Time Loves a Hero
for Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
PART 1
Monday Times Three
PART 2
“… Where Angels Fear to Tread”
PART 3
Free Will
Acknowledgments
Sources
About the Author
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
—ALEXANDER POPE
Autumn, 1365—8:05Z
The boy began climbing the mesa shortly after sunrise, stealing away from the village while his mother was making breakfast for his sisters. It wasn’t long before she noticed his absence; he heard her calling his name, her voice echoing off the sandstone bluffs of the canyon he called home, but by then he was almost a third of the way up the narrow trail leading to the top of the mesa.
Darting behind a pile of talus, he cautiously peered down at the adobe village. Pale brown smoke rose from fire pits within its circular walls, and tiny figures moved along the flat rooftops. There was no sign of pursuit, though, so after a few minutes he emerged from hiding and continued his long ascent.
He had hiked to the top of the mesa several times before, but always in the company of his father or one of his uncles, to set traps for tassel-ear squirrels and desert rabbits. The tribal elders had decreed that children were never to leave Tyuonyi alone, for it was only within the settlement’s fortified walls that they were safe from the Enemy. Yet the boy was never very obedient, and he had been plotting this journey for several weeks now. He knew of a stand of juniper trees that grew on top of the mesa. Although the morning was warm, the first frost had come to the canyon a few days ago, and juniper berries would now be sweet enough to eat. He had bided his time until his father and uncles went away on a hunting expedition, then he made his escape from the village.
The boy was little more than five years old, but he was almost as strong as a child twice his age; the soles of his bare feet were tough as leather, his small body accustomed to the rarefied air of the high desert. He scurried up the steep path winding along the mesa’s rugged cliffs, barely noticing the escarpments that plunged several hundred feet to the canyon floor. When he became thirsty, he paused to dig a small cactus out of the ground; he pulled its quills, peeled its skin, and chewed on its pulp as he continued his lonely trek.
It was shortly after he passed the landmark his father called Woman Rock—a sheer bluff scarred by an oval-shaped crevasse that bore a faint resemblance to a vagina—that he came to the place where deep blue sky met the ground. Suddenly, there was nowhere left to climb; the terrain lay flat, covered with mesquite and sage, with only blue-tinged mountain peaks in the far distance. He had reached the roof of the world.
The boy grinned broadly. He would find his juniper berries and stuff himself to his heart’s content, then he would swagger back down the trail to Tyuonyi, where he would regale his sisters and the other children with his tale of adventure. In his mind’s eye, he saw the tribal elders, impressed by his courage and fortitude, inviting him into their kiva, where he would undergo the sacred ceremonies which would affirm his status as a man. His mother and sisters would be proud of him, and when his father returned …
His father would probably tear off a willow branch and whip him to within an inch of his life.
Realizing this, the daydream vanished like so much cookfire smoke. Well, for better or worse, he was here. The least he could do was find a juniper tree.
He walked over to a nearby mesquite and lifted the flap of his loincloth. A thin yellow stream of urine irrigated its roots, and he sighed with satisfaction. The sun hadn’t yet climbed to its zenith, and he had plenty of time to find the object of his desire. Once he had eaten, perhaps he would locate a shady place to take a nap before …
A vague motion caught the corner of his eye.
The boy instinctively froze, not twitching a muscle as his dark eyes sought the source of the movement. For a moment he thought it might be a bird or a lizard, yet as he listened, he couldn’t detect any familiar animal sounds. Had it only been …?
There. Just to his left, about twenty paces away. A strange rippling pattern, like the forms hot air makes as it rises from sun-baked ground.
Turning very slowly, the boy studied the apparition. He half expected it to vanish any second, the way mirages always do when the breeze shifts a little, yet the pattern remained constant, spreading out before him like a wavering, transparent wall …
No. Not transparent … reflective, like the shallows of the creek that wound through the canyon. Indeed, he could see the reversed image of a nearby tree against its surface.
Remaining absolutely still, his heart thudding against his chest, he regarded the manifestation with dread and fascination. Then, ever so carefully, he knelt and, without taking his eyes from the strangeness, picked up a stone. Gathering his courage, he hesitated for another moment, then he leaped up and hurled the rock at the wall-of-air.
The boy had always possessed a keen eye. He had learned how to kill lizards when he was only three, and more recently had refined his talent to the point where he could knock a squirrel off a tree branch from twenty paces. The stone he threw now hurtled on a straight trajectory toward his selected point of reference, the center of the air-wall where the juniper tree was reflected …
The rock hit something that wasn’t there. It made an odd hollow sound, and in the briefest of instants, the boy glimpsed concentric whorls spreading outward from its point of impact. Then the rock bounced off the invisible surface and fell to the ground.
He was still staring at the place where stone had fallen when a ghostly hand touched his left shoulder.
“Go away, kid,” a voice said, in a language he couldn’t understand. “You’re bothering me.”
The boy leaped straight into the air. When his feet touched ground again, he was already running. His terrified scream echoed off the canyon walls as he sprinted back down the trail, the coveted juniper berries utterly forgotten.
