Kettridge fussed with the spines of his ornate costume and did not look at me as he said, “We can understand, Dr. Garfield, that in the academic world people tend to view moral issues in the abstract, but nevertheless—”
“All right,” I said wearily, “I suppose I was wrong. I had to put myself on record, that’s all. Let’s go past that point. Vornan-19 is coming to the United States, and we’re going to roll out the red carpet for him. Fine. Now what do you want from me?”
“Two things,” said Kralick. “First: you’re widely regarded, sir, as the world’s ranking authority on time-reversal physics. We’d like you to provide us with your opinion as to whether it’s theoretically possible for a man to travel backward in time as Vornan-19 claims to have done, and how, in your appraisal, it might have been accomplished.”
“Well,” I said, “I have to be skeptical, because so far we’ve succeeded only in sending individual electrons backward in time. This converts them into positrons — the antiparticle of the electron, identical in mass but opposite in charge — and the effect is one of virtually instant annihilation. I see no practical way to sidestep the conversion of matter into antimatter during time-reversal, which means that to account for the purported time trip of Vornan-19, we must first explain how so much mass can be converted, and then why it is that although presumably composed of antimatter he does not touch off the annihilation effect when—”
Kralick politely cleared his throat. I stopped talking. Kralick said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t make myself quite clear. We don’t want an immediate reply from you. We’d like a position paper, Dr. Garfield, which you can file in the next forty-eight hours or thereabouts. We’ll provide any necessary secretarial assistance. The President is quite anxious to read what you have to say.”
“All right. The other thing you wanted?”
“We’d like you to serve on the committee that will guide Vornan-19 when he gets here.”
“Me? Why?”
“You’re a nationally known scientific figure associated in the public’s mind with time travel,” said Kettridge. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Who else is going to be on this committee?”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal names, even to you,” Kralick told me. “But I give you my word that they’re all figures whose stature in the scientific or scholarly world is equal to your own.”
“Meaning,” I said, “that not one of them has said yes yet, and you’re hoping to bulldoze them all.”
Kralick looked hurt again. “Sorry,” I said.
Kettridge, unsmiling, declared, “It was our belief that by putting you in close contact with the visitor, you would find some means of extracting information from him about the time-travel process he employed. We believed that this would be of considerable interest to you as a scientist, as well as of major value to the nation.”
“True. I’d like to pump him on the subject.”
“And then,” said Kralick, “why should you be hostile to the assignment? We’ve chosen a leading historian to find out the pattern of events in our future, a psychologist who will attempt to check on the genuineness of Vornan’s story, an anthropologist who’ll look for cultural developments, and so on. The committee will simultaneously be examining the legitimacy of Vornan’s credentials and trying to get from him anything that may be of value to us, assuming that he’s what he says he is. I can’t imagine any work that could be of greater significance to the nation and to humanity at this time.”
I closed my eyes a moment. I felt properly chastened. Kralick was sincere in his earnest way, and so was Kettridge in his fast-talking though heavy-handed style. They needed me, honestly. And was it not true that I had reasons of my own for wanting to peer behind Vornan’s mask? Jack had begged me to do it, never dreaming that it would be so easy for me to manage.
Why was I balking, then?
I saw why. It had to do with my own work and the minute possibility that Vornan-19 was a genuine traveler in time. The man who is trying to invent the wheel is not really eager to learn the details of a five-hundred-mile-per-hour turbine car. Here was I, piddling around for half a lifetime with my reversed electrons, and here was Vornan-19, telling tales of vaulting across the centuries; in the depths of my soul I preferred not to think about him at all. However, Kralick and Kettridge were right: I was the man for this committee.
I told them I would serve.
They expressed their gratitude profusely, and then seemed to lose interest in me, as though they didn’t plan to waste any emotion on someone who was already signed up. Kettridge disappeared, and Kralick gave me an office somewhere in the underground annex of the White House. Little blobs of living light floated in a tank on the ceiling. He told me that I had full access to the executive mansion’s secretarial services, and showed me where the computer outputs and inputs were. I could make any phone calls I wanted, he said, and use any assistance I required in order to prepare my position paper on time travel for the President.
“We’ve arranged accommodations for you,” Kralick told me. “You’re in a suite right across the park.”
“I thought I might go back to California this evening to wind up my affairs.”
“That wouldn’t be satisfactory. We have only seventy-two hours, you know, before Vornan-19 arrives in New York. We need to spend that time as efficiently as possible.”
“But I had only just returned from vacation!” I protested. “I was in and out again. I need to leave instructions for my staff — to make arrangements for the laboratory—”
“That can all be done by phone, can’t it, Dr. Garfield? Don’t worry about the phone expense. We’d rather have you spend two or three hours on the line to California than lose all the time of having you make another round trip in the short time remaining.”
He smiled. I smiled.
“All right?” he asked.
“All right,” I said.
It was very clear. My options had expired the moment I had agreed to serve on the committee. I was now part of the Vornan Project, with no independent scope for action. I would have only as much freedom as the Government could spare, until this thing was over. The odd part was that I didn’t resent it, I who had always been the first to sign any petition attacking infringement of liberties, I who had never regarded myself as an organization man but rather as a free-lance scholar loosely affiliated with the University. Without a murmur I let myself be pressed into service. I suppose it was all a subliminal way of dodging the unpleasantness that awaited me when I finally did get back into my laboratory to struggle with my unanswered questions.
The office they had given me was cozy. The floor was bouncy sponge glass, the walls were silvered and reflective, and the ceiling was aglow with color. It was still early enough to call California and find someone in the laboratory. I notified the University proctor, first, that I’d been called into Government service. He didn’t mind. Then I spoke to my secretary and said I’d have to extend my absence indefinitely. I made arrangements for staff work and for monitoring my pupils’ research projects. I discussed the question of mail delivery and maintenance of my house with the local data utility, and over the screen came a detailed authorization form. I was supposed to check off the things I wished the utility to do for me and the things I did not. It was a long list: