Stephen Dedman - The Godfather Paradox.pdf - Stephen Dedman - widez2

The Godfather Paradox

Stephen Dedman

It was a beautiful day for the beach, but terrible weather for a funeral, and Peter Daniels stood behind

Hannah's family wishing he could faint, just to be away from there. The family glowered at him

occasionally, maybe blaming him, maybe expecting him t o throw himself into the grave à la Hamlet, or

maybe wondering what he was doing there; for them, admitting that Hannah had had a boyfriend,

especially a black boyfriend, would be nearly as bad as admitting that she'd OD'ed on hyper. Peter

glanced at Mel issa, wondering if the family had known all the details of that relationship. Probably not;

Melissa had discovered the body and called the cops, which was enough to explain the hostile reception

she'd received.

Melissa looked at the expensive coffin, the women's dresses, the old-fashioned three-piece suits, and the

ancient memorials surrounding them. Burials were as twentieth-century as neckties - the rich were frozen,

and everyone else cremated; she doubted th at as many as a hundred people had been buried in New

York (legally, anyway) since she'd been born. Hannah's family seemed like travellers from the 1980s, or

maybe even the 1890s.

The two friends stood there until the service was over, then each took a few steps towards the family,

which was folding up into itself like a fist clenching - or, Melissa thought, like a Roman garrison forming a

shield wall bristling with spears. Meliss a abruptly turned on her heel and strode towards the exit; Peter

took another hesitant step towards the family, then sighed and followed her.

"I keep feeling like it's my fault," Melissa explained softly as he caught up to her, "and the last thing I need

is a pack of sanctimonious leftovers from Edgar Allan Poe agreeing with me."

Peter nodded. "Well, they'd hardly blame themselves, would they?"

"Do you ever blame yourself?"

"No." He shrugged. "Okay, yes, a little, but nowhere near as much as I blame the slime who sold her the

stuff, and I guess I'm glad I don't know who that was."

"What would you do if you did know?"

"I don't know . . . Probably nothing. I'm hardly the vigilante type; my ancestors went to a lot more

lynchings than they would have liked. Besides, whoever it was, I don't think he wanted to kill her; he may

have miscalculated the dose, or maybe she di d, and she probably didn't tell him it was her first time. She

hated admitting that, you know that."

"So you don't think it was anyone's fault?"

"You're the historian. Who killed the Kennedys?"

"What?"

"Who do you blame for the holocaust? Or the greenhouse effect? Or AIDS? Or the Hallowe'en War?

No one person was responsible for any of them. Hannah shouldn't have taken the stuff. The slime who

gave or sold it to her shouldn't have. The slime who sold it to the slime who gave or sold - and so on, ad

infinitum. There's some blame left over for her parents, for telling her so much crap she felt the only way

she could find out what was true was to try it herself . . . but I think the worst you can b lame yourself for

is not being in the right place at the time."

Melissa shook her head violently. "Everyone knows you can get drugs on campus, but no one does

anything about it, either because they don't care or because they're scared of the Mafia."

"People have been taking drugs for millennia, Hulkower," Peter said, softly. "It's as inevitable as the

weather, and like the weather, everyone complains but no one does anything about it, except maybe

make it worse."

Melissa wasn't listening. She stopped suddenly and stared at the tomb at the right of the exit. "Do you

know who's buried there?" she asked.

"No."

"Frank Costello."

"The comedian?"

"The mobster - 'Prime Minister of the Underworld', they called him."

Peter let her stare and sob for nearly a minute, then gently squeezed her shoulders. "He's dead,

Hulkower. Hannah's dead. Everyone in this place is dead. If you try taking on the Mafia, you'll be dead.

Let's get out of here, huh?"

He drove her back to her dorm, and spent the night in her room. He slept in her bed, holding her; they

made love once before breakfast, and didn't see each other again for nearly two years.

The morning news shows devoted nearly half a minute to the experiment, including a few shots of the

breadboard rig. None of them seemed sure how seriously to take it, but Daniels had expected that. He

decided to devote the morning to marking test papers , a sure cure for over-excitement, and told the

computer to record all calls unless they were from the Nobel Prize committee.