A few moments passed, then the air shimmered around the place where the boy had stood. Thousands of tiny mirrors gradually assumed a man-shaped form until it solidified into a figure wearing a loose-fitting environment suit. He raised his gloved hands and pulled off his hood, then grinned at the invisible wall.
“Did you ever see someone run so fast?” he asked. “I bet he’s already halfway home.”
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” a woman’s voice said within his headset. “You could have hurt him.”
“Oh, don’t worry so much. Just gave him a scare, that’s all.” Tucking the hood beneath his arm, Donal Bartel wiped sweat off his shaved head as he walked to the edge of the mesa and peered over the side. Although he could see the top of the trail, the boy was nowhere in sight. “All right, he’s gone. Let’s finish up here.”
He turned to watch as the spectral wall began to materialize, taking the form and substance of a saucer-shaped craft. Perched above the rocky ground on five petal-like flanges, its electrochromatic outer skin resumed its natural appearance until the vessel’s silver hull dully reflected the hot sun overhead. Hemispherical pods beneath its lower fuselage emitted an amber glow which pulsated within the craft’s shadow.
“You’ve got everything you need?” From within the single porthole on the Miranda’s low turret, the timeship’s pilot peered out at him. “We could stay a little longer, if you think we’re not going to be bothered anymore.”
Donal pondered Hans’s question as he unzipped the stealth suit and shrugged out of it. The suit was useful for hiding from contemporaries, but in the desert heat it threatened to suffocate him. “He’s not coming back, but once he tells his folks what he’s seen up here, someone might come up to investigate.”
“I agree.” The woman who had spoken earlier was climbing down a ladder set within one of the landing flanges. “The Anasazi are a very wary people. Someone down there might think the boy saw a scout from an enemy tribe.”
Donal nodded. For the last two days, he and Joelle had studied this isolated settlement of pre-Pueblo native Americans. Seven hundred years from now, this place would be identified on maps as Burnt Mesa, overlooking Frijoles Canyon within the Bandelier National Monument, not far from the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. By then, the village of Tyuonyi would be a collection of ancient ruins carefully preserved by the United States government. The site would have a gift shop and a museum, and thousands of tourists would visit this place every year to saunter among the crumbling remains of what had once been a thriving settlement.
Yet their mission hadn’t been merely to record what Tyuonyi had looked like when it was inhabited. Twentieth-century archaeologists had already done that task, three hundred years before the Miranda had traveled back through chronospace. There was also the enduring controversy over the forces that had brought an end to the Anasazi civilization. Some CRC researchers, holding to theories first advanced during the late twentieth century, believed that some tribes had begun raiding others, committing atrocities that went beyond rape and slaughter to include ritualistic cannibalism. This was what had eventually forced many tribes to abandon their adobe homes and seek refuge in cliff dwellings; the Tyuonyi villagers had already built their own Long House within the talus walls of Burnt Mesa. Indeed, the very word Anasazi, given to the pre-Pueblo tribes by the nearby Navajos, meant “Ancient Enemy.”
“We might learn more if we stayed longer, but …” Joelle Deotado pushed back her long blond hair as she gazed at the distant village. “I don’t want to risk exposing ourselves, and we may have done that already.” She glanced over her shoulder at Donal. “You might have done the wrong thing, but it probably doesn’t matter. They would have found us sooner or later.”
“I’m sorry it worked out that way, but …” He shrugged. “You’re right. We’ve been compromised. Better pack up.”
“Very well,” Hans Brech said from within the timeship. “I’ll begin laying in a return trajectory, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what we want.” Joelle walked toward the miniature cameras and listening devices they had concealed within foliage upon ledges overlooking the village. As expedition leader, it was her decision whether to call off a survey. “Let’s get ready to go.”
Donal sighed as he neatly folded the stealth suit. He had donned it when the motion sensors they had placed around the top of the trail detected the approach of the native boy. When Brech put the Miranda in chameleon mode, the timeship should have been adequately disguised, the energized fractal coating of its outer hull enabling it to blend in with its environment, yet the boy had the eyes of a cat and the curiosity to go with them. Joelle might not have liked the way he chased him away, but …
Something flashed. For an instant, he thought it was sunlight reflecting off the Miranda, until he realized that it was coming from the wrong direction, about 30 meters from the timeship. He turned his head, looked that way …
“Donal!” Joelle snapped. “Do you see …?”
“I see it,” he whispered.
Just above a large boulder near the top of the trail, not far from where the boy had emerged, a bright halo of white-yellow light had flickered into existence. About three meters in diameter, it surrounded an indistinct form lurking within its nucleus: a bisymmetrical figure, vaguely human-formed save for the pair of broad, winglike shapes that expanded outward from behind its body.
“Hans, are you getting this?” Donal spoke quietly, not daring to move a muscle. “Tell me it’s not a hallucination.”
“I’ve got it.” Brech’s voice was subdued. “Sort of. I mean, it’s not registering on … no, there it …”
Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the haloed figure vanished.
Not all at once, though. When it disappeared, Donal noticed that the nimbus seemed to collapse into itself, much as if it had created a miniature wormhole. As it did, sand and gravel were sucked into the vortex, and the surrounding scrub brush was violently yanked toward it. A half second later, there was a loud thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Donal’s hands went to his ears as Joelle yelled something unintelligible.
