Seeking the Mythical Future (24 page)

‘—there is no incontrovertible proof,' Queghan said, finishing the sentence for him and carrying the line of thought forward. ‘We should be able to verify the results, but we can't: we have to accept what we're given. Isn't that what you're saying?'

‘Yes,' Castel said. ‘I'm asking for proof. There isn't so much as a scrap, that I can see.' His lips gleamed in the light from the display. ‘In any TFC experiment there should be a method of verification, some means of checking independently of the main source whether or not the findings are accurate.' He gestured helplessly, a little show of humility. ‘We simply have the one source which we either accept or reject; it's a matter of blind faith.'

‘Not necessarily,' Queghan said. ‘You're ignoring the fact that Brenton, wherever he is, is inhabiting any one of a series of mythical futures.
Any one of a series of mythical futures
. This means that the probability of his inhabiting any or all of them simultaneously is equally as valid. Therefore our mythic projection, being based on probability, is as accurate as it could possibly be. Brenton exists in a state of probability, which means that somewhere in spacetime the possibility exists that perhaps he wasn't injected into Temporal Flux at all. It might have been someone else: you, me, Professor Blake, Dr Hallam. We just happen to be inhabiting one possible tangent of an infinite series of probabilities – just as Brenton is. But because we don't know for certain which one it is, then he could be – he
is
 – inhabiting any or all of them simultaneously.'

*

While coffee was being served Castel edged in to Zandra Hallam, and Milton Blake drew Queghan to one side. He said: ‘I want your honest opinion, Chris. Do you think Stahl's death has any connection, causal or otherwise, with Project Tempus? You gave Dr Hallam a hard time earlier on.'

‘It could have and it couldn't.'

‘That's not much of an answer.'

‘It's the only one I can give you,' Queghan said. ‘My honest opinion is that I honestly don't know. He died suddenly?'

‘Yes.'

‘Caused by …'

‘There you have
me
,' Milton Blake said. ‘I suppose you could describe it as shock. But what kind of shock I don't know. It could have been fear, it could have been caused by an electric current—'

‘By galvanology?'

Milton Blake smiled. ‘That possibility hadn't escaped me. Yes, by galvanology. Or as the result of a snake bite.'

‘I see. That's what Dr Hallam meant when she referred to injection by a virulent poison.' Queghan stared into space. There was something bothering him, a tiny niggle of doubt that hovered on the edge of his understanding and refused to come into focus. Stahl had projected the red ocean: was it a world he
had invented and Brenton had entered or had it always existed, existed even now, and Brenton was trapped in it? If the former were true, it would mean that this other world had ceased to exist. It would simply vanish, dissolve into nothingness, leaving Brenton in limbo. Queghan experienced the feeling he sometimes had of just having woken from a dream which he only dimly perceived and faultily remembered. In this particular dream – an alternative scenario – it wasn't Brenton who had been injected into Temporal Flux, but himself. And that was another possibility too, Queghan realized, just as valid. Was there no way to prove the truth or falseness of either proposition? Perhaps both were equally true, equally false; it all depended from which point of view you happened to be observing the same set of events.

Milton Blake said, ‘What do you think the chances are of retrieval?' His intelligent brown eyes were fixed intently on Queghan.

‘As always, fifty-fifty,' Queghan said. ‘They will never improve, never deteriorate. As long as Martin's location remains a probability rather than a certainty he will be held in perfect equilibrium, progressing neither forwards or backwards. Perhaps he's in a cyclic situation, living through a chain of events which repeat themselves endlessly; we have no way of knowing.'

‘And if there is a causal connection between Stahl's death and Brenton's injection into Temporal Flux?'

‘Martin will know about it, but I don't see how we ever can – unless he returns.'

‘The more we find out, the more there is to know,' Milton Blake said. ‘We ask a big question expecting a big answer; and all that happens is that we're faced with bigger questions demanding bigger answers.'

‘We have the Report,' Queghan said, indicating the fat block of mimeographed sheets bound in black vinyl. ‘We've also shown that Neuron Processing is a valuable technique in postinjection evaluation. In your second-generation machine you might surprise us even more.'

