Thrice upon a Time (35 page)

"Err… no."

"Tut tut." She shook her head reproachfully and moved the cart away.

Murdoch watched as she unloaded the tray she had been using into the sterilizer, then glanced at the nurse who was sitting at a desk nearby with her back to them. He wished the nurse would go away and find something to do elsewhere, but she seemed to have sprouted roots. "Your name's Anne, isn't it?" he said, looking back.

"That's right. You must remember it from the Bull."

"You've got a good memory," Murdoch complimented. "You remembered Maxwell too."

"Maxwell?"

"The kitten. That's his name—James Clerk Maxwell. My grandfather called him that."

Anne closed the sterilizer and moved over to a sink to rinse her hands. Then she placed a lint dressing and a bandage roll on another tray. "I take it you're staying here with your grandfather for a while," she said. "Is he something to do with EFC?"

"No." Murdoch shook his head. "He's a theoretical physicist who's doing some work for Dr. Muir's people. We—that is, myself and the pal of mine you've seen—are helping out. We're in the same line."

"I see," she said. "Arm out." Murdoch held out his arm. Anne bent close to him, placed the dressing over the wound, and began winding the bandage round with quick, nimble fingers. Her nearness and fragrance were making him sweat.

"Do you live around here?" he asked, keeping his voice low in an attempt to exclude the nurse from the conversation.

"Nairn… about fifteen miles away."

She wasn't wearing a ring, he noticed. Maybe doctors didn't when they were working. Oh, to hell with it.

"What do people do after work in Nairn?" he asked. "Or maybe on Saturdays?"

"Oh… you'd be surprised." She caught his eye for a second and held it in mock reproach. Her mouth was twitching in a hint of a smile that seemed calculated to keep him guessing. Murdoch sensed that all he had to do was play the next ten seconds exactly right. A sudden excitement surged through him as he realized that he was on the easy home straight.

"ANNE… "
The voice called out suddenly from the other side of a half-open office door at the far end of the room. It sounded reedy for a man's, almost shrill. A moment later, the man himself appeared in the doorway. He had overgrown, frizzy hair, and was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles halfway down his thin, pointed nose; his white coat ranked him as another doctor, probably the one Anne worked for, Murdoch guessed. He appeared irritated. "Anne," he said again. "I've got the Health Authority woman on my line about that RCM req. that you put through. She's querying some figures in the specification. Come and have a word with her, will you. I can't talk to her about this electronics gibberish."

"I'll be right there," Anne said. "Just tidying up Mr. Ross's arm."

"Oh, Nurse Reynolds can finish that off. Come and get this wretched woman off my phone."

Anne secured the bandage with an adhesive pad and smoothed it down. "The wound's quite deep," she said quickly to Murdoch. "You should try and rest it for a while. We'll put the arm in a sling for a few days to keep it out of action." She turned to the nurse, who had risen from the desk and moved over toward them. "Could you fix Mr. Ross up with a light sling, please. Also arrange for him to come back for us to have another look at it in a week's time." With that she disappeared through into the office, and the door closed. The sign on it read DR. M.J. WARING. Murdoch glowered at it, hoping that his stare could focus malevolence on the man that the name symbolized—a somewhat impractical attempt at voodoo.

"It's really none of my business, but I couldn't help overhearing," the nurse whispered as she positioned a narrow band of black material around his neck. "I think you'll be lucky if you're not wasting your time."

Murdoch scowled at her. "How come?"

"I believe she's already going out with someone. She's the kind that tends to keep to one at a time, if you know what I mean."

"Big guy, red face… looks like a prize-fighter?"

"Yes. You know him then?"

"I've seen him around." Murdoch sighed resignedly. He looked at the nurse again. She was slightly on the plump side, but quite pretty with bright, blue eyes and blonde curls beneath her cap. "What are you doing on Saturday?" he asked on impulse.

"Tied up, I'm afraid. I've got to go to a wedding."

"Oh, really? Whose?"

"Mine, actually."

Murdoch decided it just wasn't one of his days.

Lee was sprawled on a seat in the waiting room outside, browsing through a magazine, when Murdoch left the clinic. He looked up, tossed the magazine aside, and hauled himself to his feet.

"How's the arm? Didn't they amputate?"

"It's okay. It wasn't as bad as it looked; a lot of it was just blood and skin. It looks as if you'll be doing all the driving for a day or two though."

"Still feel sick?" Lee asked as they walked out into the corridor and turned in the direction of the elevators.

"No. That's worn off now. They gave me something to get rid of the nausea."

They stopped in front of one of the elevators, and Lee pressed the call button.

"So… " Lee said after a few seconds. "Was she there?"

Pause.

"Yes." Murdoch continued to stare blankly at the doors in front of him.

"So?"

"So what?"

"So, did you get a date?"

"I don't know."

"What the hell do you mean, you don't know?" Lee demanded. "Either you're seeing her or you're not. What happened?"

"You wouldn't believe it." The doors slid open, and they stepped inside.

"You screwed it up," Lee declared flatly.

"I did
not
screw it up. Her boss screwed it up. He came muscling in at exactly the wrong moment. Another minute and I'd have been all fixed up."

"That's the lousiest excuse I ever heard. Come on, be honest—you blew it."

"I did
not.
Look, I've gotta come back in a week for a check. We'll see then what happens. I'll lay you money on it."

"Five pounds," Lee said at once.

"You're on."

"You'll screw it up."

"We'll see."

A week later Murdoch returned and was told that Anne was off for the day, visiting her family in Dundee. His arm was healing satisfactorily, and there was no need for him to come back again. The visit cost him five pounds.

