The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories Read online

Birth of a Notion

  That the first inventor of a workable time machine was a science fiction enthusiast is by no means a coincidence. It was inevitable. Why else should an otherwise sane physicist even dare track down the various out-of -the-way theories that seemed to point toward maneuverability in time in the very teeth of General Relativity?

  It took energy, of course. Everything takes energy. But Simeon Weill was prepared to pay the price. Anything (well, almost anything) to make his hidden science-fictional dream come true.

  The trouble was that there was no way of controlling either the direction or distance through which one was chronologically thrust. It was all the result of random temporal collisions of the harnessed tachyons. Weill could make mice and even rabbits disappear-but future or past, he couldn't say. One mouse reappeared, so he must have traveled but a short way into the past-and it seemed quite unharmed. The others? Who could tell?

  He devised an automatic release for the machine. Theoretically, it would reverse the push (whatever the push might be) and bring back the object (from whichever direction and whatever distance it had gone). It didn't always work, but five rabbits were brought back unharmed.

  If he could only make the release foolproof, Weill would have tried it himself. He was dying to try it-which was not the proper reaction of a theoretical physicist, but-was the absolute predictable emotion of a crazed s. f. fan who was particularly fond of the space-operish productions of some decades before the present year of 1976.

  It was inevitable, then, that the accident should happen. On no account would he have stepped between the tempodes with conscious determination. He knew the chances were about two in five he would not return. On the other hand, he was dying to try it, so he tripped over his own big feet and went staggering between those tempodes as a result of total accident. . . But are there really accidents?

  He might have been hurled into the past or into the future. As 1t happened, he was,hurled into the past.

  He might have been hurled uncounted thousands of years into the past or one and a half days. As it happened, he was hurled fifty-one years into the past to a time when the Teapot Dome Scandal was burning brightly but the nation was keeping Cool with Coolidge and knew that nobody in the world could lick Jack Dempsey.

  But there was something that his theories didn't tell Weill. He knew what could happen to the particles themselves, but there was no way of predicting what would happen to the relationships between the various particles. And where are relationships more complex than in the brain?

  So what happened was that as Weill moved backward through time, his mind unreeled. Not all the way, fortunately, since Weill had not yet been conceived in the year before America's Sesquicentennial, and a brain with less than no development would have been a distinct handicap.

  It unreeled haltingly, and partially, and clumsily, and when Weill found himself on a park bench not far from his 1976 home in lower Manhattan, where he experimented in dubious symbiosis with New York University, he found himself in the year 1925 with an abysmally aching head and no very clear idea as to what anything was all about.

  He found himself staring at a man of about forty, hair slicked down, cheekbones prominent, beaky nose, who was sharing the same bench with him.

  The man looked concerned. He said, "Where did you come from? You were not here a moment ago. " He had a distinct Teutonic accent. .

  Weill wasn't sure. He couldn't remember. But one phrase seemed to stick through the chaos within his skull even though he wasn't sure what it meant.

  "Time machine," he gasped.

  The other man stiffened. He said, "Do you read pseudoscientific romances?"

  "What?" said Weill.

  "Have you read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine?"

  The repetition of the phrase seemed to soothe Weill a bit. The pain in his head lessened. The name Wells seemed familiar, or was that his own name? No. his own name was Weill.

  "Wells?" he said. "I am Weill. "

  The other man thrust out a hand. "I am Hugo Gernsback. I write pseudo-scientific romances at times, but of course, it is not right to say 'pseudo. ' That makes it seem there is something fake about it. That is not so. It should be properly written and then it will be scientific fiction. I like to shorten that"-his dark eyes gleamed-"to scientifiction. "

  "Yes," said Weill, trying desperately to collect shattered memories and unwound experiences and getting only moods and impressions. "Scientifiction. Better than pseudo. Still not quite-"

  "If done well. Have you read my 'Ralph 124C41 +'?"

  "Hugo Gernsback," said Weill, frowning, "Famous-"

  "In a small way," said the other, nodding his head. "I have been publishing magazines on radio and on electrical inventions for years. Have you read 'Science and Invention'?"

