The waiter filled Mannheim's glass and went away.
"Now," he said. "Timmie."
"He'll die if he's returned. Don't you see that?"
Mannheim set down his glass with such abruptness that the wine brimmed over and splashed the tablecloth. "Are you telling me that a return trip in time is fatal?"
"No, that isn't it. Not as far as I know, and I don't think it would be. But it would be fatal for Timmie. Look, he's civilized now. He can tie his shoelaces and cut a piece of meat with a knife and a fork. He brushes his teeth morning and night. He sleeps in a bed and takes a shower every day. He watches picture tapes and now he can read simple little books. What good are any of those skills in the Paleolithic era?"
Suddenly solemn, Mannheim said, "I think I see what you're getting at."
"And meanwhile," she went on, "he's probably forgotten whatever he knew about how to live under Paleolithic conditions-and very likely he didn't know a lot to begin with. He was only a little child when he came to us. His parents, his tribal guardians, whoever, must have still been taking care of him. Even Neanderthals wouldn't have expected a boy of three or four to know how to hunt and forage for himself. And even if he did know a little bit at that age, it's been several years since he was exposed to those conditions. He won't remember a thing."
"But surely if he's returned to his own tribe, they'll take him in, they'll re-educate him in tribal ways-"
"Would they? He can't speak their language very well any more; he doesn't think the way they do; he smells funny because he's so clean. -They might just as readily kill him, wouldn't you say?"
Mannheim gazed thoughtfully into his wineglass. Miss Fellowes went on, "Besides, what guarantee is there that he'll return to his tribe at all? 1 don't understand a lot about how time travel works, and I'm not sure the Stasis people really do, either. Will he go back right to the exact moment when he left? In that case he'll be three years older and from their point of view he'll have changed tremendously in a single instant-and they won't know what to make of him. They might think he was a demon of some kind. Or will he return to the same place on Earth, but a time three years after he left? If that's how it works, then his tribe will have moved on to some other region long ago. Surely they were nomads then. When he arrives in the past, there'll be no one around to take him in. He'll be completely on his own in a rugged, hostile, bitterly cold environment. A little boy facing the Ice Age by himself. Do you see, Mr. Mannheim? Do you see?"
"Yes," Mannheim said. "I do."
He was quiet a long while. He seemed to be working out some profound calculation in his mind.
Finally he said, "When is he supposed to be shipped back? Do you know?"
"Perhaps not for months, Dr. Hoskins told me. I can't say whether that means two months or six."
"Not much time, either way. We'd have to organize a campaign, a Save Timmie campaign-letters to the newspapers, demonstrations, an injunction, maybe a Congressional investigation into the whole Stasis Technologies operation. -Of course, it would be useful if you'd take part by testifying to Timmie's essential humanity, by providing us with videos showing how he reads and looks after himself. But you'd probably have to resign your post there if you were to do that, and that would cut you off from Timmie, which you wouldn't want, and which wouldn't be useful to us, either. A problem. On the other hand, suppose-"
"No," Miss Fellowes said. "It's no good." Mannheim glanced up, surprised. "What?" "A campaign of the kind you're talking about. It'll backfire. The moment you start with your protests and your talk of demonstrations and injunctions, Dr. Hoskins will simply pull the switch on Timmie. That's all it is-a switch, a handle. You yank it and whatever's in the cubicle goes back where it came from. The Stasis people couldn't afford to let things get to the point where you have them tied up with an injunction. They'd act right away and make the whole thing a moot issue." "They wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't they? They've already decided the Timmie experiment is over. They need his Stasis facility for something else. You don't know them. They're not sentimental people, not really. Hoskins is basically a decent man, but if it's a choice between Timmie and the future of Stasis Technologies, Ltd., he wouldn't have any problem choosing at all. And once Timmie's gone, there's no bringing him back. It'll be a fait accompli. They could never find him in the past a second time. Your injunction would be worthless. And somebody who lived forty thousand years ago and died before civilization was ever imagined wouldn't have any recourse in our courts." Mannheim nodded slowly. He took a long, reflective sip of his wine. The waiter came by, hovering with his order pad at the ready, but Mannheim waved him away.
"There's only one thing to do," he said.
"And that is?"
"We have people in Canada who'd be glad to raise Timmie. In England, in New Zealand also. Concerned, loving people. Our organization could provide a grant that would cover the cost of employing you as his full-time nurse. Of course, you'd have to make a total break with your present existence and start all over again in some other country, but my reading of you is that for Timmie's sake you'd have no problem with-"
"No. That wouldn't be possible."
"No?"
"No. Not at all."
Mannheim frowned. "I see." Though it was apparent that he didn't. "-Well, then, Edith, even if you have a problem yourself about leaving the country, and I completely understand that, I think we can count on you at least to help us in smuggling Timmie out of the Stasis facility, can't we?"
"I don't have any problem with leaving the country, if that's what I'd need to do to save Timmie. I'd do whatever I could and go wherever I had to, for Timmie's sake. It's smuggling him out of the Stasis facility that isn't possible."
"Is it as tightly guarded as all that? I assure you, we'd find ways of infiltrating the security staff, of working out a completely foolproof plan for taking Timmie from you and getting him out of that building."
"It can't be done. Scientifically, it can't."
"Scientifically?"
"There's something about temporal potential, an energy build-up, lines of temporal force. If we moved a mass the size of Timmie out of Stasis it would blow out every power line in the city. Hoskins told me that and I don't question the truth of it. They've got a bunch of pebbles and dirt and twigs that they brought here when they scooped Timmie out of the past, and they don't even dare take that stuff out and throw it away. It's all stored in the back of the Stasis bubble. -Besides all that, I'm not even sure whether moving Timmie outside of Stasis would be safe for him. I'm not certain about that part, but maybe it could be dangerous for him. I'm only guessing at this part. For all I know, he might undergo some kind of temporal-force effect too if he was brought out of the bubble into our universe. The bubble isn't in our universe, you know. It's in some special place of its own. You can feel the change when you pass through the door, remember? So your idea of kidnapping Timmie from Stasis and sending him to people overseas -No, no, the risks are too big. Not for you or for me, really, but maybe for Timmie."
Mannheim's face was bleak.
"I don't know," he said. "I offer to raise a legal firestorm in Timmie's defense and you say it won't work, they'll simply pull the switch on him the moment we make any trouble. Then I come up with the completely illegal resort of stealing Timmie from Stasis and putting him beyond Hoskins' jurisdiction and you tell me we can't do that either, because of some problem in the physics of it. All right. I want to help, Edith, but you've got me stymied and right now I don't have any further ideas."
"Neither do I," Miss Fellowes said miserably.
They sat there in silence as the rain hammered at the windows of the restaurant.
Chapter Eleven. Going
PROJECT MIDDLE AGES-that was all that anyone was talking about at Stasis Technologies, Ltd. now. It was the beginning of an amazing new phase for the time-travel operation, everyone agreed. The unique process that Stasis Technologies controlled would open the gateway to the historical past-would bring new and astounding knowledge of antiquity pouring into the twenty-first century, an incredible intellectual treasure. And perhaps treasure of another kind, some said: if they could reach back into any century of historic times and bring people back, why not scoop up works of art, rare books and manuscripts, valuable objects of all sorts? Overnight the resources of the museums of the world could be doubled, tripled, quadrupled! And everything in perfect condition-and at no expense other than the energy costs.