Through April and into May, groups of scientists, political advisers, and delegates from various governments visited Storbannon to meet Charles and his team, to learn more of the breakthrough and what it meant, and to see the machine for themselves. Most of the visitors spent a few days there, and the Guest Wing was reopened to accommodate them. The place began to acquire the atmosphere of a cosmopolitan, residential club for the world's scientific and political elite. As further research into the machine and its workings continued, a model gradually emerged of a dynamic timeline continuum in which spontaneous fluctuations at the quantum level could occasionally manifest themselves as major changes in events at higher levels. This meant that a future situation as described in a message that was sent back could be found to have changed when the recipients of the message eventually arrived there, even if no action was taken because of the message. The discovery of this fact, achieved through a long series of experiments that involved sending back random numbers, in no way detracted from the value of the new technology; on the contrary, it implied that the outcomes of major undertakings frequently hinged on apparently trivial details, and the ability to know in advance just how significant such details would be promised undreamed-of possibilities. In fact the whole thing seemed too awesome. Everybody who became involved agreed on the need for a full-scale experiment along the lines that Charles had originally suggested, but nobody was willing to take the initiative in proposing the actual form that such an experiment should take. The enormity of what it implied had mentally paralyzed all of them.

At Burghead, the physicists working on the reactor problem progressed with the task of integrating Charles's theory into their design calculations. By the end of May they had reached a point where a series of moderate-power tests of the reactors and the accelerator system were needed to check their preliminary results for a revised arrangement of target geometry. A schedule of tests was drawn up accordingly, and arrays of instruments were set up around the target chambers to capture details of the complex interactions that were expected as conditions approached the onset of the extreme nonlinearities featured in Charles's equations. Murdoch had not yet seen the Burghead system running. Accordingly he drove up to the plant on the day the tests were due to begin, and by midmorning was in the main control room in the Reactor Building, watching the checkout procedures as the accelerators were brought up to the power levels required.

Mike Stavely scanned a column of mnemonics that had just appeared on one of the displays in the mosaic of screens and indicator panels before him while Murdoch watched over his shoulder. All the stations in the control room were manned, and on every side displays changed and lights flickered as the computers analyzed, summarized, and reported the status of every section and subsystem of the nine-square-mile complex. Elizabeth, Courtney, and a few of the other senior executives were standing around in small groups to observe the tests getting under way.

Mike turned his head slightly to speak into a microphone projecting toward him from one side of the console. "FIC's third phase are all plus. Sequencer has unlocked. How are the quad-field stabilizers?"

"We've still got orange," a voice replied from a grill above one of the screens. "Status checkout still running."

"Advise as soon as complete, will you," Mike said.

"Will do."

Mike flipped a couple of switches, entered a code into a touchboard, and spoke into the microphone again. "Are you there, Linac One?"

"Reading," a different voice replied.

"We need vacuums, RTX affirmations, and pilot lineup vectors."

"Coming up now," the voice advised. "Vacuums are
Go.
RTX slaving to your Channel Five."

Murdoch watched for a moment longer as another screen filled with hieroglyphics, and then he sauntered across to where Elizabeth was standing with Simon Vickers and one of the engineers. "From what I can tell, it seems to be going fine," he said.

Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, all on schedule. With a bit of luck we'll see some one-shot firings before the end of today. I hope it goes smoothly from here on. If things ease off a bit, I'll be able to get down to Storbannon again. How are things going down there?"

"We're getting some pretty interesting people coming through," Murdoch replied. "It's a pity you couldn't get down in the last couple of days. We had a bunch of people from all over talking about possible cosmological implications. You'd have liked it."

"Cosmology?" Elizabeth looked puzzled. "What's the machine got to do with cosmology? I'm not sure I follow."

"It's amazing," Murdoch began. "They—" He stopped as Vickers returned his eyes from something that he had been watching on the far side of the room and nodded to acknowledge Murdoch's presence. "Hi, Simon."

"Good to see you again, Murdoch," Vickers said. "You've come up to see us begin the tests, eh?" He glanced quickly around. "Where's Lee? I'd have thought he'd be around to see the system working as well."

"He's not feeling too well," Murdoch said. "He was in bed most of yesterday, and couldn't get up today. Said he felt washed out."

"Oh dear, I do hope it isn't anything serious," Elizabeth said. "Have you had a doctor there?"

"He said it was just a bug," Murdoch told her. "Thinks he'll be okay tomorrow."

"I hope he's right," Vickers said dubiously. "It couldn't be that funny thing that people around here have been coming down with, could it?"

Murdoch shrugged and sighed. "You know Lee. I wouldn't have thought so though. It seems to be affecting just Burghead people."

Since the beginning of May, eight of the Burghead technical staff, all of whom worked in the Reactor Building, had succumbed to a mysterious sickness that had not yet been fully diagnosed. There had been a minor flurry of speculation in the press and news media that the sickness could have some connection with the fusion-related activities going on at Burghead, but this had died away after official statements that the effects had nothing in common with any that would have resulted from radiation.

One of the technicians at a nearby panel called the engineer over to point out something on a display, and Vickers moved away to join them. Murdoch and Elizabeth began walking slowly toward one side of the room and stopped in front of the large window that looked down over the reactor bay. The bay was brightly lit, and a number of technicians were moving around among the mass of tubes and steelwork surrounding the reactor housing.

"What were you saying a minute ago about cosmology?" Elizabeth asked.

"In the last couple of days we've had a German cosmologist and a Russian astronomer getting interested in the fact that matter-annihilation produces tau waves," Murdoch told her. "They pointed out that celestial black holes annihilate matter on a huge scale; therefore they ought to produce tau waves on a huge scale."