‘This is the complete Report?' Milton Blake said, opening the cover.

‘As transcribed and interpreted by Professor Castel, with appendices and reference sources. You've seen the extracts?'

‘They were sent to us as they came through; but it would be useful to have the final and official text on file. It bears detailed study.' He turned to the first page and began to read:

‘“The vessel cleaved through the red ocean, the purple foam churning and frothing in its wake. It was a three-masted barque, square-rigged on the fore- and main-mast, schooner-rigged on the mizzen, with yellow vinyl sails, its prow a whorled piece of timber painted white in the shape of a unicorn's horn: the
Slave Trader
, seventeen days out of London Toun bound for New Amerika in this, the ninth year of the reign of Our Most Gracious …”'

Blake paused and glanced up. ‘Interesting style.'

‘Franz rather fancies himself as a literary mythographer,' Queghan said, smiling.

‘Franz?'

‘Professor Castel.'

‘I don't object to it so long as it doesn't distort the truth,' Milton Blake said, though he looked none too happy.

‘Truth is subjective. This happens to be one man's interpretation. Through someone else's eyes it would appear quite different. It's even possible' – Queghan raised his white eyebrows and smiled – ‘that we're the mythic projection of someone in another region of spacetime. They could be observing us at this moment, eavesdropping on our conversation, trying to figure out the strange antics of those peculiar creatures on Earth IVn.'

*

Oria was in the garden with the child when he returned home. The youngster was tottering about on sturdy seventeen-month-old legs chasing insects and sunbeams and laughing when he took a tumble. Rain was due later that evening, but they had at least an hour's sunshine before the first drops were scheduled to fall. Oria was sitting bare-legged on the grass, the slender set of her shoulders now in keeping with the rest of her frame, her fine yellow hair pulled back in bunches which gave her the manner
and appearance of a mischievous schoolgirl. She was tanned, clear-blue-eyed, and happy as a sandboy.

She said: ‘Do you suppose that when they made this planet they knew we were going to live here?'

‘They might have peeked into their crystal ball and seen a thousand years hence,' Queghan conceded. ‘But I think it more likely that they wanted to replicate Old Earth as near as was technologically feasible. The first two weren't a tremendous success; it took some time to organize the bioplasm to become self-generating and self-supporting.'

‘But those were
planetary states
,' Oria said. ‘They merely looked for suitable planets and tried to adapt them to earthlike conditions; we can take some pride in being entirely manmade.'

‘The planetoidal state does have a few things going for it,' Queghan said, picking up the child. ‘One of them being that this fine fellow will grow up thinking of himself as a citizen of the world instead of trying to prove that his patch of dirt is superior to anyone else's.'

‘That doesn't defeat the problem,' Oria pointed out wisely. ‘It simply moves it up the scale. He'll probably try to prove that his ball of dirt is superior to anyone else's.'

The child struggled to be released and Queghan set him down on the grass. He ran off, chasing a butterfly.

Oria said, ‘Would you like a drink?'

‘No, thanks. I'll just rest awhile.' He stretched out on the striped lounger and closed his eyes so that the sun filled his eyelids with a warm, kindly glow. He was tired. The trouble with mythic projection was that it disoriented the sense of time and place. He remembered what he had said to Blake about Martin Brenton: ‘Perhaps he's in a cyclic situation, living through a chain of events which repeat themselves endlessly; we have no way of knowing.' He had that feeling now – of having lived a number of alternative lives simultaneously, of having lived
this
life before. It was an interesting speculation, but he was too weary to pursue it. In any case, there was no way of arriving at a definite conclusion: a man could only occupy a certain world-point at any given moment. The fact that he
might, in a universe of probability, have occupied some other world-point was logically sound but impossible to prove. I'm here, sitting on the lounger in the garden, my consciousness tells me so, Queghan thought; now if I'm somewhere else at this same moment, my other consciousness, belonging to my other self, will also confirm my presence there. It will be unaware of this self, this consciousness, except in these same terms of abstract speculation. Perhaps the two separate consciousnesses – the several, an infinite number of them – are at this moment involved in this same speculation, each aware of the possible existence of the others but unable to prove or refute their actual reality.

