"People will probably debate that forever. One thing I'm sure of, if they hadn't researched those
questions, if they had opted out from fear of the consequences... somebody else would have found the same answers."
"No question. It's the same with cloning research. We can try to keep it in control, but the answers will come."
"Yes. I know it's foolish to worry too much about the effects of what you might discover. We'd stop discovering anything at all. Still..." He leaned back in his chair and sighed, wondering if he needed to get into this. But there wasn't much they could do until the sun came up, which could be hours yet. He went on. "When I was very young, I discovered science. I couldn't get enough of it. I read everything. I figured I'd continue doing that until I knew everything about everything. Chemistry, biology, physics, math, astronomy, you name it, it was all the same to me. In fact, I didn't see any distinction."
"That's true. In many ways, there isn't any difference. You can't do biology without chemistry, you can't do astronomy without physics... and you can't do any of them without math. That's what I kept coming back to, after I realized there was too much knowledge for any one person to learn in a hundred lifetimes. So when I reached the point where I had to specialize, I asked people what I seemed to be the best at, and they all said math. Which was good, because that's what I thought, too.
"And I'd given some thought to the responsibility of the researcher. Astronomy seemed fairly safe... until you started thinking about the power inherent in stars, in neutron stars, black holes, quasars. Same with physics. Biology gets into the realm of really hairy moral questions, like biological or genetic war, which in some ways is scarier than nuclear bombs. I'll tell you, it got to the point, if I'd been any good with the harmonica, I'd have dropped out of school and started a blues band. Unfortunately, I have no talent for music, or sports, or business, or sales, or fishing... no talents at all, really, except for memory and logical thinking. So I concentrated on math. Math seemed safe."
"You were how old?"
"Twelve."
Susan smiled. "Prodigies. When I was twelve I was learning how not to fall off when an elephant was lifting me on her trunk."
"I wish I knew how to do that."
"I'll teach you. But go on."
Matt wasn't sure he wanted to, but he'd started down the road.
"Well... I got my Ph.D. in mathematics. Even in math you're expected to specialize, but I tried to stay as broadly based as possible. One month I'd be working on the most theoretical things I could find, another I'd get interested in what we call 'real-world' problems. About a year ago I was noodling around some equations concerning superstrings. Do you know what that is?"
"Sure. It's that goop you squirt out of a can at parties. Sticks to stuff."
"Right. But the other sense of the word concerns what quarks are made of."
"Quarks being the particles that make up protons and neutrons and such."
"Yes. So far there is no real evidence of their existence, just some interesting mathematical theories. If they do exist, they are very small. Anyway, superstrings seemed as remote in one direction as quasars are in the other. I didn't think it was likely anything I discovered would have a lot of real-world applications." "You should have remembered that, in 1939, protons and neutrons seemed incredibly tiny."
"I gather it didn't work out that way."
"At first, it was fine. Lovely speculation. Good response to the papers I was publishing, interesting feedback from the three or four people around the world looking into the same thing.
"Then I stopped publishing. I didn't even realize I had done it at the time. I thought I was just organizing my thoughts, I'd put them down and send them in later.
"A year went by, and I started sleeping badly. I was getting an inkling of something that was... frightening me. I'm still not sure why. It got to be hard to do the math; sort of like writer's block, I guess.
"Then one day I stopped talking." Matt swallowed hard, and suited action to his words. After a minute had gone by, Susan spoke, cautiously.
"That must have been awful."
Matt laughed.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you? Actually, it wasn't so bad, at first. The weird thing was to discover I could get through the day pretty easily without speaking at all. I never had a lot of human contact at work, math is a lonely game sometimes. Casual contact could be handled with a nod or a smile. Hell, it's not like I was the office clown before that; people didn't expect a lot of words out of me. But gradually it became clear that I wasn't choosing not to speak, but that I couldn't speak. I'd open my mouth to say something, and nothing would come out. I wrote notes, memos, and emails to cover myself in most things... then I realized I was having trouble writing, too. I knew it was time to get help.
"And that's sort of where I was when Howard found me. I'd spent a month in a very nice, quiet facility in the country, mildly sedated, and after a while I could talk to a therapist. I was advised to take a few months off to think things over. I didn't need a lot of time to decide one thing: I wouldn't publish my results on the superstring research. There was too much potential danger. In fact, I knew I had to destroy the equations."
There wasn't much he could add that wouldn't get into more specificity than Susan could handle, and she seemed to recognize that. They were silent for a while, until Susan looked toward the door they had left propped open, and realized there was pale gray light coming through it.
They approached the door cautiously. Outside, there were entirely unremarkable trees and shrubs. The analytical side of Matt's mind noted there was no sign of whatever trees and shrubs had occupied the ground the time-traveling building now sat on. Were those trees now growing from Howard Christian's land in Santa Monica? Something to think about later, after they had made a plan.
At the top, they looked out over a primeval Pleistocene landscape, untouched in any way by the hand of man.
To the west, the Pacific was still gray in the morning light. To the north they could see what had to be the Hollywood Hills, surprisingly green and covered with scrub oaks. To the east the sky was orange, the sun about to burst over the horizon... and the mountains over there seemed to be frosted with snow. To the south, just rolling country and, far in the distance, what looked like a herd of horses.
"Maybe horses, maybe camels," Susan said. "I can't tell from this far away."
"Camels?"
"Sure, there were several species. And the horses may have three toes."
"And the tigers have big teeth."
"Not really tigers, Matt, they were a lot more like lions."
"You're the expert. But we'd probably better watch out for them. I'll bet they could hide pretty
well in all this underbrush."
"If we stick with the elephants, we shouldn't be bothered much by saber-toothed cats."
"Right. The elephants. What are we going to do about the elephants?"
"Water them, obviously."
"And how do we do that?"
"I think we leave it to them." They were silent again as the first rays of the sun reached them.
"That is so beautiful," Susan said, with a catch in her voice. "I wish I'd brought my camera."
Matt was thinking about saber-toothed cats and wishing he'd brought a gun... a very large gun.
"So...," Susan said. "Where did you hide your superstring data?"
"It's in my safe-deposit box, in Portland."
They looked at each other, and laughed. "Well, I should have destroyed it," Matt said.
Matt looked into the distance again, and decided to say nothing.
"I guess we'd better get to work," Susan said. "I think we've got an interesting day ahead of us."
ABOUT twelve thousand years in the future, Howard Christian was finally at the end of the most interesting day of his life, and one of the more expensive ones.