Time Travel Omnibus, page 972
She smiled. “Italian sounds good. I had egg rolls for lunch anyway.”
“Fine. Franco’s, down on Fifth Street, is one of my favorite places.”
After they had placed their orders, Carson said, “You told me you were a stock analyst. Just what’s that?”
“I work for Consolidated Insurance. We underwrite almost any kind of insurance. Life, auto, fire, and so on.”
“What’s that got to do with stocks?”
“The premiums our policy holders pay don’t fully cover the losses we have to pay out. Instead, we invest the policyholders’ money in stocks and bonds. The income from that allows us to reduce the premiums below the true actuarial value.”
“Hmmm. I never thought about that. I just figured I paid money in, and if I had an accident or a fire I got some of it back.”
“That’s only partly true. You’d be paying in more if we didn’t invest your money well. But what do you do with time gates?”
“Fix them when they go wrong.”
“Does that happen often?”
“It doesn’t happen often. Our failure rate isn’t as low as, say, airliner jet engines, but it’s much lower than that of the telephone system.”
“What happens if someone gets caught going through a gate when something goes wrong?”
“That hasn’t happened yet. We haven’t lost even a shipment of apples, let alone a person. There are enough interlocks and safeties that if something does go wrong, the gates are supposed to shut down rather than shunt anything through.” He rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “I hope they always work.”
“This bridge-out thing you’re working on. Doesn’t that mean that somebody is in two places a once? Home, say, and also in a car on that bridge?”
“To my simple mind, it does. However, the quantum mechanics guys say all the atoms in the two people are in different states, so they’re not really the same person. Same thing with cars or anything else.”
He described the incident involving the Wall Street Journal. “There was a case where a guy was on the bridge and down below it at the same time. All I can say is, it seems to work.”
“But what about conservation of matter? Say you send a shipment of apples back from October to August. Those same apples are on the tree and in the grocery at the same time. Where’d the additional matter come from?”
“That one’s simple. Even I understand that one. The apples go through a closed loop. They appear to be in two places at once, only from August through October. Once the apples on the tree reach October, they’re picked and shunted down-time. Before August, and after October, there’s only one set of apples. I guess it means the law of conservation of matter has to be extended to allow for time travel.”
Their orders arrived. They shuffled things around on the table to make room. Between bites, Jennifer asked, “What else are they doing on that bridge, besides putting up nets?”
“They’ve installed video cameras. Now they have a video record of a car for the full time it’s on the bridge.”
“So if anyone throws anything out or drops anything, they’ll spot that?”
“That’s the idea. I know they have lights on the bridge now so the video cameras have a good view of everything.”
“Sounds like it’s pretty expensive.”
“I guess it is, but they tell me it’s still better than detouring cars around the bridge. They must know what they’re doing.” He paused. “Well, maybe not. It’s the government. Probably doesn’t matter to them whether it’s good economics or not.”
“Why do they go to the trouble of checking on people anyway? Suppose somebody does send back a newspaper. What harm is done?”
“Well, the way it’s been explained to me, letting people transmit information down-time encourages the wrong thing. For instance, what do you do in your stock analysis?”
“Well,” she replied, “I look at an industry. Is it profitable? Is it likely to decline? Then if the industry looks good, I look at individual firms in that industry. Which firms are well placed to be more profitable than average? If I find a good prospect, I recommend investing in it.”
“Okay, that’s the point. You use rationality, logic, and so on, to try to make good decisions. Suppose someone bypassed all that by being able to read next month’s stock market news. In effect, that’s cheating. It’s like reading the answer in the back of the book instead of working the problem. You don’t learn anything. Instead of rewarding intelligence and effort, allowing people to profit by sending information down-time rewards chicanery. That’s why it’s a crime. As the FBI guy told me, we want to encourage brains, talent, and hard work, not skullduggery.”
“It sounds good, but I wonder if they catch all the ‘cheaters,’ as you call them.”
“Beats me. The FBI guy that’s working on the bridge seems pretty sharp. He’s mentioned several cases where he’s caught people involved in time crime.”
“How can they tell if someone is illegally using information from the future, or is simply good at, say, buying the right stocks or picking the right horses?”
“He tells me they almost always have to depend on physical evidence. Somebody simply being right isn’t enough. Even if one day somebody correctly picked the winner in every race at the Laurel racetrack, that wouldn’t be good enough to convict.”
“The odds against that must be incredibly high.”
“Yeah, but it’s conceivable that the bettor was simply a good judge of horseflesh. They don’t want to penalize that. They need something substantial to prove he got the results from himself or someone else up-time.
“However, I imagine that if someone did that, they’d start looking for physical evidence.”
“So they insist on physical evidence? That’s interesting. I guess I better be able to document all my research into stock values, just in case I get incredibly lucky.”
She changed the subject. “How’d you get into the time travel business, anyway?”