No one said anything for a moment.
“Was that an angel?” Joelle asked softly.
“If it was,” Brech said, “then it’s another good reason for us to leave.”
PART 1
MONDAY TIMES THREE
PART 2
“… WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD”
PART 3
FREE WILL
Monday, January 12, 1998: 7:45 A.M.
The train from Virginia was crowded, as it always was during morning rush at the beginning of the week. Murphy could have driven into D.C., and in fact had left his home in Arlington intending to do just that, but when he heard on the radio that an accident on the Roosevelt Bridge had caused traffic to back up on the Beltway, he changed his mind at the last minute and decided instead to catch the inbound Metro from Huntington Station. Under normal circumstances he would have sat out the jam, but his meeting was scheduled for eight o’clock sharp, and this was one appointment for which he dared not be late.
So he sat nervously on the plastic seat, hands folded together on his briefcase, jostled every now and then by the man next to him reading the Washington Post. As the train rumbled through the long tunnel beneath the Potomac, he contemplated his reflection in the window. The face which gazed back at him was still young, yet rapidly approaching middle age; he saw creases where he had never noticed any before, a hairline subtly receding from his forehead and temples, dark circles beneath eyes that had once been curious and lively.
Was this just the Monday blahs, or was he was getting old, and more quickly than expected? It had been only seven years since he had left Cornell University, moving his wife and infant child from Ithaca to Washington so he could take a job with NASA. He’d had a beard then, as he recalled, and his eleven-year-old Volvo had still sported a peeling Grateful Dead sticker left over from some grad-student road trip he had taken with Donna. That seemed like a hundred years ago; the beard was long gone, he had traded in the trusty Volvo for a Ford Escort that promptly broke down once every three months, and even the Dead were no longer around. All that remained was another overworked and underpaid government bureaucrat, indistinguishable from the dozens of others riding the train to work.
He only hoped that, when the day was done, he’d still have a job to which he could commute.
Just as Murphy was checking his watch for the tenth time since boarding the Metro, the train began to decelerate. A few moments later, the next station swept into the view. Rushing past businessmen in overcoats, students in parkas, and shabby-looking street people, the train gradually coasted to a stop in front of the platform.
“L’Enfant Plaza. Transfer to all lines. Doors opening on the right.” Again, Murphy found himself wondering whether the train’s voice was recorded.
He pulled on his gloves, picked up his briefcase, stood up, and joined the line of passengers shuffling out of the car. Once on the platform, he quickened his pace; buttoning up his parka, he marched through the exit turnstiles, then jogged past the ticket machines to the long escalator leading up to E Street. Muted winter sunlight caught random flakes of snow drifting down through the entrance shaft; he pulled up his hood against the harsh wind and ignored the homeless people begging for spare change at the top of the escalator.
He was almost running by the time he covered the two city blocks that separated L’Enfant Plaza from his place of work. A long, eight-story glass box, NASA headquarters was as soulless as any of the other other federal offices surrounding the Mall, but at least it didn’t have the paranoid Post-Apocalypse-style of government buildings erected during the late sixties and early seventies, when government architects were obviously planning for civil insurrections by excluding ground-floor windows and limiting the number of entry doors. Digging into his coat pocket, Murphy pulled out his laminated I.D. badge and flashed it at the security guard behind the front desk, then sprinted for the nearest elevator just as its doors were beginning to close. He glanced at his watch; just a minute past eight. No time to visit his office; he reached past the other passengers to stab the button for the eighth floor.
The elevator opened onto a long corridor decorated with paintings of Saturn V rockets and Apollo astronauts being suited up. Murphy tugged off his coat as he strode down the hall, carefully noting the coded signs on each door he passed. In the seven years he had worked at NASA, he had been to this floor only a few times; this was the senior administrative level, and you didn’t come up here unless you had a good reason.
The boardroom was located at the end of the corridor, only a few doors down from the Chief Administrator’s office. The door was half-open; he could hear voices inside. Murphy hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
Three men were seated at the far end of the long oak table that took up most of the room; one chair had been left vacant between them. Their conversation came to a stop as Murphy walked in; everyone looked up at him, and for an instant he felt a rush of panic.
“Dr. Murphy, welcome. Please come in.” Roger Ordmann, the Associate Administrator of the Office of Space Science, pushed back his chair and stood up. “You’re running a little late. I hope you didn’t have any trouble getting here today.”
“My apologies. There was a …” No point in telling them about his decision to take the Metro. “Just a problem with traffic. Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“Not at all.” Ordmann gestured to the vacant chair as he sat down again. “The Beltway can be brutal this time of day. At any rate … well, I believe you already know everyone here.”
Indeed he did. Harry Cummisky, Space Science’s Chief of Staff, was the man who had hired Murphy seven years ago. Although only a few years older than Murphy himself, he was the person to whom Murphy directly reported. Harry gave him a nod which was cordial yet nonetheless cool. If it weren’t for Murphy, after all, he wouldn’t be here today.
