The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) Page 14

  “Not that I can take credit for planning it that way,” Jack said as he split one of the bagels that he’d taken out of the freezer the night before. “Glad I don’t have any well-wishers or snoops to run off so you and I can get down to business.”

  “Yes, my boy,” Nick replied, nodding mute thanks for the coffee that Jack slid across the table, “we’re a bit overdue for a session of ‘what-am-I-doing-here.’ Shall I begin while the bagels toast? Unless you’d like to start with a question or two.”

  “Oh, no,” said Jack. “The floor’s all yours.”

  “Very well,” Nick responded, looking into the middle distance and pursing his lips in the way his namesake had done in the Thin Man films. “Let’s begin with the most important thing; despite the fact that I’m now what we call a ‘trans-temporal force field,’ I’m every bit as much a human being as you are.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “The thing is,” he went on as if Jack hadn’t spoken, “We’d learned a lot more about ourselves by the time I came along.”

  “And when was that, exactly?”

  “In terms of the Old Scale, that is to say the one with which you’re familiar, in the first third of the forty-third century.” Seeing that Jack had already started to juggle the numbers, Nick paused to let him finish.

  “Jesus! That’s about as far in the future from here as there’s been recorded history, going back the other way.”

  “Just about, at least with respect to the recorded history that’s been available to scholars of your era. So humanity’s had time to solve some problems that would currently appear to be insoluble.”

  “Obviously including time travel,” said Jack.

  “Hell, people had been subjecting themselves to one sort of time travel or another for over a thousand years before I came along, with varying degrees of success, or better said, satisfaction.”

  “So H. G. Wells et al won’t give us much of a clue as to how they brought off the real thing.”

  Nick chortled at Jack’s observation. “In that you’re asking for trouble subjecting the human body, at any degree of evolution, to velocities above the speed of light, I’d have to say that they came far wide of the mark. Flinging all that hardware hither and yon gradually produced results, but it cost a lot of lives. Those early efforts, in retrospect, were almost laughably simple. But ultimately we could send the equivalent of a small city to the desired time and place, with scout ships and the other bells and whistles so dear to the science-fiction writers that you’re reading today.”

  “Wait a minute. ‘Scout ships?’ You talkin’ about flying saucers?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “What about all the talk about aliens from outer space? Is there anything to that, or are you telling me, first, that the saucers are real, and second, that they come from the future? What about the aliens?”

  “That’s about the size of it; allowing for the usual proportion of hallucinations, they’re real, they come from the future, and they’re operated by humans, and humanoids. So far as we’ve been able to determine up to now, there’re no aliens between here and Alpha Centauri; unless you want to count guys like me.” This said with a gentle smile.

  Jack sat very still as he came to grips with what Nick had just told him. As soon as the process subsided enough for him to speak, he asked: “But how?”

  With a slow, understanding nod, Nick responded with a seriousness and gravity that Jack had never seen in him. “Looking at it from my end of the telescope, what’s happened- and what will happen- is a seamless piece of cause and effect. There’s no way now, or possibly ever, that it’ll look that way to you. Humanity’s rate of change really began to take off during your lifetime. And when I tell you- and I will- what’s going to take place during that lifetime, you’ll be hard put to believe it. And beyond that time, things simply happen faster, and faster, and faster yet. And from the point in time that I originated, the rate of change has become literally too fast to plot.”

  “Could we pursue that term ‘originated’ a bit?”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “Wherever you like.”

  “Well, all you probably meant when you said it was the point in time that you came from. But it made me think of something else.”

  “What?”

  “About being born. That to me means having a body. You know; blood, guts, shit like that. Did you have one? Or should I say do you have one, a real one that you park somewhere, as opposed to just taking a shape that suits you when you’re traveling among us ancient types? And if you have, or had one, you were necessarily born. Weren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, by all means. With all the fanfare and solicitude that a newborn of that time could reasonably expect. I slipped out of my sack, hitting, you might say, on all eight cylinders.”

  “And what did they call the little sack-slipper?”

  “How about John Henry Mason, the fourth?”

  12 TERTIARY FORCE ARRAY

  Jack’s response was a whispered croak. “The fourth. Which makes me exactly what?”

  “Would you believe one of my ancestors?”

  “Sure. Of course. Makes perfect sense, the more I think about it. Glad you got around to mentioning it.”

  “Sarcasm noted. I guess you think that I should’ve brought that fact up earlier.”

  “I guess you guess right.”

  “And I guess you might BE right, give or take a week or two.”

  Flushing, Jack shouted, “A WEEK or two? How about a YEAR or two? Or five? Or ten? Why the big secret? Why keep something like that a secret from me?”

  “Because ,” Nick said as he attended to an invisible wrinkle in his left stocking, “You needed to be old enough, and, it’s to be hoped, wise enough, to understand the implications of that seemingly simple fact. Seems to me that we’ve now reached that point.”

  Right now, all Jack wanted was to know more, and more about Nick in particular. “OK,” he’d said to him, “Today you’re a ‘trans-temporal force field.’ What were you like when you were born?”

