Gregory Benford - Timescape (Sf Masterworks 27)

T O R ICHARD C URTIS WITH T HANKS

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I wish to acknowledge warmly the contribution made by my sister-in-law, Hilary Foister Benford, to this book. She contributed significantly to the manuscript, bringing to it her special qualities of interest in people. Certain characters are in part her creation. As a native of England and a graduate of Cambridge University, she gave invaluable help in developing and maintaining a consistent British idiom. Without her contribution this would be a quite different book.

GREGORY BENFORD
Cambridge
August, 1979

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For technical discussions I am indebted to Doctors Riley Newman, David Book and Sidney Coleman.

Many facets of this work were improved by my wife, Joan Abbe. Her patience and support, as well as that of my children, Alyson and Mark, were invaluable.

For editing and work on the final draft I thank Asenath Hammond. I am indebted to David and Marilee Samuelson, Charles Brown, Malcolm Edwards, Richard Curtis, Lawrence Littenberg and especially David Hartwell for comments on the manuscript.

Many scientific elements in this novel are true. Others are speculative, and thus may well prove false. My aim has been to illuminate some outstanding philosophical difficulties in physics. If the reader emerges with the conviction that time represents a fundamental riddle in modern physics, this book will have served its purpose.

GREGORY BENFORD
Cambridge
August, 1979

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external . NEWTON How is it possible to account for the difference between past and future when an examination of the laws of physics reveals only the symmetry of time? present-day physics makes no provision whatever for a flowing time, or for a moving present moment .

SPRING, 1998

REMEMBER TO SMILE A LOT, JOHN RENFREW thought moodily. People seemed to like that. They never wondered why you kept on smiling, no matter what was said. It was a kind of general sign of good will, he supposed, one of the tricks he could never master.

Daddy, look

Damn, watch out! Renfrew cried. Get that paper out of my porridge, will you? Marjorie, why are the bloody dogs in the kitchen while were having breakfast?

Three figures in suspended animation stared at him. Marjorie, turning from the stove with a spatula in her hand. Nicky, raising a spoon to a mouth which formed an O of surprise. Johnny beside him, holding out a school paper, his face beginning to fall. Renfrew knew what was going through his wifes mind. John must be really upset. He never gets angry .

Right, he didnt. It was another luxury they couldnt afford.

The still photograph unfroze. Marjorie moved abruptly, shooing the yelping dogs out the back door. Nicky bowed her head to study her cooked cereal. Then Marjorie led Johnny back to his place at the table. Renfrew took a long, rustling breath and bit into his toast.

Dont bother Daddy today, Johnny. Hes got a very important meeting this morning.

A meek nod. Im sorry, Daddy.

Daddy. They all called him Daddy. Not Pop, as Renfrews father had wanted to be called. That was a name for fathers with rough hands, who worked with caps on.

Renfrew looked moodily round the table. Sometimes he felt out of place here, in his own kitchen. That was his son sitting there in a Perse school uniform blazer, speaking in that clear upper-class voice. Renfrew remembered the confusing mixture of contempt and envy he had felt towards such boys when he was Johnnys age. At times he would glance casually at Johnny and the memory of those times would come back. Renfrew would brace himself for that familiar well-bred indifference in his sons faceand be moved to find admiration there instead.

Im the one should be sorry, lad. I didnt mean to shout at you like that. Its as your mother said, Im a bit bothered today. So whats this paper you wanted to show me, eh?

Well, theyre having this competition for the best paper Johnny began shyly on how school kids can help clean up the environment and everything and save energy and things. I wanted you to see it before I give it in.

Renfrew bit his lip. I havent got time today, Johnny. When does it have to be in? Ill try and read it through tonight if I can. Okay?

Okay. Thanks, Daddy. Ill leave it here. I know youre doing frightfully important work. The English master said so.

Oh, did he? What did he say?

Well, actually The boy hesitated. He said the scientists got us into this beastly mess in the first place and theyre the only ones who can get us out of it now, if anyone can.

Hes not the first one to say that, Johnny. Thats a truism.

Truism? Whats a truism, Daddy?

My form mistress says just the opposite, Nicky came in suddenly. She says the scientists have caused enough trouble already. She says God is the only one who can get us out of it and He probably wont.

Oh, lor, another prophet of doom. Well, I suppose thats better than the primmies and their back-to-the-stone-age rubbish. Except that the prophets of doom stay around and depress us all.

Miss Crenshaw says the primmies wont escape Gods judgment either , however far they run, Nicky said definitively.

Marjorie, whats going on in that school? I dont want her filling Nickys head with ideas like that. The woman sounds unbalanced. Speak to the headmistress about her.

I doubt that it would do much good, Marjorie replied equably. There are far more prophets of doom, as you call them, around than anyone else these days.

Miss Crenshaw says we should all just pray, Nicky went on obstinately. Miss Crenshaw says its a judgment . And probably the end of the world.

Well, thats just silly, dear, Marjorie said. Where would we be if we all just sat about and prayed? You have to get on with things. Speaking of which, you children had better get a move on or youll be late to school.

Miss Crenshaw says, Consider the lilies of the field, Nicky muttered as she left the room.

Well, Im no bloody lily, Renfrew said, pushing back his chair and rising, so Id better go off and toil for another day.

Leaving me to spin? Marjorie smiled. Its the only way, isnt it? Heres your lunch. No meat again this week, but I got a bit of cheese at the farm and I pulled some early carrots. I think we may have some potatoes this year. Youd like that, wouldnt you? She reached up and kissed him. I do hope the interview goes well.

Thanks, luv. He felt the old familiar tightening begin. He had to get that funding. Hed put vast sums of time and thought into this project. He must have the equipment. It had to be tried.

Renfrew left the house and mounted his bicycle. Already he was sloughing off the family man, his thoughts reaching ahead to the lab, the days instructions to the technicians, the coming interview with Peterson.

He pumped along, leaving Grantchester and skirting round Cambridge. It had rained during the night. A slight mist hung low over the ploughed fields, softening the light. Drops clung to the new green leaves on the trees. Moisture glittered on the carpet of bluebells covering the ground in the clearings. The lane here ran alongside a little stream lined by low alder bushes and nettles. On the surface of the stream he could see ripples forming as the bugs called water boatmen jerked themselves along on their oarlike legs. Kingcups were blooming in a sheet of gold along the banks and big soft furry catkins were coming out on the willows. It was a fresh April morning, the kind he had loved as a boy in Yorkshire, watching the mist rise off the moors in the pale morning sun and the hares scurry off at his approach. The lane he was cycling along had sunk deep over the years and his head was nearly level with the tree roots on either side. A smell of damp earth and rain-washed grass came to him, mixed with an acrid tang of coal smoke.