Next to him was Kent Morris, the Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Public Affairs Office. Murphy knew Morris less well; they had met only three weeks ago, during NASA’s annual Christmas party. Morris seemed affable enough then, but there was a certain edge to him that Murphy instinctively disliked. As it turned out, his feelings were correct; Morris had just transferred over to NASA from the Pentagon, where the PAO was more inclined to scrutinize civilian employees for possible security breaches. It had been a little less than a week after the Christmas party when Morris had blown the whistle on Murphy.
As for Roger Ordmann … although Murphy had only met him once or twice before, he knew him all too well, if only by reputation. The former vice president of a major NASA contractor, Ordmann had been recruited to the agency by the Chief Administrator after Dan Goldin himself had come aboard during the Bush administration. Ordmann was a company man; he followed Goldin’s visionary lead without having much of a vision of his own, beyond making sure that Space Science continued to be sufficiently funded through the next fiscal year. Courtly, urbane, and soft-spoken, he could nonetheless be unmerciful when it came to dismissing any personnel in the Washington office who roused his ire.
“Yes, sir. I know everyone.” Murphy draped his coat over the back of his chair; there was a long, expectant silence as he sat down. Now it seemed as if everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to continue. “To start with …”
Feeling an itch in his throat, Murphy coughed into his hand. “Excuse me. To begin with, I apologize for any embarrassment I may have caused the agency. It wasn’t my intent to cast NASA in a bad light. When I wrote that article, I didn’t believe it would be attributed to …”
“David …” Roger Ordimann regarded him with a paternal smile. “This isn’t a formal board of inquiry, let alone an inquisition. We simply want to know … well, at least I’d like to know … how you drew your conclusions, and why you decided to publish them at this time.”
“And who gave you clearance to do so,” Morris added, much less warmly.
Murphy glanced across the table at the PAO deputy chief, and that was when he noticed a copy of the February issue of Analog resting before him. Not only that, but Ordmann and Cummisky also had copies. The very same science fiction magazine currently on sale in bookstores and newsstands across the country which, along with new stories by Michael F. Flynn, Paul Levinson, and Bud Sparhawk and book reviews by Tom Easton, also featured a nonfiction article by one David Z. Murphy: “How to Travel Through Time (And Not Get Caught).”
“So …” Steepling his fingers together, Ordmann leaned back in his chair. “Tell us why you think UFOs may be time machines.”
Mon, Oct 15, 2314—0946Z
Franc Lu awoke as the lunar shuttle fired its braking thrusters. Feeling the momentary pull of gravity, he pushed off the eyeshades he had donned a couple of hours ago and carefully blinked a few times. The ceiling lights had been turned down, though, so he didn’t have to squint; free fall returned after a moment, and he felt his body once more beginning to rise above his seat; he was thankful that he hadn’t neglected to check the straps before taking a nap.
Turning his head to the left, he peered out the oval porthole window next to his seat. Past the port engine nacelle, he caught a brief glimpse of Earth, an enormous, cloud-flecked shield that glided away as the shuttle completed its turnaround maneuver. Unable to make out any major continents through the clouds, he assumed that they must be somewhere over the Pacific. Probably just beyond the visible horizon lay Hong Kong, his ancestral home. Franc smiled at the thought. Someday, he would like to get another chance to visit …
“Well. Now there’s a pleasant smile.” Across the aisle, Lea put down her compad to regard him with mischievous eyes. “Pfennig for your thoughts?”
Franc started to reply, then realized, too late, that she was indulging one of her favorite games. “Caught you!” She playfully wagged a finger at him. “Now, tell me …”
“A pfennig is a coin.” Franc laid his head back against the seat. “Smallest form of hard currency used in Germany until 2003, when the deutsche mark was replaced by the Eurodollar.”
“Very good.” Yet she wasn’t about to let him get off so easily. “And what does that expression mean, ‘pfennig for your thoughts’?”
“That you’ve made a bad pun. And I was thinking about Hong Kong, if you must know. It might be an interesting place to visit.”
“I thought you’ve already been there. Three years ago, when …” Then her elegant eyebrows arched slightly. “Oh. You mean a CRC expedition.”
Franc nodded. “Dec 31, 1997. The day Great Britain formally ceded the island to the People’s Republic of China. An intriguing period, from what I’ve read.”
She shook her head as she folded shut her compad. “It might be, but it’s probably well documented. Nothing of major interest there. You could always file a proposal, of course, but …”
“The Board would probably turn it down. You’re right.” He shrugged, then turned toward the window again. “Just a passing thought.”
Earth had completely disappeared; now all he could see was the black expanse of cislunar space. From behind him, he could hear the small handful of fellow passengers beginning to move restlessly in their seats. They had been travelling for a little more than eighteen hours now, following the shuttle’s departure from the Mare Imbrium spaceport. A private spacecraft owned and operated by the Chronospace Research Centre, the shuttle didn’t have the luxury accommodations afforded by the large commercial moonships. Everyone aboard was a CRC employee; some were returning from furlough, while others like Lea and himself had their homes on the Moon. Yet because commercial craft weren’t permitted to dock at Chronos Station, you had to take the CRC shuttle or else try hitching a ride aboard a freighter.
