Time Travel Omnibus, page 435
IF . . .
What was it Long said? “If totalitarianism comes to America, it’ll be labeled Americanism.” Dead Huey, now I find thy saw of might. . . .
IF
There was a lighted window shining through the fog. That meant Cleve was still up. Probably still working on temporomagnetic field-rotation, which sounded like nonsense but what did you expect from a professor of psionics? Beyond any doubt the most unpredictable department in the University . . . and yet Lanroyd was glad he’d helped round up the majority vote when the Academic Senate established it. No telling what might come of it . . . if independent research had any chance of continuing to exist.
The window still carried a sticker for the Judge and a NO ON 13. This was a good house to drop in on. And Lanroyd needed a drink.
Cleve answered the door with a full drink in his hand. “Have this, old boy,” he said; “I’ll mix myself another. Night for drinking, isn’t it?” The opinion had obviously been influencing him for some time; his British accent, usually all but rubbed off by now, had returned full force as it always did after a few drinks.
Lanroyd took the glass gratefully as he went in. “I’ll sign that petition,” he said. “I need a drink to stay sober; I think I’ve hit a lowpoint where I can’t get drunk.”
“It’ll be interesting,” his host observed, “to see if you’re right. Glad you dropped in. I needed drinking company.”
“Look, Stu,” Lanroyd objected. “If it wasn’t for the stickers on your window, I’d swear you were on your way to a happy drunk. What’s to celebrate for God’s sake?”
“Well as to God, old boy, I mean anything that’s to celebrate is to celebrate for God’s sake, isn’t it? After all . . . Pardon. I must be a bit tiddly already.”
“I know,” Lanroyd grinned. “You don’t usually shove your Church of England theology at me. Sober, you know I’m hopeless.”
“Point not conceded. But God does come into this, of course. My rector’s been arguing with me—doesn’t approve at all. Tampering with Divine providence. But A: how can mere me tamper with anything Divine? And B: if it’s possible, it’s part of the Divine plan itself. And C: I’ve defied the dear old boy to establish that it involves in any way the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, or the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
“Professor Cleve,” said Lanroyd, “would you mind telling me what the hell you are talking about?”
“Time travel, of course. What else have I been working on for the past eight months?”
Lanroyd smiled. “OK. Every man to his obsession. My world’s shattered and yours is rosy. Carry on, Stu. Tell me about it and brighten my life.”
“I say, Peter, don’t misunderstand me. I am . . . well, really dreadfully distressed about . . .” He looked from the TV set to the window stickers. “But it’s hard to think about anything else when . . .”
“Go on.” Lanroyd drank with tolerant amusement. “I’ll believe anything of the Department of Psionics, ever since I learned not to shoot craps with you. I suppose you’ve invented a time machine?”
“Well, old boy, I think I have. It’s a question of . . .”
Lanroyd understood perhaps a tenth of the happy monolog that followed. As an historical scholar, he seized on a few names and dates. Principle of temporomagnetic fields known since discovery by Arthur McCann circa 1941. Neglected for lack of adequate power source. Mei-Figner’s experiment with nuclear pile 1959. Nobody knows what became of M-F. Embarrassing discovery that power source remained chronostationary; poor M-F stranded somewhen with no return power. Hasselfarb Equations 1972 established that any adequate external power source must possess too much temporal inertia to move with traveler.
“Don’t you see, Peter?” Cleve gleamed. “That’s where everyone’s misunderstood Hasselfarb. ‘Any external power source . . .’ Of course it baffled the physicists.”
“I can well believe it,” Lanroyd quoted. “Perpetual motion, or squaring the circle, would baffle the physicists. They’re infants, the physicists.” Cleve hesitated, then beamed. “Robert Barr,” he identified. “His Sherlock Holmes parody. Happy idea for a time traveler: Visit the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and see if Holmes really was killed. I’ve always thought an impostor ‘returned.’ ”
“Back to your subject, psionicist . . . which is a hell of a word for a drinking man. Here, I’ll fill both glasses and you tell me why what baffles the physicists fails to baffle the ps . . .”