  Weill caught the word "invention" and somehow that left him on the edge of understanding what he had meant by "time machine. " He grew eager and said, "Yes, yes. "

  "And what do you think of the scientifiction that I add in each issuer'

  Scientifiction again. The word had a soothing effect on him and yet it was not quite right. Something more-Not quite-

  He said it, "Something more. Not quite-"

  "Not quite enough? Yes, I've been thinking that. Last year I sent out circulars asking for subscriptions to a magazine to contain nothing but scientifiction. I would call it Scientifiction. The results were very disappointing. How would you explain that?"

  Weill didn't hear him. He was still concentrating on the word "scientifiction," which didn't seem quite right, but he couldn't understand why it didn't.

  He said, "The name is not right. "

  "Not right for a magazine? Maybe that's so. I have not thought of a good name; something to catch the eye, to get across just what the reader will get, and what he will want. That is it. If I could get a good name I would start the magazine and not worry about circulars. I would not ask anything. I would simply put it on every newsstand in the United States next spring; that is all. "

  Weill stared at him blankly.

  The man said, "Of course, the stories I want should teach science even as they amuse and excite the reader. They should open to him the vast scope of the future. Airplanes will cross the Atlantic nonstop. "

  "Airplanes?" Weill caught a fugitive vision of a large metal whale, rising on its own exhaust. A moment, and it was gone. He said, "Large ones, carrying hundreds of people faster than sound. "

  "Of course. Why not? Staying in touch at all times by radio. "

  "Satellites. "

  "What?" It was the other man's turn to look puzzled.

  "Radio waves bounce off an artificial satellite in space. "

  The other man nodded vigorously. "I predicted the use of radio waves to detect at a distance in 'Ralph 124C41 +. ' Space mirrors? I've predicted that. And television, of course. And energy from the atom. "

  Weill was galvanized. Images flashed before his mind's eye in no suitable order. "Atom," he said, "Yes. Nuclear bombs. "

  "Radium," said the other man complacently.

  "Plutonium," said Weill.

  "What?"

  "Plutonium. And nuclear fusion. Imitating the Sun. Nylon and plastics. Pesticides to kill the insects. Computers to kill the problems. "

  "Computers? You mean robots?"

  "Pocket computers," said Weill enthusiastically. "Little things. Hold them in your hand and work out problems. Little radios. Hold them in your hand, too. Cameras take photographs and develop them right in the box. Holographs. Three. dimensional pictures. "

  The other man said, "Do you write scientifiction?"

  Weill didn't listen. He kept trying to trap the images. They were growing clearer. "Skyscrapers," he said. "Aluminum and glass. Highways. Color television. Man on the Moon. Probes to Jupiter. "

  "Man on the Moon," said the other man. "Jules Verne. Do you read Jules Verne?"

  Weill shook his head. It was
quite clear now. The mind was healing a bit. "Stepping down onto the Moon's surface on television. Everyone watching. And pictures of Mars. No canals on Mars. "

  "No canals on Mars?" said the other man, astonished. "They have been seen. "

  "No canals," said Weill firmly. "Volcanoes. The biggest. Canyons the biggest. Transistors, lasers, tachyons. Trap the tachyons. Make them push against time. Move through time. Move through time. A-ma-"

  Weill's voice was fading and his outlines trembled. It so happened that the other man looked away at this moment, staring into the blue sky, and muttering, "Tachyons? What is he saying?"

  He was thinking that if a stranger he met casually in the park was so interested in scientifiction, it might be a good sign that it was time for the magazine. And then he remembered he had no name and dismissed the notion regretfully.

  He looked back in time to hear Weill's last words, "Tachyonic time travel-an-amazing-stor-y-" And he was gone, snapping back to his own time.

  Hugo Gernsback stared in horror at the place where the man had been. He hadn't seen him come and now he really hadn't seen him go. His mind rejected the actual disappearance. How strange a man-his clothes were oddly cut, come to think of it, and his words were wild and whirling.

  The stranger himself said it-an amazing story. His last words.

  And then Gemsback muttered the phrase under his breath, "Amazing story. . . Amazing Stories?"

  A smile tugged at the comers of his mouth.

  One last word. . .

  In putting together the stories for this collection, I couldn't help noticing that between November 1974 and November 1975, I had written and sold seven science fiction stories. In addition, I had written and sold two mystery stories and one mystery novel, for a total of 132,000 words of fiction.

  You understand then, why, when some people, blinded by my 120+ books of nonfiction, ask me why I have quit writing fiction, I always answer, "I haven't. "

  Well, I haven't!

  And while I live, I won't!