Альфред Бестер - Star of Stars [Anthology]

The staff rustled uncertainly. Carpenter nodded emphatically.

“Yes, gentlemen. Time travel is here. It has not arrived the way we expected it ... as a result of expert research by qualified specialists; it has come as a plague . . . an infection . . . a disease of the war ... a result of combat injury to ordinary men. Before I continue, look through these reports for documentation.”

The staff read the stenciled sheets. PFC Nathan Riley disappearing into the early twentieth century in New York; M/Sgt Lela Machan.. . visiting the first century in Rome; Corp/2 George Hanmer. . . journeying into the nineteenth century in England. And all the rest of the twenty-four patients, escaping the turmoil and horrors of modern war in the twenty-second century by fleeing to Venice and the Doges, to Jamaica and the buccaneers, to China and the Han Dynasty, to Norway and Eric the Red, to any place and any time in the world.

“I needn’t point out the colossal significance of this discovery,” General Carpenter pointed out. “Think what it would mean to the war if we could send an army back in time a week or a month or a year. We could win the war before it started. We could protect our Dream . . . poetry and beauty and the fine culture of America ... from barbarism without ever endangering it.”

The staff tried to grapple with the problem of winning battles before they started.

“The situation is complicated by the fact that these men and women of Ward T are non compos . They may or may not know how they do what they do, but in any case they’re incapable of communicating with the experts who could reduce this miracle to method. It’s for us to find the key. They can’t help us.”

The hardened and sharpened specialists looked around uncertainly.

“We’ll need experts,” General Carpenter said.

The staff relaxed. They were on familiar ground again.

“We’ll need a Cerebral Mechanist, a Cyberneticist, a Psychiatrist, an Anatomist, an Archaeologist and a first rate Historian. They’ll go into that ward and they won’t come out until their job is done. They must get the technique of time travel.”

The first five experts were easy to draft from other war departments. All America was a tool chest of hardened and sharpened specialists. But there was trouble locating a first-class Historian until the Federal Penitentiary cooperated with the army and released Dr. Bradley Scrim from his twenty years at hard labor. Dr. Scrim was acid and jagged. He had held the chair of Philosophic History at a Western university until he spoke his mind about the war for the American Dream. That got him the twenty years hard.

Scrim was still intransigent, but induced to play ball by the intriguing problem of Ward T.

“But I’m not an expert,” he snapped. “In this benighted nation of experts, I’m the last singing grasshopper in the ant heap.”

Carpenter snapped up the intercom. “Get me an Entomologist,” he said.

“Don’t bother,” Scrim said. “I’ll translate. You’re a nest of ants . . . all working and toiling and specializing. For what?”

“To preserve the American Dream,” Carpenter answered hotly. “We’re fighting for poetry and culture and education and the Finer Things in Life.”

“You’re fighting to preserve me,” Scrim said. “That’s what I’ve devoted my life to. And what do you do with me? Put me in jail.”

“You were convicted of enemy sympathizing and fellow-traveling,” Carpenter said.

“I was convicted of believing in the American Dream,” Scrim said. “Which is another way of saying I had a mind of my own.”

Scrim was also intransigent in Ward T. He stayed one night, enjoyed three good meals, read the reports, threw them down and began hollering to be let out.

“There’s a job for everyone and everyone must be on the job,” Colonel Dimmock told him. “You don’t come out until you’ve got the secret of time travel.”

“There’s no secret I can get,” Scrim said.

“Do they travel in time?”

“Yes and no.”

“The answer has to be one or the other. Not both. You’re evading the—”

“Look,” Scrim interrupted wearily. “What are you an expert in?”

“Psychotherapy.”

“Then how the hell can you understand what I’m talking about? This is a philosophic concept. I tell you there’s no secret here that the army can use. There’s no secret any group can use. It’s a secret for individuals only.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I didn’t think you would. Take me to Carpenter.”

They took Scrim to Carpenter’s office where he grinned at the general malignantly, looking for all the world like a red-headed, underfed devil.

“I’ll need ten minutes,” Scrim said. “Can you spare them out of your tool box?”

Carpenter nodded.

“Now listen carefully. I’m going to give you all the clues to something vast, so strange, so new, that it will need all your fine edge to cut into it.”

Carpenter looked expectant.

“Nathan Riley goes back in time to the early twentieth century. There he lives the life of his fondest dreams. He’s a big-time gambler, the friend of Diamond Jim Brady and others. He wins money betting on events because be always knows the outcome in advance. He won money betting on Eisenhower to win an election. He won money betting on a prize fighter named Marciano to beat another prize fighter named La Starza. He made money investing in an automobile company owned by Henry Ford. There are the clues. They mean anything to you?”

“Not without a Sociological Analyst,” Carpenter answered. He reached for the intercom.

“Don’t bother. I’ll explain. Let’s try some more clues. Lela Machan, for example. She escapes into the Roman empire where she lives the life of her dreams as a femme fatale . Every man loves her. Julius Caesar, Brutus, the entire Twentieth Legion, a man named Ben Hur. Do you see the fallacy?”

“No.”

“She also smokes cigarettes.”

“Well?” Carpenter asked after a pause.

“I continue,” Scrim said. “George escapes into England of the nineteenth century where he’s a Member of Parliament and the friend of Gladstone, Canning and Disraeli, who takes him riding in his Rolls Royce. Do you know what a Rolls Royce is?”

“No.”

“It was the name of an automobile.”

“You don’t understand yet?”

“No.”

Scrim paced the floor in exaltation. “Carpenter, this is a bigger discovery than teleportation or time travel. This can be the salvation of man. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Those two dozen shock victims in Ward T have been H-Bombed into something so gigantic that it’s no wonder your specialists and experts can’t understand it.”

“What the hell’s bigger than time travel, Scrim?”

“Listen to this, Carpenter. Eisenhower did not run for office until the middle of the twentieth century. Nathan Riley could not have been a friend of Diamond Jim Brady’s and bet on Eisenhower to win an election . . . not simultaneously. Brady was dead a quarter of a century before Ike was President. Marciano defeated La Starza fifty years after Henry Ford started his automobile company. Nathan Riley’s time traveling is full of similar anachronisms.”

Carpenter looked puzzled.

“Lela Machan could not have had Ben Hur for a lover. Ben Hur never existed in Rome. He never existed at all. He was a character in a novel. She couldn’t have smoked. They didn’t have tobacco then. You see? More anachronisms. Disraeli could never have taken George Hanmer for a ride in a Rolls Royce because automobiles weren’t invented until long after Disraeli’s death.”

“The hell you say,” Carpenter exclaimed. “You mean they’re all lying?”