The Science-Fantasy Megapack. E. C. Tubb
and gestured at the multi-coloured screen at the far end of the chamber. A low hum, almost on the threshold of audibility, filled the air—along with what felt like a static charge.
I guessed, of course, but even then never really believed that my guess was correct.
Cauldwell gestured, and we walked along an aisle between ranked terminals.
We paused beneath the aperture—it was perhaps three metres high—like supplicants.
Cauldwell said, “Did you wonder how I came to write such a revolutionary paper?”
I looked at him. “It wasn’t quite what I’ve come to expect from you,” I said.
He smiled at that. “Ah, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
A question caught in my throat. I was suddenly aware that I was sweating. “Tell me what’s going on here,” I almost pleaded.
Cauldwell nodded, not looking at me but staring at the shifting patterns on the surface of the screen. Seen closer to, the colours had about them the slick sheen sometimes seen on petroleum.
“What do you know about quantum physics, Dan?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I admitted.
“Planck theory? Gupta’s updating of Einstein?” He waved away my admission of ignorance. “No matter. Theory isn’t required—merely the appreciation of the end result.”
“Which is?”
He paused, then said, “Sigma Research has managed to break down the barriers that have hitherto prevented our access to other times.”
He stopped there and looked at me, smiling. The word smug might have been coined to describe his self-satisfied expression.
“They do it with super-conducted tachyons and hyper-charged baryonic particles—I know, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either. The result, at any rate, is a passage into the past, though never into the future. Once a month—as the expenditure of energy is prohibitively high—very briefly the portal is opened: three months ago onto 1050, last month 1052. We’re going for 1054 in a few days from now.”
I had known all along, of course. At least I told myself as much. How else to explain the anomaly of the skull?
I considered telling Cauldwell about my discovery, but something stopped me.
He was saying, “The only real problem, Dan, is that we can’t open the portal onto any time more than once. For the period of a year, the tachyon vectors specific to that time are seriously weakened and won’t support passage. I mean, it would be wonderful to revisit specific times, but alas that’s impossible.”
I stared at him. “You mean, you actually visit, physically visit, these times?”
He nodded, smug again. “We do, though only for strictly allotted periods of up to thirty minutes. The power-drain, you see.…”
I nodded, as if he had been explaining the cost of running an expensive car.
“At any rate, it would be superfluous to explain quite what a benefit to historical understanding this breakthrough has been.…” Nevertheless, unable to pass up the opportunity for a lecture, Cauldwell proceeded to tell me all about his latest discoveries.
He conducted me around the chamber, interleaving his historical lecture with complex scientific explanations.
One hour later I found myself back in his office.
Over a coffee, Cauldwell said, “So, Dan, let me at last get to the purpose of showing you around. Despite our differences, I respect your work. I think you could be a great asset to my team here at Sigma Research.”
He passed a folder across the desk. “A contract. I think you’ll find it more than a little enticing. Of course, I don’t want an immediate answer. Go away and think about it for a few days. You have my e-mail if you have any questions.”
A little later, he rose and shook my hand.
I made to return the ID he had given me.
“Keep it, Dan,” he said. “You’ll need it if you do decide to join the team.”
I emerged into the bright summer sunlight not a little dazed—a few questions answered, of course, but others remaining tantalizingly opaque.
I drove slowly home, and decided that I would tell Fiona everything when I returned. It would help to talk, and her insight might shed light on aspects of the situation I was too blind to perceive.
That evening, over dinner, I told Fiona about my discovery of the skull and my subsequent investigations, then Cauldwell’s offering me a job and showing me around the Sigma Research station.
She pushed her glass of wine aside and stared at me. “But…I mean, are you sure the bullet—”
I interrupted, “Of course I’m sure. The bullet passed through the left orbit and scoured a groove around the back of the skull. Death would have been instantaneous. The groove had aged over the centuries—it hadn’t been made recently.”
“But how would that be possible in the eleventh century? Perhaps it wasn’t a bullet.”
“It was. I found it lodged in the nasal cavity, eroded but recognizably a modern .22 bullet.”
Fiona shook her head. “So this time-travel device at Sigma research.… It must be connected, right? Someone goes back to that time—to, when was it, the 1070s?—and shoots dead some poor bloody innocent Anglo-Saxon.…”
I massaged my eyes, wearily “Fiona, there’s more.” I ordered my thoughts. “Although the skull dated from that time, circa 1070, it was the skull of a modern man.”
“You aren’t making sense, Dan!”
“Its upper jaw showed signs of contemporary dental work. A couple of fillings.…”
Fiona nodded. “So it was someone from the research team who travelled back in time and was shot dead?”
“That’s what happened. I made enquiries, accessed dental records. I found out who the skull belonged to.”
She stared at me. “Whose, Dan?”
“Simon Cauldwell’s.” I said. “That isn’t all.” I swept on. “I consulted a ballistics expert, and from the bullet I found in the skull we identified the weapon used to kill Cauldwell.”
She opened her mouth. I think she knew what was coming.
Last year, after a spate of violent robberies in the area, I had insisted that we purchase a pistol for the times when Fiona would be alone in the house.
“Not ours?” she said in barely a whisper.
I nodded. “Ours.”
We went through all the possibilities over the course of the next hour or two. Did I kill Simon Cauldwell when I accepted the offered post and traveled back in time with him to the eleventh century? Why would I do such a thing? Granted, I didn’t like the man—but I would never dream of shooting him dead.
And anyway, I had no intention of accepting his offer. Despite the amazing possibilities opened up by Sigma Research’s temporal breakthrough, I could not see myself as some kind of Wellsian time-traveller.
But the fact remained—Cauldwell was shot dead, at some point in the eleventh century, with my pistol.
We went to bed late that night, and Fiona held me and made me promise that I would not take the Sigma post.
I promised…and tried to sleep, but my mind was full of temporal causality and paradox, and I passed a fitful night.
* * * *
Fiona was out at yoga the following evening when the doorbell chimed.
I made my way from the study and pulled open the front door.