He smiled in his semi-waking state of tranquillity as the word appeared in his mind. Of course it had no objective, empirical meaning. ‘We each invent our own reality,' as he had once said to someone a long time ago.

The boy was chuckling, and when Queghan opened his eyes he saw that Oria had rolled a coloured ball to him which, in narrowly evading his reach, had caused him to topple sideways on to the grass like a fat wobbly doll. He lay, helpless and out of breath with laughter, an arm and a leg waving comically as he tried to regain his balance.

Would any of this have been altered, Queghan wondered, if he and not Brenton had been selected for injection into Temporal Flux? How would the alternative scenario have read with a cast of characters shifted one to the left? In a private aside, Johann Karve had confided to him that Project Tempus was finished. His exact words had been: ‘It's over and done with. Martin, wherever he exists, is beyond our help'. And Queghan, for all his powers of mythic projection, failed to visualize that other place: it was well and truly down the rabbit hole, through the one-way membrane, beyond the event horizon.

Oria stood before him twirling a golden flower. The grass grew between her toes. She knelt down and held the buttercup underneath his chin, saying the old nursery rhyme: ‘Do you like butter? Do you like cheese? Yes is a smile. No is a sneeze.'

The child sneezed, making them both laugh.

‘Do you think he's a mythographer in the making?' Oria asked.

‘God, I hope not,' Queghan answered. ‘I wouldn't wish that fate on my own worst enemy.'

‘Speaking of which,' Oria said lightly, ‘I've invited Castel to dinner tomorrow evening.'

Queghan groaned. ‘Castel isn't an enemy,' he said. ‘He's much worse: a bore.'

‘I feel sorry for him.'

‘I think you secretly desire him.'

‘Naturally; but I thought we'd agreed not to mention that.'

Queghan suddenly needed the reassurance of commonplace intimacies. His hands went around her waist and slid down inside the top of her skirt to hold the firm globes of her buttocks, the thumb of his left hand seeking the dark-brown mole on her right cheek. It was a tiny but significant landmark, one of the many which guided him through the day and proved to him the realness of his own existence. Without them he would have floundered, become lost and drifting in a grey, featureless dream.

Just as now, the human race, spreading outwards on the stepping-stones of natural and man-made planets, also clung to comforting reminders of the birth-planet which had no more substance than that of a collective racial memory. Mankind's original home had entered mythology, become an ancient legend like Old Earth's own legends of primitive civilizations. So in order to preserve it they had fashioned their new homes in the likeness of Old Earth, shaping the continents and oceans in its image.

On starlit nights Queghan sometimes sought out the 4th magnitude star which was the original Sun, the one that had given birth to human life. Its light still travelled across space, to be collected in the retina of his eye, even though the star itself had for a long time become dull and fat with premature old age, a red giant in the incipient stages of nuclear decay. The small speck of light he saw now was of the Sun in its prime, many centuries Pre-Colonization: he was in effect looking backwards in time to an age when human beings had just begun
to heave themselves off the planet, first of all in crude flying machines and then in small pieces of space hardware. The exact point in time was impossible to define, though Queghan liked to imagine it was round about – give or take a century or two – the time of the Second World War; this appealed to the romantic aspect in his nature and made a convenient link with his specialist study of the period.

But the eerie paradox of looking backwards to the age of his ancestors never diminished or failed to thrill him. His own antecedents were alive then, carrying his blueprint in the cells of their bodies. In however bizarre a form, he had lived through that time too, been present at every stage of human evolution.

Oria said, ‘It's starting to rain.'

The clouds had formed according to plan, shutting out the sun, and the air became suddenly chill as the light faded. Queghan shivered and experienced a twinge of pain: an ache in his left shoulder where the strange pale mark was imprinted in the flesh. He picked up the child and with his wife went up to the house.”