“ ‘Sounds of strong men struggling with a word,’ ” Cleve murmured. They were both fond of quotation; but it took Lanroyd a moment to place this muzzily as Belloc. “Because the power source doesn’t have to be external. We’ve been developing the internal sources. How can I regularly beat you at craps?”
“Psychokinesis,” Lanroyd said, and just made it.
“Exactly. But nobody ever thought of trying the effect of PK power on temporomagnetic fields before. And it works and the Hasselfarb Equations don’t apply!”
“You’ve done it?”
“Little trips. Nothing spectacular. Tiny experiments. But—and this, old boy, is the damnedest part—there’s every indication that PK can rotate the temporomagnetic stasis!”
“That’s nice,” said Lanroyd vaguely.
“No, of course. You don’t understand. My fault. Sorry, Peter. What I mean is this: We can not only travel in time; we can rotate into another, an alternate time. A world of If.”
Lanroyd started to drink, then abruptly choked. Gulping and gasping, he eyed in turn the TV set, the window stickers and Cleve. “If . . .” he said.
Cleve’s eyes made the same route, then focused on Lanroyd. “What we are looking at each other with,” he said softly, “is a wild surmise.”
From the journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Mon Nov 12 84: So I have the worst hangover in Alameda County, & we lost to UCLA Sat by 3 field goals, & the American Party takes over next Jan; but it’s still a wonderful world.
Or rather it’s a wonderful universe, continuum, whatsit, that includes both this world & the possibility of shifting to a brighter alternate.
I got through the week somehow after Black Tue. I even made reasonable-sounding non-subversive noises in front of my classes. Then all weekend, except for watching the game (in the quaint expectation that Cal’s sure victory wd lift our spirits), Stu Cleve & I worked.
I never thought I’d be a willing lab assistant to a psionicist. But we want to keep this idea secret. God knows what a good Am Party boy on the faculty (Daniels, for inst) wd think of people who prefer an alternate victory. So I’m Cleve’s factotum & busbar-boy & I don’t understand a damned thing I’m doing, but—
It works.
The movement in time anyway. Chronokinesis, Cleve calls it, or CK for short. CK . . . PK . . . sound like a bunch of executives initialing each other. Cleve’s achieved short CK. Hasn’t dared try rotation yet. Or taking me with him. But he’s sweating on my “psionic potential.” Maybe with some results: I lost only 2 bucks in a 2 hour crap game last night. And got so gleeful about my ps pot that I got me this hangover.
Anyway, I know what I’m doing. I’m resigning fr the County Committee at tomorrow’s meeting. No point futzing around politics any more. Opposition Party has as much chance under the Senator as it did in pre-war Russia. And I’ve got something else to focus on.
I spent all my non-working time in politics because (no matter what my analyst might say if I had one) I wanted, in the phrase that’s true the way only corn can be, I wanted to make a better world. All right; now I can really do it, in a way I never dreamed of.
CK . . . PK . . . OK!
Tue Dec 11: Almost a month since I wrote a word here. Too damned magnificently full a month to try to synopsize here. Anyway it’s all down in Cleve’s records. Main point is development of my psionic potential. (Cleve says anybody can do it, with enough belief & drive—wh is why Psionics Dept & Psych Dept aren’t speaking. Psych claims PK, if it exists wh they aren’t too eager to grant even now, is a mutant trait. OK so maybe I’m a mutant. Still . . .
Today I made my first CK. Chronokinesis to you, old boy. Time travel to you, you dope. All right, so it was only 10 min. So nothing happened, not even an eentsy-weentsy paradox. But I did it; & when we go, Cleve & I can go together.
So damned excited I forgot to close parenth above. Fine state of affairs. So:)
Sun Dec 30: Used to really keep me a journal. Full of fascinating facts & political gossip. Now nothing but highpoints, apptly. OK: latest highpoint:
Sufficient PK power can rotate the field.
Cleve never succeeded by himself. Now I’m good enough to work with him. And together . . .
He picked a simple one. Purely at random, when he thought we were ready. We’d knocked off work & had some scrambled eggs. 1 egg was a little bad, & the whole mess was awful. Obviously some alternate in wh egg was not bad. So we went back (CK) to 1 p.m. just before Cleve bought eggs, & we (how the hell to put it?) we . . . worked. Damnedest sensation. Turns you inside out & then outside in again. If that makes sense.
