Thrice upon a Time (22 page)

In some later tests, however, the team tried experimenting with the effects of arbitrary human decision. They set the program exactly as before, allowed it to run through to the point where the signal was about to be sent, and at that point made an arbitrary decision, sometimes based on flips of a coin and sometimes by other means, whether or not to switch off the transmitter. In the cases where they did switch it off, the computer produced a number anyway but couldn't send it. The number that had been received, therefore, the team reasoned, must have been sent from a time-line that had been altered only to the degree of containing a transmitter that had been switched on, but which was switched off on the new timeline. This should not have affected the value of the random number produced; the number received should still have matched the number later observed, whether it was sent or not. And indeed, in most of the cases the two did match. But in a tiny fraction of the large number of results, they didn't. Murdoch and Lee discussed the anomaly one day in mid-February while they were tramping from Storbannon down to Glenmoroch village for some fresh air and a spot of exercise, which was as good an excuse as any for a drink.

"Let's go through it, very simply, one more time," Murdoch said. They were following a footpath that led from a side gate in the grounds down toward the crescent-shaped wood. "Here is the machine waiting, and at some time a number comes in—let's say, 123."

"Okay," Lee agreed.

"So 123 gets stored. Now nothing happens until the time comes for it to be sent back. The random-number routine runs and generates a number."

"Check."

"Now we know, from the data we've collected from lots of tests, that if the number that's just been generated is sent, it always matches what has already been received. If it isn't sent, then most of the times it still matches, which is what we'd expect. But sometimes, just sometimes… we end up with 123 recorded as having been received, but the program outputs something else, let's say 456. Now try and make sense out of that for me." By now they had entered the wood. The silence was broken only by the steady crunching of their boots in the snow and the occasional swishing sound of snow sliding off the branches in the trees all around.

"There had to be a timeline with a computer on it that generated 123," Lee said after a while. "There had to be because there's no other way that 123 could get received in the first place. Agreed?"

"Okay, I'll buy that."

"But by the time our computer has become that computer, it doesn't produce 123; it produces 456. Therefore the computer that did produce 123 doesn't exist any more."

"Which says it got reset onto a new timeline."

"Which says it got reset onto a new timeline. So what reset it?"

"That's where it gets crazy," Murdoch said. "The whole sequence was preprogrammed so the events of both sending the signal and receiving it had to be on the original timeline that involved 123. Nothing changed from that situation until we took the decision to switch off the transmitter. But that couldn't have had any effect on what was happening inside the computer. So what made the number come out wrong?"

"And why doesn't it ever come out wrong when you leave the transmitter on?" Lee completed.

"Exactly," Murdoch said.

The path brought them to a flight of iron-railed stone steps that led up to the road running from the wood to the village. As they came out onto the road, Bob Ferguson from the farm on the far side of the village drove by in a rickety van with one of his sheep-dogs hanging out from the passenger-side window. He tooted the horn and waved cheerfully as he passed, then disappeared around a bend in the road heading in the direction of Loch Keld.

"There's only one answer," Lee said after they had covered a few hundred more yards. "Something else must have reset the timeline… something that's got nothing to do with signals being sent back or not being sent back."

"What are you getting at?"

"Well, look at it this way. Here I am with 123 stored as having come in. Now suppose that
something
affects the timeline I'm on, after that moment but before the time comes to send the signal… something that leaves my record of 123 intact, but causes the computer to generate 456. Now if I switch off the transmitter, 456 never gets sent. So I'm left with a mismatch, which is what we got."

Murdoch thought about it for a few seconds, then said, "But if you leave the transmitter on, 456 does get sent. That would reset the whole timeline from the moment the signal was received on, so that it would show 456 coming in. In that situation it would overwrite 123 and you'd end up never knowing that 123 ever got sent at all. Yes… and that was what we got too: Whenever the number was sent, we never had a mismatch."

"It's sneaky," Lee declared. "The something else alters the timeline and sets up a mismatch situation. But when you send the signal, it changes things in such a way as to cancel out the effect of it. It's only when you don't transmit that you can hope to catch it."

"So what's the something else that affects timelines?" Murdoch summarized.

"Yes. And why doesn't it do it consistently? Why does it only happen every now and then instead of every time?" Lee added.

They reached the outskirts of the village without speaking further. The few people who were out and about acknowledged them with nods or a few words of greeting as they passed.

"Something unpredictable," Murdoch mused, half to himself. "It has to be something that operates randomly and can affect random numbers generated by a computer. What kinds of things work like that?"

"Noise fluctuations," Lee said. "Thermal effects. Relaxation sequences of excited atoms. All kinds of quantum… " His voice trailed away, and his pace slowed abruptly as he realized what he had said. He halted and turned to stare back at Murdoch, who had already come to a halt a pace farther back. In the same instant they had both realized the same thing.

"It's exactly what Elizabeth said," Murdoch breathed. "She said that an adequate model would have to include some kind of quantum uncertainty. Now we've found exactly the same thing, but from actual experimental data." They stood silently for what seemed a long time as the full implications sank in. A woman who was clearing snow from a path leading to the side door of a house across the road stopped to look at them curiously, but they took no notice. Then they started walking again, this time more slowly.

"The particle threads can't be precisely defined," Lee said after a while. "They're only defined within uncertainty limits. At the quantum level, the pattern is dynamic. It can change spontaneously, independent of whether any signals are sent or not. That says it must happen all the time, machine or no machine."

"So at the quantum level events are not frozen into the thread pattern and predetermined," Murdoch said excitedly. "And all kinds of macroscopic phenomena can be decided by random quantum-level fluctuations. That could be where chance and free will come into it. That's exactly what Elizabeth wanted to see!"