Thinking about their destination, Franc reached to the comp in the seatback in front of him. He ran his forefinger across the index, and the panel changed to display a forward view. Now he could see what the pilots saw from the cockpit: a cruciform-shaped station, each arm comprised of five cylindrical modules, with two spherical spacedocks located at opposite ends of its elongated central core. Within the rectangular bay of the closer dock, Franc could make out tiny spacecraft, while others hovered in parking orbit nearby.
Out of curiosity, Franc touched his finger against the image of the spacedock farther away from the shuttle. As the shuttle completed an orbit around the station, for a brief instant he caught a glimpse of a small, saucer-shaped craft nestled within the hangar bays. Then, just as he expected, the scene was blotted out by a graphic inverted triangle.
*** CLASSIFIED ** CLASSIFIED ***
REMOTE IMAGING NOT
PERMITTED
CRC 103-B
*DOWN*
The screen wiped clean, to be replaced by the original index bar. “Verdammt,” Franc murmured in disgust. It was at times like this when the gentlemen in Security Division took their work a little too seriously. As if no one aboard a CRC shuttle had ever seen a timeship before …
Lea chuckled. “You’re getting better with your explicatives.”
“Cut it out.” He cast her a warning look. “I’ve been studying as hard as I can, and you know it.”
Closing her eyes, she laid her head back against the seat. “I just hope you’ve learned your history better than your German. You’re going to need it.”
Franc opened his mouth to object, then thought better of it. There was no sense in arguing with Lea when she was in one of her moods. So he tried to relax, but after a moment he touched the comp again, and passed the remaining minutes of the flight watching the shuttle complete its primary approach.
As the spacedock filled the screen, he reflected that Chronos Station was just over a kilometer in length. It wasn’t very large, at least in comparison to some of the colonies in Lagrange orbit, yet it was amazing to think that, almost three hundred years ago, airships nearly this same size had been built—and actually flown!—on Earth.
Franc smiled to himself. In just two days, they would see the Hindenburg. Then he’d offer Lea a pfennig for her thoughts.
Monday, January 14, 1998: 8:06 A.M.
Like so many physicists, David Zachary Murphy had fallen in love with science by reading science fiction.
His love affair began when he was ten years old and saw Star Trek on TV. That sent him straight to his elementary-school library, where in turn he discovered, tucked in among more conventional fare like The Wind in the Willows and Johnny Tremain, a half dozen lesser-known books: Rocket Ship Galileo, Attack from Atlantis, Islands in the Sky, and the Lucky Starr series by someone named Paul French. He read everything in a few weeks, then reread them a couple more times, before finally bicycling to a nearby branch library, where he found more sophisticated fare: I, Robot; Double Star; Needle in a Timestack; Way Station; and other classics of the genre.
By the time David Murphy reached the sixth grade, not only was he reading at college freshman level, but he was also taking a sharp interest in science, so much so that he regularly confounded his teachers by asking questions they couldn’t answer, such as the definition of a parsec. For Christmas, his bemused yet proud parents gave him a hobby telescope; when he caught a flu after spending one too many winter evenings in the backyard, his mother brought back from the neighborhood drugstore, along with Robitussin and orange juice, a magazine she happened to spot on the rack just below the new issue of Look: the January, 1969, issue of Analog. It seemed to be just the sort of thing her strange young son would like, and it might help keep him in bed.
David recovered from the flu two days later, but he faked sick for another school day so he could finish reading every story in the magazine. One of them was the first installment of a three-part serial by Gordon R. Dickson, Wolfling; for the next two weeks, he haunted the pharmacy newsstand until the February issue finally appeared. Not only did it have the second part of Wolfling, but it also contained, as the cover story, a novelette by Anne McCaffrey, “A Womanly Talent.” An insightful observer might have noted, in retrospect, that the lissome young lady depicted in Frank Kelly Freas’s cover painting for this story bore a strong resemblance to the woman David would eventually marry, yet that may have only been a coincidence.
For the next twenty-nine years of his life, David Murphy remained a devoted reader of Analog, seldom missing an issue, never disposing of any after he read them. On occasion he picked up some of the other science fiction magazines—Galaxy, If, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vertex—but it was only in Analog, in some indescribable way, that he found the sort of thing he liked to read. He went through high school with a copy tucked in among his textbooks—no small matter, for during the seventies it was far more socially acceptable to smoke pot than to be caught reading science fiction—and when he was in college and faced a choice between a meal or the latest issue, he would sooner go hungry before passing up on what he called “his Analog fix.” After he met Donna during his third semester of his postgrad tenure at Cornell, on the first night she spent with him she was astonished to find a dozen issues of Analog beneath the bed of his small apartment. She was even more amused the first time he took her home to visit his mother for Christmas, and she found boxes upon boxes of science fiction magazines stacked in the attic.
