Further, it was a death without precedence. A ceasing to exist, and no more. The passing of a breath. The vanishing of a dream. The drift into eternal non-space and non-time of a shadow. I would not be dead at all, in fact I would merely never have been born.
Or would I? Would I exist-my individuality-my ego-my soul, if you like? Another life? Other circumstances?
I thought none of that in words then. But if a cold knot in the stomach could ever speak under the circumstances, it would sound like that, I think.
The Boss moved in on my thoughts-hard.
“Then, we have about two and a half weeks. No time to lose. Come on.”
I grinned with one side of my mouth: “What do we do? Chase the book?”
“No,” he replied coldly, “but there are two courses of action we must follow. First, you may be wrong-altogether. All of this circumstantial reasoning may still represent a false lead, perhaps deliberately thrown before us, to cover up the real truth. That must be checked.
“Secondly, you may be right-but there may be some way of stopping the book: other than chasing it in a time machine, I mean. If so, we must find out how.”
“I would just like to say, sir, if this is a false lead, only a madman would consider it a believable one. So suppose I’m right, and suppose there’s no way of stopping it?”
“Then, young fellow, I’m going to keep pretty busy for two and a half weeks, and I’d advise you to do the same. The time will pass more quickly that way.”
Of course he was right.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“The first thing we need is a list of all men and women on the government payroll under Tywood.”
“Why?”
“Reasoning. Your specialty, you know. Tywood doesn’t know Greek, I think we can assume with fair safety, so someone else must have done the translating. It isn’t likely that anyone would do a job like that for nothing, and it isn’t likely that Tywood would payout of his personal funds-not on a professor’s salary.”
“He might, “ I pointed out, “have been interested in more secrecy than a government payroll affords.”
“Why? Where was the danger? Is it a crime to translate a chemistry textbook into Greek? Who would ever deduce from that a plot such as you’ve described?”
It took us half an hour to turn up the name of Mycroft James Boulder, listed as “Consultant, “ and to find out that he was mentioned in the University Catalogue as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and to check by telephone that among his many accomplishments was a thorough knowledge of Attic Greek.
Which was a coincidence-because with the Boss reaching for his hat, the interoffice teletype clicked away and it turned out that Mycroft James Boulder was in the anteroom, at the end of a two-hour continuing insistence that he see the Boss.
The Boss put his hat back and opened his office door.
Professor Mycroft James Boulder was a gray man. His hair was gray and his eyes were gray. His suit was gray, too.
But most of all, his expression was gray; gray with a tension that seemed to twist at the lines in his thin face.
Boulder said, softly: “I’ve been trying for three days to get a hearing, sir, with a responsible man. I can get no higher than yourself.”
“I may be high enough,” said the Boss. “What’s on your mind?”
“It is quite important that I be granted an interview with Professor Tywood.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I am quite certain that he is in government custody.”
“Why?”
“Because I know that he was planning an experiment which would entail the breaking of security regulations. Events since, as nearly as I can make them out, flownaturally from the supposition that security regulations have indeed been broken. I can presume, then, that the experiment has at least been attempted. I must discover whether it has been successfully concluded.”
“Professor Boulder,” said the Boss, “I believe you can read Greek.”
“Yes, I can,” -coolly.
“And have translated chemical texts for Professor Tywood on government money.”
“Yes-as a legally employed consultant.”
“Yet such translation, under the circumstances, constitutes a crime, since it makes you an accessory to Tywood’s crime.”
“You can establish a connection?”
“Can’t you? Or haven’t you heard of Tywood’s notions on time travel, or…what do you call it…micro-temporal-translation?”
“Ah?” and Boulder smiled a little. “He’s told you, then.”
“No, he hasn’t,” said the Boss, harshly. “Professor Tywood is dead.”
“What?” Then-”I don’t believe you.”
“He died of apoplexy. Look at this.”
He had one of the photographs taken that first night in his wall safe. Tywood’s face was distorted but recognizable-sprawled and dead.
Boulder’s breath went in and out as if the gears were clogged. He stared at the picture for three full minutes by the electric clock on the wall. “Where is this place?” he asked.
“The Atomic Power Plant. “
“Had he finished his experiment?”
The Boss shrugged: “There’s no way of telling. He was dead when we found him.”
Boulder’s lips were pinched and colorless. “That must be determined, somehow. A commission of scientists must be established, and, if necessary, the experiment must be repeated-”
But the Boss just looked at him, and reached for a cigar. I’ve never seen him take longer-and when he put it down, curled in its unused smoke, he said: “Tywood wrote an article for a magazine, twenty years ago-”
“Oh, “ and the professor’s lips twisted, “is that what gave you your clue? You may ignore that. The man is only a physical scientist and knows nothing of either history or sociology. A schoolboy’s dreams and nothing more.”
“Then, you don’t think sending your translation back will inaugurate a Golden Age, do you?”
“Of course not. Do you think you can graft the developments of two thousand years of slow labor onto a child society not ready for it? Do you think a great invention or a great scientific principle is born full-grown in the mind of a genius divorced from his cultural milieu? Newton’s enunciation of the Law of Gravity was delayed for twenty years because the then-current figure for the Earth’s diameter was wrong by ten percent. Archimedes almost discovered calculus, but failed because Arabic numerals, invented by some nameless Hindu or group of Hindus, were unknown to him.
“For that matter, the mere existence of a slave society in ancient Greece and Rome meant that machines could scarcely attract much attention-slaves being so much cheaper and more adaptable. And men of true intellect could scarcely be expected to spend their energies on devices intended for manual labor. Even Archimedes, the greatest engineer of antiquity, refused to publish any of his practical inventions-only mathematic abstractions. And when a young man asked Plato of what use geometry was, he was forthwith expelled from the Academy as a man with a mean, unphilosophic soul.
“Science does not plunge forward-it inches along in the directions permitted by the greater forces that mold society and which are in turn molded by society. And no great man advances but on the shoulders of the society that surrounds him-”
The Boss interrupted him at that point. “Suppose you tell us what your part in Tywood’s work was, then. We’ll take your word for it that history cannot be changed.”
“Oh it can, but not purposefully-you see, when Tywood first requested my services in the matter of translating certain textbook passages into Greek, I agreed for the money involved. But he wanted the translation on parchment; he insisted on the use of ancient Greek terminology-the language of Plato, to use his words-regardless of how I had to twist the literal significance of passages, and he wanted it hand-written in rolls.
“I was curious. I, too, found his magazine article. It was difficult for me to jump to the obvious conclusion, since the achievements of modem science transcend the imaginings of philosophy in so many ways. But I learned the truth eventually, and it was at once obvious that Tywood’s theory of changing history was infantile. There are twenty million variables for every instant of time, and no system of mathematics-no mathematic psychohistory, to coin a phrase-has yet been developed to handle that ocean of varying functions.