  “Cute as a button, if I do say so myself,” Nick said, slapping the plus-fours at the knee. “And not a mark on me. I still shudder at what all those billions of other babies went through before birthing became a rational process. When I think of a pair of forceps clamping down on my head...”

  Jack held up his hand. “I was just interested to know if you were what we might call a ‘normal’ human being, before the trans-temporal business.”

  “Oh, sure. Except for my little TT bunch, we’re still fur-bearing mammals, more or less. The range of types probably isn’t as wide as it is in the 20th century, but you’d still be a model type to people in my time.”

  “Thanks- I guess. It’s nice to know I’m still in demand.”

  “Well... That’s the thing, you see,” Nick said, fiddling with his jacket’s knit cuff. “The demand’s not what it used to be.”

  “What? No little Jackie on every corner? Say it ain’t so!”

  “Au contraire; where I come from, it’s a rare person who’s prone to replicating.”

  “Hm,” Jack mused. “The stocks of rubber companies must be doing very well.”

  Nick grinned. “I don’t think condoms made it through the twenty-first century. Matter of fact, something’s in the works right now that’ll put a major crimp in that market.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Birth control pills. One of those little rascals every day, and zero bambinos.”

  “Wow! Now there’s an investment. I remember reading a couple of things about them, but honestly I thought it was just so much eyewash. How do they work?”

  “By stopping ovulation. A women takes the pill daily, and its synthetic hormones duplicate the function of real estrogen and progestin in her body. The body is tricked into believing it’s pregnant, and no new eggs are released.”

  Jack’s eyes drifted toward the window. “When’s this going to happen?�
�

  “It’ll go on the market next year. Been in FDA testing since ’57.”

  “Good God! What company developed it?”

  “GD Searle.”

  “Guess I ought to place a little bet on old GD.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Nick said with a brief nod. “They’re calling it Enovid. Quite a long first step away from overpopulating this little old mud ball we know and love so well.”

  “And what’s the next step?”

  “Well, the pill approach persists into the 21st century, and is greatly improved. People will take them after sex to stop a pregnancy, or later on to abort one. Oh yeah, there’ll also be one for men.”

  Jack held up his hand. “Whoa! I can’t take in any more until I’ve digested this. The looks like we’re headed toward nirvana, if you define it as no more unwanted babies.”

  “A pretty narrow definition, but that’s the idea. Particularly when you consider babies who may be wanted, but in circumstances in which their chances of surviving to adulthood are very low indeed. Those circumstances obviously required a very different approach.”

  “‘Chances of surviving?’ Who’re you talking about now?”

  “People- entire societies, actually- whose way of life produced little but misery for them within the context of a rapidly-developing world. It’s not that popular a term yet, but it won’t be long before you’ll be hearing these societies described as ‘Third World Nations,’ that don’t do that much- except add to the world’s population burden.”

  “Illustrating the Malthusian theory,” Jack said. “And you’re saying that society finally found a way to deal with the problem.”

  “Yep. Well, several ‘ways’ succeeded each other during the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. When it became apparent that rubbers and oral contraceptives wouldn’t work in the Third World, the rest of the world put its scientists to work looking for a way to deliver contraceptives to these people en masse. And it only took them about a hundred years to get it right.”

  “How’d they end up handling it?”

  “Well, after years of salting the water supply and efforts at mass hypnosis, humanity had evolved to the point that it left hypnosis behind for implantation of information at the subconscious level, with the result that ovulation and sperm counts were reduced to practically zero.”

  “Shit!” Jack exclaimed. “That’s genocide.”

  “All depends on how you look at it. Gradually, limited numbers of people’s fertility was restored. And people in the developed nations were scrambling to get the same treatment. What it amounted to was that once childbirth became truly elective, many people decided that they’d just as soon not bother with it. Oh, and one more thing. By that time, it was possible to pretty much custom-build your offspring. Before long, you’ll be hearing the process described as ‘genetic engineering’. You could say that getting hold of the reproduction process was the principal social advance of the Third Millennium.”

  “Pretty attractive, on the face of it. Reminds me of all the shit that Ricky went through back in high school, when Trisha lied about being pregnant. Eliminating situations like that’s certainly a big plus. But as good as that is, I’m even more curious about something else.”

  “Really. And what might that be?”

  “How you got from there to here. From a flesh-and-blood baby to...”

  “A tertiary force array? That’s my ‘official’ label, for what it’s worth. A very good question that I knew you’d be asking. It has a rather long answer.”

  “Guess I’d better top up our coffee. By the way; where does the coffee go when you drink it?”

  The ends of Nick’s mustache assumed a slight up-angle as he held out his cup. “Just away. But I do taste it. We’ll come back to that if you like, but it’s a very small detail in a story that stretches over more than a few thousand years.”

  “Well, I’m way short of details about, for want of a better word, your ‘situation,’ so carry on and I’ll try to keep up.”

  “OK. For starters, let’s see if we can agree that, so far, the century of your birth’s been eventful, to say the least. Two world wars alone would qualify it for that distinction. Now, just a few years into its second half, you’ve had UFO landings and a nasty little ‘police action’ that could have started World War III, and the momentum’s still building. What would you say if I told you that the United States will have men on the moon in 1969?”

