“And you’re saying we can go backwards?” she asked, brushing his leg with hers as she moved closer.
“Not backwards, exactly,” deVere said. He put his finger on 2026, almost on the right-hand edge of the list, and picked up the other end, curling it over his hand until 1950 hovered above 2026.
“We take a short cut.” He bounced his finger up and down between the two ends of the paper, between 1950 and 2026. “Space is curved, remember?”
“Einstein,” Amanda said, nodding. “You taught me that in Ithaca.”
“Exactly. A wormhole is like a short, narrow tunnel between different parts and times of the universe. If this piece of paper is the universe, and the universe is curved, then the idea is instead of trying to go across the surface of time, we simply drop through a hole.” He laid the paper flat on Amanda’s skirt.
“How do you know where the wormhole is?” Amanda asked.
“That’s half the problem,” deVere said. “Wormholes aren’t static, they don’t always exist. Lewis would have to explain the math, but the real problem is that matter has to have a negative energy density relative to a light beam to pass through one of these things. It’s called exotic matter, because nobody knows of any sort of matter that can do that right now.”
“Except… you guys?”
“Lewis’ math showed that evaporating black holes implied the existence of this exotic matter. Our discovery of SU44 confirmed it. But if the wormhole focuses, which it does on ordinary matter, the field’s strength grows and destroys the wormhole. If it’s exotic matter, however, the wormhole won’t focus and will stay stable long enough for the matter to pass through. It’s like a tunnel that will try to crush anyone it notices trying to pass through, but if it finds it can’t crush somebody it lets that person pass through.”
“Wow. You guys aren’t fooling around. How do you know where you’ll end up?”
“Think of it as a garden hose. One end is fixed at the faucet. But you can turn the other end anywhere you want. On the lawn, the hedges, or the rose bushes.”
“But the water in the hose doesn’t decide where it goes.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But imagine if the water points the hose nozzle before the spigot’s turned on.”
“You guys can do that?”
DeVere smiled. “We already have.”
“You’ve turned yourselves into exotic matter?”
“Not quite. Lewis identified a wormhole that connected the Accelechron in our lab with a spot under the Concord Bridge a little over one year ago. We set a chronometer to zero, started it ticking, and sent it back in a canister. I drove out and recovered it. The chronometer showed it had been there over a year.”
“So, it can be done. How do you come back? Or do you?” Amanda asked, becoming alarmed.
“David. Dr. Bennett David,” Paul said. “The Father of Time Travel.”
“David,” she repeated. “Didn’t he become… sort of…?”
Paul nodded. “Yes, well, before all that, he was a brilliant theoretician. He reasoned that for the universe to maintain its equilibrium there had to be contrapositive wormholes. For every wormhole that linked a time and point in space with another time and point in space there had to be a wormhole that linked back that point at a future time with the original time and point. And anything that came through the first wormhole could go back through the contrapositive wormhole without needing to be accelerated again.”
Amanda nodded slowly. “And since there are an infinite number of wormholes—”
“Virtually infinite,” Paul corrected.
“Virtually infinite, whatever that means, you just identify the one you want and get on.”
”Exactly.”
“Why didn’t the canister come back then?”
Lewis spoke up. “I selected a wormhole whose contrapositive had not yet occurred. Otherwise we never would have known if the canister had gone anywhere since the departure and arrival times are identical.”
“Ah, I see. So you just have to go someplace, do whatever, and return to that same spot in time for the return trip.”
“There is some window of allowance, but yes,” Lewis explained.
Amanda shook her head. “So you’ll pop down the rabbit hole and boom, Alice lands in Wonderland.”
“Boom,” Paul repeated.
“Have you done it yet? I mean, with people?” Amanda asked.
“No, not yet,” Paul answered. “But it’s still just a matter of time.”
“Cute joke,” Amanda retorted.
“Sorry,” Paul apologized.
“I liked it,” Amanda said, studying the Roadrunner. “So, why me?”
“Will you help us?” Paul asked.
“Need a flesh and bones guinea pig to send back first?” Amanda asked.
“No, Amanda, we’d never test on a person what we weren’t absolutely sure—”
“Paul, lighten up, it was a joke. Seriously, what do you need me for? I don’t know anything about time travel. How can I help?”
“We need you to pinpoint the time and location for us,” Lewis said.
“What do you mean ‘pinpoint?” she asked cautiously.
“When should we go back?” Lewis continued. “Identify a nerve point, a crucial step that we can undo. We’re not going back with an army; it’s me and Paul. We need to draw up the mission before we go back, freelancing won’t work.”
“What mission?” she asked warily.
Lewis looked at Paul before turning back to Amanda.
“Your mission,” Lewis said, “should you decide to accept it, is to go back to a point in time in the old United States and change something that will prevent the demise of the U.S. of A.”
There were several moments of silence before anyone spoke. Finally Amanda asked deliberately, “That’s it? That’s all you want to do? You’re not talking science here, you’re talking history, changing fucking history.”
“Yeah, well, Paul and I feel that ‘fucking history’ as you call it hasn’t been so great for the good guys and if there were a different one we might all be better off. So that’s what Paul and I want to do.”
“You and Paul? Oh, I don’t even get the fun part?” Amanda asked.
“Well, uh, certainly if you’d like,” Paul said, cutting a glance at Lewis who shrugged and drank some beer. “I mean we didn’t assume you’d want to, it’s pretty risky—”
“No riskier than asking me to join you.”
Paul stopped with a slightly panicked look on his face. Amanda burst out laughing.
“Paul, you really can’t see a joke when it hits you in the face, can you?” Amanda asked. “Of course I’ll do whatever I can to help you guys.”
Paul let out a sigh. “I really didn’t know what you were going to say.”
“So, you were taking a chance?” Amanda asked.
He nodded. “Lewis and I talked about whether we should include you.”
“I can be trusted. Even if it does mean that when I come back I will no longer be qualified to teach.”
Lewis glanced at her face as she spoke. Amanda hadn’t looked at either of them when she had answered. He turned back to the carburetor.
Paul studied Amanda who sat quietly on the grimy work stool.
“Is there a problem?” Paul asked.
“Not a problem,” she began. “I’m just not sure…”
“About what?” Lewis interjected sharply, looking up from the carburetor.
“When you sent that canister back. It went back a little over one year in time. So when you went to pick it up under the bridge it had been there one year, correct?”
“Yeah,” Lewis answered warily.
“So,” she continued. “Since it had been there one year what would have happened if you had gone to the bridge the day before you sent it back? Would the canister have been there?”
Paul and Lewis looked at each other.