‘You blundered in where angels fear to tread,’ Johann Karve said, puffing pipesmoke into the air. It rose above his head like a grey wraith.
‘You should have warned me that the woman was a hardliner.’ Queghan shook his head slowly, baffled, slightly irritable. ‘Why do people like that choose to work at MyTT? If they don’t understand and sympathize with our aims why come here in the first place?’
‘Professor deGrenier is an extremely capable scientist.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘And we do need such people. It’s all very well when you go off on one of your blue sky sessions, or whatever you get up to in that monk’s cell of yours, but without people like deGrenier the hardware to put your schemes into operation would never get developed.’ He regarded Queghan sternly from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
‘RECONPAN has nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was a Research Committee decision to fund it. I’m not responsible.’
‘No, that’s right, I am.’
‘I’m sorry, Johann.’ Queghan got up and paced about. ‘It’s just that the bloody woman wouldn’t even meet me halfway. I don’t know what’s going on, I just have this instinctive feeling that something somewhere is wrong. But how do you explain that to a hardliner? DeGrenier won’t accept anything unless it’s in black and white on a cyberthetic print-out.’
His annoyance, Karve realized, had deeper roots than Queghan was prepared to admit. Perhaps he felt guilty. The Director said casually:
‘I don’t suppose you looked into her mind.’
Queghan carried on pacing. Finally he did say, ‘It wasn’t intentional, maybe for a moment or two.’ He wouldn’t meet Karve’s eye. ‘She wouldn’t realize, Johann. Probably feel uncomfortable and then forget all about it. It’s second nature with me, you know that.’
‘Hardliners are suspicious of mythographers as it is without you poking around in their heads. And Pouline deGrenier isn’t a fool, she’d guess what you were up to.’
Queghan paced. He was tall and rangy but there was an abundance of nervous energy that his body couldn’t contain. Karve knew that the physical activity was simply a displacement of intellectual frustration. Queghan was stuck for a direction and the signposts were either misleading or nonexistent.
‘Did you read the CENTiNEL report?’ asked the Director.
‘Yes.’
‘Odd, isn’t it?’
‘I’d hardly describe the disintegration of spacetime as “odd”.’
‘You’re being churlish again.’
‘It’s the mood I’m in.’
‘Have we got it wrong, do you suppose? Is there another interpretation – a simple one – we’ve overlooked?’
‘We’re assuming the data are correct.’
‘They’ve been verified by cyberthetic analysis.’
‘As far as we know the rate of decay of mu-mesons has never altered. We know – we thought we knew – how they behaved, and now all at once we observe a series of particle interactions which don’t fit the pattern,’ Queghan sat down. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t say that.’ Karve gave a wan smile. ‘My guesses aren’t worth two a penny at present.’ He puffed some more smoke into the air. ‘If we go right back to the earliest phase, the time of the primeval atom, we know that there must have been an equivalent number of anti-protons and anti-neutrons in existence to complement the positively-charged particles—’
‘Quantum theory tells us so but we don’t know it for a fact. There was nobody around at the time to collect samples.’
‘We have to have a premise of some kind,’ Karve said, not unreasonably. ‘We didn’t at one time believe in the existence of Temporal Flux Centres and now we find them throughout the universe. As the only man on the fourteen Colonized States to have been inside one I should have thought you’d grant me the courtesy of an accepted hypothesis.’
Queghan said, ‘The thought in your mind is that I’m being churlish again.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re right, I am, carry on.’
‘So we have anti-particles. We also have White Holes, as complementary companions to Temporal Flux Centres; and we mustn’t forget your particular favourites, the mythical anti-quark family.’
‘They’d never forgive you if you left them out.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Now as far as we know all anti-particles are existing in minus time, which is the mirror-image of the spatio-temporal frame of reference in which we and our universe exist. Am I going too fast for you?’
‘I’m keeping up.’
‘Doesn’t all this suggest something to you?’
‘Not so far.’
‘I’ll give you a word: proemptosis.’
