Athene's Prophecy (Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy) (2 page)

Athene stared at them in disbelief. Obviously something was wrong, but what? Most likely the news of her prank had been relayed to Earth, and these people were going to be fired. "Look," she started, "I know that what I did is going to have repercussions, but I promise I shall make a statement taking full responsibility, and . . ."

"What you did was wrong," Dr Chu interrupted. "You might think it was harmless enough, but you never considered what might follow."

"I know . . ." Athene started.

"I doubt it," Dr Chu interrupted again. "We have a problem, and we need you."

"What problem?" Athene asked cautiously.

"It appears that the wretch who now occupies your cell read your notes and decided to commit a crime with the perfect alibi, namely he was not born when it was committed. The crime was carried out on another planet, presumably to prevent our knowing about it, and that planet had to have space travel capability to get the reward to him. He chose Ranh."

The closest planet to Earth with a civilization. "And I'm going to be responsible for . . ."

"Not in the sense you are thinking," Dr Chu gave a wan smile. "Let me explain. It appears that he changed something very profoundly on their system, and we suspect . . ."

"Can't you use the viewer to find out?" Athene interrupted.

"Please!" Dr Chu said. "We suspect the beneficiary there was rewarded with power at another's expense, but that left him with the problem that the same could be done to him. His solution seems to have been to exterminate the human race to prevent the temporal viewer ever being constructed."

"But this afternoon all was . . ."

"The problem with interfering with the past," Chu shrugged, "is that you can make changes that took hundreds of years for the participants in what is, for you a matter of seconds. Anyway, whether you believe that or not, believe this. As a consequence of his activities, we are now in a state of paradox . . ."

Paradox! When the cause necessary to create the effect was prevented from occurring by the effect. The common example was killing your parents before you were born; the parents did not die unless you killed them, but if they died, you did not exist, hence you could not kill them, therefore they did not die, except if they did not die then you were born and hence you killed them.

"At that point, the amplitude of our time-line collapsed to zero, which means there is zero probability that what was there when we left survived. We can use the viewer to see Earth in the present, which is how we know that all civilization on Earth is effectively terminated, however we seem to have been shifted off any actual time-line, and effectively we are no longer connected causally with the rest of the Universe. We can guess when the critical event happened, because that is the time when we can no longer view Earth, other than at present, and we have to assume that was when we were shifted off that timeline. Unfortunately, the critical decision presumably occurred on Ranh, and we cannot penetrate sufficiently close to the act to guess what happened."

"That's probably because the decision was a mental one," Grenfell offered. "Once someone had decided to do something, that created the paradox, even though it may have taken some time to actually carry out the act, and we cannot watch every person's thinking process on another planet."

"Whatever happened," Dr Chu continued, "The practical result is that we can no longer communicate with anything other than through the temporal viewer, for example, or receive solar power, which is why we are trying to save every Joule of energy we can."

"So we have the choice of sitting around, running out of food, and dying," Athene mused, "or sacrificing ourselves to allow humanity to survive. Not that it's much of a sacrifice if we're going to die anyway."

"What have you got in mind?" Dr Chu asked. He might be puzzled, she noted, but Commander Black was terrified.

"Try to get a message to Lansfeld," Athene replied. "If you recall, he was going to give up physics to be a space pilot, but he failed admission to the academy when, during his test where he elected to study the magnetosphere of Uranus, he failed to realize that somebody else was using one of the pieces of equipment on the deep space array. If he corrected that, he may never have been a physicist, he would never have discovered temporal theory, and . . ."

"To be honest, I thought of that too, but it won't work," Dr Chu said quietly. "A curious fact about multiverses is that when a cause has several possible outcomes, they all occur until eventually something happens, such as somebody making an observation, that collapses the probabilities to precisely one. Accordingly, you see one timeline because only one sequence of events actually happened that lead to your now. However, if somebody in history could have done something different that will resolve the paradox, the corresponding state vector now has a finite probability, proportional to the probability that it will resolve the paradox. There is one very faint alternative timeline, and while it eventually involves Lansfeld, there is no possibility that any such option commences with him."

"So, why are you telling me?"

"Because you speak Latin and ancient Greek. Because of the limitations of relativity, this one last chance commences on Rhodes in the first century."

"How could that help?" It was unbelievable that anything on Rhodes in the first century could affect the outcome of an event in the twenty-fifth century.

"By getting alien help. This new time-line goes through an alien civilization that we know was exterminated," Professor Grenfell explained.

"You mean . . ?"

"I mean that a newly generated timeline shows that if this Roman accepts an opportunity to be abducted in a space vehicle, and if he can get to this planet Ulse, and if once there he does certain things, he may return and with one other he could solve this problem for us," Dr Chu said.

"And why do we think this Roman could solve a problem that an advanced civilization couldn't?" Athene asked. "It just isn't possible."

"No, just highly improbable," Chu shrugged.

"In fact," Professor Grenfell added with a wry smile, "following the paradox, a future timeline for that civilization has formed with a similar intensity as this Roman's alternative timeline, which is consistent with this Roman's arrival altering the future of this alien civilization."

"But in reality, this Roman didn't do any of this, did he?" Athene asked.

"No, he didn't, seemingly because sufficient cause could not be put in place until the paradox occurred. So you, Pallas Athene, have to play Goddess again."

"Why do you think I can make the difference?"

"First, that a new timeline appears means that it commenced with something that only happened because the paradox happened, which means someone has to put that cause in place. We hope you can do that."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Several things have to happen," Professor Grenfell explained. "To get to this alien civilization, the Roman has to board a space ship. As it happens, an alien zoo-specimen collector was nearby. I have enticed that ship to land at a place where our Roman could be abducted . . ."