To his surprise, the phone rang at eleven. He glanced at the Caller ID; it was a four digit number, which

indicated an internal call - and obviously someone who knew computers well enough to fool a Turing

program, which ruled out most of his fellow physi cists. "Daniels."

"Peter?"

The voice was vaguely familiar, but nothing more, and he wished that the university didn't regard

videophones as an extravagance. "Yes?"

"It's Melissa Hulkower." There was a brief pause, then, "I hear you've invented a time machine."

"Well, sort of," he said. "I'm afraid it's no use to the history department - or any threat, for that matter.

Anyway, how're you doing?"

"I'm okay," she replied. "What does the machine do?"

Daniels restrained a sigh. "What have you heard?"

"That you've used it to send small samples of radio-isotopes back a few weeks, and checked the rate of

decay. Is that correct?"

"Basically. The results are in Nature."

"And you've found capsules that you don't have any record of sending, which have dates from several

years in the future printed on them, and you assume someone is going to send."

"Yeah. That's caused the real stir. Of course, we've lost a few capsules as well, but that's hardly

surprising - the damn machine can't send more than a few grams: the biggest sample, which is supposed

to be from 2112, was just over 3.1 grams."

"What if you build a bigger machine?"

"We'd need a lot more power, for one thing - and it's exponential, not linear. Simone's worked it out

mathematically, and she says the absolute limit's about forty-two grams and a hundred and seven years,

even if you blow up the sun."

"Oh."

"Besides, the 2112 sample appeared in Price's office, two floors up from the lab, which seems to confirm

that the further you send a sample, the harder it is to place it in a precise location. I forget how many of

the bloody things we must have lost by n ow. Anyway, if you want to come and see it, you're welcome,

but it really won't be any use to the history department . . ."

Melissa looked at the sprawl of equipment, nodding. "The glass case is the transmitter?"

"Uh-huh. It's a vacuum chamber - we can't afford to waste power sending air back into the past. And it's

a receiver, too, when our future selves - or whoever - manage to hit it. There's always a burst of

Cerenkov radiation when they miss, which is why we've put counters all around the building."

"And the capsules you send are radioactive, too?"

Peter nodded. "That's how we confirmed the mechanism. If you send an isotope back twenty-four hours,

it arrives showing the same amount of decay as it would in twenty-four hours in, uh, normal time. The

same sort of thing would happen if we sent someth ing that was alive - assuming it could survive in the

vacuum."

Melissa nodded. "Why all the security outside?"

Peter smiled. "A lot of the public think we can use it to hop back to the Cretaceous, or the Crucifixion, or

whatever. A few have worked out what we could do - things like sending a list of stock market or sports

results back to last year or whenever."

"Could you?"

"Yes. Of course, if you sent it back to last year, most people would just think it was a joke. The problem

is going to be when people who've heard of this device start getting messages that're supposed to be

from next year. We've been careful not to tr y anything like that, and none of the capsules we've received

from the future have given us any hot tips. Maybe there's a cosmic censor out there that prevents

messages like that getting through - I don't know.

"And, of course, the lawyers are worried about it being used for terrorism. It's not accurate enough to

use for assassinations - you'd be lucky to hit something as small as a limo, much less a president - but in

theory, they said, you could send biowar c ultures into water supplies or air-conditioning ducts. We

pointed out that (one) you could do that without the machine - a clipboard and a boiler suit can get you

into almost anywhere, (two) the culture would have to survive the trip, and (three) the mac hine has a

geographical range limit, too - about twenty-one miles - and isn't exactly portable, not with the power

supply it needs, so anywhere outside New York is safe and even New York is still about as safe as it's

ever been." He shook his head. "And for all we know, the past is immutable. If it wasn't, how would we

know, anyway?"

Melissa stared at the device, thinking hard, and then smiled. "Thanks for showing it to me. Can I buy you

a coffee?"

