Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 25

The little machine sat there, under the ground, for as long as we had sent it back in time. If we sent it five hundred years back, its timer had it wait there for five hundred years, doing nothing.

Once its timer said "GO!" the temporally active area was turned on, its treads startedmoving, and it ate its way through the top of its canister, and then through the rock above it, crawling slowly upward on its treads until it eventually reached either the air, or, as was more likely, the bottom of the sea. If it reached air, it would send up an antenna and broadcast its ID number. If it found water, it dropped its treads and their drive as an anchor, while the rest of it floated to the surface, connected by a few thousand feet of fis.h.i.+ng line, and again it radioed its presence.

Then someone, usually from the Navy, went out and found it with the aid of radio direction finders, carefully noted its position using the Loran system we had installed, and brought it back for possible repair and reuse.

As the project continued, we found a major long-term drift to the east, far out into the Atlantic Ocean. This meant that we had to operate from deeper and deeper shafts, to make sure that one of our canisters didn't emerge deep in the ocean water. If that happened, there was no telling where ocean currents would take the thing, and if we ever did get it back, it's positional data would be totally useless.

The design of the canisters and the surfacers they contained had to be changed as time went on. Making machinery that could sit idle for thousands of years, and then function properly on command was no trivial task!

Eventually, we were building the surfacers mostly out of stainless steel, with gold bus.h.i.+ngs on all moving parts, and then filling the canisters with a fluorinated oil to keep moving parts from welding themselves together over the ages. Whole categories of electronic parts had to be eliminated. There isn't a battery or an electrolytic capacitor that will last more than a few decades, and these things had to be designed around. Power supplies were a particular problem.

A version of Ian's emergency generator eventually powered the things. It made a partial vacuum that the encapsulating oil boiled into. The resultant gas went through a piston type motor which in turn powered an electric generator.

Even so, a small atomic battery was needed to get the Rube-Goldberg affair started.

These batteries had been developed in the late fifties. They consisted of a thin rod of a radioactive isotope that emitted alpha particles. These particles struck a surrounding layer of a phosphor that gave off visible light. This light, in turn, energized a layer of solar cells, which converted the light into a small trickle of electricity, enough to run a clock and keep a large, mylar capacitor charged. It was a matter of one overly complicated Rube-Goldberg device starting another.

We also had to modify the six s.h.i.+ps of our small navy, so they had the range to go out on the high seas and recover our transmitters. Their huge Rolls-Royce gas turbines were removed and replaced with things that worked on the same principle as Ian's emergency generator, but which turned impellers rather than electric generators. They now had essentially infinite range, especially after we added a small galley, a shower, and some submarine-style bunk s.p.a.ce, where the engines and fuel used to be.

Even so, toward the end, only one surfacer in three was being returned to us.

We sent out some sixty-seven thousand of the things before we were sure that we had the local drifts mapped for the last fifty thousand years. We would have gone back even farther, except that we weren't up to designing machinery and electronics equipment that could last much longer. In the end, we decided that we'd have to someday build a beachhead back there, and then use it as a base for further temporal explorations into thepast.

Mayor Jenkins managed to find a genuine Catholic priest who was willing to commit the unspeakably sinful task of marrying two people who were not of his faith. He turned out to be an impoverished fellow of mostly Indian ancestry who hailed from one of the poorest sections of Paraguay.

Even so, he didn't come cheap. In return for his services, KMH bought and installed a complete water and sewage system for the extended village that was his parish. He also got a small, but well equipped hospital, two food processing plants (to get local products ready for market), and a small fleet of trucks (to get those processed products to those markets). Finally, he gouged us for the materials necessary for the building of a church, a rectory, and a minimal house for every family in the parish.

The priest figured that if he was going to sell his only soul to the rich and boorish, he might as well charge all that the traffic would bear!

It was months before he arrived, since he demanded his pay, or rather his loot, up front. Then, once he got here, he insisted on taking six weeks for the posting of the banns, time which he planned to use to educate us in the one true religion. Fortunately, he spoke no English, we spoke no Spanish, and the translators that I was paying for somehow found more pressing things to do, so his plan didn't quite work out.