It was during this time, while he was working on his Ph.D. in astrophysics, that David attempted to write science fiction. It didn’t take very long—only a couple of dozen reject slips, garnered not only from Analog but also Asimov’s, Omni, and F&SF—for him to realize that, no matter how much he enjoyed reading SF, he had absolutely no talent for creating it. Not that he couldn’t write at all—in fact, one of his dissertation advisors, no less than the estimable Carl Sagan, often remarked on his innate writing skills—yet the art of fiction was beyond him; his dialogue was tone-deaf, his characters wooden, his plots contrived and reliant upon unlikely coincidences. This wasn’t very heartbreaking; writing was little more than a hobby, and certainly not a passion. Nonetheless, his secret ambition was to have his name appear in the same magazine he had followed since he was a kid. Even after he received his doctorate and was happily married to Donna, with a ten-month-old baby in his arms and a new job at NASA waiting for him, he considered his life to be incomplete until he was published in Analog.
Then, late one afternoon while sitting out a Beltway traffic jam with nothing but All Things Considered on the radio to keep him company, Murphy had a brainstorm. He may not have much talent as a fiction writer, but he wasn’t half-bad at nonfiction. After all, he had already published three articles in major astrophysics journals; it might be possible for him to turn those same skills to writing pop-science articles. Indeed, he knew several working scientists who moonlighted as regular contributors to Astronomy and Discover. Why couldn’t he do the same with Analog?
After dinner that evening, Murphy sat down in his study and, very methodically, made a list of ideas for articles he could see himself writing for Analog. It was remarkably easy; as a lifelong reader, he had a good grasp of what the magazine published, and as a NASA researcher he was able to keep up with the latest developments in the space science community.
At the top of the list was “Spacewarp Drives—Are They Possible?” This was followed by “Three Ways to Terraform Mars,” “Biostasis for Interstellar Travel,” “New Space Suit Designs,” “How to Grow Tomatoes on the Moon,” so forth and so on … and at the bottom of the list, added almost as an afterthought, was: “UFOs—A Different Explanation (Time Travel).”
Much to his surprise, Analog bought his article about spacewarp drives. The check he received for six weeks of part-time work amounted to a little less than half of his weekly take-home pay from NASA, but that wasn’t the point. Nine months later, when the article finally saw print, Murphy blew away the money by getting a baby-sitter to look after Steven and taking Donna to the best five-star restaurant in Georgetown. He proudly showed his advance copy to everyone from the maître’d to the cab driver, and Donna was embarrassed when he got mildly drunk and suggested that they have sex in the ladies room, but it was all worth it. His life was complete. He had been published in Analog.
Few of his colleagues saw the article. This didn’t surprise Murphy; during the last three years he had learned that all too many NASA employees were civil-service drudges who cared nothing for space and would have gladly gone to work at the Department of Agriculture or the IRS for a few more dollars and a reserved parking space in the garage. Yet a handful of people in the Space Science office were Analog readers; they recognized his by-line, and they stopped by his office to offer their compliments. Among them was Harry Cummisky; much to Murphy’s surprise, Harry not only liked the piece, but he also gave him permission to do research during office hours, so long as it didn’t interfere with his work.
That response, along with favorable letters published several months later in the magazine, was sufficient encouragement to send Murphy back to the keyboard. Over the course of the next four years, he became a semiregular contributor to Analog. The checks he received were deposited in Steven’s college fund, but earning a little extra cash wasn’t the major reason why he wrote. Besides the satisfaction of the craft itself, on occasion he found himself exchanging correspondence with science fiction authors who had read his articles and wanted to ask a few questions for stories they were developing. Likewise, his stock at NASA gradually rose. After his article on human biostasis was published, Harry sent him down to Huntsville to lecture on the subject at the Marshall Space Flight Center; a few months later he and his family were invited to Cape Canaveral to watch a shuttle launch from the VIP area. He became regarded within NASA headquarters as a member of the brain trust.
Then he wrote an article linking UFOs to time travel, and that’s when the shit hit the fan.
“This is … ah, it’s an intriguing theory.” Roger Ordmann slipped off his wire-frame glasses and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket to clean the lenses. “Rather unorthodox, but intriguing nonetheless.”
“And you have evidence for this?” Kent Morris had his copy of Analog open on the boardroom table.
“Well … no. But it isn’t a theory.” Murphy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Kind of a thought experiment, really. This is a science fiction magazine, after all. This kind of speculation goes on all the …”
“I understand that,” Morris said impatiently, “but here, in your footnotes …” He peered at the last page of the article. “You’ve cited a NASA study on wormholes …”
“A paper from an academic conference held last spring on interstellar travel. I found it on the Web.”
“I know. I read it after I read your piece.” Morris frowned as he tapped a finger against the magazine. “The paper says nothing about time travel, let alone any connection with UFOs. You’ve drawn upon it to reach some rather far-fetched conclusions.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Murphy stole a glance at Cummisky. Harry wasn’t looking directly at anyone; his hands were folded together in his lap. He had remained silent so far, offering no comment, and Murphy had gradually come to the realization that Harry’s main concern was covering his own ass. There was no way his boss would rise to his defense.
“They’re far-fetched, I’ll admit,” Murphy said, “but they’re not inappropriate.”
