A dark haze seemed to settle across his vision. It had started, then; the beginning of the end. If a concerted desire to eliminate one incarnation of a given technology could spill over onto another, then there was literally nothing on the face of the earth that could resist Garwood's influence. His eyes fell on the packages of frozen food before him on the counter, and a dimly remembered television program came to mind. A program that had showed how the root invention of refrigeration had led to both frozen foods and ICBMs...
The girl finished packing the two paper bags and read off the total for him. Garwood pulled out the requisite number of bills, accepted his change, and left. Outside, the parking lot lights were still humming their cicada/firefly song. Still beckoning him to the safety of the wilderness.
A wilderness, he knew, which didn't exist.
—
The bags, light enough at the beginning of the walk, got progressively heavier as the blocks went by, and by the time he reached the door to his apartment house his arms were starting to tremble with the strain. Working the outside door open with his fingertips, he let it close behind him and started up the stairs. A young woman was starting down at the same time, and for an instant, just as they passed, their eyes met. But only for an instant. The woman broke the contact almost at once, her face the neutral inward-looking expression that everyone seemed to be wearing these days.
Garwood continued up the stairs, feeling a dull ache in the center of his chest. The "not-me" generation. Everyone encased in his or her own little bubble of space. So why should I care, either? he thought morosely. Let it all fall apart around me. Why am I killing myself trying to take on decisions like this, anyway? Sounders is the one in charge, and if he says it'll work, then whatever happens is his responsibility. Right?
The computer had finished its work. Setting the bags down, Garwood dug out his opera glasses again and studied the display. The machine had found three solutions to his coupled equations. The first was the one he'd already come up with, the one that had started this whole mess in the first place; the second was also one he'd seen before, and found to be mathematically correct but non-physical. The third solution...
Heart thudding in his ears, Garwood stepped to the table and reached to the ashtray for one of the loose cigarettes lying there. The third solution was new... and if it contained the build-in safeguard he was hoping to find...
He picked up one of the cigarettes. Squeezing it gently between thumb and fingertips, he gazed at the formula through his opera glasses, letting his eyes and thoughts linger on each symbol as he ticked off the seconds in his mind. At a count of ten he thought he felt a softness in the cigarette paper; at twenty-two, it crumbled to powder.
Wearily, he brushed the pieces from his hand into the garbage. Twenty-two seconds. The same length of time it had taken the last time... which meant that while it wasn't getting any worse, it wasn't getting any better, either.
Which probably implied this was yet another walk down a blind alley.
For a moment he gazed down at the cigarettes. A long time ago he'd believed that this field contained nothing but blind alleys—had believed it, and had done all he could to persuade Saunders of it, too. But Saunders hadn't believed... and now, Garwood couldn't afford to, either. Because if there weren't any stable solutions, then this curse would be with him forever.
Gritting his teeth, he stepped over to the counter and began unloading his groceries. Of course there was a stable solution. There had to be.
The only trick would be finding it before his time ran out.
IV
"Well," Davidson said, "at least he's staying put. I suppose that's something."
"Maybe," Lyman said, reaching over Davidson's shoulder to drop the report back onto his desk. "A broken laser scanner is hardly conclusive evidence, though."
"Oh, he's there, all right," Davidson growled, glaring at the paper. His fingertips rubbed restlessly at the edge of his desk, itching to be holding a cigarette. Damn Saunders's stupid rule, anyway. "He's there. Somewhere."
Lyman shrugged. "Well, he's not at any hotel or motel in the area—that much is for sure. We've got taps on all his friends around the country, checking for any calls he might make to them, but so far that's come up dry, too."
"Which means either he's somehow getting cash in despite the net, or else he's been holed up for nearly three weeks without any money. How?"
"You got me," Lyman sighed. "Maybe he had a wad of cash buried in a safe deposit box somewhere in town."
"I'd bet a couple of days' salary on that," Davidson agreed. "But any such cash had to come from somewhere. I've been over his finances four times. His accounts have long since been frozen, and every cent he's made since coming to Backdrop has been accounted for."
Lyman grimaced. "Yeah, I know—I ran my own check on that a month ago. You think he could be working transient jobs or something? Maybe even at that supermarket where the laser scanner broke?"
Davidson shook his head. "I tend to doubt it—I can't see someone like Garwood taking the kind of underground job that doesn't leave a paper trail. On the other hand... do we know if he was ever in Champaign before?"
"Oh, sure." Lyman stepped around to Davidson's terminal, punched some keys. "He was there—yeah, there it is," he said over his shoulder. "A little over two and a half years ago, on a seminar tour."
Davidson frowned at the screen. Princeton, Ohio State, Illinois, Cal Tech—there were over a dozen others on the list. Silently, he cursed the bureaucratic foot-dragging that was still keeping his full security clearance from coming through. If he'd had access to all this data three weeks ago... "Did it occur to anyone that Garwood just might have made some friends during that trip that he's now turning to for help?
"Of course it did," Lyman said, a bit tartly. "We've spent the last three weeks checking out all the people he met at that particular seminar. So far he hasn't contacted any of them."
"Or so they say." Davidson chewed at his lip. "Why a seminar tour, anyway? I thought that sort of thing was reserved for the really big names."
"Garwood is big enough in his field," Lyman said. "Besides, with him about to drop behind Backdrop's security screen, it was his last chance to get out and around—"
"Wait a second," Davidson interrupted him. "He was already scheduled to come to Backdrop? I thought he came here only two years ago."
Lyman gave him an odd look. "Yes, but Backdrop didn't even exist until his paper got the ball rolling. I thought you knew that."
"No, I did not," Davidson said through clenched teeth. "You mean to tell me Backdrop was Garwood's idea?"
"No, the project was Saunders's brainchild. It was simply Garwood's paper on—" he broke off. "On the appropriate subject," he continued more cautiously, "that gave Saunders the idea. And that made Backdrop possible, for that matter."
"So Garwood did the original paper," Davidson said slowly. "Saunders then saw it and convinced someone in the government to create and fund Backdrop. Then... what? He went to Garwood and recruited him?"
"More or less. Though I understand Garwood wasn't all that enthusiastic about coming."
"Philosophical conflicts?"
"Or else he thought he knew what would happen when Backdrop got going."
The Garwood Effect. Had Garwood really foreseen that fate coming at him? The thought made Davidson shiver. "So what it boils down to is that Saunders approached Garwood half a year before he actually came to Backdrop?"
"Probably closer to a year. It takes a fair amount of time to build and equip a place like this—"