since been frozen, and every cent he's made since coming to Backdrop has been accounted for."

Lyman grimaced. "Yeah, I know*I ran my own check on that a month ago. You think he could be working transient jobs or something? Maybe even at that supermarket where the laser scanner broke?"

Davidson shook his head. "I tend to doubt it*I can't see someone like Garwood taking the kind of underground job that doesn't leave a paper trail. On the other hand... do we know if he was ever in Champaign before?"

"Oh, sure." Lyman stepped around to Davidson's terminal, punched some keys. "He was there*yeah, there it is," he said over his shoulder. "A little over two and a half years ago, on a seminar tour."

Davidson frowned at the screen. Princeton, Ohio State, Illinois, Cal Tech*there were over a dozen others on the list. Silently, he cursed the bureaucratic foot-dragging that was still keeping his full security clearance from coming through. If he'd had access to all this data three weeks ago... "Did it occur to anyone that Garwood just might have made some friends during that trip that he's now turning to for help?

"Of course it did," Lyman said, a bit tartly. "We've spent the last three weeks checking out all the people he met at that particular seminar. So far he hasn't contacted any of them."

"Or so they say." Davidson chewed at his lip. "Why a seminar tour, anyway? I thought that sort of thing was reserved for the really big names."

"Garwood is big enough in his field," Lyman said. "Besides, with him about to drop behind Backdrop's security screen, it was his last chance to get out and around*"

"Wait a second," Davidson interrupted him. "He was already scheduled to come to Backdrop? I thought he came here only two years ago."

Lyman gave him an odd look. "Yes, but Backdrop didn't even exist until his paper got the ball rolling. I thought you knew that."

"No, I did not," Davidson said through clenched teeth. "You mean to tell me Backdrop was Garwood's idea?"

"No, the project was Saunders's brainchild. It was simply Garwood's paper on*" he broke off.

"On the appropriate subject," he continued more cautiously, "that gave Saunders the idea. And that made Backdrop possible, for that matter."

"So Garwood did the original paper," Davidson said slowly. "Saunders then saw it and convinced someone in the government to create and fund Backdrop. Then... what? He went to Garwood and recruited him?""More or less. Though I understand Garwood wasn't all that enthusiastic about coming."

"Philosophical conflicts?"

"Or else he thought he knew what would happen when Backdrop got going."

The Garwood Effect. Had Garwood really foreseen that fate coming at him? The thought made Davidson shiver. "So what it boils down to is that Saunders approached Garwood half a year before he actually came to Backdrop?"

"Probably closer to a year. It takes a fair amount of time to build and equip a place like this*"

"Or put another way," Davidson cut him off, "Garwood knew a year in advance that he was coming here... and had that same year to quietly siphon enough money out of his salary to live on if he decided to cut and run."

Lyman's face seemed to tighten, his eyes slightly unfocused. "But we checked his pre-Backdrop finances.

I'm sure we did."

"How sure? And how well?"

Lyman swore under his breath. "Hang on. I'll go get another chair."

It took them six hours; but by the end of that time they'd found it.