"That mother!" "In his case that's merely descriptive. What happened?"
"Uh- Maybe I reacted too strongly. Better ask Dr. Burroughs."
"Jacob?" "No, Richard did not overreact. Lazarus went out of his way to be offensively difficult with all four of us. In the first place, Lazarus has no business trying to supervise the mathematics section; he is not a mathematician in any professional sense and is not qualified to supervise. In the second place each of us in the section knows the quirks of the others; we never interfere with each other's work. But Lazarus kicked me out, and Deety, and Jane Libby, for daring to talk a few moments about something not on his agenda... totally unaware, or at least uncaring, that I and both my daughters use a two-level mode of meditation. Hazel, I kept my temper. Truly I did, dear. You would have been proud of me."
"I'm always proud of you, Jacob. I would not have kept my temper. In dealing with Lazarus you should take a tip from Sir Winston Churchill and step on his toes until he apologizes. Lazarus doesn't appreciate good manners. But what did he do to Richard?"
"Told him not to feed his cat at the conference table. Ridiculous! As if it could possibly harm his fancy table if this kitten happened to pee on it."
Hazel shook her head and looked grim, which doesn't fit her face. "Lazarus has always been a rough cob but, ever since this campaign-Overlord, I mean-started, he has been growing increasingly difficult. Jacob, has your section been handing him gloomy predictions?"
"Some. But the real difficulty is that our long-range projections are so vague. That can be maddening, I know, because when a city is destroyed, the tragedy is not vague; it's sharp and sickening. If we change history, we aren't truly unde-stroying that city, we are simply starting a new time line. We need projections that will let us change history before that city is destroyed." He looked at me. "That's why rescuing Adam Selene is so important."
I looked stupid-my best role. 'To make Lazarus better tempered?"
"Indirectly, yes. We need a supervising computer that can direct and program and monitor other large computers in creating multi verse projections. The biggest supervising computer we know of is the one on this planet, Athene or Teena, and her twin on Secundus. But this sort of projection is a much bigger job. Public functions on Tertius are mostly automated fail-safe and Teena steps in only as a trouble-shooter. But the Holmes IV-Adam Selene or Mike-through a set of odd circumstances, grew and grew and grew with apparently no one trying to keep his size down to optimum... then his self-programming increased enormously through a unique challenge: running the Lunar Revolution. Colonel, I don't think any human brain or brains could possibly have written the programs that Holmes IV self-programmed to let him handle all the details of that revolution. My older daughter, Deety, is a top specialist in programming; she says a human brain could not do it and that, in her opinion, an artificial intelligence could swing it only the way Holmes IV did it-by being faced with the necessity, a case of 'Root, Hog, or Die.' So we need Adam Selene-or his essence, those programs he wrote in creating himself. Because we don't know how to do it."
Hazel glanced at the pool. "I'll bet Deety could do it. If she had to."
"Thank you, dear, on behalf of my daughter. But she is not given to false modesty. If Deety could do it, or thought she had even a slim chance, she would be hacking away at it now. As it is, she's doing what she can; she is working hard at tying together the computer bank we have."
"Jacob, I hate to say this-" Hazel hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn't."
"Then don't." "I need to get it off my chest. Papa Mannie isn't optimistic over the results even if we are totally successful in retrieving all the memory banks and programs that constitute the essential Adam Selene-or 'Mike' as Papa Mannie calls him. He thinks his old friend was hurt so badly in the last attack-I remember it to this day; it was dreadful-Mike was hurt so badly that he withdrew into a computer catatonia and will never wake up. For years Papa tried to wake him, after the Revolution when Papa had free access to the Warden's Complex. He doesn't see how bringing those memories and programs here will do it. Oh, he wants to try, he's eager to, he loves Mike. But he's not hopeful."
"When you see Manuel, tell him to cheer up; Deety has thought of an answer." "Really? Oh, I hope so!" "Deety is going to provide Teena with lots more unused capacity, both for memory and for symbol manipulation, thought-and then she'll shove Mike into bed with Teena. If that does not bring Mike back to life, nothing will."
My love looked startled, then giggled. "Yes, that ought to do it."
She then went back to the pool and I learned from Jacob Burroughs why his daughter Deety spoke so emotionally about the Father of the Atom Bomb: She had seen-they had seen, all four of them, their own home wiped out by an atom bomb- a fission bomb, I inferred, but Jake did not say.
"Colonel, it is one thing to read a headline or hear a news report; it is something else entirely when it's your own home that has the mushroom cloud covering it.
"We are dispossessed, we can never go home. Eventually we were wiped completely off the slate. In our time line there is nothing to show that we four-myself, Hilda, Deety, Zeb- ever existed. The houses we once lived in are gone, never were; the earth has closed over them with no scars." He looked as lonely as Odysseus, then went on: "LAzarus sent a Time Corps field operative back- Dora? May I speak to Elizabeth?"
"Start talking." "Lib love? Place that rosette Pete wanted-or was it Archie? Spike the earliest date of surveillance. Go back three years. Evacuate."
"Paradox, Jacob."
"Yes. Place those three years in a loop, squeeze them off, throw them away. Check it."
"I check you, dear. More?"
"No. Off now."
Burroughs continued, "-sent a field operative to our time line to try to find us, anywhere in the fifty-year bracket from my birth to the night we ran for our lives. We are not there at all. We were never born. Both Zeb and I had military careers as well as academic ones; we are not in military records, we are not in campus records. There is a record of my parents... but they never had me. Colonel, in all the dozens, hundreds, of ways that citizens were recorded in the twentieth century in the United States of North America not one trace could be found that showed that we had ever been there."
Burroughs sighed. "The Gay Deceiver not only saved our lives that night; she saved our very existence. She took evasive action so fast that the Beast lost track- What is it, dear?"
Jane Libby was standing by us, dripping, and looking round-eyed. "Papa?"
"Say it, love."
"We need those sneakies Pythagoras wanted but they should go back much farther, oh, ten years or more. Then, when they spot the tick at which the Overlord or whoever started watching THQ, back off some and evacuate. Loop and patch, and they'll never suspect that we outflanked them. I told Deety; she thinks it could work. What do you think?"
"I think it will. Let me get your mother on line and we'll introduce it. Dora, let me have Elizabeth again, please." Nothing in his face or manner suggested that he had just spoken to Libby Long, proposing what was (so far as I could see) the same plan.
"Elizabeth? A message from our table tennis champ. Jane Libby says to place that rosette at minus ten years, spike first surveillance, then go back-oh, say, three years-evacuate, squeeze off a loop and patch in. Both Deety and I think it will work. Please submit it to the panel, credited to Jane Ell, with Deety's vote and mine noted."