Sunset of the Gods - By Steve White Page 0,3
a great gift. “We want you—”
“—To be the mission leader,” Jason finished for him. “Even though this time you have to ask me to do it,” he couldn’t resist adding, for all his growing interest.
Rutherford spoke with what was clearly a great, if not supreme, effort. “I am aware that we have had our differences. And I own that I may have been a trifle high-handed on the last occasion. But surely you of all people, as discoverer of the Teloi element in the human past, can see the importance of investigating it further.”
“Maybe. But why do you need me, specifically, to investigate it?”
“I should think it would be obvious. You are the nearest thing we have to a surviving Teloi expert.” Jason was silent, as this was undeniable. Rutherford pressed his advantage. “Also, there is the perennial problem of inconspicuousness.” Rutherford gazed at Jason, who knew he was gazing at wavy brown-black hair, dark brown eyes, light olive skin, and straight features.
Jason, despite his name, was no more “ethnically pure” than any other inhabitant of Hesperia or any other colony world. But by some fluke, the Hellenic contribution to his genes had reemerged to such an extent that he could pass as a Greek in any era of history. It also helped that he stood less than six feet, and therefore was not freakishly tall by most historical standards. It had always made him valuable to the Temporal Regulatory Authority, which was legally interdicted from using genetic nanoviruses to tailor its agents’ appearance to fit various milieus in Earth’s less-cosmopolitan past. The nightmare rule of the Transhuman movement had placed that sort of thing as far beyond the pale of acceptability as the Nazis had once placed anti-Semitism.
“If we were sending an expedition to northern Europe,” Rutherford persisted, “I’d use Lundberg. Or to pre-Columbian America, Cardones. But for this part of Earth, you are the only suitable choice currently available, or at least the only one with your—” (another risibly obvious effort at being ingratiating) “—undeniable talents.”
Jason turned around, leaned on the parapet, and looked out over the breathtaking panorama once again. “Are you sure you really want me? After my latest display of those ‘talents.’”
Rutherford’s face took on a compassionate expression he would never have permitted himself if Jason had been looking. “I understand. Up till now, you have taken understandable pride in never having lost a single member of any expedition you have led. And this time you returned from the past alone. But that was due to extraordinary and utterly unforeseeable circumstances. No one dreamed you would encounter what you did in the remote past. And no one blames you.”
“But aside from that, aren’t you afraid I might be just a little too . . . close to this?” Once again, Jason clenched his fist to prevent his hand from straying to his pocket.
Rutherford smiled, noticing the gesture. “If anything, I should think that what you know of Dr. Sadaka-Ramirez’s fate would make you even more interested.”
Deirdre, thought Jason, recalling his last glimpse of those green eyes as she had faded into the past. Deirdre, from whom it is practically a statistical certainty that I myself am descended.
He turned back to face Rutherford. “Well, I don’t suppose it can do any harm to meet the other people you have lined up.”
CHAPTER TWO
Seven decades earlier, Aaron Weintraub had held the key.
Before that, time travel had been merely a fictional device. That it could never be anything more than that had been as certain as any negative can ever be. Over and above its seemingly preposterous physics, the concept self-evidently violated the very logic of causality. The classic statement was the “Grandfather Paradox”: what was to prevent a time traveler from killing his own young, childless grandfather? In which case, how could the time traveler have been born? And who, therefore, had killed the grandfather? No; this was one case in which the dread word impossible was pronounced without hesitation or doubt. Physicists and philosophers were at one about that. Reality protected itself.
Then Weintraub had embarked on a series of experiments to verify the existence of the temporal energy potential which he had postulated (to the near-unanimous hoots of his colleagues) as a necessary anchor to hold matter in time. If it existed, theory predicted that it could be manipulated. And Weintraub had proceeded to do precisely that. Subatomic particles had appeared in his device a few microseconds before the power was turned on and remained for a