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been several years since he was exposed to those conditions. He won't
remember a thing."
"But surely if he's returned to his own tribe, they'll take him in, they'll
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re-
educate him in tribal ways-"
"Would they? He can't speak their language very well any more; he doesn't
think the way they do; he smells funny because he's so clean. -
They might just as readily kill him, wouldn't you say?"
left? If that's how it works, then his tribe will have moved on to some other
region long ago. Surely they were nomads then. When he arrives in the past,
there'll be no one around to take him in. He'll be completely on his own in a
rugged, hostile, bitterly cold environment. A little boy facing the Ice
Age by himself. Do you see, Mr. Mannheim? Do you see?"
"Yes," Mannheim said. "I do."
He was quiet a long while. He seemed to be working out some profound
calculation in his mind.
Finally he said, "When is he supposed to be shipped back? Do you know?"
"Perhaps not for months, Dr. Hoskins told me. I can't say whether that means
two months or six."
"Not much time, either way. We'd have to organize a campaign, a Save
Timmie campaign-letters to the newspapers, demonstrations, an injunction,
maybe a Congressional investigation into the whole Stasis Technologies
operation. -Of course, it would be useful if you'd take part by testifying to
Timmie's essential humanity, by providing us with videos showing how he reads
and looks after himself. But you'd probably have to resign your post there if
you were to do that, and that would cut you off from Timmie, which you
wouldn't want, and which wouldn't be useful to us, either. A problem.
On the other hand, suppose-"
wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't they? They've already decided the Timmie experiment is over.
They need his Stasis facility for something else. You don't know them.
They're not sentimental people, not really. Hoskins is basically a decent man,
but if it's a choice between Timmie and the future of Stasis
Technologies, Ltd., he wouldn't have any problem choosing at all. And once
Timmie's gone, there's no bringing him back. It'll be a fait accompli. They
could never find him in the past a second time. Your injunction would be
worthless. And somebody who lived forty thousand years ago and died before
civilization was ever imagined wouldn't have any recourse in our courts."
Mannheim nodded slowly. He took a long, reflective sip of his wine. The waiter
came by, hovering with his order pad at the ready, but Mannheim waved him
away.
"There's only one thing to do," he said.
"And that is?"
"We have people in Canada who'd be glad to raise Timmie. In England, in New
Zealand also. Concerned, loving people. Our organization could provide a grant
that would cover the cost of employing you as his full-time nurse. Of course,
you'd have to make a total break with your present existence and start all
over again in some other country, but my reading of you is that for Timmie's
sake you'd have no problem with-"
to do to save Timmie. I'd do whatever I could and go wherever I had to, for
Timmie's sake. It's smuggling him out of the Stasis facility that isn't
possible."
"Is it as tightly guarded as all that? I assure you, we'd find ways of
infiltrating the security staff, of working out a completely foolproof plan
for taking Timmie from you and getting him out of that building."
"It can't be done. Scientifically, it can't."
"Scientifically?"
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"There's something about temporal potential, an energy build-up, lines of
temporal force. If we moved a mass the size of Timmie out of Stasis it would
blow out every power line in the city. Hoskins told me that and I don't
question the truth of it. They've got a bunch of pebbles and dirt and twigs
that they brought here when they scooped Timmie out of the past, and they
don't even dare take that stuff out and throw it away. It's all stored in the
back of the Stasis bubble. -Besides all that, I'm not even sure whether moving
Timmie outside of Stasis would be safe for him. I'm not certain about that
part, but maybe it could be dangerous for him. I'm only guessing at this part.
For all I know, he might undergo some kind of temporal-force effect too if he
was brought out of the bubble into our universe. The bubble isn't in our
universe, you know. It's in some special place of its own. You can feel the
change when
jurisdiction and you tell me we can't do that either, because of some problem
in the physics of it. All right. I want to help, Edith, but you've got me
stymied and right now I don't have any further ideas."
"Neither do I," Miss Fellowes said miserably.
They sat there in silence as the rain hammered at the windows of the
restaurant.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Going
[52]
PROJECT MIDDLE AGES-that was all that anyone was talking about at
Stasis Technologies, Ltd. now. It was the beginning of an amazing new phase
for the time-travel operation, everyone agreed. The unique process that Stasis
Technologies controlled would open the gateway to the historical past-would
bring new and astounding knowledge of antiquity pouring into the twenty-first
century, an incredible intellectual treasure. And perhaps treasure of another
kind, some said: if they could reach back into any century of historic times
and bring people back, why not scoop up works of art, rare books and
manuscripts, valuable objects of all sorts?
not die. If the attempt to bring a man forward from the fourteenth century
turned out to be a flop, there'd be no need to vacate the Stasis bubble that
Timmie occupied. Then everydiing could go on as before.
So she hoped for the failure of the project; but the rest of the world hoped
for its success. And, irrationally, Miss Fellowes hated the world for it.
Project Middle Ages was reaching a climax of white-hot publicity now. The
media and die public both were obsessed with it. It was a long time since [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]