Karve sucked on his pipe and awaited Queghan’s reaction. A long time, relatively speaking, elapsed. Then eventually:
‘The mu-mesons are interacting with their anti-particle equivalents and therefore seem to be decaying before the appointed time. Hence proemptosis.’
‘Yes,’ Karve said, smiling faintly.
‘In fact they might not be decaying at all in minus time. We could be observing the process in reverse, like a film run backwards.’
‘The anti-matter universe interacting with our own. Exactly! Theoretically we know that it exists but we can never seem to point to a specific occurrence and say: “There it is – the matter/anti-matter interface”. This might well be it, the specific point in spacetime where the two coexist.’
‘Is it testable? Could we devise a program for CENTiNEL to verify it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Karve said, shaking his head. ‘That’s beyond the scope of Myth Technology. We’d have to talk to the astrophysicists. CENTiNEL is their baby.’
Queghan mulled over the consequences of Karve’s theory. And its pitfalls. How on earth could you devise a controlled experiment that had to take place in minus time? The very concept was, by definition, untenable. He tried to visualize this other universe moving on a reciprocal course in another stratum of spacetime: it would contain galaxies and nebulae, solar systems and planets, and presumably life of some sort. What was happening on these alternate planes of existence? What kind of history was being written on these anti-worlds existing in minus time? Perhaps a similar history to that of their own universe, yet with certain inconsistencies …
Supposing, Queghan thought, the idea suddenly taking hold, there was a person called Queghan (an anti-person) who was even now, at this moment (anti-moment), contemplating the possibility of another Queghan (himself) existing in an alternative universe? His alternate self, composed of anti-particles, sitting in an office on top of a pyramidal structure wondering if there was another version of himself?
An interesting cosmological and metaphysical speculation, Queghan (Mark I) thought wryly. And why stop at two? There might be fifty, a thousand, 1010 Queghans all busily contemplating their cosmic navels. But as usual he was running ahead of himself.
‘Is it worth a try?’ Karve asked.
‘In the absence of anything else I’d have to say yes; but how do we go about it? It’s difficult enough trying to imagine a universe existing in minus time without having to conduct experiments there. But it can’t simply be a mirror-image, can it? There must be other factors, other inconsistencies.’
‘That’s where proemptosis fits in,’ Karve said, squinting through the pipesmoke. ‘The occurrence of an event before the calculated date. We have to sniff out any events which don’t seem to follow in natural progression. It could be that their entire time sequence is out of kilter.’
‘Yes,’ Queghan agreed. ‘And maybe ours is too.’
*
Queghan didn’t dwell on the mysterious Dr Morell. Although it was still lodged in a corner of his mind and nagged at him now and then, the apparent ‘coincidence’ was pushed aside and in its place he erected Karve’s scaffolding of a hypothesis regarding the supposed matter/anti-matter interface. He pondered on this, and the paradoxical nature of minus time, the strange phenomenon of proemptosis, and all the while tried to discover a link, or ‘ley’, which would connect one thing with another and so bring order to the random scatter of theory, instinct, blind chance and probability.
Another factor, which ought to have concerned him more, was his wife’s increasing disorientation. She was inhabiting the real world less and less, concerning herself with detailed scenarios for historical reconstructions – at the moment researching mid-Twentieth America Pre-Colonization.
One evening after dinner he asked her why she was digging so far back into the history of Old Earth. ‘What is it that fascinates you?’ Queghan asked, twirling the crystal brandy glass in his long fingers.
‘That’s where it all began. They must have had a special feeling for living, a reverence for natural things which we’ve lost.’
‘Not judging by the newstapes.’ Queghan too had studied the mid-Twentieth and made a number of mythological surveys. The era was rich in symbolism. ‘They revered the planet so much they almost killed it – the ruptured biosphere, remember.’
‘We made ours,’ Oria said; ‘We shaped it into a lump and hacked it around. The custom-built planet, suitable for all ages, races, colours and creeds.’ There was disgust in her voice.
‘You want to return to nature?’ Queghan mocked, ‘Become the protoplastic woman and start from scratch?’
‘There’s nothing wrong in trying to regain our roots.’