He then demanded that I cease sleeping with Barbara until the wedding.

I politely suggested that in return, it would only be proper that we should burn his building materials, put sugar in the gas tanks of all of his pretty, new trucks, and dynamite his nice, new water and sewage system. Eventually, he saw the light.

It's a h.e.l.l of a thing. A sold out sky pilot who won't stay bought!

Meanwhile, work on the Time Train went on.

With the local temporal drifts mapped out, we went into Phase Two of the project.

This involved canisters big enough to transport equipment, supplies, and people. After some debate, we settled on a canister sixteen feet in diameter and sixty feet long, big enough to take a standard s.h.i.+pping container and the truck it drove in on, or to comfortably seat fifty people, along with all of their luggage.

Long hours were spent in meetings, hammering out our plans. After months of debate, what we came up was this: The first part of the drill was to be much like that used on the smaller, exploratory canisters, except that now we knew where we were going, as well as when. The first canister would weave its way through five dimensions, arrive at the predetermined site for a few nanoseconds, and then go away, taking nine thousand cubic feet of rock away with it. The second would arrive by the same route, a few nanoseconds behind, and materialize in the vacuum left by the departing first canister.

And yes, we probably could leave the first canister in position, and discard only its contents, saving the cost of the second canister entirely, but this procedure would leave the walls of the canister impregnated with rock, which weakened the metal in an unpredictable way, and made it radioactive. In addition, the temporal circuitry itself wasn't all that dependable after it had emerged once in solid rock.Time, money, and human effort weren't among our problems. We had plenty of resources, so there wasn't any incentive to chintz on the job.

The second canister sat there until the the third canister was scheduled to arrive. Just before that point, it sent its contents (mostly air, along with anything else that might have leaked in) out into the fifth dimensional void so that the third canister could emerge into a truly hard vacuum.

Once the third canister made it safely back to the twentieth century, that particular leg of the Time Train was declared ready to be put into service.

Then, a work crew could be sent back, armed with temporal digging tools, to tunnel their way up to the surface.

The temporal drifts were such that we were able put our first big canister back some two hundred and thirty-five years, and still be under the island. Before that, and they would emerge in the rock under the sea, and that didn't seem like something that I'd personally want to dig my way up from.

Intuitively, one would think that the sensible thing to do would be to go in small steps, sending the first canister back one year, say, and the next back for two. I mean, that's the way things are normally built. If you are building a railroad, you start from where you are, and build in the direction that you are going to. Then you continue the proscess until you finally get to where you want to be.

But it doesn't work that way when you are building a railroad line into the past.

Consider that tunnels, by their very nature, tend to last a long time. Starting out below ground, we had to first tunnel our way out.

Suppose that we made our first canister emerge in 1900, planning to have other canisters emerge earlier than that. In 1900, we couldn't know what we would find out there in 1890, so we couldn't possibly know what we would need to build in 1890 once we got there. And since we didn't know exactly what we would need in the past, we couldn't be sure that we wouldn't wreck some of it as we dug ourselves out. If we made sure in 1890 that there would be plenty of empty s.p.a.ce for the 1900 people to dig themselves out, we would be seriously reducing our building options.

Then, of course, when we went back to 1880, our problems would be even more difficult, and by 1750... well, you see the problem. Even when you have a time machine, you have to start at the beginning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Barbara's Family

One evening, I was sitting on a couch in the American Room of Camelot with Barb snuggled up comfortably at my side, as naked as all of my other servants around the place. Fumbling through my pockets, I dug out the list of things I had to do prior to marriage.

"Ian says that to do things properly, I need your father's permission to marry you."

"Tom, we are both adult human beings. Neither of us needs parental approval to do anything."

"I agree. However, I think that it might be a good idea for me to meet your relatives in any case, and if that satisfies Ian, well, so much the better."

"Very well, if that is your wish."

"Is there some reason why I shouldn't? Is there some problem between you and your folks? I mean, you've never mentioned them, or anything."

"My siblings and I maintain a normal relations.h.i.+p with our parents and our other ancestors, and meet them at all the usual quarterly meetings."