We bought the eggs, spent the same aft working as before, knocked off work, had some scrambled eggs . . . delicious!
Most significant damned egg-breaking since Columbus!
Sun Jan 20 85: This is the day.
Inauguration Day. Funny to have it on a Sun. Hasn’t been since 57. Cleve asked me what’s the inaugural augury. Told him the odds were even. Monroe’s 2d Inaug was a Sun . . . & so was Zachary Taylor’s 1st & only, wh landed us w Fillmore.
We’ve been ready for a week. Waited till today just to hear the Senator get himself inaugurated. 1st beginning of the world we’ll never know.
TV’s on. There the smug bastard is. Pride & ruin of 200,000,000 people.
“Americans!”
Get that. Not “fellow Americans . . .”
“Americans! You have called me in clarion tones & I shall answer!”
Here it comes, all of it. “. . . my discredited adversaries . . .”
“. . . strength, not in union, but in unity . . .” “. . . as you have empowered me to root out these . . .”
The one-party system, the one-system state, the one-man party-system- state . . .
Had enough, Stu? (Hist slogan current ca 48) OK: let’s work!
Damn! Look what this pencil did while I was turning inside out & outside in again. (Note: Articles in contact w body move in CK. For reasons of Cleve’s notebooks.) Date is now
Tue Nov 6 84: TV’s on. Same cheerful commentator:
“. . . Yessir, it’s 1 of the greatest landslides in American history. 524 electoral votes from 45 states, to 69 electoral votes from 5 states, all Southern, as the experts predicted. I’ll repeat: That’s 524 electoral votes for the Judge . . .”
We’ve done it! We’re there. . . . then . . . whatever the hell the word is. I’m the first politician in history who ever made the people vote right against their own judgment!
Now, in this brighter better world where the basic tenets of American democracy were safe, there was no nonsense about Lanroyd’s resigning from politics. There was too much to do. First of all a thorough job of party reorganization before the Inauguration. There were a few, even on the County and State Central Committees of the Free Democratic Republican Party, who had been playing footsie with the Senator’s boys. A few well- planned parliamentary maneuvers weeded them out; a new set of by-laws took care of such contingencies in the future; and the Party was solidly unified and ready to back the Judge’s administration.
Stuart Cleve went happily back to work. He no longer needed a busbar- boy from the History Department. There was no pressing need for secrecy in his work; and he possessed, thanks to physical contact during chronokinesis, his full notebooks on experiments for two and a half months which, in this world, hadn’t happened yet—a paradox which was merely amusing and nowise difficult.
By some peculiar whim of alternate universes, Cal even managed to win the UCLA game 33-10.
In accordance with the popular temper displayed in the Presidential election, Proposition 13, with its thorough repression of all free academic thought and action, had been roundly defeated. A short while later, Professor Daniels, who had so actively joined the Regents and the Legislature in backing the measure, resigned from the Psychology Department. Lanroyd had played no small part in the faculty meetings which convinced Daniels that the move was advisable.
At last Sunday, January 20, 1985, arrived (or, for two men in the world, returned) and the TV sets of the nation brought the people the Inaugural Address. Even the radio stations abandoned their usual local broadcasts of music and formed one of their very rare networks to carry this historical highpoint.
The Judge’s voice was firm, and his prose as noble as that of his dissenting or his possibly even greater majority opinions. Lanroyd and Cleve listened together, and together thrilled to the quietly forceful determination to wipe out every last vestige of the prejudices, hatreds, fears and suspicions fostered by the so-called American Party.
“A great man once said,” the Judge quoted in conclusion, “ ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Now that a petty and wilful group of men have failed in their effort to undermine our very Constitution, I say to you: ‘We have one thing to destroy. And that is destruction itself!’ ”
And Lanroyd and Cleve beamed at each other and broached the bourbon.
From the journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph. D.:
Sun Oct 20 85: Exactly 9 mos. Obstetrical symbolism yet?