"How did you manage that?" Athene asked.

"I played on his greed," Grenfell smiled. "There is to be a major battle near where we hope to get our Roman abducted. I have persuaded this collector to visit the site and record the battle. He could make far more from the rights to that recording than he could ever make selling specimens, so the alien will land and put up recording equipment."

"That's cunning," Athene said.

"So that gets us an alien space ship on the site. You must persuade the Roman to be abducted."

"Even if he gets abducted," Athene replied dubiously, "what good does that do?"

"According to Ulsian law, the abduction of a person whose work could alter the path of his civilization is a major crime, in which case both the perpetrator and the victim have to be taken to Ulse. So, the key to getting him there is to turn him into somebody who otherwise could have altered the future of Earth."

"And that something is?"

"Science is our best bet," Dr Chu said, "because our subject almost made a discovery. You have to persuade him to do so."

"That sounds simple," she said sarcastically.

"Yes, and there's more. This Roman was highly original as a military strategist, and that must not change."

"The science gets him noticed by the aliens," Grenfell explained, "but once he gets there he has to do something to change the aliens' future. That will not be science."

"It won't be military either," Black muttered. "They'll have got past swords."

"Yes, they got past swords," Grenfell shook his head in despair, "but it could be like the so-called butterfly effect. Maybe he inspired someone to do something different. These aliens had a record of continuous losses until they were wiped out. Maybe . . ."

"We don't know what he did, or, with the other way of looking at it, is yet to do, because the alternative timeline's too weak to visualize," Dr Chu interrupted, "but we get more than one go at this. If I'm correct and the science is critical, because probabilities of different steps are multiplied together, fixing that will strengthen the overall signal, then we can see what we have to do next. As an aside, we know this works because diverting that space ship has already improved the signal strength of this alternative timeline. We know we can improve our chances."

"What do we think happened to this Roman?" Athene asked.

"During the invasion of Britain he and some close family members were killed by Celts," Dr Chu explained, "and until then, as much as possible must remain unchanged so we don't simply replace one paradox with another. Some of Vespasian's men caught up with the Celts and killed all of them, so we're in luck: since everybody in this incident dies, our altering what happened by taking the Roman and any others off-world won't create another paradox. Since we get more than one go, we try for one big change at a time, so two guesses don't cancel out each other."

"So what do I do specifically?"

"This new time-line commences at a temple to . . . like to guess?"

"How would I know?" she frowned.

"To you!"

"What?"

"The Roman falls asleep between two large stone objects and underneath a statue in a disused temple to Pallas Athene," Chu smiled, "which I thought might appeal to you. Do what you can just before he wakes, then if the overall probability of resolving the paradox improves, the intensity of the line increases and we get more detail. Then you can have another go, a little earlier. You get about six attempts. After that, well . . ."

"What do I know about this Roman?"

"Fortunately, quite a bit, because he featured strongly in a thesis about why Roman science did not advance. Four students spent quite a lot of time viewing him, and we have their recordings. I'll download the notes into your notebook, if you wish."

"So you want me to give him a quick physics lesson?"

"No! I am afraid he must make the discovery himself. You must inspire him."

"I don't want to be unduly negative," Athene said, "but I just don't believe you can turn a Roman soldier into a leading physicist . . ."

"We know it's not easy," Chu nodded, "but it's our only chance to undo this disaster. According to the thesis, he was toying with the heliocentric theory, and had a debate with his teacher. He lost that debate when his teacher provided physical proof that the Earth could not travel around the sun and he gave up; his attitude could be summarized as Aristotle was obviously right, and in any case, who cares? So you must inspire him to greater things and also give him information that will get him through a couple of crises."

"There's another reason he must prove his heliocentric theory," Grenfell added. "We're asking a Roman to board an alien space ship and comprehend what's going on. When told, he must accept there are other planets going around other stars."

"We're asking him to do what Galileo did from roughly the same starting point," Chu added. "He nearly did it, so it's possible, if he can undo Aristotle's errors."

"But he didn't do it," Athene pointed out.

"The hardest part of making a discovery," Dr Chu smiled, "is convincing yourself that you can, that it's possible."

"Are you sure I'm the right person to . . ."

"Oddly enough, yes," Chu smiled. "If you could inspire what would have become a wine-sodden nothing to change his life and write two of the greatest pieces of literature of classical times, you can do this."

"I don't know enough about physics," she warned, although secretly she was very pleased with herself to receive such an accolade.

"You don't have to," Chu nodded supportively. "What you have to do is prod him in the right direction. I'll tell you what you should tell him, but leave you to work out how to say it. Will you do it?"

"I'll try," she replied. "I mean, it's not as if I've much choice, is it?"

"It's when you've got no choice you tend to make the right one," Chu smiled. "If we can help in any way, ask, but don't waste time. There will be no further supplies of food or spare parts, and we do not know how long this will take."

"Do we know how long we can exist in this state of paradox?"

"Until the paradox is resolved or until we run out of food," Dr Chu said. "The instant our interventions cannot resolve the issue in our favour, or, for that matter, we give up trying, we cease to exist, as does the human civilization."

"We are devoting much of our nuclear energy to life support and growing vegetables," Grenfell added. "However, there is a problem. The viewer is very energy hungry, and when we use the viewer, we have to turn off certain life-support functions. If we over-use it, we shall degrade our own environment to an extent that we shall not survive."

"One of the other odd things about where we are," Dr Chu added, "is that since we are not connected directly to the rest of the Universe and cannot get energy in, it is also rather difficult to get rid of spare heat. If we cannot work out a way to get rid of it, and I am working on that, we shall eventually cook. The good news is that the viewer gets rid of energy, but the bad news is it does not get rid of heat."