‘You sound like a sociology textbook. What roots? They’re right here, all around you.’
It was an argument they had rehearsed many times until it had grown stale. Queghan couldn’t understand what drove her back into the past; it was an evasion of reality; neither could he understand why this should annoy him the way it did, and not understanding any of these things annoyed him even more.
Oria said, ‘You have your work. It fulfils you. You lose yourself in it and find yourself in it.’
‘You’re a trained archivist,’ Queghan pointed out. He sensed chauvinistic blackmail and he wasn’t having any. ‘If you want a job you could get one easily enough: MyTT would take you back tomorrow.’
Oria covered her eyes. ‘Emotionally I’m blank. I can’t feel for things. Everything tastes dead.’
Queghan didn’t know what to say to this. They went out into the garden. It was a calm night, the wind barely moving the leaves on the huge plane trees. The smaller of the two moons was a pale crescent rising in the eastern sky. The configurations of stars sharpened in icy brilliance as the darkness came on. Somewhere out there, Queghan reflected, shone the sun of Old Earth, too faint to be seen with the naked eye. An average star of no special significance, which somehow by accident had given birth to a species of intelligent creatures who so far were alone in the universe. It was true that their explorations had been tentative and minuscule in cosmic terms – no more than a few thousand light-years – and the galaxy must surely be teeming with life: the law of statistical probability made this fact self-evident. What would it do to the human race when the first shock of contact was made – the confrontation of alien cultures with nothing in common but the stars?
Some scientists believed that contact had been made already. Some of those engaged in MetaPsychical Research were of the opinion that intelligent life was at this moment communicating with the Colonized States but that human technology was incapable of deciphering the messages. They pointed to the radio chatter from the stars which, if only it could be interpreted correctly, would form a coherent signal from other beings elsewhere in the galaxy.
Queghan kept an open mind on this subject. The related sciences of Myth Technology and MetaPsychical Research sometimes worked at cross-purposes but in the long term they each contributed to the sum total of knowledge regarding man’s place in the scheme of things. For instance, MetaPsychical Research had done much to relate human neurochemistry to the elemental forces of the universe, the ‘celestial clockwork of the Metagalaxy’ as it was known to the purists.
In contrast his own field was concerned with psi phenomena and its relation to the four prime energy sources. They knew, and had known for a long time, that human thought could affect such random events as the radioactive fission of atomic nuclei. The production of ‘mind stuff’ was a scientifically accepted fact, the research data were irrefutable; yet how and why this was so had still to be explained.
It was this search that had led him into the murky regions of quarks and anti-quarks, the genus of particles whose existence could not be proven but which had to exist if the material universe was an objective entity and not simply a figment of the imagination. ‘I think I am, therefore I am,’ was still the most telling proof of all for the ultimate reality of the mythical quark.
A bright steady speck of light came from behind the trees, heading due north. It was one of the satellite beacons circumnavigating Earth IVn: homing fixes for incoming shuttles. Queghan felt a sudden yearning to go into space. It was like the call of the sea the old mariners had experienced, the compulsive biological urge to cross uncharted oceans and discover unknown continents. There was life out there somewhere amongst those billions of winking stars; they were calling to him, a vast cosmic whispering like the seductive lure of the sirens of ancient mythology.
The air had become slightly chill. The moon was now a brilliant slice of melon, perfectly clear and hard-edged against the night.
‘Did you know it was the Americans who made the first atomic bomb?’ Oria said. She was back in the mid-Twentieth, still seeking the roots of emotional response.
‘So much for their reverence for natural living things.’
‘The first nuclear detonation took place on the 16th July, 1945 in New Mexico in the United States.’
‘I hope that isn’t going to be the subject of your next historical reconstruction,’ Queghan said, and saw the gleam of a smile in the darkness. He still refused to believe there was anything seriously wrong with her.
Oria moved against him. How much was real and how much a jaded simulation? It was an uncharitable thought but one he couldn’t dismiss. The accumulation of emotional debris that had built up over the aeons was like a log-jam in the mind; too many memories to accommodate within a single human brain. They were the most advanced of their species and had to carry the total collective consciousness of the race. It was a crushing burden.
