Simon Hawke - Khyber Connection

She frowned. "So do 1. I thought my implant education was complete. If he was-is-an important historical figure, even if I didn’t remember anything about him consciously, the subknowledge of the programming should have triggered my awareness of him the moment I heard his name. And there was nothing in the mission programming about him either."

"I know. That’s what’s wrong. There’s simply no way for that to be possible. Or at least there shouldn’t be. That young subaltern riding up ahead grew up to be one of the most important men of the 20th century. One of the greatest political figures of his time. He became prime minister of Great Britain and led that nation through the Second World War."

"My God," said Andre. "And the programmers missed that" How could they""

Lucas shook his head. "They couldn’t. I just can’t see it. Even if someone was somehow negligent, the data banks have built in failsafe for vital information. It’s been driving me crazy. And you put your finger on it. The subknowledge. I knew something was missing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until you said that. I knew about Churchill, but I couldn’t figure out why there was a gap. Why did I know about Churchill, but didn’t know about him being on this campaign" Because I didn’t know it through the subknowledge of my implant education either! I remembered. I just plain remembered about him on my own, because I like to read history. But it’s been a while since I’ve read any British history, or any 20th century history for that matter. I didn’t remember completely. It just goes to show you how dependent we are on our subknowledge. And that’s the common denominator. There was nothing about Churchill in our mission programming, and neither of us could extract anything about him from our programmed subknowledge because it simply wasn’t there. And that’s impossible."

— You’re right," she said. "It doesn’t make sense. It should have been there."

— You still don’t understand," he said. "It can’t not have been there! I can only think of one possible explanation. A temporal disruption. There isn’t any record of Churchill in our subknowledge or in our supplementary mission programming because there was no record of a Winston Churchill as a pivotal figure in history."

"But that doesn’t make sense either," Andre said. "If that’s the case and a disruption occurred that has prevented-or will prevent-Churchill from following his historical template as we know … as you know it, then how could you know about it in the first place""

Lucas stared at her. "You want to run that by me again"

"I’m not even sure what I just said." She shook her head. "What1 mean is, if there isn’t any historical record of Churchill, then how could you remember reading about him in your history books""

"I see what you mean," he, said. "It has to be an anomaly of Zen physics. Whatever happened that caused Churchill to be wiped from history must have happened after I read about him."

"I’m confused," said Andre. "How could something have happened during his lifetime and yet have taken place after you read about him in the 27th century""

— You’re confused because you never studied Zen physics," Lucas said. "I only have a well-versed layman’s knowledge of it. Delaney’s the only one I know who’s taken the full course, and he said it almost gave him a nervous breakdown. I take that back. Our friend Dr. Darkness understands it. Hell, he could probably teach the course in his sleep. I wish to hell there was some way of getting in touch with him so we could ask him about this. Let me try to follow it through with you. Assume that some action originating in our time, in the 27th century, kicked off a chain of events that led to the disruption. For the sake of argument, let’s set up a simple hypothesis. Say somebody clocked out to Minus Time, to this scenario, on the day before we went in for our mission programming. And let’s say that someone killed Churchill."

"You’d have a paradoxical situation which would have to be resolved by a disruption," Andre said.

"Right. Up until that someone clocked out to the past in order to cause the disruption, that is, killing Churchill, there was no disruption and Churchill was part of our history. If we assume that the disruption wasn’t massive enough to overcome temporal inertia — and frankly, I don’t see how Churchill’s death wouldn’t qualify as a disruption massive enough to cause a timestream split-then temporal inertia wouldn’t be overcome. It would simply be affected significantly. You remember the analogy Delaney used, the timestream seen as a river" The river has a current, and that current is temporal inertia. An act that’s insignificant, that is, not historically disruptive enough to affect the timeflow, is like tossing a small pebble into the river. The current or the inertia overcomes any possible effect. You wouldn’t see any ripples from where you tossed the pebble in. Next, take a large rock and toss it in. The rock has mass sufficient enough to affect the current, if only temporarily. You’ll see the splash, perhaps a very brief rippling effect, and then the force of the current eliminates it or compensates for it. Now take a huge, behemoth boulder-something the size of one of these damn mountains-and toss it in the river. The effect of the current is overcome. It either dams up the river somehow, or more likely, splits the flow-creating a timestream split. The river comes back together again on the other side and you have both effects working one against the other. A historical timeline in which Churchill died and one in which he didn’t. Nobody knows how the hell that would resolve itself. It would either create a parallel universe or screw up the future six ways from Sunday. Trying to work out the possibilities has driven more than one scientist right off the deep end. Whatever it is that’s happened back here-or, from where we stand now, is about to happen-has. affected the timestream to the point that we have no historical knowledge of Churchill. It wasn’t in the mission programming because the programming session took place after whatever event it was that originated in our time affected history in this time."

Andre shook her head. "That doesn’t work," she said.

Lucas frowned. "Why not""

"Granted," Andre said, "the information could be missing from my subknowledge because my implant education took place fairly recently, relatively speaking. But when did you get your implant education""

"Why … when I enlisted, of course. But I still don’t see what that has … " His voice trailed off.

"Uh-huh," said Andre. "When did you take up reading history as a hobby""

"Not until well after I enlisted," Lucas said. "Damn! I shouldn’t remember anything about Churchill either.

"I’d say we’ve got ourselves a real problem," Andre said.

"To which no solution can possibly exist," said Lucas, "because the problem can’t exist. Only it does."

"Maybe Finn will have an answer," she said hopefully.

"Which brings up another question," Lucas said. "Will Finn remember anything about Winston Churchill" "

"What are you getting at"" said Andre.

"Suppose he doesn’t"" Lucas said.

"Okay, so suppose that. What of it""

"If Finn doesn’t have any subknowledge of Churchill, then the whole explanation works, except in that case, I’ll be the anomaly."

"I still don’t see your point."

"Remember our hypothesis. What if something I’m about to do-or something I’ve already done-is the cause of the disruption"" He bit his lower lip. "Jesus, what if I" m the guy who’s going to kill Churchill""

Their arrival at the Malakand was like an entrance through the doors of Hell. The troops of the garrison were worn out from fighting. Many were wounded. Many had been killed. The broken ground was littered everywhere with bodies, far too numerous for the burial details to dispose of, even if they’d had the time. The lizards and the carrion birds were feasting.