"Maybe it is, but that's my job. Hugo's the designer of the time
machine and you're the operator, but I'm the theoretical man in this
research team. It's my job to look for trouble. So, just in case, I
wrote a brief history of the world from the time the missile exploded
in the Pacific. It tells why ours is the worst possible of futures.
It's in that box."
"What do I do with it--hand it to the guy from the alternate 2089?"
The small fat man exasperatedly hit the side of the time machine with
a well-cushioned palm. "You know better. There won't be any alternate
2089 until you push that red switch on the green instrument panel. The
moment you do, our world, with all its slow slide to extinction, goes
out and its alternate goes on--just like two electric light bulbs on a
push-pull circuit. We and every single one of our artifacts, including
the time machine, disappear. The problem is how to keep that manuscript
from disappearing.
"Well, all you do, if I have this figured right, is shove the metal
box containing the manuscript out into the surrounding temporal medium
a moment before you materialize to do your job. That temporal medium
in which you'll be traveling is something that exists independent of
and autonomous to all possible futures. It's my hunch that something
that's immersed in it will not be altered by a new time sequence."
* * * * *
"Remind him to be careful, Bob," Honek rumbled. "He thinks he's Captain
Blood and this is his big chance to run away to sea and become a
swashbuckling pirate."
Albin grimaced in annoyance. "I _am_ excited by doing something
besides sitting in a safe little corner working out safe little
abstractions for the first time in my life. But I know that this is a
first experiment. Honestly, Hugo, I really have enough intelligence to
recognize that simple fact. I know that if anything unexpected pops up,
anything we didn't foresee, I'm supposed to come scuttling back and ask
for advice."
"I hope you do," Bob Skeat sighed. "I hope you do know that. A
twentieth century poet once wrote something to the effect that the
world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, our world is
ending with a whimper. Try to see that it doesn't end with a bang,
either."
"That I'll promise you," Albin said a trifle disgustedly. "It'll end
with neither a bang _nor_ a whimper. So long, Hugo. So long, Bob."
He twisted around, reaching overhead for the lever which activated the
forces that drove the time machine.
_flick!_
* * * * *
It was strange, Max Alben reflected, that this time travel business,
which knocked unconscious everyone who tried it, only made him feel
slightly dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni,
he had been told. There must be some complicated scientific explanation
for it, he decided--and that would make it none of his business. Better
forget about it.
All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which
objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him
of patrolling his beat at the North American Chicken Reservation in a
thick fog.
According to his gauges, he was now in 1976. He cut speed until he hit
the last day of April, then cut speed again, drifting slowly backward
to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile Experiment.
Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a
strange planet, he watched the center gauge until the needle came to
rest against the thin etched line that indicated the exactly crucial
moment. Then he pulled the brake and stopped the machine dead.
All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and
pull the red switch toward him. Then his well-paid assignment would be
done.
But....
He stopped and scratched his dirt-matted hair. Wasn't there something
he was supposed to do a second before materialization? Yes, that
useless old windbag, Sadha, had given him a last instruction.
He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the
time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating
near the entrance caught his eye. He put his arm out--whew, it was
cold!--and pulled it inside.
A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously,
he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few
sheets of paper, Alben noted disappointedly. He began to read them
slowly, very slowly, for the manuscript was full of a lot of long and
complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another.
The problems all began with the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976,
he read. There had been a number of such experiments, but it was
the one of 1976 that finally did the damage the biologists had been
warning about. The missile with its deadly warhead exploded in the
Pacific Ocean as planned, the physicists and the military men went
home to study their notes, and the world shivered once more over the
approaching war and tried to forget about it.
But there was fallout, a radioactive rain several hundred miles to
the north, and a small fishing fleet got thoroughly soaked by it.
Fortunately, the radioactivity in the rain was sufficiently low to do
little obvious physical damage: All it did was cause a mutation in the
mumps virus that several of the men in the fleet were incubating at the
time, having caught it from the children of the fishing town, among
whom a minor epidemic was raging.
* * * * *
The fleet returned to its home town, which promptly came down with the
new kind of mumps. Dr. Llewellyn Shapiro, the only physician in town,
was the first man to note that, while the symptoms of this disease were
substantially milder than those of its unmutated parent, practically no
one was immune to it and its effects on human reproductivity were truly
terrible. Most people were completely sterilized by it. The rest were
rendered much less capable of fathering or bearing offspring.
