And he could not answer him.
Elwood stood, staring up at it, the great hulk they had built, struggling to understand. Why had he worked? What was it all for? When would he know? Would he ever know? For an endless time he stood there, staring up.
It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.
Meddler
They entered the great chamber. At the far end, technicians hovered around an immense illuminated board, following a complex pattern of lights that shifted rapidly, flashing through seemingly endless combinations. At long tables machines whirred—computers, human-operated and robot. Wall-charts covered every inch of vertical space. Hasten gazed around him in amazement.
Wood laughed. “Come over here and I’ll really show you something. You recognize this, don’t you?” He pointed to a hulking machine surrounded by silent men and women in white lab robes.
“I recognize it,” Hasten said slowly. “It’s something like our own Dip, but perhaps twenty times larger. What do you haul up? And when do you haul?” He fingered the surface-plate of the Dip, then squatted down, peering into the maw. The maw was locked shut; the Dip was in operation. “You know, if we had any idea this existed, Histo-Research would have—”
“You know now.” Wood bent down beside him. “Listen. Hasten, you’re the first man from outside the Department ever to get into this room. You saw the guards. No one gets in here unauthorized; the guards have orders to kill anyone trying to enter illegally.”
“To hide this? A machine? You’d shoot to—”
They stood, Wood facing him, his jaw hard. “Your Dip digs back into antiquity. Rome. Greece. Dust and old volumes.” Wood touched the big Dip beside them. “This Dip is different. We guard it with our lives, and anyone else’s lives; do you know why?”
Hasten stared at it.
“This Dip is set, not for antiquity, but—for the future.” Wood looked directly into Hasten’s face. “Do you understand? The future.”
“You’re dredging the future? But you can’t! It’s forbidden by law; you know that!” Hasten drew back. “If the Executive Council knew this they’d break this building apart. You know the dangers. Berkowsky himself demonstrated them in his original thesis.”
Hasten paced angrily. “I can’t understand you, using a future oriented Dip. When you pull material from the future you automatically introduce new factors into the present; the future is altered—you start a never-ending shift. The more you dip the more new factors are brought in. You create unstable conditions for centuries to come. That’s why the law was passed.”
Wood nodded. “I know.”
“And you still keep dipping?” Hasten gestured at the machine and the technicians. “Stop, for God’s sake! Stop before you introduce some lethal element that can’t be erased. Why do you keep—”
Wood sagged suddenly. “All right, Hasten, don’t lecture us. It’s too late; it’s already happened. A lethal factor was introduced in our first experiments. We thought we knew what we were doing…” He looked up. “And that’s why you were brought here. Sit down—you’re going to hear all about it.”
They faced each other across the desk. Wood folded his hands. “I’m going to put it straight on the line. You are considered an expert, the expert at Histo-Research. You know more about using a Time Dip than anyone alive; that’s why you’ve been shown our work, our illegal work.”
“And you’ve already got into trouble?”
“Plenty of trouble, and every attempt to meddle further makes it that much worse. Unless we do something, we’ll be the most culpable organization in history.”
“Please start at the beginning,” Hasten said.
“The Dip was authorized by the Political Science Council; they wanted to know the results of some of their decisions. At first we objected, giving Berkowsky’s theory; but the idea is hypnotic, you know. We gave in, and the Dip was built—secretly, of course.
“We made our first dredge about one year hence. To protect ourselves against Berkowsky’s factor we tried a subterfuge; we actually brought nothing back. This Dip is geared to pick up nothing. No object is scooped; it merely photographs from a high altitude. The film comes back to us and we make enlargements and try to gestalt the conditions.
“Results were all right, at first. No more wars, cities growing, much better looking. Blow-ups of street scenes show many people, well-content, apparently. Pace a little slower.
“Then we went ahead fifty years. Even better: cities on the decrease. People not so dependent on machines. More grass, parks. Same general conditions, peace, happiness, much leisure. Less frenetic waste, hurry.
“We went on, skipping ahead. Of course, with such an indirect viewing method we couldn’t be certain of anything, but it all looked fine. We relayed our information to the Council and they went ahead with their planning. And then it happened.”
“What, exactly?” Hasten said, leaning forward.
“We decided to revisit a period we had already photographed, about a hundred years hence. We sent out the Dip, got it back with a full reel. The men developed it and we watched the run.” Wood paused.
“And?”
“And it wasn’t the same. It was different. Everything was changed. War—war and destruction everywhere.” Wood shuddered. “We were appalled; we sent the Dip back at once to make absolutely certain.”
“And what did you find this time?”
Wood’s fists clenched. “Changed again, and for worse! Ruins, vast ruins. People poking around. Ruin and death everywhere. Slag. The end of war, the last phase.”
“I see,” Hasten said, nodding.
“That’s not the worst! We conveyed the news to the Council. It ceased all activity and went into a two-week conference; it canceled all ordinances and withdrew every plan formed on the basis of our reports. It was a month before the Council got in touch with us again. The members wanted us to try once more, take one more Dip to the same period. We said no, but they insisted. It could be no worse, they argued.
“So we sent the Dip out again. It came back and we ran the film. Hasten, there are things worse than war. You wouldn’t believe what we saw. There was no human life; none at all, not a single human being.”
“Everything was destroyed?”
“No! No destruction, cities big and stately, roads, buildings, lakes, fields. But no human life; the cities empty, functioning mechanically, every machine and wire untouched. But no living people.”
“What was it?”
“We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads, buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead. Plague, radiation, or what, we don’t know. But something killed them. Where did it come from? We don’t know. It wasn’t there at first, not in our original dips.
“Somehow, we introduced it, the lethal factor. We brought it, with our meddling. It wasn’t there when we started; it was done by us, Hasten.” Wood stared at him, his face a white mask. “We brought it and now we’ve got to find what it is and get rid of it.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“We’ve built a Time Car, capable of carrying one human observer into the future. We’re sending a man there to see what it is. Photographs don’t tell us enough; we have to know more! When did it first appear? How? What were the first signs? What is it? Once we know, maybe we can eliminate it, the factor, trace it down and remove it. Someone must go into the future and find out what it was we began. It’s the only way.”