"Let's see if I've got this right," said Melissa, rolling over and propping herself up one elbow. "You can

send two grams back a hundred and seven years to somewhere in New York City. Right?"

"Hmm?" Peter turned to face her and tried to focus (he always removed his contact lenses before sex;

they tended to pop out when he was aroused). "Yeah . . . well, in theory. In practice, I'd say ninety years

was the best we could do."

"1938," she murmured.

"Even then, you'd need a big target area, and you could miss the slot by a month or more . . ."

"How big?"

"Oh . . . something the size of a lecture theatre, but three or four floors high."

"A library or a large law firm . . ."

"Yeah, that should . . . what?"

She bobbed her head down and bit his nipple. "Never mind. Just an idea."

"You want me to what?"

Melissa counted to three silently. "Send this back to 1938. It'll survive the trip; I checked."

"What is it?"

"Photographic negatives. 35mm, black and white, just like they used back then. No one will know where

they came from. The originals were taken at about that time, or maybe a few years later . . . Four shots -

well within the mass limit."

Peter put down his coffee cup carefully, and peered at the strip of celluloid. "These look like someone

sucking a cock. Is that right?"

"Yes."

He peered again. "Either an ugly man or a damn ugly woman . . . Benito Mussolini?"

Melissa laughed. "Not exactly. It's J Edgar Hoover. I copied them from the latest biography - the other

two show him in drag."

"Hoover? The FBI man?"

"Yes."

"I thought these were supposed to be fakes - computer-generated."

"Maybe they are, but those photos did exist. Several people admitted to having seen them, including a

few CIA agents. The Mafia used them to blackmail Hoover to get the FBI to leave them alone - which

they did until the old man died, nearly forty years later."

Peter shook his head. "Jesus. Who was the other guy, a Russian spy or something?"

"No, just his boyfriend - the Assistant Director, actually. Look, you remember Hannah's parents. Most

people in the western world last century had the same prejudices they do; sex was disgusting, gay sex

revolting, and male gay sex was absolutely abomin able and usually illegal. A lot of men committed

suicide when they were discovered to be gay - Alan Turing, for one. Things didn't start to get better until

the late sixties, and got worse again in some ways in the eighties; it wasn't until an AIDS cure was found

that what we now consider sanity became the norm. But ninety years ago, photos like this could destroy

a man's career -"

"And that's what you want to do to Hoover?"

"Yes. He used to do it to his political rivals, without any qualms. If we drop these into the offices of the

New York Times - they weren't scared of Hoover, and he hated them for it - then his secret would be

out. He might be able to keep his job - at least three presidents tried to fire him at various stages, but he

blackmailed them into changing their minds, he had something on everyone - but it'd break the Mafia's

hold on him. Or at least weaken it, which would weaken them . . . It might even keep them out of the

narcotics business; that was always risky politically, and without him to protect them . . ."

So that's what this is about, Peter thought wearily. He passed the negatives back to Melissa, and rested

his head on his hands. "We don't even know if we can change the past . . ."

"How else are you going to find out?"

He sighed. "There has to be a safer way than this. What if the past isn't immutable, and we changed it for

the worse . . . What if the Ku Klux Klan or someone like that got hold of the photos?"

"Hoover," she said quietly, "left the Ku Klux Klan alone unless they claimed credit for a murder, but

spent millions investigating and harassing black power groups and their supporters. He tried to blackmail

Martin Luther King; he knew he was depressive, and tried to bully him into committing suicide. Some

researchers even say that he hired the man who shot him -"

Peter held up his hands. "Okay, okay. I'll need time to think about this . . ."

"Sure," said Melissa. "Take all the time you need."

Cates was sweeping in the Times's morgue and fantasizing semi-platonically about the new cashier at

Bookmart, when the sudden, silent flash of blue light behind him startled him out of his reverie. For a

moment he stood and blinked, waiting for the black dots to disappear from his peripheral vision, thinking

of lightning, flash-bulbs, police cars and welding torches and trying not to think of the Hindenburg

explosion and Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space. Wielding his broom like a warhammer, he advanc

ed cautiously towards the source of the light. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he took a quiet step

towards the door and opened it suddenly, looking up and down the corridor outside.

