After three months he'd been caught... and promptly lost again.
Davidson gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to dwell on his failure. Bidwell had been right: too much emotional involvement had a bad tendency to cloud the thinking.
But then, there was more than one form of emotional involvement. Leaning back in his seat, stretching his injured leg out beneath the desk, he closed his eyes and tried to become Dr. James Garwood.
For whatever reason, he'd decided to quit Backdrop. Perhaps he and Saunders had argued one too many times; perhaps the presence of the Garwood Effect had finally gotten too much for him to take. Perhaps—as he'd claimed on the ride last night—he truly felt that Backdrop was a danger and that the best thing for him to do was to abandon it.
So all right. He'd left... and managed to remain hidden from practically everybody for a solid three months. Which implied money. Which usually implied friends or relatives.
Opening his eyes, Davidson attacked the keyboard again. Family...? Negative—all members already interviewed or under quiet surveillance. Ditto for relatives. Ditto for friends.
Fine. Where else, then, could he have gotten money from? His own bank accounts? It was too obvious a possibility to have been missed, but Davidson keyed for it anyway. Sure enough, there was no evidence of large withdrawals in the months previous to his abrupt departure from Backdrop. He went back another year, just to be sure. Nothing.
Behind him, the door squeaked open, and Davidson turned to see a young man with major's oak leaves on his jumpsuit step into the room. "Major Davidson, I presume," the other nodded in greeting. "I'm Major Lyman, data coordinator for Backdrop Security."
"Nice to meet you," Davidson nodded, reaching back to shake hands.
"Colonel Bidwell told me you've been co-opted for the Garwood birdhunt," Lyman continued, glancing over Davidson's shoulder at the computer screen. "How's it going?"
"It might go better if I had more information on Garwood's activities at Backdrop," Davidson told him. "As it is, I've got barely one paragraph to cover two years out of the man's life—the two most important years, yet."
Lyman nodded. "I sympathize, but I'm afraid that's per the colonel's direct order. Apparently he thinks the full records would give you more information about what Backdrop is doing than he wants you to have."
"And Backdrop is doing something he doesn't want anyone to know about?" Davidson asked.
Lyman's face hardened a bit. "I wouldn't make vague inferences like that if I were you, Major," he said darkly. "You wouldn't have been allowed to just waltz into the Manhattan Project and get the whole story, either, and Backdrop is at least as sensitive as that was."
"As destructive, too." Davidson held a hand up before Lyman could reply. "Sorry—didn't mean it that way. Remember that all I know about this whole thing is that Garwood can use it to wreck cars and cigarettes.
"Yeah—the walking time bomb, I hear you dubbed him." Lyman snorted under his breath. "It's hoped that that... side effect, as it were... can be eliminated. Hoped a lot."
"Can't argue with that one," Davidson agreed. So his description of Garwood as a walking time bomb was being circulated around Backdrop. Interesting that what had been essentially a throwaway line would be so widely picked up on. He filed the datum away for possible future reference. "You think Garwood can help get rid of it if we find him?"
Lyman shrugged. "All I know is that my orders are to find him and get him back. What happens after that is someone else's problem. Anyway... my office is down the hall in Room One Fifty—let me know if you need anything."
"Thanks."
Lyman turned to go, then paused. "Oh, by the way... if your computer seems to go on the blink, don't waste time fiddling with it. Just call Maintenance and they'll take care of it."
Davidson frowned. "Computers go on the blink a lot around here?"
The other hesitated. "Often enough," he said vaguely. "The point is, just tell Maintenance and let them figure out whether to fix or replace."
"Right."
Lyman nodded and left, and Davidson turned back to his terminal. So computers were among the modern conveniences subject to attack by the Garwood Effect... and it reminded Davidson of something else he'd planned to try.
It took a few minutes of searching, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a list of maintenance records, going all the way back to Backdrop's inception two years ago. Now, with a little analysis...
An hour later he straightened up in his chair, trying to work the cramps out of his fingers and the knot out of his stomach. If ever he'd needed confirmation of Garwood's story, he had it now. The amount of wrecked equipment coming up from the offices and experimental areas to Maintenance was simply staggering: computers, all kinds of electronic equipment, plastic-based items—the list went on and on. Even the physical structure of Backdrop itself was affected; a long report detailed instance after instance of walls that had been replastered and ceilings that had had to be shored up. That it was a result of Backdrop's work was beyond doubt: a simple analysis of the areas where damage had occurred showed steadily increasing frequency the closer to the experimental areas one got. To the experimental areas, and to Garwood's office.
And the analysis had yielded one other fact. The damage had been slowly increasing in frequency over the two years Garwood had been with Backdrop... until the point three months back when he'd left. After that, it had dropped nearly to zero.
Which meant that Garwood hadn't been lying. He was indeed at the center of what was happening.
A walking time bomb. Davidson felt a shiver run up his back. If Garwood remained at large... and if the Garwood Effect continued to increase in strength as it had over the past two years...
With a conscious effort he forced the thought from his mind. Worry of that sort would gain him nothing. Somewhere, somehow, Garwood had to have left a trail of some sort. It was up to Davidson to find it.
He fumbled for a cigarette, swore under his breath. Leaning back in his seat again, he closed his eyes. I am James Garwood, he told himself, dragging his mind away from the irritations of nicotine withdrawal and willing his thoughts to drift. I'm in hiding from the whole world. How exactly—exactly—have I pulled it off?
III
...times e to the gamma one t.
Garwood circled the last equation and laid down the pencil, and for a minute he gazed at the set of equations he'd derived. It was progress of a sort, he supposed; he had gotten rid of the gamma zero factor this time, and that was the one the computer had been having its latest conniption fits over. Maybe this time the run would yield something useful.
Or maybe this time the damn machine would just find something else to trip over.
Garwood gritted his teeth. Stop it! he ordered himself darkly. Self-pity was for children, or for failures. Not for him.
Across the tiny efficiency apartment, the computer terminal was humming patiently as it sat on the floor in the corner. Easing down into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor, Garwood consulted his paper and maneuvered his "remote arm" into position. The arm was pretty crude, as such things went: a long dowel rod reaching across the room to the terminal with a shorter one fastened to it at a right angle for actually hitting the keys, the whole contraption resting on a universal pivot about its center. But crude or not, it enabled him to enter data without getting anywhere near the terminal, with the result that this terminal had already outlasted all the others he'd used since fleeing Backdrop. He only wished he'd thought of this trick sooner.