“I don’t really consider myself that much into it. I got a degree in electronics engineering. My first job out of college was repairing radio station equipment for a broadcast chain. After a while it got boring. I looked for another job, and ended up with Time Gates. I don’t deal with the theory. I just fix the electronics. It pays well and it’s challenging work, but I leave the job behind me at five. Most nights and weekends, I don’t have to think about work.”
“Well, I hope my questions haven’t bothered you. I’m just curious about something that sounds so strange.”
“Not at all. I guess I don’t very often get a chance to talk about my work. I’m glad you were interested.”
He called for the check, and they left the restaurant. As he dropped her off at her apartment he said, “Tomorrow morning again?”
“Yes. Maybe I’ll think of more questions for you.”
“I’ll try to answer them.”
Carson parked his car near the bridge. As he was examining the readouts on one of the time gates, Hardhat walked up.
“Something wrong?”
“Nope. Just a routine check. I try to check all the time gates I’m responsible for once a week.”
“How often do you find a problem in a routine check?”
“Only one complete failure in the two years I’ve been at it. The other guys tell me their experience is about the same. Actual failures are rare. Incipient failures, though, are a little more frequent. We can use diagnostic tests to catch something that’s getting weak and replace it before it fails.”
“Sounds like the same thing we do. Look for cracks in bridges to catch them while they’re still small. Acoustic checks to find hidden flaws before they get big. Saves a lot of trouble later.”
“Anything more from that FBI guy?” Carson asked.
“He shows up every couple of days, but there’s been nothing since they caught that guy with the newspaper.”
“Hope that means there aren’t any more people trying to get an unfair edge on their competitors. Every time there’s a scandal like that some politician gets headlines by calling for more regulations on us.”
“Well, up to now any funny business here has been on the receiving end, like that guy catching a newspaper. Three more days and we close the bridge. Then any funny business will be on the sending end.”
Carson’s relationship with Jennifer had steadily deepened. In addition to their morning runs, they went out two or three times a week. They found they had many interests in common. From dinners, they added movies, plays, and museums to their outings, and tonight, a symphony concert.
As Carson adjusted his necktie, he thought, This thing with Jenny is getting serious. I’m falling in love with her. But I don’t know how she feels. She must like going out with me, but is that all it is? Sure wish I knew how this thing was going to turn out. Maybe it’s better I don’t know. But I’d sure be tempted to send myself a warning message through a time gate if things turned out badly.
As they sat eating before the concert, Jennifer asked, “When somebody crosses that bridge, how do you make sure they get back to the same time they left?”
“Ever listen to what goes on when you send a fax? You hear the dialing sound, then the whistle from the other machine, and the growl from your own machine?”
“I’ve never paid it much attention, but yes, I remember those noises.”
“Well, that’s called a ‘handshake.’ There’s a protocol that both machines have to follow to make sure the fax goes through.
“Well, there’s a handshake protocol for the time gates, too. In the usual case, the sending time gate establishes a connection with the receiving gate and verifies the connection is correct before anything is sent.
“On the bridge, it’s a little more elaborate. There’s an infrared link between the gates at the two ends of the bridge. When a car enters a gate, the gate establishes a connection with itself down-time. It also sends a signal to the gate at the other end of the bridge. That gate establishes a connection with itself at the same day and time as the first gate. Nothing happens until both links are established. Then the car is shunted down-time. When it crosses the bridge, the gate at the other end is already set up to return it to the same day and time as it departed.
“If there were anything wrong with either connection, the car wouldn’t leave the first gate. It’s as safe as we know how to make it.”
“How do you make sure there aren’t two cars on the bridge at the same time?”
“The bridge has been closed for an hour each night. We divide that hour into two-minute time slots. For the three months the time gates have been operating, that’s roughly twenty-seven hundred time slots. That’s about twice the number of time slots actually needed, based on traffic counts before the time gates were installed.
“Cars get assigned to time slots at random, except that we keep track, so no two cars are assigned the same time slot.”
“What if a car takes more than two minutes to cross?”
“We count two time slots as having been used up.”
“It sounds like you’ve taken care of everything.”
I hope we have, he thought, but I’m still waiting for the day Murphy catches up with us. Hope that’s after I’m safely retired.
As they finished eating, he called for the check and they left for the concert hall.
“So,” Carson said, “this is the day the bridge comes down?”
“Actually it will take a couple of days,” Hardhat said. “Wrecking ball, jackhammers, and finally cutting torches on the steel members. It’ll come down, but a piece at a time. Nothing worth watching. It’s not like watching them implode a building.”
“Guess there won’t be much to see, then,” Carson replied. “Still, I need to make sure nothing happens to the time gates.”
He turned to FBI. “What will you be doing now? Staking out the bridge to watch cars crossing?”
“No,” FBI replied, “we won’t need to do much now. We’ve made sure nothing physical was received down-time, so we’re pretty sure nothing was sent. However, we’ll be sorting through all the pictures we took, to see if there are any patterns. Same car repeatedly going through, even though the driver doesn’t live around here, things like that.”