"Quarterly meetings? Now you've got me confused again, Barb."

"Among my people, it is customary to spend a day with one's biological ancestors every three months, at the solstices and equinoxes. This permits parents to observe the developments of their offspring and their further descendants."

"Sort of a culture-wide family reunion, huh? Not a bad idea, I suppose. I'm surprised that I've never been invited to one."

"Well, you don't have any ancestors here, Tom. But I expect that the real reason for the lack of invitations is that these meetings are terribly boring, even for those who are seeing their relatives again. An outsider would simply feel lost."

"Well, if everybody is bored stiff at them, why do you hold them at all?"

"Because not everybody is bored. The older people enjoy the meetings immensely.

Parents are naturally far more interested in their children than the children are in them.

This is even more noticeable between grandparents and grandchildren. And when they are eight or ten generations removed, well, I'll let you imagine the results for yourself.""Eight or ten generations! Good G.o.d, Barbara, I knew that your people lived longer than mine, but that's ridiculous! Even at twenty years per generation, you are talking about people who are more than two hundred years old!"

"I think that the average length of a generation among us might be closer to fifty years, Tom, although people over two hundred years old subjective are extremely rare.

And since you are about to ask it, no, I am nothing close to fifty years old. You got me started on raising children quite early, as it turned out."

"Please don't tell me what I'm going to ask you next. I'm never sure if it's just an expression of yours, or if you really have read my next statement out of one of your history books."

"It's simply that your facial expressions are very telling, Tom, so your thoughts are easy to guess. I never really know what you're thinking. The history of this century has never been written. Quite possibly, it never will be."

"One strange statement at a time, young lady. Back to these ancestors of yours who are ten of your fifty year generations old without pus.h.i.+ng two hundred."

"Isn't it obvious? After they reach retirement age, people in my culture have a great deal of freedom. They can do just about anything they want, go anywhere, or any when.

Many of them become extremely interested in their descendants, and attend two, or three, or sometimes even seven successive quarterly meetings a week, subjectively. There are some who have made meeting their descendants the major hobby in their lives, and attend all of the meetings for thousands of years."

"So the world for them becomes like a series of conventions, with the same old pros there every time, and an ephemeral bunch of young neos bubbling through and going their way."

"Yes, I suppose that it could seem that way to some of them."

"Huh. Back home, I knew a couple of old guys who treated science fiction conventions that way. So, do I have to wait for the next solstice to meet your folks?"

"Of course not, Tom. They'd be delighted to meet you at any time. My siblings would like to meet you as well. Shall I invite them here? I know that they'd all like to see this place."

"It sounds fine to me, and let's do it as soon as you feel it's appropriate. I'd just as soon get this thing over with as soon as possible."

"As you wish. Would this coming Sat.u.r.day at six be acceptable to you?"

One of the glories of having time travel available was that you never had to check with anyone else before you scheduled any sort of gathering, party, or other event. If your guests had something else going on at the same time, they could always go to both things if they wanted to. On the other hand, if they didn't show up, they had no possible excuses except that they simply didn't want to go.

Most people had a long list of social events in the past that they had promised to attend, and simply hadn't gotten around to showing up at yet. It wasn't considered wise or even polite to mention those events to them. After all, if a hostess chided you for not coming to her party, she was proving that you never would go to it, thus relieving you of having to worry about it in your subjective future.Not that it made any difference to me back then, since they still weren't letting Ian and me use the time machines that we hadn't completely invented yet. It wasn't so much that they forbade us to use them, it was more that they had hidden the things, and try as we might, we hadn't been able to find them. Yet.

When Sat.u.r.day afternoon came around, I found that a silk tie and a vicuna sports jacket had been laid out for me. Barb had apparently decided on the evening's dress code, and I wasn't about to argue with her about it.

I noticed a more startling change on my way down tairs. All of the usually nude serving wenches that filled the place were now properly dressed. This took me aback for a moment, but then I realized that having a naked harem girl answer the door for my fiancee's parents would not be the socially corect thing to do.

Ian had invited himself over, with Ming Po on his arm, I suppose mostly to lend me his moral support.