Shapiro's Mumps spread over the entire planet in the next few decades.
It leaped across every quarantine erected; for a long time, it
successfully defied all the vaccines and serums attempted against
it. Then, when a vaccine was finally perfected, humanity discovered
to its dismay that its generative powers had been permanently and
fundamentally impaired.
Something had happened to the germ plasm. A large percentage of
individuals were born sterile, and, of those who were not, one child
was usually the most that could be expected, a two-child parent being
quite rare and a three-child parent almost unknown.
Strict eugenic control was instituted by the Security Council of the
United Nations so that fertile men and women would not be wasted upon
non-fertile mates. Fertility was the most important avenue to social
status, and right after it came successful genetic research.
Genetic research had the very best minds prodded into it; the lesser
ones went into the other sciences. Everyone on Earth was engaged in
some form of scientific research to some extent. Since the population
was now so limited in proportion to the great resources available, all
physical labor had long been done by robots. The government saw to it
that everybody had an ample supply of goods and, in return, asked only
that they experiment without any risk to their own lives--every human
being was now a much-prized, highly guarded rarity.
There were less than a hundred thousand of them, well below the danger
point, it had been estimated, where a species might be wiped out by a
new calamity. Not that another calamity would be needed. Since the end
of the Epidemic, the birth rate had been moving further and further
behind the death rate. In another century....
That was why a desperate and secret attempt to alter the past was being
made. This kind of world was evidently impossible.
Max Alben finished the manuscript and sighed. What a wonderful world!
What a comfortable place to live!
He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at
the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.
_flick!_
* * * * *
It was odd, Mac Albin reflected, that these temporal journeys, which
induced coma in everyone who tried it, only made him feel slightly
dizzy. That was because he was descended from Giovanni Albeni, he
knew. Maybe there was some genetic relationship with his above-average
fertility--might be a good idea to mention the idea to a biologist or
two when he returned. _If_ he returned.
All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which
objects were hinted at rather than stated definitely. It reminded him
of the problems of landing a helicopter in a thick fog when the robot
butler had not been told to turn on the ground lights.
According to the insulated register, he was now in 1976. He lowered
speed until he registered April, then maneuvered slowly backward
through time to the eighteenth, the day of the infamous Guided Missile
Experiment. Carefully, carefully, like an obstetrician supervising
surgical robots at an unusually difficult birth, he watched the
register until it rolled to rest against the notch that indicated the
exactly crucial moment. Then he pushed a button and froze the machine
where it was.
All he had to do now was materialize in the right spot, flash out and
push the red switch from him. Then his exciting adventure would be over.
But....
He paused and tapped at his sleek chin. He was supposed to do something
a second before materialization. Yes, that nervous theoretician, Bob
Skeat, had given him a last suggestion.
He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening
of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object
floating near the opening attracted his attention. He shot his arm
out--it was _cold_, as cold as they had figured--and pulled the object
inside.
A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there?
Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document
inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began
to read it rapidly, very rapidly, as if it were a newly published paper
on neutrinos. Besides, the manuscript was written with almost painful
simplicity, like a textbook composed by a stuffy pedagogue for the use
of morons.
The problems all began with the Guided Missile Experiment of 1976, he
read. There had been a number of such experiments, but it was the one
of 1976 that finally did the damage the biologists had been warning
about. The missile with its deadly warhead exploded in the Brazilian
jungle through some absolutely unforgivable error in the remote-control
station, the officer in charge of the station was reprimanded and the
men under him court-martialed, and the Brazilian government was paid a
handsome compensation for the damage.
* * * * *
But there had been more damage than anyone knew at the time. A plant
virus, similar to the tobacco mosaic, had mutated under the impact
of radioactivity. Five years later, it burst out of the jungle and
completely wiped out every last rice plant on Earth. Japan and a large
part of Asia became semi-deserts inhabited by a few struggling nomads.
Then the virus adjusted to wheat and corn--and famine howled in every
street of the planet. All attempts by botanists to control the Blight
failed because of the swiftness of its onslaught. And after it had fed,
it hit again at a new plant and another and another.
Most of the world's non-human mammals had been slaughtered for food
long before they could starve to death. Many insects, too, before they
became extinct at the loss of their edible plants, served to assuage
hunger to some small extent.
But the nutritive potential of Earth was steadily diminishing in a
horrifying geometric progression. Recently, it had been observed,
plankton--the tiny organism on which most of the sea's ecology was
based--had started to disappear, and with its diminution, dead fish had
begun to pile up on the beaches.