Nothing.

Cates stood there for a moment, shaking his head, then stepped back into the morgue. He stared at the

ceiling, but all of the lights seemed to be working as normal. He sighed, looked at the floor, and noticed

something small, dark and flat, with perfora ted edges. He knew there were thousands, maybe millions,

of negatives filed away in the morgue, and pitied the person whose job it was to return this one to its

proper place. He picked it up, looked at it to make sure it wasn't merely a piece of blank f ilm, whistled

sharply, and then leaned against the shelves and studied the pictures closely. The negatives might have

come from the Times's archives, he decided, but the photographs had certainly never appeared in its

pages, or those of any other newspap er. He also suspected that the subject had not consented to the

shots being taken - and while he didn't recognise the face from the negatives, it was ugly enough to be

someone of some importance.

Cates looked around the room anxiously, and then carefully wrapped the negative in his handkerchief and

pocketed it.

"Meyer, can you do me a favour?"

"Sure. How much?"

"It isn't money," replied Cates, and then lowered his voice further. "I need a couple of prints, and I don't

want anyone else to see 'em. Can you do it?"

"I'm pretty busy . . . can't you take 'em to Kodak?"

"No."

"No?" Meyer Berger stared at the younger man with exaggerated astonishment and genuine curiosity.

"What have you been up to, Chris? I wouldn't have thought you had time, what with two jobs."

Cates squirmed slightly. He'd come to New York a week before the Wall Street Crash, sixteen years old

and hoping for work as an actor. A friend had gotten him a job as a copy boy at the Times in time to

prevent him starving; he still worked there as a j anitor three mornings a week. "I found these. I don't

know who the guy is, but I thought you might . . ." He handed the negatives to Berger, who peered at

them, then did the best double-take Cates had ever seen.

"You look as though you haven't slept yet." Cates shook his head. "Go and get yourself some breakfast;

I'll meet you in the diner on the corner in an hour."

Cates was dozing in a corner booth when Berger walked into the diner with a newspaper under his arm.

The journalist slid in opposite him and said, softly, "I'm glad you're sitting with your back to the wall. It's a

good habit."

Cates opened his eyes. "Who was it?"

Berger regarded him sadly, then withdrew an envelope from the newspaper and handed it to him.

"There's two sets of prints in there, a proof sheet, and the negatives. What you do with them is up to you,

but I haven't seen them."

"Huh?"

"And if I had seen them," added Berger, "I would have hidden another set of prints in a safe deposit box,

with orders that they were to be opened in the event of my death. Do you understand?"

"No," replied Cates, hesitantly. "Who is he?"

"J. Edgar Hoover."

Cates half-stood, and blurted out "Jesus! J. Edgar Hoover is a -" and then sat down again, hurriedly.

"So it would seem," replied Berger.

"You could get another Pulitzer nomination out of this one . . ."

"Posthumously, perhaps," said Berger, drily. "Chris, I don't know where these came from. I know there

are homosexuals in your profession; I assume one of them gave them to you." Cates shook his head.

"That's as may be. Unfortunately, the Times cannot print these photographs, for obvious reasons, and

without them there isn't a story - we have no dates, no places, nothing but the pictures themselves, which

might be faked.

"And then there's the question of who would want us to know this and publicise it, and why. Hoover's

made a lot of enemies, and most of them aren't the sort of people you'd want to aid and abet. What's

worse are the photos themselves. If they're fakes, they're brilliant ones. If not, then Hoover must have

been set up - a camera behind a one-way mirror, maybe, in his hotel while he was on vacation. I had to

wonder, who could do that? Even the smartest mobsters in the country would find it difficult . . . and then

I wondered, what about the communists?"

"Communists?" said Cates, dubiously. "The Communist Party's a joke."

Berger shook his head. "Not the local party. The Russians - the OGPU, or NKVD, or whatever it's

called now. They could have done it, and they might want Hoover replaced with an FBI Director who's

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