Robert Silverberg - The Time Hoppers

Suppose, he speculated, some hoppers had made a good adaptation, settled down, married people of their new era. Not, like Martin Backhouse, marrying other hoppers, but marrying people whose time-lines began four or five hundred years before their own. That way they might well have married their own great-great-great-great-grandmothers. And thus become their own great-great-great-great-grandfathers. What did that do to genetic flow and continuity of the germ plasm?

Then, too, how about the hopper who lands in 2050, gets into a fist-fight with the first man he meets, knocks him to the pavement, kills him—only to discover that he’s slain one of his own direct ancestors and broken his own line of descent? Quellen’s head ached. Presumably, any hopper who did that would wink out of existence instantly, never having been born in the first place. Were there any records of such occurrences? Make a note, he said to himself. Check every angle of this thing.

He did not think that such paradoxes were possible. He dung firmly to the idea that it was impossible to change the past, because the past was a sealed book, unchangeable. It had already happened. Any manipulation done by a time-traveller was already in the record. Which makes puppets out of us all, Quellen thought gloomily, finding himself down the dead end of determinism. Suppose I went back in time and killed George Washington in 1772? But Washington, we know, lived till 1799. Would that make it impossible for me to kill him in 1772? He scowled. Such enquiries made his mind spin. Brusquely he ordered himself to return to the business at hand, which was to find some way to halt the further flow of hoppers, thus fulfilling the implied deterministic prophecy that there would be no more hoppers going back after 2491 anyway.

Here’s a point to consider, he realized:

Many of these hopper records listed the actual date on which a man took off for the past. This Martin Backhouse, for instance; he had skipped out on 1 November 2488. Too late to do anything about that one now, but what if the records listed a hopper who had taken his departure on 4 April 2490? That was next week. If such a person could be put under surveillance, tracked to the hopper-transporting agent, even prevented from going—Quellen’s heart sank. How could someone be prevented from going back in time, if documents hundreds of years old said that he had made it safely to the past? Paradox, again. It might undermine the structure of the universe. If I interfere, Quellen thought, and pull a man out of the matrix just as he’s setting forth—He scanned the endless roster of hoppers that Brogg had compiled for him. With the furtive pleasure of a man who knows he is doing something quite dangerous, Quellen searched for the information he desired. It took him a while. Brogg had arranged the hopper data alphabetically by name, and had not sorted for date of departure or date of arrival. Besides, many of the hoppers had simply refused or neglected to reveal their date of departure except in the. most approximate way. And, with the series of dates nearly four-fifths expired by now, Quellen did not have much leeway.

Half an hour of patient searching, though, turned up the man he wanted:

RADANT, CLARK R. Detected 12 May 1987, Brooklyn, New York. Interrogated eight days. Declared date of birth 14 May 2458, declared date of departure ? May 2490 ...

It didn’t give the exact date, but it would do. A close watch would be kept on Clark Radant during the month to come, Quellen resolved. Let’s see if he can slip back to 1987 while we watch him!

He punched for Master Files.

“Get me documents on Clark Radant, born 14 May 2458,” Quellen snapped.

The huge computer somewhere below the building was designed to give instant response. It did not necessarily give instant satisfaction, however, and the response that Quellen got was less than useful.

“NO RECORD OF CLARK RADANT BORN 14 MAY 2458,” came the reply.

“No record? You mean there’s no such person?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

“That’s impossible. He’s in the hopper records. Check them. He turned up in Brooklyn on 12 May 1987. See if he didn’t.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. CLARK RADANT LISTED AMONG 1987 ARRIVALS AND 2490 DEPARTURES.”

“You see? So you must have some information on him! Why did you tell me there was no record of him, when—”

“POSSIBLY FRAUDULENT HOPPER LISTING IS ONLY ENTRY. NAME ON LIST DOES NOT IMPLY LEGITIMATE EXISTENCE. EXPLORE POSSIBILITY THAT RADANT NAME IS PSEUDONYM.”

Quellen nibbled his lower lip. Yes, no doubt of it! Radant, whoever he might be, had given a phony name when he landed in 1987. Perhaps all the hopper names on the list were pseudonyms. Maybe they were individually instructed to conceal their real names when they arrived, or possibly indoctrinated so that they could not reveal them, even after interrogation. The enigmatic Clark Radant had been interrogated eight days, it said, and he still hadn’t offered a name that corresponded to anything in the birth records.

Quellen saw his bold plan fluttering into the discard. He tried again, though. Expecting to search another half hour, he was rewarded with a new lead after only five minutes:

MORTENSEN, DONALD G. Detected 25 December 2088, Boston, Massachusetts. Interrogated four hours. Declared date of birth 11 June 2462, declared date of departure 4 May 2490 ...

He hoped it had been a merry Christmas in Boston for Donald Mortensen four hundred and two year; ago. Quellen punched for Master Files again and demanded to know what there was to be known about Donald Mortensen, born 11 June 2462. He was prepared to learn that no such individual was recorded in the voluminous birth annals of that year.

Instead, the computer began to chatter to him about Donald Mortensen—his skill classification, his marital status, his address, his physical description, his health record. Quellen at length had to silence the machine.

Very well. There was a Donald Mortensen. He had not— would not—bother to use a pseudonym when he showed up in Boston on Christmas Day forty decades ago. If he showed up. Quellen consulted the hopper records again and learned that Mortensen had found employment as an automobile service technician (how prehistoric, Quellen thought!) and had married one Donna Brewer in 2091, fathering five children on her (even more prehistoric!) and living on until 2149, when he expired of an unrecorded disease.

Those five children no doubt had had multitudes of offspring themselves, Quellen realized. Thousands of modern-day human beings might be descended from them, including Quellen himself, or some leader of the High Government. Now, if Quellen’s minions closed in on Donald Mortensen as the critical day of 4 May arrived, and prevented him from taking off for the year 2088—He felt hesitant. The sensation of bold determination that had gripped him a few moments before evaporated completely as he considered the consequences of altering Donald Mortensen’s chosen path of action.

Perhaps, Quellen thought, I should have a talk with Koll and Spanner about this, first.

The job machine—more formally, the Central Employment Register—was located in the grand lobby of a geodesic dome six hundred feet wide. The dome was surfaced with a platinum spray three molecules thick. Within, along the walls of the dome, were the external manifestations of the computer banks, which were located somewhere else. A busy inanimate mind worked unsleepingly to tally employment opportunities and to match them with qualifications.

Norm Pomrath took a quickboat to the job machine. He could have walked, and saved a piece of change at the expense of an hour of his time, but he chose not to do so. It was a deliberate squandering. His time was almost infinite; his cash supply, despite the generosity of the High Government, was limited. The weekly dole cheques that reached him through the courtesy of Danton and Kloofman and the other members of the ruling elite covered all basic expenses for the Pomrath family of four, but they did not go much beyond those basic expenses. Pomrath usually conserved his cash. He hated the dole, of course; but there was little likelihood of his ever getting regular work, so he accepted the impersonal benevolence like everyone else. No one starved except through free will in this world, and even then it took some doing.