Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

He nodded. “I know. It is odd. I don’t understand why there’s no evidence.”

I drew back the thick curtains that blocked off the hard sunlight. Across the empty street, I could see Harvey Keating trying to get his lawnmower started. “In fact, if you were the father of time travel, they’d be out there now. Taking pictures of the house. Banging on the door.”

He nodded. “I hear what you’re saying.” A pickup rumbled past. Keating’s lawnmower kicked into life. “Still,” he said quietly, “it works.” He jabbed an index finger toward the torus and expanded his arms in a grand gesture that took in the entire lab, with its computer banks, gauges, power cord tangles, roll-top desk. Everything. “It works,” he said again. His gaze lost focus. “I’ve been somewhere . I’m not sure where.” He lowered himself onto a mustard-colored divan. “I finally realized the problem was in the stasis coils—”

“Say again, Mac?”

“Gillie, I’ve tried it. I landed in the middle of a riot.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I never kid. I damn near got trampled. There was a labor demonstration. At least that’s what it looked like. People carrying signs, making speeches. Just as I got there, a bomb went off. In the back of the crowd somewhere. Cops waded in, swinging sticks. It was pretty grim. But they had handlebar mustaches. And old-time uniforms. ” He took a deep breath. “We were outside somewhere. In the street.” His eyes focused behind me. “Goddamnit, Gillie, I’ve done it. I was really there.”

“Where? Where were you?”

“Maybe it was the Haymarket Riot. I was on Jefferson Street, and that’s where it happened. I spent the day at the library trying to pin it down.”

“The Haymarket Riot? Why would you go there?”

“I was trying to get to the Scopes Monkey Trial.” He shrugged. “I missed, but what difference does it make?” His eyes gleamed. “I’ve done it.” He swept up a half-full beer can and heaved it across the lab. “I have goddamn done it!”

“Show me,” I said.

He smiled. My pleasure. “That’s why you’re here. How would you like to see Our American Cousin on the night?”

I stared at him.

He handed me another Coors—it was mine that had gone for a ride—stepped over a snarl of cables, turned on a couple of computers and opened a closet. Status lamps glowed, and columns of numbers appeared on the monitors. “You’ll need these.” He tossed me some clothes. “We don’t want to be conspicuous.”

“I think I’d prefer to see him at Gettysburg.”

“Oh.” He looked annoyed. “I could arrange that, but I’d have to recalibrate. It would take a couple of days.” The clothes were right out of Gone With the Wind . He produced a second set for himself.

“I don’t think they’ll fit,” I said.

“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” He jabbed at a keyboard. A legend appeared on one of the monitors: TEMPORAL INTERLOCK GREEN. “The heart of the system.” He indicated a black box with two alternately flashing red mode lamps. “It’s the Transdimensional Interface. The TDI.” He put a hand on the polished surface. “It synchronizes power applications with field angles—”

I let him talk, understanding none of it. I was an old friend of McHugh’s, which is why I was there. But I was no physicist. Not that you had to be to understand that the past is irrevocable. While he rambled on, I climbed reluctantly into the clothes he provided.

The twin lamps blinked furiously, slowed, changed to amber, and came gradually to a steady, bright green.

“The energy field will be established along the nexus,” he said. “We should arrive about a mile and a half outside D.C., at nine in the morning, local time. That’ll allow us to have dinner at the Congress Inn and travel to the theater at our leisure.”

His fingers danced across the keyboard. Relays clicked, and somewhere in the walls power began to build. A splinter of white light appeared in the center of the torus. It brightened, lengthened, rotated. “Don’t look at it,” McHugh said. I turned away.

“You ready?” he asked.

I was pulling on a shoe. “I guess.”

The floor trembled. Windows rattled, a few index cards fluttered off a shelf, a row of black binders fell one by one out of a bookcase. “Any second now, Gillie.”

The general clatter intensified until I thought the building would come down on us. It ended in a loud electrical bang and a burst of sunlight. I could smell ozone. McHugh threw up an arm to shield his eyes. A final binder tottered and crashed. Then a blast of wind knocked me off my feet and across the mustard-colored divan. I went down in a hurricane of printouts, pencils, paper clips, and beer cans. Everything was being sucked into the torus. A chair fell over and began to slide across the floor. Windows exploded; the curtains flapped wildly. I grabbed hold of the divan.

A rectangular piece of clear sky appeared in the torus and began to expand. Everything not bolted down, books, index cards, monitors, you name it, was being blown through. “Got to find a better way to do this,” McHugh shouted. He almost went too.

My senses rotated. I was looking straight down. Like out of a plane. I watched the stream of Mac’s belongings drop toward a forest far below. A river ran through the forest. And in the distance, I could see green and gold squares of cultivated land. Something with feathers flapped in through a window, squawking, banged into a wall, and went out through the nexus.

The land was unbroken by highways or automobile traffic. But I saw a familiar white dome, gleaming in the sunlight.

“Gillie—!” He jabbed wildly in the direction of the dome. “Look. I told you—”

“Mac,” I howled. “What the hell’s going on?”

“We’re here , goddamnit. Now what do you say?” He laughed and his eyes watered. He didn’t seem to notice that the only thing between him and oblivion was the desk he was hanging onto.

“We must be at ten thousand feet, Mac. How do I close it?” He couldn’t hear me. But I spotted what looked like the main power cord. I picked it up and yanked it out of the wall.

“You got one thing right,” I told him as the windstorm subsided. “We were about a mile and a half from D.C. Straight up.”

“Ready?” He stood beside the TDI. It was about two weeks after the first attempt.

“Should we wear seatbelts?”

He grinned. Very much the man in charge. “Have your little joke. But the adjustments will work. Don’t worry. We’ll be at ground level this time.” The twin mode lamps on the TDI went to green.

“Same destination?”

“Of course.” He hovered over the computer. “Ready?”

I nodded, positioning myself near the divan.

He touched the keyboard and this time a piece of darkness appeared in the torus. I tightened my grip. We got the electrical effects again and the ozone. And the sudden intoxicating bite of salt air. The strong winds were gone. “Caused by the difference in air pressure,” he said. “All we had to do was get to ground level.”

It was night on the other side of the torus. A lovely evening, broad dark sea, blazing constellations, and a lighthouse. A quarter moon floated just above the horizon. McHugh strolled over to the torus and stood gazing out across the scene. Surf boomed, and a line of white water appeared. “I guess we missed D.C.,” he said.

I felt spray.

A large wave roared into the room. McHugh howled and ran for the computer. Water boiled around the walls, tossed the furniture about, smashed the windows. And shorted the power.