Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

And it was a good one. He'd been right about the sound earlier; one of the steel I-beams from the ceiling had indeed broken free, creating a somewhat bowed diagonal across the hallway. A team of men armed with acetylene torches were cutting carefully across the beam, trying to free it without bringing more down.

"Dr. Garwood?"

Garwood focused on the burly man stepping toward him, an engineer's insignia glittering amid the plaster dust on his jumpsuit collar. "Yes, Captain?"

"If you don't mind, sir," the other said in a gravelly voice, "we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't hang around here any longer than necessary. There may be more waiting to come down."

Garwood glanced at the ceiling, stomach tightening within him as he recognized the all-too-familiar message beneath the other's words. It wasn't so much interest in his, Garwood's, safety as it was concern that the cloud of destruction around him might wind up killing one of the workers. Briefly, bitterly, Garwood wondered if this was how Jonah had felt during the shipboard storm. Before he'd been thrown overboard to the whale... "I understand," he sighed. "Would you mind passing a message on to Dr. Saunders when you have the chance, then, asking him to meet me at my office? My phone's gone out again."

"A lot of 'em have, Doctor," the engineer nodded. "I'll give him the message."

Garwood nodded back and turned to go—

And nearly bumped into Major Davidson, standing quietly behind him.

"Major," Garwood managed, feeling his heart settle down again. "You startled me."

Davidson nodded, a simple acknowledgment of Garwood's statement. "Haven't seen you in a while, Dr. Garwood," he said, his voice the same neutral as his face. "How's it going?"

Garwood's usual vague deflection to that question came to his lips... "I have to get back to my office," he said instead. "The workmen are worried about another collapse."

"I'll walk with you," Davidson offered, falling into step beside him.

Davidson waited until they were out of sight of the workers before speaking again. "I've been keeping an eye on the damage reports," he commented in that same neutral tone. "You been following them?"

"Not really," Garwood replied through dry lips. Suddenly there was something about Davidson that frightened him. "Though I can usually see the most immediate consequences in and around my office."

"Been some extra problems cropping up in the various machine and electronic fabrication shops, too," Davidson told him, almost off-handedly. "As if there's been some work going on there that's particularly susceptible to the Garwood Effect."

Garwood gritted his teeth. The Garwood Effect. An appropriate, if painful, name for it. "Saunders has had some people trying to translate what little he and the rest of the team know into practical hardware terms," he told Davidson.

"But they don't yet know how to build a time machine?"

"No. They don't."

"Do you?"

Again, Garwood's reflex was to lie. "I think so," he admitted instead. "I'm pretty close, anyway."

They walked on in silence for a few more paces. "I'm sure you realize," Davidson said at last, "the implications of what you're saying."

Garwood sighed. "Do try to remember, Major, that I was worrying about all this long before you were even on the scene."

"Perhaps. But my experience with scientists has been that you often have a tendency toward tu

"No, to both."

"Well, that's a start." Davidson threw him a sideways look. "Unfortunately, it won't hold anyone for long. If I'm smart enough to figure out what the increase in the Garwood Effect implies, Saunders is certainly smart enough to do the same."

Garwood looked over at Davidson's face, and the knot in his stomach tightened further as he remembered what the other had once said about Saunders using hypnosis against him. "Then I have to get away again before that happens," he said in a quiet voice.

Davidson shook his head. "That won't be easy to do a second time."

"Then I'll need help, won't I?"

Davidson didn't reply for several seconds. "Perhaps," he said at last. "But bear in mind that above everything else I have my duty to consider."

"I understand," Garwood nodded.

Davidson eyed him. "Do you, Doctor? Do you really?"

Garwood met his eyes... and at long last, he really did understand.

Davidson wasn't offering him safe passage to that mythical wilderness Garwood had so often longed for. He was offering only to help Garwood keep the secret of time travel out of Saunders's grasp. To keep it away from a world that such a secret would surely destroy.

Offering the only way out that was guaranteed to be permanent.

Garwood's heart was thudding in his ears, and he could feel sweat gathering on his upper lip. "And when," he heard himself say, "would your duty require you to take that action?"

"When it was clear there was no longer any choice," Davidson said evenly. "When you finally proved safe time travel was impossible, for instance. Or perhaps when you showed a working time machine could be built."

They'd reached the door to Garwood's office now. "But if I instead proved that the probability-shift effect would in fact keep a working time machine from actually being built?" Garwood asked, turning to face the other. "What then?"

"Then it's not a working time machine, is it?" Davidson countered.

Garwood took a deep breath. "Major... I want a working time machine built even less than you do. Believe me."

"I hope so," Davidson nodded, his eyes steady on Garwood's. "Because you and I may be the only ones here who feel that way... and speaking for myself, I know only one way to keep your equations from bringing chaos onto the world. I hope I don't have to use it."

A violent shiver ran up Garwood's back. "I do, too," he managed. Turning the doorknob with a shaking hand, he fled from Davidson's eyes to the safety of his office.

To the relative safety, anyway, of his office.

For several minutes he paced the room, his pounding heart only gradually calming down. A long time ago, before his break from Backdrop, he'd contemplated suicide as the only sure way to escape the cloud of destruction around him. But it had never been a serious consideration, and he'd turned instead to his escape-and-research plan.

A plan which had eventually ended in failure. And now, with the stakes even higher than they'd been back then, death was once again being presented to him as the only sure way to keep the genie in the bottle.

Only this time the decision wasn't necessarily going to be his. And to add irony to the whole thing, Davidson's presence here was ultimately his own fault. If he hadn't skipped out of Backdrop six months ago, the major would never even have come onto the scene.

Or maybe he would have. With the contorted circular logic that seemed to drive the probability-shift effect nothing could be taken for granted. Besides, if Davidson hadn't caught him, perhaps someone less intelligent would have. Someone who might have brushed aside his fears and forced him onto that airplane at Chanute AFB. If that had happened—if the effect had then precipitated a crash—

He shook his head to clear it. It was, he thought bitterly, like the old college bull sessions about free will versus predestination. There were no answers, ever; and you could go around in circles all night chasing after them. On one hand, the probability-shift effect could destroy engines; on the other, as Davidson himself had pointed out, it logically shouldn't be able to crash a plane that Garwood himself was on...

Garwood frowned, train of thought breaking as a wisp of something brushed past his mind. Davidson... airplane...?