Maybe I shd’ve seen it then, at this other inauguration. Read betw the lines, seen the meaning, the true inevitable meaning. Realized that the Judge was simply saying, in better words (or did they sound better because I thought he was on My Side?), what the Senator said in the inaugural we escaped: “I have a commission to wipe out the opposition.”
Maybe I shd’ve seen it when the Senator was arrested for inciting to riot. Instead I cheered. Served the sonofabitch right. (And it did, too. That’s the hell of it. It’s all confused. . . .)
He still hasn’t been tried. They’re holding him until they can nail him for treason. Mere matter of 2 constitutional amendments: Revise Art III Sec 3
Pariso “treason” no longer needs direct-witness proof of an overt act of war against the U S or adhering to their enemies, but can be anything yr Star Chamber wants to call it; revise Art I Sec 9 Par 3 so you can pass an ex post facto law. All very simple; the Judge’s arguments sound as good as his dissent in U S v Feinbaum. (I shd’ve seen, even in the inaug, that he’s not the same man in this world—the same mind turned to other ends. My ends? My end . . .) The const ams’ll pass all right . . . except maybe in Maine.
I shd’ve seen it last year when the press began to veer, when the dullest & most honest columnist in the country began to blether about the “measure of toleration”—when the liberal Chronicle & the Hearst Examiner, for the 1st time in S F history, took the same stand on the Supervisors’ refusal of the Civic Aud to a pro-Senator rally—when the NYer satirized the ACLU as something damned close to traitors. . . .
I began to see it when the County Central Committee started to raise hell about a review I wrote in the QPH. (God knows how a Committeeman happened to read that learned journal.) Speaking of the great old 2-party era, I praised both the DAR & the FDR as bulwarks of democracy. Very unwise. Seems as a good Party man I shd’ve restricted my praise to the FDR. Cd’ve fought it through, of course, stood on my rights—hell, a County Committeeman’s an elected representative of the people. But I resigned because . . . well, because that was when I began to see it.
Today was what did it, though. 1st a gentle phone call fr the Provost—in person, no secty—wd I drop by his office tomorrow? Certain questions have arisen as to some of the political opinions I have been expressing in my lectures. . . .
That blonde in the front row with the teeth & the busy notebook & the D’s & F’s . . .
So Cleve comes by & I think I’ve got troubles . . . !
He’s finally published his 1st paper on the theory of CK & PR-induced alternates. It’s been formally denounced as “dangerous” because it implies the existence of better worlds. And guess who denounced it? Prof Daniels of Psych.
Sure, the solid backer of # 13, the strong American Party boy. He’s a strong FDR man now. He knows. And he’s back on the faculty.
Cleve makes it all come out theological somehow. He says that by forcibly setting mankind on the alternate if-fork that we wanted, we denied man’s free will. Impose “democracy” against or without man’s choice, & you have totalitarianism. Our only hope is what he calls “abnegation of our own desire”—surrender to, going along with, the will of man. We must CK & PK ourselves back to where we started.
The hell with the theology; it makes sense politically too. I was wrong. Jesus! I was wrong. Look back at every major election, every major boner the electorate’s pulled. So a boner to me is a triumph of reason to you, sir. But let’s not argue which dates were the major boners. 1932 or 1952, take your pick.
It’s always worked out, hasn’t it? Even 1920. It all straightens out, in time. Democracy’s the craziest, most erratic system ever devised . . . & the closest to perfection. At least it keeps coming closer. Democratic man makes his mistakes—& he corrects them in time.
Cleve’s going back to make his peace with his ideas of God & free will. I’m going back to show I’ve learned that a politician doesn’t clear the hell St- gone out of politics because he’s lost. Nor does he jump over on the winning side.
He works & sweats as a Loyal Opposition—hell, as an Underground if necessary, if things get as bad as that—but he holds on & works to make men make their own betterment.
Now we’re going up to Cleve’s, where the field’s set up . . . & we’re going back to the true world.
Stuart Cleve was weeping, for the first time in his adult life. All the beautifully intricate machinery which created the temporomagnetic field was smashed as thoroughly as a hydrogen atom over Novosibirsk.
“That was Winograd leading them, wasn’t it?” Lanroyd’s voice came out oddly through split lips and missing teeth.