Ordmann looked up sharply, and Morris raised a skeptical eyebrow. Cummisky softly let out his breath. Too late, Murphy realized that he had said the wrong thing. “What I mean is, I don’t think …”
“Please.” Ordmann held up a hand. “Perhaps we should back up a little, summarize what we know so far.” He put on his glasses again, picked up his copy of Analog. “David, on your own initiative, you’ve written an article for this … uh, sci-fi magazine … which claims that the UFOs aren’t from another planet, but instead may be time machines.”
“I didn’t make any such claim, sir. I merely speculated that …”
“Let me finish, please. Your main point is that, since there’s no feasible way for small spacecraft to cross interstellar distances, and since the star systems most likely to contain planets capable of harboring intelligent life are dozens of light-years from Earth, the only reasonable explanation for UFOs is that they’re vehicles somehow capable of generating wormholes, which in turn would enable their passengers to travel backward in time. Therefore, UFOs may have originated on Earth, but from hundreds of years in the future. That’s the gist of it, right?”
From across the table, Morris regarded him much as if he was one of the fanatics who haunted Lafayette Park across from the White House, holding up signs demanding the release of the Roswell aliens from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Harry sank lower in his seat, if that was at all possible.
“Yes, sir,” Murphy said, “but, like I said, it’s an entirely speculative proposition. I mean, I don’t think this is what’s happening. I’m only suggesting … extrapolating, that is, that …”
“I understand.” Unexpectedly, Ordmann smiled, with no trace of condescension. “As I said, it’s an intriguing idea. If someone in Hollywood made a movie out of it, it’d probably be a hit.” He chuckled and shook his head. “If I were you, I’d write a screenplay and send it to Steven Spielberg. Maybe he’d buy it for a few million dollars.” His smile faded. “But that’s not the point. You’ve written this article as a NASA scientist …”
“Pardon me, sir,” Murphy interrupted, “but I didn’t present my credentials in the article. There’s nothing in the piece which states that I work for the agency …”
“I understand that,” Ordmann said. “Nevertheless, you’re a senior NASA scientist. That lends a certain amount of credibility to your theory … or speculation, as you call it.”
Murphy was about to object, only to be headed off by Morris. “I went back and read your earlier pieces,” the Public Affairs chief said. “On two separate occasions, you made mention of the fact that you’re a physicist working for NASA. Although you don’t present your credentials in this particular article, many of them are bound to remember your affiliation with the agency.”
“Right. And there’s the problem.” Ordmann closed the magazine, placed it on the table. “David, I can take you downstairs to the mailroom and show you how many crackpot letters we receive each month. People claiming the Apollo program was canceled because we found cities on the Moon, that shuttle astronauts have seen flying saucers in orbit, that we’re covering up everything from alien invasions to the Kennedy assassination. That sort of thing’s been going on since the Mercury days, and hasn’t let up since.”
The Associate Administrator sighed as he removed his glasses once more. “This is why NASA has no official position on UFOs, other than to state that we’re not actively engaged in researching them. Even unofficially, we say that they don’t exist. Son, if a flying saucer landed in front of the White House and the Post called to ask for my opinion, I’d say it wasn’t there. That’s how carefully we have to play this sort of thing.”
Although he nodded, Murphy remained unconvinced. His previous articles had touched on subjects nearly as farfetched. Indeed, in his piece on lunar agriculture, he had playfully suggested that marijuana could be potentially useful as a cash crop. No one had complained about that. Yet any public discussion of UFOs appeared to be off-limits.
There was no sense in arguing the point, though. “I see,” he said. “I’m sorry if this has embarrassed the agency. That wasn’t my intent.”
Ordmann smiled. “I’m sure that wasn’t the idea, David. And believe me, I don’t want to do anything that would stifle your creativity. When Kent brought this to my attention, I asked Harry to let me see some of the other things you’ve done. You’re a pretty good writer.” He chuckled a little. “You know, back when I was a kid, I used to read this magazine when it was still called Astounding. It was one of the things that got me interested in space. I’m glad to see that one of our people has this connection. It’s a good way of touching base with the public.”
Then he shook his head. “But I can’t let you go off half-cocked like this. Have you done any other articles lately?”
“Is there anything else awaiting publication?” Morris asked more pointedly.
“No, sir,” Murphy replied. “I’ve been a little too busy lately to do much writing.” Which was only a half-truth. Although he had been involved with analyzing the data received from the Galileo space probe, he had also been collecting notes on the same for an article he hoped to pitch to Analog. Perhaps he should come clean. “I’ve been thinking about doing a piece about Jupiter,” he added. “What Galileo tells us about the possibility of life in the Jovian system, that sort of thing.”
Morris ran a hand across his brow. There was no mistaking the look on his face: Christ, here we go again. Ordmann didn’t seem to notice, yet he frowned slightly. “Well, if and when you write that piece … or any other articles, for that matter … I want you to forward a copy to Kent, just to let him see what you’re doing.”
“Send it to me before you submit.” Morris glared across the table at Murphy. “And let me know if it’s going anywhere else other than this magazine. Understand?”
Murphy’s stomach turned to glass. For him, writing was an intimate experience; he never let anyone, not even Donna, see what he was doing before it was published. Being mandated to show his work to someone before he sent it away was like being told that he had to set up a camcorder in the bedroom. Yet the Associate Administrator had just laid down the law, with no hope of compromise.