I was in good hands, but I was still nervous as all h.e.l.l.

Meeting Barb's parents was less of an ordeal than I feared it would be, once I got over their appearance. They both looked to be incredibly young, about my own age. That troubled me a bit. Your girl's folks are supposed to look old.

Furthermore, Barb's mother is every bit as beautiful as Barb is.

Barb introduced everyone, using first names only, as was customary among these people. Except in work situations, you almost never heard anyone's last name.

Her parents were both charming and intelligent people, as were Barb's two sisters, her brother, and her three siblings-in-law. Over drinks and then dinner, I found that they all had productive jobs on the island, in everything from accounting to agriculture. Indeed, Barb's brother Justin ran the island's only dairy farm, a major installation with over a hundred workers and five hundred cows that turned out milk, b.u.t.ter, yogurt, and twenty- two varieties of cheese.

It turned out that Barb was very close to her siblings, more so than the usual American woman would be with hers. It made sense, though, considering the way they were all the same age when they were raised together. It was almost as though they were fraternal twins.

As the pleasant evening ended, I formally asked Barb's father's permission to marry his daughter and he just as formally granted it.

When I thanked him, he said, "According to the standard formulas that Barbara made me read, I was supposed to inquire about your finances, to be sure that you could support her properly, but since you are known to be one of the wealthiest men in history, I thought it best to forget about that requirement."

Finally, the day came when we sent a full-sized canister back to 1737, and had it return safely.

"Are you all ready for our little jaunt?" I asked Ian at breakfast.

"I've been looking forward to this moment since we started fiddling with time. Iwouldn't miss this trip for the whole world and a certificate that the taxes had already been paid on it!"

Ming Po, who was present, looked distressed, and Barbara said, "You mean that both of you are planning to test that thing out personally? Together?"

"Of course. It should be safe enough, and if it isn't, that's all the more reason for us to go ourselves, at first. What kind of men would we be to send someone else out on a job that we wouldn't go on ourselves?"

"This is no time to be heroic!" Barb said, while Ming Po nodded vigorously. "There is not only the danger of a technical malfunction in what is still an experimental device, there is also the fact that you know nothing about the local terrain back then. Why, there could be a sinkhole right below where your canister materializes. There could be hostile natives living there in that period, which was also noted for pirates, and various wars between England, France, and Spain. You might dig your way up right into the middle of a battle!"

"Or maybe, we might have to rescue a Spanish virgin princess from the English pirates, and we will come down with a case of the Spanish pox each, as a result of accepting the lady's grat.i.tude," Ian said. "Who knows? It might be worth it. But when you consider the probabilities . . ."

The normally obsequious Ming Po threw a serving of Cherries Jubilee at Ian, splattering the delicious stuff across his black silk s.h.i.+rt. Completely unfazed, he took no particular notice of her uncharacteristic actions except to remove his stained s.h.i.+rt right there at the table, while he continued talking. Without looking, he gave it a toss behind him where a maid was ready to catch it and take it out of the room to wherever they went with such things.

Again without looking, he reached out to the side and another maid put a clean s.h.i.+rt in his hand, which he then donned while two more women cleaned off a few small splatters from his hands and face, and yet another one tidied up the table in front of him.

He never stopped talking the whole while.

The way these people always seemed to know what was going to happen, even the most trivial or unusual events, never ceased to amaze me, any more than did our complete acceptance of their well-coordinated actions.

" . . . so logically, there can be no possible danger to either of us," Ian concluded.

"Nonsense," Barb said. "The two of you are the only indispensable people on this entire island. It is totally absurd to risk either one of you, much less both of you for absolutely no good reason at all!"

Ian looked aside to me and said, "Have you noticed how feisty they get once they think that you're going to marry them?"

"I have. But, given your last statement, taken together with the cherry sauce that recently decorated your s.h.i.+rt, am I to a.s.sume that you have followed my lead and proposed matrimony to Ming Po?"

"You are not, for I have made no such decision. It's just that she thinks that I might do some such thing, and is already acting as though it is a done deal."

"I see. Well, keep me posted as to the state of your current thinking on the subject.""I shall do so."