At the Narrow Passage (17 page)

Latham showed an early inclination toward mathematics and technology. He
had the soul of an engineer, but the mind of a pure research scientist
and was ripe for the picking by the Kriths.
By the time he had finished the equivalent of secondary school the Kriths
and their agents had already approached him about joining the Timeliners,
with Academy instruction and training in skudder engineering. Latham jumped
at the chance. And entered the Krithian Academy nearest his Homeline.
While he was there, he showed such an amazing ability that he was allowed
to do something almost unprecedented in the Academy: He took a "split
major" in engineering -- advanced electronics and skudder engineering --
and graduated with honors in both fields.
The Kriths put him to work at once in one of their vast engineering labs
in some unspecified, uninhabited Line. Latham loved his work. When he
wasn't working on skudder design or tinkering with the most sophisticated
electronic gear in all the Lines, he was spending his spare time reading
anything he could put his hands on related to his fields and ultimately
became interested in contratime communications. He requested that he be
allowed to study the works of the Indus Line scientists who had actually
established the contratime link that had informed the Kriths of the
future menace of alien invasion. He was refused.
The story gets rather complicated and filled with cloak-and-dagger overtones
along in here, but to simplify it, Latham's interest grew as he was more
strongly refused the data he wanted. After a while he pretended that he
had lost interest, though by this time he had become determined to learn
everything he could about contratime communications, no matter what it
took. Several years passed before he was able to lay his hands on the
data he wanted.
One of his assignments led him cross-Lines to do some research in an area
of the Lines through which skudders had always had some difficulty passing.
On his way back to his base he was able to fake a malfunction in his skudder
right in the middle of the Indus Lines. The defective skudder was examined
by Indus technicians, and Latham was told that it would take some time to
effect the repairs -- his "faking" of a malfunction had been done well --
and since no other skudders were available for his use, he would have
to lay over for a few days -- which is exactly what he wanted.
Latham managed to have dinner with one of his Indus colleagues and during
the course of the dinner, by a stratagem I don't recall at the moment, he
was able to steal the engineer's library access card, top-level. The next
day Latham plugged into the planet-wide computer library and, pretending
to be the engineer whose card he had stolen, asked for full data on the
contratime experiments. The library produced a vast amount of data which
Latham was given in the form of microdots which he hid on his person.
He secretly returned the library card to its owner, who had not yet
discovered its loss, waited until his skudder was ready, and then returned
to his base Line.
About half the information he had gotten from the Indus library was in
Shangalis, while the remainder, and apparently the most important portion
of it, was in the local Indus language. Before he could really get into
it, he was forced to learn Indus in secret. This took him nearly a year,
and more than once he was almost exposed, but finally Latham learned
Indus and went back to his data.
According to his book, it didn't take him long to discover why the data
had been kept from him. They were phony! The mathematics, while very
complex and involved, led around in a circle and laboriously established
nothing whatsoever. The experiments had been performed, the conclusions
had been reached and the actual contact with the future had
been . . .
faked
!
At first Latham didn't believe it. He checked and rechecked and re-rechecked
his figures. And always came to the same final conclusions.
Stealing equipment from his own lab, he set up some of the experiments
that the Indus scientists had performed -- and their ultimate conclusions
were validated. The whole theory of contratime communications fell apart.
It just wouldn't work. Time was closed, forward and backward. The future
could not talk to the past! It was that simple; the whole thing was a
tremendous fraud!
Latham was in a quandary. What the hell was he going to do? Go to the Kriths?
No, it was their plot, but for what reasons be couldn't even guess. Tell
other humans? Who would believe him? And word would eventually get back
to the Kriths -- and then what would happen?
Finally, in desperation and fear, Latham stole a four-man skudder from
the lab's skudder pool, removed the governor and the telltale from it,
set its controls for the T-West and started out, intending to travel as
far as the fully charged power cells would carry him, find men who had
never been contacted by the Kriths, and tell them the whole story.
