They sat on the couch, with La facing them. Matt poured two glasses from the still-cold bottle.
“If you went backward through time as far as we’re going forward, you would be back in the Paleolithic Era, in the middle of the last great ice age. People were huntergatherers, thousands of years before agriculture. Language would be very primitive, and even if we became fluent, it might be impossible to explain our situation to them.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Matt said. “About going into a future that’s literally incomprehensible to us.”
She nodded. “Where they would have to study usand invent a way to communicate. I’ve developed a few approaches to that situation.”
“Or there might be the opposite of progress,” Matt said. “Civilization might be a temporary state. We could wind up in the Stone Age again—after all, my last jump was only a couple of centuries, and the last thing I would have expected would be a return to medieval theocracy.”
“That’s not really fair,” Martha said. “We know about things like television and airplanes, but choose to live simply, without them.”
“I stand corrected. But we’re going a hundred times as far into the future, this jump.”
“But suppose you hadn’t detoured into that theocracy,” La said. “Suppose you had pushed the button twice and come straight here. Two thousand years later, but isn’t it less strange to you than Martha’s time and place?”
“It is. Most of the people I knew could make the transition easily, even enjoy it. My mother would go crazy here; shop till you drop.”
“Which is something we ought to be prepared for. The main reason I want to leave this place is that it’s so stable. One century is much like the next. We may step out of the time machine and find that nothing’s changed. The culture here is not just comfortable and stable; it’s addictedto comfort and stability. And there aren’t any barbarians at the gates; the whole world, outside of the isolated Christers, enjoys a similar style of life.”
“You could change it,” Martha said.
“You and the others like you,” Matt said. “If you left this world in the charge of people like Em and Arl, you wouldn’t have a utopia for very long.”
La laughed. “Don’t give me evil ideas. I’ve contemplated doing that, of course, and degrees of social engineering less extreme. But in fact the thou shalt notbuilt into me that prevents that is deeper than self-preservation is to your own selves. This civilization created me specifically to preserve it.”
“But you can run away from it,” Martha said.
“Only this way: leaving behind a perfect duplicate. It’s like a human committing suicide after making sure his family would be taken care of.”
She paused. “This jump might be literal suicide for you, of course. Or the one after, or the one after that. We might wind up in a world that man or nature has made uninhabitable.
“That was theoretically possible in your time, Matt. And Martha, the One Year War that created your world killed half the people on the East Coast—”
“No!”
“—and would have killed more if Billy Cabot hadn’t stepped in with his mechanical Jesus.”
“That’s not true.”
“He was one of us, Martha, so to speak. We knew it would take a miracle to save you people, so we provided one.” She waved a hand and the valet appeared. “Look. Jeeves, become Jesus.”
It did, but a more convincing one than the version in Cambridge a couple of thousand years before. His robe was old and soiled, and his face was full of pain and intelligence. No halo. He faded away.
“I’m not surprised you can do that,” Martha said slowly. “But it doesn’t . . . prove anything.”
La looked at her thoughtfully. “That’s true. If you believe in magic, it explains everything. Even science.”
Matt broke the awkward silence. “If we go far enough into the future, there’s no doubt we’ll eventually find an Earth that’s uninhabitable. Eventually, the sun will grow old and die. But before that, we’ll find a future that has reverse time travel. I know that I will come back from the future to save myself, back in 2058.”
“Someone who looked like you came back. But yes, that was the main evidence I used to convince the others—your other sponsors—that this wasn’t a wild-goose chase.”
“They’re people like you?” Martha said.
“Entities, yes.” She stood. “I’ll leave you alone to talk. You know how to get to the time machine?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me there when you’re ready. Your clothes and such are there; all you need is the box, the magic box. I’ll show you around, then we can go.” She disappeared.
Martha looked at Matt. “Do you think she really left us alone?”
“I’d assume not, while we’re in this place. Or in the time machine, for that matter.”
“I . . . I want to talk about Jesus. His various, uh, manifestations. ”
Matt nodded slowly. “When we get up into the future. The next future. When she’s not in control of everything.”
“But what’s to keep her from just materializing and eavesdropping on us there?”
“I think she can only do that here because the whole place—all of Los Angeles, and maybe most of the world— is all one electronic entity. That may be true twenty-four thousand years in the future, too, but shewon’t be in charge of it.”
“I only half understand that. It’s like when everybody used to have electricity in their homes?”
“Something like that, yeah. You couldn’t go out in the woods and turn on the lights.” But you could turn on a radio, he thought. “Pack up and go?”
She stood and picked up the bag. “We’re packed, Matthew.”
18
The massive door to the time-machine hangarstood open. When they walked into the cavernous room there was a quiet whir, and a ramp slowly dropped out of the belly of the machine. They walked up it, footsteps echoing.
La was waiting at the top of the ramp, wearing a one-piece suit that seemed to be made of metal. “Let me show you your room.”
Matt had expected something along the lines of a submarine or a spaceship, but it was actually roomy and austere rather than cramped and cluttered. It seemed bigger inside than outside; that was a good trick.
Their room was like a medium-small motel room, windowless, with a double bed and a closet. Two silvery outfits like La’s were laid out on the bed.
“You might want to put those on before we jump. They’ll protect you against things like bullets and lasers. A caveman could still knock you down with a club.” She motioned for them to follow her.
“Galley and head.” She opened a door to a small room with a table for two and lots of labeled drawers and a few appliances. The head was evidently behind a curtain.
“The rest here is the living room and control room.” There was a comfortable-looking couch and chair, almost identical to the one in their sitting room, and in the front, a setup that looked more like a proper time machine: three acceleration couches in a triangle facing a windshield. The front one had controls like an airplane’s; the two behind it were passenger seats, each with an elaborate safety harness. Of course the pilot wouldn’t need such protection, not being material when she didn’t want to be.
“This is where your box goes.” There was a rectangular inset next to one of the couches, just the right size. “When we’re ready to go, just strap in and push the button.”
“Okay.” He looked at Martha, and she made a “what next” gesture with her hands. “You could go ahead and put on the suit?” She nodded and went back.
“Weapons,” La said. “That pistol you have in your bag—are you skilled with it?”
“No, I just . . . found it. I don’t even know whether it works.”