Our Children's Children (11 page)

He put up his hand and made a gesture of wiping his face.

“I hope to God, Mr. Gale,” he said, “that you and I, your people and our people, can work together on this. This is just the beginning of it. It's going to get rough. There'll be all sorts of pressure, all kinds of frenzied screaming. Have you got a good strong back and a good thick skin?”

“I think I have,” said Gale.

24

The Attorney General's visitor was an old and valued friend. They had been roommates at Harvard and in the years since then had kept in touch. Reilly Douglas knew that, in large part, he owed his cabinet appointment to the good offices and, perhaps, the political pressure that could be commanded by Clinton Chapman, a man who headed one of the nation's most prestigious industrial complexes and a heavy contributor to the party's funds.

“I know this must be a busy time for you,” Chapman told Douglas, “and under the circumstances I'll take very little of your time.”

“It's good to see a friendly face,” said Douglas. “I don't mind telling you I don't go along with this. Not that there's nothing to it, for there is. But we're rushing into it. The President has accepted at face value this story of time traveling and while I can see, at the moment, no other explanation, it seems to me there should be some further study of the matter before we commit ourselves.”

“Well, now,” said Chapman, “I agree with you—I couldn't agree more completely with you. I called in some of my physicists this afternoon. You know, of course, that among our several branches, we have a respectable corps of research people. Well, as I was saying, I called a few of them together earlier today and we did some brain-storming on this time tunnel business.…”

“And they told you it was impossible.”

“Not exactly that,” said Chapman. “Not quite that at all. Not that any of them can see quite how it's done, but they told me, and this is something that surprised me, that the matter of the direction in which time flows and precisely why it flows that way has been a subject of some quiet study and very scholarly dispute for a number of years. They talked about a lot of things I didn't understand and used terms I'd never heard before. Arrows of time and boundary conditions, for example, and it seems that the arrows of time they talk about can be viewed from a number of different points—statistical, biological, thermodynamical, and I suppose other terms that have slipped my mind. They talked about the principle of wave retardation and causality and there was quite a lot of discussion about time-symmetrical field equations and the upshot of it all seemed to be that while, on the basis of present knowledge and research it all seems plain impossible, there is really nothing hard and fast that says it can't be done. The gate, it appears, is just a little bit ajar. Someone come along and give that gate a little push and it might be possible.”

“You mean that in another hundred years or so.…”

Chapman nodded. “I guess that's what it means. They tried to explain some of it to me, but it didn't take. I haven't the background to understand what they were telling me. These people have a lingo of their own and so far as people like you and I may be concerned it's a foreign language we never knew existed.”

“So it could be true,” said Douglas. “On the face of what is happening, it quite clearly is true. There seems no other explanation, but my point was that we should not move until we know it's true. And, personally, while I could think of no other explanations, I found a great deal of difficulty in believing it.”

“Just exactly what,” asked Chapman, “is the government thinking about doing? Building new tunnels, I understand, and sending the people of the future still farther back in time. Do they have any idea of what it's going to cost? Or how much time it might take? Or.…”

“They have no idea,” said Douglas. “Not a single figure. No inkling of what's involved. But if anything can be done, we will have to do it. The people from the future can't be kept here. It would be impossible to do it. Somehow we must get rid of them.”

“My hunch,” said Chapman, “is that it will cost a bundle. And there'll be hell's own uproar about the cost of it. The public is more tax-conscious than it has ever been and something like this could bring about a confiscatory tax.”

“You're getting at something, Clint.”

“Yes, I suppose I am. A gamble, you might say.”

“You always gambled well,” said Douglas. “You have a natural poker face.”

“It's going to cost a lot of money;” Chapman said.

“Tax money,” Douglas said.

“I know. Tax money. And that could mean we'd lose the election a year from now. You know I've always been rather generous in my campaign contributions and have very rarely asked for favors. I'm not asking for one now. But under certain circumstances, I would be willing to make what I might think of as a somewhat more substantial contribution. Not only to the party, but to the country.”

“That would be very generous of you,” said Douglas, not entirely sure that he was happy with the turn the talk had taken.

“I'd have to have some figures and some facts, of course,” said Chapman, “but unless the cost is higher than I could manage, I think I would be agreeable to taking over the construction of the tunnels. That is, if the tunnels can be built.”

“In return for which?”

“In return for which,” said Chapman, “I should like exclusive future license for the building of tunnels and the operation of them.”

Douglas frowned. “I don't know,” he said. “I can't be certain of the legality of an arrangement of that sort. And there is the international angle.…”

“If you applied yourself to it,” said Chapman, “you could figure out a way. I am sure you could. You're a damn good lawyer, Reilly.”

“There must be something I am missing. I don't see why you should want the license. What good would the tunnels be?”

“After all of this is over,” Chapman said, “people will be considerably intrigued with the idea of traveling in time. A brand new way of traveling. A way of getting places they could never get before.”

“But that's insane!”

“Not as insane as you might think. Imagine what a sportsman would be willing to pay for the privilege of going back to prehistoric days for a spot of hunting. Universities would want to send teams of paleontologists back to the Age of Reptiles to study and photograph the dinosaurs. Classical historians would sell their souls to go back and learn what really happened at the siege of Troy.…”

“And the church,” said Douglas rather acidly, “might want a first-class ticket for a seat at the Crucifixion.”

