Eric Flint - Time spike

All of them immediately understood what was being displayed. And all of them-including Margo herself, she was pretty sure-practically had their eyes bulging out of their sockets. "Jesus," she whispered. "It's aperfect correlation." Morgan-Ash, naturally, interjected a cautionary note. "Nothing in nature is 'perfect,' Margo. Not to mention that this is simply a graphic depiction of some mathematical concepts which may or may not have any correlation to the real world." O'Connell rolled his eyes. "Oh, great. Just the time and place to have another philosophical debate about whether mathematics inheres in nature or is simply hard-wired in the human brain and our way of interpreting data that has no inherent mathematical nature of its own. God, I swear. If the day ever comes that we master this stuff enough to create our own time machines, I vote that the first expedition goes back and shoots David Hume." "You'd probably have to shoot Locke and Berkeley too,"

Brisebois said, smiling. "And just to be on the safe side, jog forward a bit and plug Immanuel Kant. I'm afraid that debate's pretty deeply rooted in the western intellectual tradition. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, in the end, you wound up putting out a contract on Plato and Aristotle." Margo stared at him. It would never have occurred to her that a man whose institution of higher learning had been the Air Force Academy would be familiar with the history of philosophy. He must have spotted her stare, because he shifted the smile to her and shrugged modestly. "I read Will Durant'sHistory of Philosophy when I was a teenager and got interested. I don't have the training to work my way through Whitehead and Russell'sPrincipia Mathematica, but I've read most everything else. Even worked my way through Hegel'sScience of Logic once. The Big Logic, too, not the condensation in his encyclopedia." His friend Tim spoke, for the first time in over an hour. "Good thing for him he was just a lowly trash-hauler. They make allowances for such. If he'd been a fighter jock, he'd never have lived it down." Again, Brisebois did that little modest shrug. "What can I say? I simply didn't have the wherewithal to be a fighter pilot. My reflexes might have been good enough, but I lacked the key temperamental ingredient." "Which is?" Leo asked.

"You've got to be a complete asshole to make a good fighter jock. I'm just not that arrogant. Even my kids admit it." A little chuckle went through the room. Margo joined in, although she wasn't moved so much by the humor as by a new peak of personal interest. An impulse made her ask: "What did you think of Schopenhauer?" "You mean, besides his being a misogynistic jerk?" She decided that maintaining one's focus exclusively on professional matters was probably not what it was cracked up to be. She gave Nick a gleaming smile and said: "No, that'll do quite nicely." Morgan-Ash cleared his throat. "To get back to where we were, I wasn't actually raising an abstract philosophical issue. I was simply pointing out that even Malcolm will admit that half the principles-if I may be allowed the term-of his invented mathematics-" "Discovered mathematics," O'Connell interjected. "-are just first approximations." Richard pointed to the display on the screen. "Whatthat is, with all its crispness, is simply a display of logic that's at least partly guesswork. It's more like a drawing-or a cartoon-than a photograph." O'Connell looked on the verge of exploding. Richard held up his hand in a somewhat placating gesture.

"I'm not sneering, Malcolm. I'm simply cautioning against trying to draw too many exact conclusions." Fortunately, Leo came into it-on Richard's side, where he normally tended to align with O'Connell.

"Hey, look, Malcolm, he's right. Still and all"-here he shot Morgan-Ash a reproving look-"the fact remains that while Margo was over-shooting to call the correlation 'perfect,' it's awfully damn good. You're the statistician, Richard. You tellme what the probability is that a display like that would emerge from random correlations." Morgan-Ash grinned. "Oh, there's none at all. Not worth talking about. I agree that we're looking at something real. I'd just be a lot happier if we could match the numbers against-dare I say it-some bloodyevidence. You know, that filthiest of all filthy four-letter Anglo-Saxon words. 'Fact.' " The state policeman shifted in his seat. "What sort of fact are you talking about?" Morgan-Ash tugged his neatly trimmed beard. "Lord, I don't know. If we could just get our hands on whatever showed up in Grantville! One thing that seems clear about these time impact events is that, in their own way, they adhere to the principles of thermodynamics. Action, reaction.

Nothing is free. If they shift something into the past, something gets shifted forward to the present. If we had enough data to find out, I'd be willing to bet we'd discover the mass involved was identical."

Harshbarger stared at him, for a moment. Then, suddenly, came to his feet. "All right. I've decided you guys are real. Give me a minute.

Nick, I'll need a hand." With no further ado, he left the suite, with Brisebois on his heels. They were back in less than three minutes, carrying something large and heavy into the suite. It was encased in a peculiar sort of wrapping that Margo realized must be one of the storied body-bags she'd heard of, and seen occasionally on television news footage. "Clear the table, would you?" Hastily, the scientists moved aside the remains of their lunch. Tim and Nick placed the body bag on the table and, with no further ado, Harshbarger slid open the long zipper. "Okay. You tell me. Is this the kind of evidence you're looking for?" After a long silence, Leo said:"Holy shit." Richard's contribution was more sedate. "Unless there's a hitherto unreported species of large reptile in the central United States, I'd say the answer is yes. This is indeed the evidence we're looking for. And the odds of that being true-I speak here as a expert statistician, you understand-I estimate as being indistinguishable from zero. Seeing as how-" He peered at the carcass on the table. "Did you weigh it?" "Yup.

Eighty-three pounds, four ounces. Measures six feet, three inches, from the snout to the tip of the tail." "As I said. The chances that a reptile not much smaller than a Komodo Dragon has been wandering around loose along the Mississippi river without ever being noticed is indistinguishable from zero." Malcolm-unusually, for him-played the devil's advocate. "We shouldn't jump to conclusions. Maybe it got mistaken for an alligator." "Wouldn't matter," said Tim. The policeman pointed to the patch on his shoulder. "State Police, remember? There have never been any sightings of alligators in Illinois. This isn't Florida or Alabama. I can guarantee you that if anyone spotted what they thought was an alligator in these parts, we'd have heard about it." He leaned over. "Besides, it doesn't look the least bit like an alligator, other than having a generally reptilian appearance. But I don't think it's even a reptile in the first place. My partner and I got a clear look at it before we shot it. This critter wasn't running on all fours, the way a lizard or alligator will. Hell, look at those forelimbs. Those aren't designed for weight-bearing. It was running on its two hind legs. Like a bird, except the body was level, with the heavy tail counterbalancing the head and chest. Which is to say-"

Margo finished the sentence for him. "Exactly the way paleontologists these days figure dinosaurs moved." "Yup." Harshbarger poked the reddish skin with a long forefinger. "That's what I think this thing is. A real, no-fooling dinosaur. Got no idea what kind, though. It's not something I ever studied." So far as Margo knew, none of the scientists in the room had any real knowledge of paleontology either.

She certainly didn't. "Where's your partner?" Nick asked. Tim grinned.