“Sounds pretty dull.”
“It is, but that’s the way we catch crooks. Watch for the little things they don’t think of, that give them away.”
At dinner that night, Jennifer said, “We’re starting a big project at work. Computerizing a lot of data. I’ll be tied up weekday evenings for the next several months. No more dates during the week, I’m afraid, but I’d still like to see you on weekends. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you.”
Disappoint me, yes, he thought, but there’s definitely a bright side. She does want to see me even if it can’t be on weeknights.
“And of course I’ll still be running every morning,” she went on. “So it’s not like we won’t be seeing each other except on weekends.”
“I’m glad of that,” he replied. “I really enjoy your company, and I’d miss you if, say, your company transferred you.”
“Not likely,” she said. “The kind of work I do is all done at headquarters. There’s really no place else they could send me. So there’s no reason you’d have to miss me.”
I don’t want to ruin things by getting too eager, he thought, but it sounds like I won’t be tempted to send myself any warning messages.
Carson closed and latched the access hatch.
“There. Got the weak part replaced before you had an in-service failure. Sorry it took so long, though. The fault was hard to trace.”
“Good,” the warehouseman replied. “We’ll be getting a lot of Christmas stuff through soon. Wouldn’t want a failure then. It really helps to know what the big sellers were, so we can order them and have them made next year, then have them shipped down-time to when the customers want them.”
“Cuts out a lot of after-Christmas sales, though, doesn’t it?” Carson asked.
“Yeah, but it means we don’t have to sell things at a loss after Christmas. We can price them without having to worry about eating the cost of a lot of unsold stuff. It averages out. We get a better profit, and the customers get a better price.”
The sun was already down as Carson crossed the parking lot to the company car he was using. Too bad I don’t get overtime for jobs like this, he thought. But it doesn’t happen very often.
He headed back to Time Gates to pick up his own car. The route took him past the apartment complex where Jennifer lived.
Wonder what she’s doing this evening. They must have a lot of data to computerize if it’s going to take several months.
A car pulled out ahead of him.
That’s Jennifer’s car! Where’s she going?
He hung back, so she wouldn’t feel as though she was being followed, but he kept her car in sight. Finally, she turned off.
That’s route 297. Is she heading for the bridge?
He turned and followed her, while maintaining a discreet distance. She continued to the bridge. He saw her car enter the time gate and disappear, then appear again on the other side of the gap.
Why’d she do that? Was that why she asked me all those questions about safety? Did she know she was going to cross that bridge and want my reassurance? Just what’s going on here?
He had pulled his car off the road and turned around. Just as he was about to start back, Jennifer’s car appeared again. He followed her to where she turned off to go to her apartment. He turned the other way, dropped off the company car, and drove back to his apartment.
Once inside, he paced back and forth.
She made it clear she wanted to see me on weekends. Why’d she tell me about a big project at work that’d keep her busy weeknights, when she’s really going back and forth across that bridge? Or is crossing that bridge part of the work she claims she’s doing?
He sat down and held his head in his hands.
Blast! This really makes me feel sick. He thought back to their first date. She asked me about the bridge job, but I never told her I was working on that. Somehow she already knew. And she told me she was good at numbers but not at things. Yet she asked me about conservation of matter. Somehow that doesn’t add up.
He started pacing again.
Is she sending financial information back to herself? That would fit in with her job. But if so, how’s she doing it?
FBI was sure no physical evidence had been sent back, once they put up that net. What he really meant was tangible evidence. Something you can see and feel. But physical doesn’t have to mean tangible. Radio waves are physical, but not tangible. Could she have been sending a radio message to herself? Or to someone else?
Should I go to FBI with my suspicions? Not a good idea. If she’s innocent, I don’t want them paying attention to her. And what would she think if I told them I thought she was involved in time crime? That would really put an end to our relationship. No, I’d better check up myself. If I find something, then it’s time to bring in Mr. FBI.
He’d rented a car, so Jennifer wouldn’t recognize it, then waited outside her apartment. After dark she came out, got in her car, and drove off. He followed at a discreet distance, tracking the transmitter he’d stuck under her car the previous weekend.
She drove through the time gates, turned around and came back. Once she was gone, he parked near the time gates and got out his instruments. He checked the two time slots to which her car had been shunted, going and coming. He adjusted the equipment to send him to a time slot a few minutes before her first passage. He stopped in the middle of the bridge and hung a broadband receiver on the netting strung on the near side. Once back to his own time, but on the far side of the bridge, he adjusted the time gate to shunt him to a vacant time slot a few minutes after her first passage and retrieved the receiver. He repeated the process with a second receiver for her passage back, then headed for his apartment.
The sour taste of vomit was still in his mouth. He’d emptied his stomach, but still felt as though someone had kicked him in the gut. He sat down and shook his head.