“I suppose that, too,” Chapman agreed, “and, as you imply, there would be times when it might get slightly sticky. There'd have to be rules and regulations worked out and certain safeguards set up not to change the course of history, but.…”

“It wouldn't work,” said Douglas flatly. “Time traveling, we are told, works in only one direction, back toward the past. Once you go back, you can't return. You can't move future-ward.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” said Chapman. “Maybe that's what you were told. Maybe that's true now. But my physicists assured me this afternoon that if you can move in time at all, you can move in both directions. They were sure of that. Sure it could be worked out. It simply makes no sense, they said, for the flow to go only one way. If you can go into the past, you certainly can go futureward, for that would seem the preferred direction. That's what we have right now.”

“Clint, I can't go along on this.”

“You can think about it. You can see how things develop. You can keep me well informed. If it should work out, there would be something very worthwhile in it for you.”

25

“So now you'll explain to me, perhaps,” said Alice Gale, “what a picnic is. You told me this afternoon you had been going on a picnic.”

The Secret Service man hunched forward on the seat. “Has Steve been talking picnic to you? Don't ever chance it with him.…”

“But, Mr. Black,” she said, “I don't even know what a picnic is.”

“It's fairly simple,” Wilson told her. “You pack a lunch and you go out in a park or woods and you eat it there.”

“But we did that up in our time,” she said. “Although we did not call it picnic. I don't think we called it anything at all. I never heard it called anything at all.”

The car rolled slowly down the drive, heading for the gate. The driver, in the seat up front, sat erect and straight. The car slowed to a halt and a soldier came up to the driver's window. There were other military men stationed by the gate.

“What is going on?” asked Wilson. “I had not heard of this.”

Black shrugged. “Someone got the wind up. This place is closed in tight. It's stiff with military. There are mortars scattered through the park and no one knows what else.”

“Does the President know about it?”

“I'm not sure,” said Black. “No one might have thought to tell him.”

The soldier stepped back and the gate came open and the car went through. It proceeded silently along the street, heading for the bridge.

Wilson peered out the window. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “A Sunday night and the tourist season and there's no one here.”

“You heard the news,” said Black.

“Of course I heard the news.”

“Everyone's holed up. Everyone's indoors. They expect a monster to come leaping out at them.”

“We had such lovely places we could go out on picnics,” said Alice Gale. “So many parks, so much wild land. More open spaces than you have. Not as crowded as you have it now, although somehow I like it crowded. There are so many people; there is so much to see.”

“You are enjoying it,” said Wilson.

“Yes, of course, enjoying it. Although I have the feel of guilt in my enjoyment. My father and I should be with our people. But I was telling you of our time. It was a good time to live in. Until the aliens came, of course. And even then part of the time, in the earlier days, before there were so many of them. They were not at our throats all the time, you know, except in the last few years. Although I don't think we ever were unaware of them. We always talked about them. We never really forgot them, no matter what. All my life, I think, they have been in my mind. There were times, in the later years, when we were obsessed with them. We continually looked over our shoulders to see if they were there; we were never free of them. We talked of them and studied them.…”

“You say you studied them,” said Wilson. “Exactly how did you study them? Who studied them?”

“Why,” she said, “biologists, of course. At times they came into possession of an alien's body. And the psychologists and psychiatrists, as well. The evolutionists.…”

“Evolutionists?”

“Certainly, evolutionists. For these aliens were very strange evolutionarily. They seemed to be creatures that were consciously in control of their evolutionary processes. There are times when you are inclined to suspect they can order their evolutionary processes. My father, I think, explained some of this to you. In all their long history of evolution they apparently gave up no evolutionary advantage they had gained. They made no compromises, trading one thing for another. They kept what they had and needed and added whatever else they could develop. This, of course, means they are adaptive creatures. They can adapt to almost any condition or situation. They respond almost instantly to stresses and emergencies.…”

“You almost sound,” said Black, “as if you—well, not you, perhaps, but your people—might admire these creatures.”

She shook her head. “We hated them and feared them. That is quite apparent, for we ran away from them. But, yes, I suppose we might have felt something like awed admiration, although we did not admit it. I don't think anyone ever said it.”

“Lincoln is coming up ahead,” said Wilson. “Naturally, you know Lincoln.”

“Yes,” she said. “My father has Lincoln's bedroom.”

The memorial loomed ahead, softly lit against the night-black sky. The statue sat deep within the recess, brooding in the marble chair.

The car moved past and the memorial was left behind.

“If we can find the time,” said Wilson, “in the next few days, we'll go out and see it. Or, perhaps, you may have seen it. But you said the White House.…”

“The memorial, too,” she said. “Part of it is left, but less than half it it. The stones are fallen down.”

“What is this?” asked Black.

“Up in the time the people of the tunnel came from,” said Wilson, “Washington had been destroyed. The White House is a wilderness.”

“But that's impossible. I don't understand. A war?”

“Not a war,” said Alice Gale. “It's hard to explain, even if you know it and I have little understanding of it—I have read little of it. Economic collapse, perhaps, is the best name for it. Probably some ethical collapse as well. A time of mounting inflation that reached ridiculous heights, matched by a mounting cynicism, a loss of faith in government, which contributed to the failure of government, a growing gap of resources and understanding between the rich and poor. It all grew up and up and then it all collapsed. Not this nation only, but all the major powers. One after one they fell. The economy was gone and government was gone and mobs ran in the street. Blind mobs striking out, not at anything in particular, but at anything at all. You must excuse me, please; I tell it very badly.”

“And this is all ahead of us?” asked Black.

“Not now,” said Wilson. “Not any more it isn't. Or at least it doesn't have to be. We're on a different time track now.”

“You,” said Black, “are as bad as she is. You don't, either one, make sense.”