They reached the main street of the village and came at least within sight of the Argyll, Glenmoroch's hotel and principal pub. "We'll have to get Elizabeth involved again as soon as we can," Lee said. "Any idea when she's due back?"

"Next week, according to Grandpa. They're still having problems up at the plant."

Elizabeth had visited Storbannon a few times since mid-January. She had hoped to have even more time to spare after the full-power tests of the reactors were completed, but an unexpected snag had developed. The tests had begun on the Monday as planned and continued through to Tuesday morning. Then the control computers at Burghead had announced an emergency condition and shut down the reactors. Subsequent investigation had revealed severe erosion on the undersides of the reactor chambers, resulting in a vacuum loss that the sensors had detected. None of the engineers at Burghead had been able to explain what had caused the erosion. The proposed schedule for taking the plant on-line by summer was threatened, and Elizabeth had been tied up day and night with her staff, trying to track down the cause of the problem.

They reached the door of the Argyll, and Lee ducked to follow Murdoch through the low threshold. The bar inside was cheerily lit by a roaring, open fire, and pleasantly warm after the ear-nipping cold outside. A few heads turned among the knot of farmers and other locals gathered at the bar. In the middle of them was Hamish, the gardener from Storbannon, a wild-looking man with eyes that always seemed wide and staring like a maniac's, a bald head fringed by two dense tufts of unruly, red hair, and a full, rust-colored beard.

"Well, if it isn't our two Americans come to join us," one of the farmers said. He had a weathered face, laced with a network of fine purple veins, and was wearing a flat cloth cap. "Hello, Murdoch Ross, and hello, Lee. Will you be joining us for a drink?"

"Hi, Willie," Murdoch replied. "Pint, thanks."

"Same," Lee said. "Hi… and thanks."

" 'Tis good to see you're cultivating a taste for
real
beer at last," Hamish told them, wiping a trace of froth from his beard with his sleeve. "All that American synthetic rubbish does nothing for a man at all."

"What's wrong with our beer, Hamish?" Murdoch asked, feigning surprise. "It's not synthetic, it's natural. It's made from natural ingredients, under natural conditions, grown with natural organic fertilizers. The ads on the TV say so."

"Aye," Hamish growled, screwing his face into a scowl of distaste. "And it tastes like a certain natural organic fertilizer that I could mention too."

Murdoch collected the few remaining dishes together into a stack and dropped the two crumpled napkins on top, leaving the glasses and the still quarter-f bottle of burgundy on the table. Then he picked up the stack, balancing it carefully, and turned to the door that led through to the kitchen.

He enjoyed the evenings and all-too-infrequent weekends that he found time to spend in Anne's Nairn apartment. Storbannon was all very grand and imposing, and quite cheerful in its own lofty way, but this was what he called homey. He was never quite sure what it was that Anne did that made the apartment seem that way, but every time he walked in, he was instantly aware of something subtly different about it from the places belonging to girls he had known in California, New York, and elsewhere.

There was no one thing that stood out on its own, but rather lots of little things that contributed somehow to an overall effect merely by being there—such as the collection of small, hollow glass sculptures on the bookshelves, always containing a few flowers that were fresh, or the frilly covers on the armchair backs and side tables that always matched. And then there were the things that were slightly more elaborate and slightly more ornate than they needed to be, but in a particular kind of way such that each of them served the dual role of fulfilling the purpose it was ostensibly designed for while at the same time contributing something to the mood of the whole setting. The writing paper on the bureau in one corner, for example, could have been just writing paper; it was, but in addition it was pale brown and richly textured, with a simple floral design in green and yellow at the lower left-hand corner of every sheet. The envelopes could have been just envelopes, but they matched the paper. The cabinet opposite the window could have contained just bottles and glasses; it contained an
arrangement
of bottles and glasses, along with a cut-crystal decanter and set of goblets. The vi-set screen, standing on its flexible supporting arm on top of the cabinet, could have been the standard black-and-gray model that came at the standard rental, but it was coffee-brown two-tone, which cost slightly more; the room needed coffee-brown two-tone. It was the same with the funny fluffy animal figures in the corners and over the door, the china figurines on the ledge above the heater vent, and the embroidered, tasseled mats underneath the table lamps. They achieved nothing individually, but had any of them not been there, something would have been missing.

Or maybe Murdoch was imagining it all; maybe the only thing different was that Anne lived there.

He carried the stack through to the kitchen and set it down beside where Anne was loading the dishwasher with the rest of the dishes from dinner. She was wearing a figure-hugging, navy-blue dress that seemed to continue the curves of her legs in a flowing wave all the way through to her shoulders. Murdoch slipped his arms under hers and around her waist, nibbled her ear, and squeezed her breasts lightly. She giggled and wriggled, but not too much.

"You know you shouldn't do that in front of the children," she said, meaning the picture that was taped to the refrigerator door, showing a pair of scampish-looking puppies staring out of a garbage can.

"They have to learn sometime," Murdoch replied as he let go of her and drifted back to the door. "There's still about two glasses of wine left. Want me to fill yours up?"

"Mmm, please. I'll be through in a second."

"Ice?"

"Heathen!"

"Just kidding."

He strolled back into the lounge, refilled the glasses, and settled down with his in the armchair by the window to look out over the lights of the town center. Anne had known exactly what she was looking for when she chose this place, he thought to himself… just like everything else. A minute or so later, Anne came into the room, picked up the other glass from the table, and curled herself up on one end of the sofa, facing him.