Bidwell's eyebrows raised politely. "Isn't that a little premature, Major? We haven't even really gotten a handle on him yet."
"And we may not, either, sir, at least not the way Major Lyman thinks we will. There are at least two ways Garwood could have covered his trail well enough for us not to find it without tipping him off. But I think I know another way to track him down."
"Which is...?"
Davidson hesitated. "I'd like to be there at the arrest, sir."
"You bargaining with me, Major?" Bidwell's voice remained glacially calm, but there was an unpleasant fire kindling in his eyes.
"No, sir, not really," Davidson said, mentally bracing himself against the force of the other's will. "But I submit to you that Garwood's arrest is unfinished business, and that I deserve the chance to rectify my earlier failure."
Bidwell snorted. "As I said when you first came in, Major, you have a bad tendency to get personally involved with your cases."
"And if I've really found the way to track Garwood down?"
Bidwell shook his head. "Worth a commendation in my report. Not worth letting you gad about central Illinois."
Davidson took a deep breath. "All right, then, sir, try this: if you don't let me go get him, someone else will have to do it. Someone who doesn't already know about the Garwood Effect... but who'll have to be told."
Bidwell glared up at him, a faintly disgusted expression on his face. Clearly, he was a man who hated being maneuvered... but just as clearly, he was also a man who knew better than to let emotional reactions cloud his logic.
And for once, the logic was on Davidson's side. Eventually, Bidwell gave in.
—
He stood at the door for a minute, listening. No voices; nothing but the occasional creaking of floorboards. Taking a deep breath, preparing himself for possible action, he knocked.
For a moment there was no answer. Then more creaking, and a set of footsteps approached the door. "Who is it?" a familiar voice called.
"It's Major Davidson. Please open the door, Dr. Garwood."
He rather expected Garwood to refuse; but the other was intelligent enough not to bother with useless gestures. There was the click of a lock, the more elongated tinkle of a chain being removed, and the door swung slowly open.
Garwood looked about the same as the last time Davidson had seen him, though perhaps a bit wearier. Hardly surprising, under the circumstances. "I'm impressed," he said.
"That I found you?" Davidson shrugged. "Finding people on the run is largely a matter of learning to think the way they do. I seem to have that knack. May I come in?"
Garwood's lip twisted. "Do I have a choice?" he asked, taking a step backwards.
"Not really." Davidson walked inside, eyes automatically sweeping for possible danger. Across the room a computer terminal was sitting on the floor, humming to itself. "Rented?" he asked, nodding toward it.
"Purchased. They're not that expensive, really, and renting them usually requires a major credit card and more scrutiny than I could afford. Is that how you traced me?"
"Indirectly. It struck me that this was a pretty unlikely town for someone to try and hide out in... unless there was something here that you needed. The Beckman Institute's fancy computer system was the obvious candidate. Once we had that figured out, all we had to do was backtrack all the incoming modem links. Something of a risk for you, wasn't it?"
Garwood shook his head. "I didn't have any choice. I needed the use of a Cray Y-MP, and there aren't a lot of them around that the average citizen can get access to."
"Besides the ones at Stanford and Minneapolis, that is?"
Garwood grimaced. "I don't seem to have any secrets left, do I? I'd hoped I'd covered my trail a little better than that."
"Oh, we only got the high points," Davidson assured him. "And only after the fact. Once we knew you were here for the Beckman supercomputer it was just a matter of checking on which others around the country had had more than their share of breakdowns since you left Backdrop."
Garwood's lips compressed into a tight line, and something like pain flitted across his eyes. "My fault?"
"I don't know. Saunders said he'd look into it, see if there might have been other causes. He may have something by the time we get you back."
Garwood snorted. "So Saunders in his infinite wisdom is determined to keep going with it," he said bitterly. "He hasn't learned anything at all in the past four months, has he?"
"I guess not." Davidson nodded again at the terminal. "Have you?" he asked pointedly.
Garwood shook his head. "Only that the universe is full of blind alleys."
"Um." Stepping past Garwood, Davidson sat down at the table. "Well, I guess we can make that unanimous," he told the other. "I haven't learned much lately, either. Certainly not as much as I'd like."
He looked up, to find Garwood frowning at him with surprise. Surprise, and a suddenly nervous indecision... "No, don't try it, Doctor," Davidson told him. "Running won't help; I have men covering all the exits. Sit down, please."
Slowly, Garwood stepped forward to sink into the chair across from Davidson. "What do you want?" he asked carefully, resting his hands in front of him on the table.
"I want you to tell me what's going on," Davidson said bluntly. He glanced down at the table, noting both the equation-filled papers and the loose cigarettes scattered about. "I want to know what Backdrop's purpose is, why you left it—" he raised his eyes again—"and how this voodoo effect of yours works."
Garwood licked his lips, a quick slash of the tongue tip. "Major... if you had the proper clearance—"
"Then Saunders would have told me everything?" Davidson shrugged. "Maybe. But he's had three weeks, and I'm not sure he's ever going to."
"So why should I?"
Davidson let his face harden just a bit. "Because if Backdrop is a danger to my country, I want to know about it."
Garwood matched his gaze for a second, then dropped his eyes to the table, his fingers interlacing themselves into a tight double fist there. Then he took a deep breath. "You don't play fair, Major," he sighed. "But I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore. Besides, what's Saunders going to do?—lock me up? He plans to do that anyway."
"So what is it you know that has them so nervous?" Davidson prompted.
Garwood visibly braced himself. "I know how to make a time machine."
—
For a long moment the only sound in the room was the hum of the terminal in the corner... and the hazy buzzing of Garwood's words spinning over and over in Davidson's brain. "You what?" he whispered at last.
Garwood's shoulders heaved fractionally. "Sounds impossible, doesn't it? But it's true. And it's because of that..." he broke off, reached over to flick one of the loose cigarettes a few inches further away from him.
"Dr. Garwood—" Davidson licked dry lips, tried again. "Doctor, that doesn't make any sense. Why should a... a time machine—?" He faltered, his tongue balking at even suggesting such a ridiculous thing.
"Make things disintegrate?" Garwood sighed. "Saunders didn't believe it, either, not even after I explained what my paper really said."
The shock was slowly fading from Davidson's brain. "So what did it say?" he demanded.
"That the uncertainty factor in quantum mechanics didn't necessarily arise from the observer/universe interaction," Garwood said. "At least not in the usual sense. What I found was a set of self-consistent equations that showed the same effect would arise from the universe allowing for the possibility of time travel."
"And these equations of yours are the ones you recited to me when you wrecked my car and gun?"
Garwood shook his head. "No, those came later. Those were the equations that actually show how time travel is possible." His fingers moved restlessly, worrying at another of the cigarettes. "You know, Major, it would be almost funny if it weren't so deadly serious. Even after Backdrop started to fall apart around us Saunders refused to admit the possibility that it was our research that was causing it. That trying to build a time travel from my equations was by its very nature a self-defeating exercise."