“I understand, sir,” he said quietly.
Ordmann smiled sympathetically. “David, you’re a fine writer. I don’t want to do anything that puts a crimp in your creativity. But you’ve got to contain some of your wilder ideas … or at least while you’re working for NASA.”
And that was the bottom line, wasn’t it? For all Roger Ordmann cared, David Zachary Murphy could write that the President was under mind control by aliens from Alpha Centauri and that the Air Force had a fleet of starships hidden at the Nevada Test Range … but the moment he did so, he was out on the street. The last thing NASA HQ would tolerate was an in-house crank.
“I understand, sir,” Murphy repeated.
Harry exhaled as if he had been underwater for the last five minutes. He wasn’t going to lose his job today. Morris looked like a hyena gloating over a giraffe carcass. “Well, then … I’m glad we’ve got this settled.” Ordmann pushed back his chair, glanced at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m running late for a budget meeting on the Hill. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Murphy.”
Then he was out the door, where a female aide anxiously waited for him, attaché case in hand. Harry mumbled something about making a phone call, then he hastily stood up and exited the conference room. Out in the hall, Murphy heard him taking the opportunity to shake hands with Ordmann and thank him profusely for his time and patience. Never too late to curry favor, he reflected sourly.
Which left him, for the moment, alone with Morris. At first, the Public Affairs chief studiously avoided meeting his eye as he folded his notebook and gathered his papers. Then he picked up the copy of Analog and his gaze lingered on the cover art, a Vincent Di Fate painting of an astronaut spacewalking outside a large spacecraft.
“You really like this sci-fi stuff, don’t you?” he asked.
“Been reading it all my life.” Murphy kept his voice even. Like most lifelong science fiction fans, he despised the word “sci-fi.”
Morris shook his head. “Not for me,” he murmured. “Too unbelievable. I prefer real stories.” He dropped the magazine on the table. “Kinda like The X-Files, though. That’s pretty good.” He turned toward the door. “Anyway, keep in touch.”
Murphy waited until he was gone, then he picked up the discarded Analog. Leafing through the magazine, he noted that several passages of his article had been highlighted with a yellow marker.
For some reason, he found himself oddly flattered. At least Morris had bothered to read the piece. Too bad he hadn’t understood a word.
Mon, Oct 15, 2314—1045Z
Franc expected to have a meeting with the Commissioner, yet not for several hours. When he arrived at his quarters on Deck 5E to drop off his bag, however, his desk had a message for him: Sanchez wished to see him and Lea as soon as possible.
Lea apparently had received the same message; he found her waiting for him in the central hub corridor, just outside the hatch leading to Arm 5. As a selenian, she could have taken a room on one of the upper levels, but since she was trying to get herself reacclimated to Earth-normal gravity, she had requested a berth on 4E. During the flight up from Tycho, Franc had once again tried to talk her into sharing his quarters on 5E. She had politely turned down his invitation, but it wasn’t too late to ask one more time.
“We can still get a room together, you know,” he said. “I checked with the AI. It told me there’s a double available on my deck, right across from where I am now. I looked at it before I came up here, and it’s really quite comfortable. All we have to do is move our stuff over there and …”
“Thank you, but no.” She favored him with a smile. “I’d prefer to sleep alone, if you don’t mind.”
“Well …” He hesitated. “Yes, I do mind, since you ask. I thought we were partners.”
“Oh, come on now.” She gave him a admonishing look. “We are partners … but I think you’re taking this a little too seriously for your own … our own good. Keep this up, and the next thing you know, you’ll be asking for a contract.”
“I never said anything about a contract.” Although, in fact, the thought had crossed his mind more than a few times lately. Even a twelve-month MH-2, with a nonexclusionary clause, would do. “I just hate breaking up a good team.”
She was about to say something when they were interrupted by a shrill electronic beep. They looked around to see a service bot moving down the corridor, the electrostatic brushes at the ends of its rotating arms sweeping dust from the cylindrical walls. “Move aside, please,” it droned as it approached. “Move aside, please.”
Irritated, Franc resisted the urge to kick the bot out of the way. That would have been recorded by the bot’s camera, though, and then he would have received a warning from the station AI not to interfere with maintenance equipment. He reached up to grasp an overhead handrail, and swung his legs up to let the bot pass. “Thank you for your cooperation,” the bot said as it whirred beneath him; its brushes barely missed Lea, who had flattened herself against the wall. “Please do not block the corridor.”
“That’s the whole point.” Lea looked up at Franc while he was still hovering above her. “We’re teammates. We’ve got to work together. Not only that, but we’re about to go on another expedition …”
“You didn’t mind New York.”
“That was different.” The first time they had slept together, it was while they were researching the causes of the Great Depression of the twentieth century. Three days after the crash of the New York Stock Exchange, it had been easy to get a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria; by then, they wanted some relief from the mass panic that had caused young millionaires to throw themselves through office windows. “That was a Class-3,” she added, speaking a little more softly now. “We’re about to do a Class-1. You know how dangerous that is.”
Challenger