Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

The motel terminal was almost certainly tapped, and I presumed the FBI had found a way to read my portable panel even before its signal reached a satellite. Nevertheless I did what they probably expected me to do: I continued to collect Kuin data, and looked a little more closely at some of Sue’s publications.

She had published two important papers in the Nature nexus and one on the Science site. All three were concerned with matters I wasn’t competent to judge and which seemed only distantly related to the question of the Chronoliths: “A Hypothetical Tauon Unification Energy,” “Non-Hadronic Material Structures,” “Gravitation and Temporal Binding Forces.” All I could discern from the text was that Sue had been breeding some interesting solutions to fundamental physical problems. The papers were focused and, to me, opaque, not unlike Sue herself.

I spent some of that time thinking about Sue. She had been, of course, more than a teacher to those of us who came to know her. But she had never been very forthcoming about her own life. Born in Madras, she had immigrated with her parents at the age of three. Her childhood had been hermetic, her attention divided between schoolwork and her burgeoning intellectual interests. She was gay, of course, but seldom spoke about her partners, who never seemed to stick around for long, and she hadn’t discussed what her coming out might have meant to her parents, whom she described as “fairly conservative, somewhat religious.” She gave the impression that these were trivial issues, unworthy of attention. If she harbored old pain, it was well concealed.

There was joy in her life, but she expressed it in her work — she worked with an enthusiasm that was unmistakably authentic. Her work, or her capacity to do her work, was the prize life had handed her, and she considered it adequate compensation for whatever else she might lack. Her pleasures were deep but monkish.

Surely there was more to Sue than this. But this was what she had been willing to share.

“A Hypothetical Tauon Unification Energy.” What did that mean?

It meant she had looked closely at the clockwork of the universe. It meant she felt at home with fundamental things.

I was lonely but too unsettled to do anything about it and bored enough that I had begun to scan the cars in the motel parking lot to see if I could spot the one with my FBI surveillance crew inside, should there be such a vehicle.

But when I finally did interact with the FBI there was nothing subtle about the encounter. Morris Torrance called to tell me I had an appointment at the Federal Building downtown and that I should expect to provide a blood sample and submit to a polygraph examination. That it should be necessary to hurdle these obstacles in order to obtain gainful employment as Sue Chopra’s code herder was an indication of how seriously the government took her research, or at least the congressional investment in it.

Even so, Morris had underestimated what would be required of me at the Federal Building. I submitted not only to the drawing of blood but to a chest X-ray and a cranial laser scan. I was relieved of urine, stool, and hair samples. I was fingerprinted, I signed a release for chromosomal sequencing, and I was escorted to the polygraph chamber.

In the hours since Morris Torrance mentioned the word “polygraph” on the telephone I had entertained but a single thought: Hitch Paley.

The problem was that I knew things about Hitch that could put him in prison, assuming he wasn’t there already. Hitch had never been my closest friend and I wasn’t sure what degree of loyalty I owed him, these many years later. But I had decided over the course of a sleepless night that I would turn down Sue’s job offer sooner than I would endanger his freedom. Yes, Hitch was a criminal, and putting him in jail may have been what the letter of the law required; but I didn’t see the justice in caging a man for selling marijuana to affluent dilettantes who would otherwise have invested their cash in vodka coolers, coke, or methamphetamines.

Not that Hitch was particularly scrupulous about what he sold. But I was scrupulous about who I sold.

The polygraph examiner looked more like a bouncer than a doctor, despite his white coat, and the unavoidable Morris Torrance joined us in the bare clinic room to oversee the test. Morris was plainly a federal employee, maybe thirty pounds above his ideal weight and ten years past his prime. His hair had receded in the way that makes some middle-aged men look tonsured. But his handshake was firm, his manner relaxed, and he didn’t seem actively hostile.

I let the examiner fix the electrodes to my body and I answered the baseline questions without stammering. Morris then took over the dialogue and began to walk me detail-by-detail through my initial experience with the Chumphon Chronolith, pausing occasionally while the polygraph guru added written notations to a scrolling printout. (The machinery seemed antiquated, and it was, designed to specifications laid down in 20th-century case law.) I told the story truthfully if carefully, and I did not hesitate to mention Hitch Paley’s name if not his occupation, even adding a little fillip about the bait shop, which was after all a legitimate business, at least some of the time.

When I came to the part about the Bangkok prison, Morris asked, “Were you searched for drugs?”

“I was searched more than once. Maybe for drugs, I don’t know.”

“Were any drugs or banned substances found on your person?”

“No.”

“Have you carried banned substances across national or state borders?”

“No.”

“Were you warned of the appearance of the Chronolith before it arrived? Did you have any prior knowledge of the event?”

“No.”

“It came as a surprise to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the name Kuin?”

“Only from the news.”

“Have you seen the image carved into the contemporary monuments?”

“Yes.”

“Is the face familiar? Do you recognize the face?”

“No.”

Morris nodded and then conferred privately with the polygraph examiner. After a few minutes of this I was cut loose from the machine.

Morris walked me out of the building. I said, “Did I pass?”

He just smiled. “Not my department. But I wouldn’t worry if I was you.”

Sue called in the morning and told me to report for work.

The federal government, for reasons probably best known to the senior senator from Maryland, operated this branch of its Chronolith investigation out of a nondescript building in a suburban Baltimore industrial park. It was a low-slung suite of offices and a makeshift library, nothing more. The hard end of the research was performed by universities and federal laboratories, Sue explained. What she ran here was more like a think tank, collating results and acting as a consultancy and clearing house for congressional grant money. Essentially, it was Sue’s job to assess current knowledge and identify promising new lines of research. Her immediate superiors were agency people and congressional aides. She represented the highest echelon, in the Chronolith research effort, of what could plausibly be called science.

I wondered how someone as research-driven as Sue Chopra could have ended up with a glorified management job. I stopped wondering when she opened the door of her office and beckoned me in. The large room contained a lacquered secondhand desk and too many filing cabinets to count. The space around her work terminal was crowded with newspaper clippings, journals, hard copies of e-mail missives. And the walls were papered with photographs.

“Welcome to the sanctum sanctorum ,” Sue said brightly.

Photographs of Chronoliths.