His skudder ran out of power in the Romano-Albigensian Lines, as he called
them, far to the West of any Line that the Kriths and Timeliners had yet
reached. There he found a civilization that had already developed their
own skudders independently of the Kriths -- and were moving East. He told
them about the Kriths and the Timeliners and the "Lie" and that the Kriths
were moving toward them.
The Albigensians began to prepare to meet the aliens -- and save mankind
from possible enslavement.
Well, in a large nutshell, that's the way the first part of Latham's
book read.
Quite a story, but was any of it true? And if it was true, was that any
proof that Latham was right? It seemed far more likely to me, giving it
all the benefit of the doubt, that Latham had made an honest mistake --
and had panicked. At least I saw no reason to believe one man whom I
had never met, and who might not even exist, when all the evidence of
my life pointed in just the opposite direction.
To hell with it, I said to myself, and got out of bed and began to pace
the floor aimlessly, only to be interrupted by a peremptory knock on
the door.
"Come in," I said, probably unnecessarily.
The door opened and the tall, thin, corpse-white form of the man called
Mica entered the room, dressed now in a gray business suit of this Line.
"Hello, Captain Mathers," he said.
I nodded to him, lit the last cigarette in the pack that Nardi had left,
and sat down on the end of the bed.
"I hope you slept well," Mica said, "and that your breakfast was agreeable."
"Yeah," I said between puffs of smoke.
"Please," he said, spreading his hands, "don't be angry with us. We are
not your enemies unless you force us to be."
"Shit!"
"Come now. We can talk like rational men, can we not?"
"Okay, talk."
Mica was silent for a few long moments, his deep eyes scanning the room,
then stopping at the open book on the table. "I see you have been reading
Martin Latham's book," he said.
"Yes," I replied, thinking that if I were going to try to fool Mica and
his gang into believing that I was swallowing their story I might as well
begin now, but very gradually. It had better be believable. I didn't figure
they'd be easy to fool.
"What do you think of it?" he asked.
"It's kind of hard to swallow, what I've read of it."
"How much have you read?"
"The first part, Latham's story of how he discovered the 'Lie' and
you people."
"Ah," Mica sighed. "It is all quite startling to you, is it not?"
I nodded.
"It is as if, for example, an Englishman of this Paratime were suddenly
told that there was no such place as China."
"Yes, sort of like that, I suppose."
"Let me go on," Mica said. "I would like to follow this analogy out.
May I?"
"Why not?"
"Very well. Our hypothetical Englishman has been to America and the
Continent, of course. He is a well-traveled man, and educated. He has
met Chinese and seen pictures of China and knows fellow Englishmen who
claim to have been to China -- but he himself has never been there. Still,
all evidence points to the fact that there is such a place as China. It
never occurs to him to doubt for a moment the existence of China. Now
what would happen," Mica asked, "if someone, in all seriousness, were
to tell him that China does not exist?"
"He'd laugh in his face."
Mica smiled, nodded, then said, "Take this fantastic Cross-Line Civilization
that you believe to exist far to the Temporal West. Have you ever been there,
Captain Mathers?"
"No."
"Yet you know it exists. How?"
"Like your Englishman, I've seen pictures of it. I've spoken to people
who have been there."
"Have you ever met anyone from those Lines? Any human natives, I mean."
I thought for a moment, honestly trying to rake up memories. "No, not that
I can recall. I've met Kriths from there, though."
"No," Mica said, "let us ignore the Kriths for a moment. You have never
met a human being who was native to those Lines. Now, the stories you
have heard, the pictures, the tapes, the books you have read, could they
have been faked? Could they have been lies?"
"Well, yes, I suppose they
could
have been. But it would have to be an
enormous conspiracy to pull something like that off."
"Granted, but then, in the final analysis, all you have to prove that
there is such a wonderful and beautiful Cross-Line Civilization is the
word of the Kriths. Is this not so?"
"Yes, but not quite the way you mean it.
"Why not? Tell me, do you like the Kriths?"
"Yes and no."
"That is hardly an adequate answer, Eric. Do you know of a single Krith
that you personally like as -- well, as a person?"