  “Well,” Jack said, “since it’s coming from you, I guess ‘No shit!’ might be appropriate. But how the hell are we going to do it?”

  “Brute force. And we can come back to that, too. But let me move on. The point I want to make is that the 20th century’s a catalytic period in world- make that universal- history. Of all the periods in the history of man, it’s the one that’s been most studied, hands down, right up to the time that I got hold of it, in 4231.”

  “Hm. It’d be like me trying to tell Alexander the Great about supersonic flight.”

  “Close enough, but there’s a vast difference between the two periods in the rate of technological progress. Suffice it to say that you and Alexander would both be working at the limits of your intellects just to understand the mechanics of upwards of 2000 years of progress, let alone their implications. By the time I came along, things were moving at quite an exponential clip, and accelerating.”

  “I guess so, if you’re getting rid of your bodies and going wherever the hell in time you please. How in the hell did that come about, anyway?”

  “Guess I’d better begin with a term that you’ll be hearing soon, and throughout the rest of your life: teleportation. Have you ever run across an author by the name of Charles Fort?”

  “Nope. F-O-R-T?

  “Yup. He’s been dead for a while. Iconoclast; sort of a cross between H.L. Mencken and Jules Verne. I bring him up only because it seems that he coined the word teleportation. you’d probably enjoy reading his The Book of the Damned. In the mid-sixties there’ll be a show on television, Star Trek, that’ll popularize a version of teleportation. Lets the characters leave their spaceship and land on the surface of the various planets that they visit. Not that different from what was ultimately developed, either.”

  “Well, then,” Jack said, “Press on, by all means, John Henry.”

  “Let’s just stay with Nick, okay? I think we’ve had all the name-swapping we need for the moment. So let me kick off with the obvious; since we’re having this conversation, we can put to rest the current question of humanity blowing itself off the face of the earth with thermonuclear bombs.”

  “Nice opening. Presumably, nothing inhuman does either?”

  “Nice distinction. No, humanity gets through the Late Barbarian Age comparatively cataclysm-free, at least as far as thermonuclear boom-booms are concerned. Humanity, by the way, is all there is.”

  “All there is? All there is where?”

  “Here. There. Anywhere.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that in all of the universe, we’re the only form of life there is?”

  “Well,” Nick said, “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. There are some emerging life forms here and there in the small percentage of the universe that we’ve gotten to so far. But as far as stand-up-put-on-pants-shoot-the-shit-fly-around guys are concerned, humans appear to be the whole ball of wax. As far as we know.”

  “Well, since ‘as far as we know’ covers a pretty fair piece of ground where you and the fifth millennium are concerned, all of the aliens-in-flying-saucers would appear to be so much eyewash. Or have I missed something?”

  Nick shook his head. “Not ‘missed,’ just misinterpreted. Toss out the aliens and you still have a basket full of interesting occurrences.”

  “Oh, so we get to keep the flying saucers.”

  “Indeed you do. We do. Since ‘they’ are ‘we,’ just from different time periods.”

  “‘Periods,’” Jack echoed, his eyes widening, “Meaning that humans
have been traveling back in time, and for a long time, to fuck around with us poor primitives? Why?”

  Nick smiled. “Why not? Put yourself in their- well, our- place for a minute, and think about not doing it, if in fact you could. Generations of the best minds overworking themselves to solve the riddles of quantum physics, spacetime and gravity, and then not use it? Just wouldn’t be human.”

  “No, I guess not. No more than sitting on the a-bomb was. If you have something...”

  “You’re bloody well going to use it. Until, and if, the species evolves away from technological opportunism. And I can tell you that when I left my home period, it was still going strong.”

  “Don’t guess that has to be a bad thing,” Jack mused. “Unless you guys stumble on a way to fuck up the entire universe. Reminds me of certain capricious gods of the Greeks, looking down from Olympus on mortal man.”

  Nick released a short bark of laughter. “Don’t suppose you could ever rule that out a hundred percent.”

  13 SEEING AS HOW…

  Nick’s latest information reverberating throughout his brain, Jack gave the Cunningham its head for the half-mile between the house that he still thought of as Chez Mose and the Bisque city limits sign, where State Road 291 becomes South Lee Street. Easing off the throttle, he gave the engine’s braking a hand with a couple of quick stabs at the car’s Alfin drums, quickly scrubbing off speed as he approached the Main Street intersection. Wait’ll Buster sees this, he thought, turning right and heading toward Bisque Chrysler-Plymouth.

  Pulling into the already-open door of the dealership’s service department, he slipped the transmission into neutral and gunned the engine; several faces that were inquiring into the innards of other cars turned his way, and stayed there, held by the compact curves of blue and white aluminum that surrounded the unmistakable sound of V-8 muscle. The face belonging to Floyd Simpson morphed from motorhead envy to I’m-in-charge-here as it approached, feet picking up tempo as Simpson recognized Jack, who had gotten out of the car.