Mankind had lunged out desperately in all directions in an effort to
survive, but nothing had worked for any length of time. Even the other
planets of the Solar System, which had been reached and explored
at a tremendous cost in remaining resources, had yielded no edible
vegetation. Synthetics had failed to fill the prodigious gap.
In the midst of the sharply increasing hunger, social controls had
pretty much dissolved. Pathetic attempts at rationing still continued,
but black markets became the only markets, and black marketeers the
barons of life. Starvation took the hindmost, and only the most agile
economically lived in comparative comfort. Law and order were had only
by those who could afford to pay for them and children of impoverished
families were sold on the open market for a bit of food.
But the Blight was still adjusting to new plants and the food supply
kept shrinking. In another century....
That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to
pool their wealth in a desperate attempt to alter the past. This kind
of world was manifestly impossible.
Mac Albin finished the document and sighed. What a magnificent world!
What an exciting place to live!
He dropped his hand on the side levers and began the process of
materializing at the crucial moment on April 18, 1976.
_flick!_
* * * * *
As the equipment of the remote-control station began to take on a
blurred reality all around him, Max Alben felt a bit of fear at what
he was doing. The technicians, he remembered, the Secretary-General,
even the black market kings, had all warned him not to go ahead with
his instructions if anything unusual turned up. That was an awful lot
of power to disobey: he knew he should return with this new information
and let better minds work on it.
They with their easy lives, what did they know what existence had been
like for such as he? Hunger, always hunger, scrabbling, servility, and
more hunger. Every time things got really tight, you and your wife
looking sideways at your kids and wondering which of them would bring
the best price. Buying security for them, as he was now, at the risk of
his life.
But in this other world, this other 2089, there was a state that took
care of you and that treasured your children. A man like himself, with
_five_ children--why, he'd be a big man, maybe the biggest man on
Earth! And he'd have robots to work for him and lots of food. Above
all, lots and lots of food.
He'd even be a scientist--_everyone_ was a scientist there, weren't
they?--and he'd have a big laboratory all to himself. This other world
had its troubles, but it was a lot nicer place than where he'd come
from. He wouldn't return. He'd go through with it.
The fear left him and, for the first time in his life, Max Alben felt
the sensation of power.
He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,
sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite
the technicians' reassurances that all this would be happening too fast
to be visible. He saw the single red switch pointing upward on the
instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile.
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!
Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
_flick!_
* * * * *
As the equipment of the remote-control station began to oscillate into
reality all around him, Mac Albin felt a bit of shame at what he was
doing. He'd promised Bob and Hugo to drop the experiment at any stage
if a new factor showed up. He knew he should go back with this new
information and have all three of them kick it around.
But what would they be able to tell him, they with their blissful
adjustment to their thoroughly blueprinted lives? They, at least, had
been ordered to marry women they could live with; he'd drawn a female
with whom he was completely incompatible in any but a genetic sense.
Genetics! He was tired of genetics and the sanctity of human life,
tired to the tip of his uncalloused fingers, tired to the recesses
of his unused muscles. He was tired of having to undertake a simple
adventure like a thief in the night.
But in this other world, this other 2089, someone like himself would
be a monarch of the black market, a suzerain of chaos, making his own
rules, taking his own women. So what if the weaklings, those unfit to
carry on the race, went to the wall? His kind wouldn't.
He'd formed a pretty good idea of the kind of men who ruled that other
world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black
marketeers had not even read it. Why, the fools had obviously been
duped by the technicians into permitting the experiment; they had not
grasped the idea that an alternate time track would mean their own
non-existence.
This other world had its troubles, but it was certainly a livelier
place than where he'd come from. It deserved a chance. Yes, that was
how he felt: his world was drowsily moribund; this alternate was
starving but managing to flail away at destiny. It _deserved_ a chance.
Albin decided that he was experiencing renunciation and felt proud.
He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel,
disregarding the roomful of military figures since he knew they could
not see him. The single red switch pointed downward on the instrument
panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile.
Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!
Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.
_flick!_
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world!
Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
_flick!_
Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world!
Mac Albin pushed the little red switch from him.
_flick!_
... pulled the little red switch toward him.
_flick!_
... pushed the little red switch from him.
_flick!_
... toward him.
_flick!_
... from him.
_flick!_