‘The Director wants me to talk to the CENTiNEL people. I shall have to visit the Tempus Control Laboratory.’
‘How long will you be away?’
‘Not more than a week via the Field. Possibly two or three months on your time-scale.’
‘It isn’t your job to go. Karve should send a physicist or go himself.’
‘He’s an old man. A trip through the E.M.I. Field wouldn’t do his cardiovascular system any good, even if they kept him in hyper-suspension. And in any case it is my job; the call of duty.’
‘What you mean is you’re itching to go into space again, and you’ll also be away from me for a while.’ But she said this with no rancour and it suddenly came to Queghan why, in spite of everything, they had stayed together all these years: he loved the woman, and if he had thought of looking into her mind he would have seen that she loved him.
*
The Tempus satellite Control Laboratory orbiting in the inertial frame of reference Theta2 Orionis in M.42 was the deepest thrust into the void, a lonely outpost on the furthermost edge of manned exploration. It was uncomfortably, almost dangerously close to the Temporal Flux Centre x-ray designation 2U0525-06.
From a distance the satellite appeared as a glittering six-pointed star, each of the arms a thousand metres in length, accommodating experimental laboratories, stimulose vegetable gardens, living space and recreational areas. Whenever he saw it poised against the star-filled backdrop Queghan felt the hairs rise on his spine that a man-made artefact could possess such awesome beauty. He became very aware of fragile mankind out here in dimensionless space, a soft-bodied bipedal primate gazing out at the universe like a child from its crib.
The transit shuttle docked and Queghan was greeted by the satellite Commander, Aldrin Laurence, a man with a large frame and a full dark beard streaked with grey. He ran Tempus as the old sea-masters had commanded the clippers, a mixture of rigid discipline tempered with paternal benevolence. It was a psychological tightrope he had to tread, a delicate balance to keep his crew and the scientific community in peaceable equilibrium. Out here there was nowhere to escape to; you had a job to do and it was the one hold on any sort of normality, the purpose that made life sane and bearable. And not far away – a few million miles – the unavoidable fact of all their lives: the inescapable presence of the Temporal Flux Centre, the datum point of infinite spacetime curvature where every law of physics was not only broken but twisted and distorted beyond comprehension.
During the first quarter-period Queghan stowed his belongings, took a nap, ate a light meal and acclimatized himself to the satellite’s weak gravity. It usually upset his stomach so that while he continually felt the need to empty his bowels he was unable, when the time came, to perform the function. Karla Ritblat had prescribed some pills which helped to alleviate the predicament, but it remained rather distressing until his body had adjusted itself.
The CENTiNEL people were glad to see him. They were glad to see anybody. Johann Karve had outlined the purpose of Queghan’s visit to the project leader, Professor Max Herff, and the first thing Herff said, even before Queghan had stepped through the door into the laboratory, was to express disappointment that a mythographer, ‘so accustomed to working in minus time, should feel it necessary to arrive before he departed’.
‘Rather mundane, I agree,’ Queghan replied. ‘But I thought that showing my arse before you saw my face might lead to some misinterpretation.’
‘How do you know we would have noticed?’ said one of Herff’s colleagues, a tall slender woman with a languid face and dark somnolent eyes; at no time during his stay did he ever see her upright – she was either leaning against something or lounging in a chair with her legs in the air.
Herff introduced him to the senior personnel and they quickly got down to the business of discussing the latest CENTiNEL report. Queghan had hoped for a clue that might shed some light on the recalcitrant mu-meson readings but the physicists were as baffled as he and Karve had been. Professor Herff, whose gentle manner, rumpled appearance and rimless spectacles reminded Queghan of a friendly family doctor, repeated that the figures made no apparent sense – ‘unless we’re prepared to accept Karve’s notion of the interactions taking place in minus time, wherever that is.’
‘If you have an alternative suggestion, Professor, I’d be happy to hear it.’ Queghan looked round at everyone. ‘Karve didn’t propose his hypothesis for its novelty value; at least it’s worth investigating.’