"No, but then there are a lot of people I don't like either."
"Surely. But do you understand them? The Kriths? I mean, do they act
from the same motives as human beings? Can you translate their thoughts
into human terms?"
"No, not really. They don't think the way we do, I suppose, but then I
don't think we should expect them to. They aren't people, but I trust
them anyway."
"Why?"
"Well, they've never given me any reason not to."
"Ah," Mica sighed. "You're saying then that you have never
caught
them in a lie."
"I supposed you could take it that way."
"Then, in the final analysis, you believe in the Cross-Line Civilization
simply because you have never caught the Kriths lying to you. That is
hardly proof that they are
not lying
. All you can really be sure about
is that, if they are lying, they are lying so well and so consistently
that you have never caught them at it. Right?"
"I can't accept that."
"I do not expect you to at this stage." Mica paused. "Let us take Martin
Latham. You have never met him, so you really have no reason to believe
his words or even that he is a real person. He could be our 'Lie.'
Is this so?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"I have met him," Mica said, "and I believe him. Now you have my word
that what Latham says is true, as opposed to the word of the Kriths
that contratime communications exists. You must accept one of us on
faith. Which will it be? You need not answer that yet. Not for a while,
at least."
There was something almost sinister in his last sentence, but before
I could comment, there was a gentle rapping on the door. Mica did not
turn but called over his shoulder, "Come in." His eyes never left my face.
The door clicked, swung outward, and Sally and Scoti came into the
room. They were both now dressed in the conventional clothing of this
Line: Sally in a white blouse and a full green skirt; Scoti in a dark
business suit. And more than ever Sally reminded me of Kristin.
"Good morning, Eric," Sally said. "How are you feeling?"
"Well enough," I answered, then nodded to Scoti.
"I hope you hold no hard feelings, old man," Scoti said. "For that bump
on the head, I mean. I was just doing what I had to do."
I didn't answer.
"I have just been having a little chat with Captain Mathers," Mica said.
"And . . ." Scoti said expectantly.
"Calm yourself, Scoti," Mica said. "He is at least trying to be honest
with us."
"That's all we ask, Eric," Sally said, sitting down on the sofa.
"We don't expect you to give us any military secrets."
"I don't believe I have any you don't know about already," I said.
Sally looked so young and fresh and innocent that I found it hard to
believe she was the same woman I had kidnapped -- or tried to kidnap.
She -- well, I liked her.
"That doesn't matter," she was saying. "We just want you to listen to us
and then judge for yourself what is true."
"Okay," I said. "I'll listen. I have a pretty good idea what will happen
to me if I don't."
There was silence in the room for a few moments.
"Let me ask you a question," I said at last.
"Very well," Mica replied.
"Okay, suppose that what you're telling me is true. Suppose that there's
really no Cross-Line Civilization and suppose that the whole contratime
communications business is a fraud, then why are the Kriths going to
all this trouble?"
Mica smiled, looked at the other two, then back to me. "I was waiting
for you to ask that, Captain Mathers," he said.
"So answer it."
"I wish I could."
That one sort of startled me. I had fully expected Mica and his gang to have
a glib explanation of the Krithian logic behind the great plot they were
postulating.
"I won't try to lie to you, Mathers," Mica said. "You are too intelligent
a man for that. In all honesty we do not know why the Kriths are doing
what they are doing. We know that they are telling the greatest lie in
all history, in all the histories of all the Paratimes put together,
but we really do not know why. We merely know that they are."
For a few moments I was at a loss for words. This wasn't working out as
I had expected.
"Look at it this way, Mathers," Scoti said. "When you catch someone
telling you a lie and you don't know why, you've got to assume that his
purposes aren't good. It could be very dangerous to do otherwise, right?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"That is our assumption," Mica said. "We do not know that they mean
mankind ill, but they are doing their best to profoundly alter the course
of history in as many Paratimes as they can. They must have some reason,
some logic of their own for doing it and all we can do is guess at what
it is -- and do what we can to stop it until we can learn why."