Through the Eye of Time (4 page)

Karve took the yellow print-out, comprising several sheets folded concertina fashion. He read:

Then followed row upon row of symbols and figures, several thousand of them neatly tabulated in blocks of electric type.

‘I take it that these aren't the biographical details you were after,' Karve said dryly, glancing up at deGrenier.

‘No, they are not. May I sit down?'

‘I'm sorry,' Karve said. ‘Please. How rude of me. Would you care for some tea?'

‘No, thank you,' deGrenier said stiffly.

These hardliners, Karve thought. Nothing must stand in their way. A screw strips its thread and they have a nervous
breakdown. Though that wasn't entirely fair, he chided himself; deGrenier was a gifted and dedicated scientist who virtually single-handed had developed the RECONPAN project from a feasibility study to the point where it was a practical research technique. It wouldn't be too long before operational trials were under way. The Director had never been absolutely sure how RECONPAN functioned or what its specific purpose was supposed to be. No doubt it would be useful for something.

‘This kind of thing is most disruptive,' deGrenier said portentously. ‘We're already behind schedule and to have some fool tampering with vital information …'

Karve smiled in his gentle myopic way. This image of bumbling academic was a subterfuge he had brought to a fine level of accomplishment. ‘Are you suggesting that someone is deliberately falsifying information?' he said, his tangled grey eyebrows forming a line of undergrowth above his polarized bifocals.

‘Well, perhaps not deliberately,' deGrenier amended.

‘You used the word “tampering” which implies an act of wilful malpractice. Or a practical joke.'

‘I take a dim view of practical jokes.'

‘It seems to me that either it's a system malfunction or human error. I shall have to find out who or what is responsible. I'm sorry if your work has been impaired in any way.' He smiled his gentle lingering smile.

‘I had to wait hours for that information and when it arrived it was worse than useless. Pages of meaningless figures.'

‘Meaningless?' the Director said. ‘Not to someone working in the field of study relating to quarks. There are other projects here in addition to RECONPAN.'

It was the nearest Karve could bring himself to an outright rebuke. As deGrenier stood up he said: ‘Whose biographical details were you seeking?' And holding the print-out aloft: ‘In place of this meaningless jumble?'

‘Theodor Morell, German National, round about the period 1936 to 1945 Pre-Colonization.'

‘Not a name familiar to me.'

‘Rather unlikely unless you'd made a special study of the mid-Twentieth, in particular the Second World War. Morell
was a top Nazi physician. Not a great deal is known about him and I was hoping to fill in the background. Instead I received the life history and mating habits of the mythical quark.'

It was the first time he had known deGrenier make a remark that was intended to be humorous. His curiosity was aroused. He said, ‘Was Morell qualified? I mean, was he a good doctor?'

‘The evidence so far, what little we have, would suggest not,' deGrenier said, pausing by the door. ‘He sometimes used drugs without knowing what effect they would have, experimenting on his patients and giving massive overdoses.'

‘I see.' Karve was looking over his bifocals at deGrenier's legs. They were rather nice legs. The scientist seemed unaware of this flattering scrutiny, though she might not have considered it all that flattering, coming from the Director of the Institute, a man more than twice her age.

‘So it would be fair to describe him as a quack.'

‘I suppose so,' deGrenier said indifferently.

‘That might explain one or two things.'

‘Might it?'

Karve nodded slowly and dropped the print-out on the desk. ‘I'll see that this finds its rightful owner.'

‘Thank you, Director.' Her face had relaxed into a tentative smile. It was quite rare for Pouline deGrenier. She went out.

Yet another reason for being alive, Karve thought, the pleasure a beautiful woman could bestow simply by her presence. It wasn't healthy for a man of his age to have such notions. The desire would be awakened but not appeased, and his casual appraisal of her legs might have led to other fanciful flights of imagination which old men were supposed to have outgrown – as if advancing years killed the urge completely. They did not, of course, merely the opportunity.

Karve reached out to take the cup from its saucer and as he did so the handle came away and the cup smashed itself into dozens of tiny fragments, too many and too small to count.

*

Queghan waited philosophically for the third coincidence.

He was not by nature a patient man but he had taught himself to curb his restlessness, knowing that the harder he sought
the third coincidence the further it would recede. The only way to snare it was by allowing it to catch him.

The print-out arrived in his room on Level 17 with a note attached, which read: ‘Gremlins at work again. Or would it be more accurate to say a quirk in the system?' and it was signed ‘Johann'.

Karve had evidently made the right connection. But as one of the founders of the metaphysical science known as Myth Technology his working hypothesis for life was based on the principle of acausal relationships. No two events were necessarily connected in direct sequence, though the connection was there if you knew how and where to look. In his book
The Hidden Universe
Karve had referred to these connections as ‘the leys' – intangible filaments of meaning which held everything together: man, matter, energy, space, time.

Queghan detached the note and underneath it was the triangular stamp with which each Section identified the material in its possession. Inside the triangle the word RECONPAN followed by the initials ‘P. deG' and the date of receipt.

Why had Pouline deGrenier received the information pertaining to HEAD QUARK/SUB ANTI/SUB CHARM/SUB STRANGE? Was it that the cyberthetic system had got its wires crossed? But the system was supposedly proof against errors of that kind, self-programmed to detect and rectify them.

Now supposing, Queghan thought, indulging in his favourite pastime, supposing the information relating to the quarks was in some way pertinent to the RECONPAN project but that Pouline deGrenier had failed to make the connection. It would possibly mean that the cyberthetic system (or something guiding the system) was pointing them in the direction they didn't realize was the correct one – rather like a guide dog leading a blind man away from a precipice he doesn't know is there.