‘How do we go about it?’ the tall languid woman, Dr Zander, asked him. ‘Did Director Karve say how we should conduct the experiment? CENTiNEL is based in this spatio-temporal continuum, not in some mythical nether world. I should have thought astrophysics and not metaphysics was our line.’
Herff said, ‘We’re not going to start all that, are we? Queghan didn’t make the trip from Earth IVn to engage in a debate on scientific demarcation.’
‘My apologies,’ Dr Zander said, though she didn’t sound apologetic or contrite.
Queghan pressed on. He wasn’t going to get involved in that sterile argument. ‘Karve bases his theory on proemptosis. The idea is that the mu-mesons are being affected by time displacement so that there appears to be a discrepancy between the actual and the apparent rates of decay. On this side of the spatio-temporal interface we are observing the mirror-image of an event taking place on the other side.’
‘The other side being minus time,’ Max Herff said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Untouched by human hand,’ Dr Zander said laconically.
Queghan chose to ignore this, though the sweat of mounting irritation prickled his shoulders and made the back of his neck damp. ‘Quantum theory tells us that when a particle and its anti-particle equivalent collide the result is instantaneous annihilation with a tremendous release of energy, mainly in the form of light.’
One of the other scientists said, ‘That’s the current theory behind the quasars, a super collision of matter and anti-matter releasing vast amounts of radiation.’
‘However, it’s conceivable that under certain circumstances the particle and anti-particle can coexist – those circumstances being prevalent in the vicinity of a Temporal Flux Centre. If this is possible, and were to happen, a matter/anti-matter interface would be set up.’ He glanced round the circle of faces. ‘What I remember of quantum theory is rather sketchy, but one thing I’ve never forgotten is what would happen if we could isolate anti-particles and hold them for a controlled period in stasis—’
He became aware that Professor Herff was gazing at him with a peculiar expression on his face; it almost seemed as if he were about to break down and weep. Herff said:
‘You do know what you’re suggesting?’
‘Yes,’ Queghan said soberly. ‘The ultimate energy source: the anti-matter bomb.’
Dr Zander laughed. It was a dead and humourless sound amongst the banks of instrumentation, the grey cyberthetic consoles, the ticking meters. ‘I see now why you’re a mythographer. Anti-protons and anti-neutrons held in stasis – impossible.’
‘I don’t like to use that word if I can help it,’ Queghan said, conjuring up a pleasant smile for her benefit. She was an attractive woman but he felt like striking her.
‘Now let’s pursue this,’ Herff said, hunching forward, his hands clasped between his knees. ‘Anti-particles isolated for a controlled period: very well, quantum theory says it’s feasible, so for the moment we’ll accept that. But how do you account for the aggregation of anti-matter at a given spatio-temporal coordinate? That would seem to suggest a deliberate and systematic rationalization of energy and matter – that I find hard to take.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Queghan said. ‘Somebody here has already mentioned quasars. We’re not sure what they are but they’re quite definitely the most concentrated source of energy in the observable universe. And we know they exist.’
‘Very well. As Riemann said, quasars could be the result of a collision between matter and anti-matter, we’re not certain, but whatever causes them they do seem to be naturally-occurring phenomena, not planned or directed by …’
‘An alien intelligence?’ Queghan looked at Dr Zander but she didn’t rise to the bait. She was watching him closely and he couldn’t read her expression. ‘Not once, in all these years of exploration, have we made contact with any other intelligent life-form. Naturally we’re expecting them to be humanoid, to have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and, if male, a five o’clock shadow. Isn’t it more likely that they’re in a form we don’t recognize as life, crystalline perhaps, or gaseous, or even sub-nuclear? Mankind is a biological accident, a freak life-form that just happened to evolve on a cosy planet near a friendly sun. I’d find it much more credible, if I were writing the scenario, to make my life-forms more in keeping with the organic structure of the universe I was constructing – matter and energy in their constituent parts. And that applies equally to anti-matter existing in minus time. It’s arrogant pigheaded chauvinism to believe otherwise.’
‘A self-aware intelligence composed of anti-matter,’ Herff said, tasting the sound of it.