Supposing, too, that the same applied in his case. He had asked for information on the decay rate of quarks and been offered instead a fictional character called Charles Bovary and an obscure doctor who had something to do with the Hitler movement on Old Earth.

And supposing he was just chasing rainbows. Maybe a micro-circuit had flipped its lid and everyone in the building
was receiving cuckoo information. Some suppositions, unfortunately, had the leaden ring of cracked bells.

Queghan pressed the ALERT tab on the input terminal and sat back as the lights started to blink and the machine hummed to itself. He had a love-hate relationship with the cyberthetic box of tricks, and it wouldn't have surprised him to know it felt the same; they were old sparring partners.

After several moments had elapsed the system said:
Can I be of service?
Evidently tired of waiting.

‘I'm perplexed.'

The human condition
,
so I'm told
.

‘I can do without the homespun philosophy.'

I've just been oiled
.

‘And the cyberthetic wit.'

Sorry. Do you need me or are you just passing the time of day?

‘How's your memory of the Second World War Pre-Colonization?' Queghan asked.

There was a slight, though significant, pause.

Comprehensive
.

‘It isn't on your mind? I mean obsessively.'

I'm not programmed for obsessions.

‘Aren't you the lucky one.'

That's a matter of opinion
.

‘You gave me some incorrect information yesterday, Cyb.'

Not possible. If it was incorrect there must have been an error at the input terminal. I have registered no malfunction in the past twenty-four hours
.

‘That's your discreet cyberthetic way of saying that I punched in the wrong question.'

I am stating a fact No malfunction occurred.

Queghan took out a pack of Nexus-T. He extracted one of the coloured plastic tubes and inhaled deeply. His senses seemed to vibrate in the fumes. He said:

‘What do you know about RECONPAN?'

Had the cyberthetic system been programmed to sigh it might have done so.
A lot
, it said.

‘Is it classified?'

Yes. Do you require the security reference?

Queghan released purple fumes into the still air. They ascended to the ceiling in a hazy spiral. As a mythographer he had clearance on all projects within MyTT, classified or not. The system was humouring him. He let a few seconds go by, just to show which of them was the human being.

‘Do you find Pouline deGrenier attractive?' he said at last.

I know what attractiveness means but I don't comprehend it. You mustn't play semantic games with me, Queghan, it isn't fair
.

‘You've been playing games with me.'

Not true
, the cyberthetic system protested. It sounded almost hurt. A machine with offended feelings.

Queghan said, ‘Is RECONPAN anywhere near operational?'

One moment
. The system went away and delved into the depths of its billionfold cellular memory. There was a muted beep and then:
Experimental trials are scheduled but they are having difficulty with the tissue cultures which are not retaining the neurons as expected. Reconstruction of the Subject's memory file is as per classification in—

‘Never mind the classification. As I recall, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, RECONPAN is the reconstruction of a human brainpan.'

Correct.

‘How is this achieved?'

By complete analysis and correlation of all material in Archives; everything written or known or recorded about the Subject – letters, books, speeches, newstapes, sound recordings, contemporary accounts and documents – every known fact is processed and a neurological simulation of the Subject's brainpan is constructed in the laboratory. The current difficulty is due to Psycho-Med being unable to stimulate self-generation of tissue cultures
.

‘Explain.'

The brain functions but is not technically alive. In order to achieve operational capability the tissue cultures must be capable of generating and transmitting neurochemical data
.

‘And they haven't managed to do this.'

No
.

Queghan took the fumes into his lungs and the room seemed to shimmer as the drug distorted the parallax of reality.

‘Have they chosen the Subject for the experimental trials?'

Yes
.

‘Who is it?'

Adolf Schicklgruber by birth, later known as Adolf Hitler. German National, early Twentieth Pre-Colonization. Austrian by birth, became German Chancellor in—

‘Thank you, Cyb,' Queghan interrupted gently. ‘I do know who Adolf Hitler was.'

*

If there was any dissension at MyTT it usually revolved round Johann Karve's original dictum that the proper field of study was the interpretation of past and future myths. This statement of the Institute's primary aim had sparked off a continuing debate which occasionally flared into open confrontation.

Karve proposed that myths and legends were repositories of knowledge – ‘centres of human consciousness in which we find certain intuitive and elemental truths' in his phrase. As a useful analogy he often compared them to the eye of a hurricane, the dead-still centre of a vortex where nothing takes place but around which a mad whirl of activity is going on. ‘Imagine time as a vortex,' he said in his lectures, ‘rushing around in a frenzy of apparently meaningless and random interactions. Time is composed of events, in our case events on a human scale which mark off the passing years, and now and then these events coagulate at a particular spatio-temporal co-ordinate. This is what we call a myth. Now if we can analyse myths and interpret them correctly we shall gain an insight into the underlying meaning and purpose of the Metagalaxy – an eye into the elemental nature of time.'

Those on the mystical or metaphysical side of the Two Disciplines could accept this readily enough, but for those on the other, more concerned with the practical development and application of advanced technology, these were concepts not easily grasped or gratefully received.

As a hardline scientist working in Myth Technology Pouline deGrenier tried to embrace, somewhat awkwardly, the two extremes. It was a contradiction she was not unaware of. In private conversation with Léon Steele, her Third Assistant, she
sometimes referred to her ‘schizophrenic position' in the Institute, of being neither fish nor fowl.

Steele was a young man of nervous disposition. He had once thought himself to be (perhaps he still was) in love with Pouline deGrenier. He had assisted her on the RECONPAN project for over a year and their relationship had been cordial until the sweating grunting struggle had taken place in a dusty subsection of Archives (HEAD WAR/SUB PRE-COL/SUB WORLD II) and his ardour had gone off the boil. Since then he had tried, with a fair measure of success, to play the role of the intense, dedicated professional researcher.