‘Not necessarily. The intelligence could be of our universe, using anti-matter as an energy source, either for constructive or destructive purposes.’
‘The anti-matter bomb,’ Dr Zander said. She was vaguely amused. ‘The ultimate weapon.’
As if suddenly waking up to the notion Herff said, ‘If there was an intelligent life-form composed of sub-atomic particles – mu-mesons, leptons, hadrons, whatever – it couldn’t find a more efficient energy source than anti-matter, providing it could exercise proper control.’
‘Particles controlling other particles,’ Queghan said. ‘It doesn’t sound so very different from people controlling other people.’
Riemann said, ‘But for what purpose? Any of this might be feasible, it’s more or less implied by accepted quantum theory, but that still leaves the question Why? What is it trying to achieve?’
‘Do you suppose a protoplasm can comprehend our world?’ Queghan said. ‘Does it even know that we exist? And supposing it did know, how could it communicate with us? We’re in the position of a protoplasm in relation to a life-form composed of sub-nuclear particles. Perhaps it knows that we exist, just as we know the protoplasm exists, but its means of communication are beyond our senses and our technology. How do we begin to communicate with something that lives in space, that can travel between galaxies at lightspeed, whose time-scale is measured at one extreme in thousand billionths of a second and at the other in millennia, that can pass through solid matter as though it was a hazy patch of mist? How can we ask the purpose of a life-form so alien to our own that its presence is only apparent as a trace on a photographic plate? You might just as well ask that chair you’re sitting on if it believes in the existence of God.’
‘Is this how mythographers spend their time?’ Dr Zander inquired dryly.
‘Do you mean inventing fictions?’
‘No, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to be clever at your expense.’
‘You’re not?’ It was Queghan’s turn to be sardonic.
‘I’m intrigued at the way the mind of a mythographer works.You seem to attack a problem in several different directions and on a number of levels simultaneously.’
‘I take that as a compliment.’
‘It wasn’t meant as criticism.’
‘If you mean that mythographers can provide the questions but not the answers I’d have to agree; the only sense I trust is my instinct.’
‘So you’ve brought the questions along and it’s up to us to find the answers?’ Dr Zander said, lounging in her chair.
‘Not the best of bargains I agree,’ Queghan said. ‘I don’t even know where to start looking. But at least you have the Particle Accelerator; one or two of the answers might be lurking there.’
‘If we knew what we were looking for.’
Max Herff said, ‘I don’t know if my instinct is in as good a working order as Queghan’s, but I suggest we set up a program of anti-particle investigation. If we can locate an inverse shift in radioactive decay which corresponds to the mu-meson findings it would at least be an indication that we’re heading in the right direction. Where we go after that I haven’t a clue.’
‘What temperatures are you operating at?’ Queghan asked.
‘Ten billion degrees,’ said Riemann.
‘Can you go higher?’
‘We could,’ Riemann said cautiously. ‘It might create problems with the Dyson Electromagnetic Sphere. The Sphere is holding the Temporal Flux Centre in equilibrium by means of a one-million-volt field. A major increase in temperature could upset the balance.’ He looked uncertainly at Max Herff.
‘How high do you want to go?’ Herff said.
‘One thousand billion degrees.’
There was an absolute stunned silence. Riemann laughed nervously and it turned into a fit of choking. Dr Zander said, ‘The impossible we can do right away. Miracles take a little longer.’
‘One thousand billion?’ Herff said. He had the crinkled weeping look on his face again.
‘That would seem to be the region if we’re chasing the antimatter equivalents to the mu-mesons,’ Queghan said. ‘At temperatures above one thousand billion degrees we get the entire range of hadronic particles and their anti-matter companions.’
There was a further silence while everyone adjusted their mental horizons to the power of 1012.
Finally Riemann ventured to say, ‘We could do it by raising the energy component to correspond to that temperature. That’s the only way I can see.’
Dr Zander smiled. It was a genuine smile, if rather bemused. ‘When you have a hunch,’ she said to Queghan, ‘you sure do have a hunch.’