Raymond found Elko at the very last moment. He had to quick-talk his way into another several hours with the temporal viewer so that he could lock it on Elko and scan the man’s entire existence.
The call came, and Raymond answered it with a quick, nervous jab at the button. It was Barbara Lemmas, a professor of the Seventh Level, one of Technica’s local bigwigs. “Raymond, we’ve reviewed your project,” she said.
“Yes.”
“This appears to be a major find. We have to talk about your follow-up research.”
“Yes.”
“Meet us at Fine Hall, third floor.”
“I’m on my way.”
Lemmas nodded once and broke the connection. Fine Hall!
Raymond thought. Third floor! It was the domain of the gods.
Technica was to science what the Catholic Church was to religion. There were branches of it everywhere, influencing everything, owning vast fortunes in knowledge and patent rights.
And here, in the Livermore Valley of California, was Technica’s “Vatican,” The Institute of Human Endeavor. Here and only here could one find humanity’s only time machines – three of them, to be exact – and the only Great Hall of Learning.
The board of directors, all professors of the sixth level and above, sat at a large horseshoe-shaped table around the single stool and podium where Raymond sat and fidgeted. The chairman himself, the “Pope” of Technica, was out of the solar system on a project of his own.
“We congratulate you on your success,” Lemmus was saying.
“Your method was precise and your supporting evidence very convincing. Elko Potter does indeed seem to be the inventor of the wheel. Your detail of his life is, also, very thorough.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Raymond said. He allowed himself a modest bow.
“The circumstances of his death also lend itself to our advantage. Suicide in the Euphrates.”
“It appeared to be suicide, yes. We won’t know for sure until we ask him.”
The professors around him nodded, except for Steve Gibson. He was a large-chested man with long flowing white hair and big blue eyes. “I suggest we make that an imperative. Burns should split his next phase into two; one being a covert contact to ask the subject exactly that: Did he really invent the wheel? It is possible that he only recreated it. Perhaps he saw such a thing earlier in his life. If so, then go on with the next phase.”
A few of the members of the board nodded at this, but Lemmas – who was acting director in the Chairperson’s absence – shook her head. “We’ve all reviewed Professor Burns’s data. There is no evidence of the wheel in any temporal scans earlier than Elko Potter’s first cart.”
“I suggest that his time scans may not have caught earlier incarnations,” Gibson said.
“We are all aware that Professor Burns’s project may cut into your own research time with the temporal devices, Professor Gibson. I suggest that you let him get on with his project as quickly as possible so that it minimizes delay with yours.”
Gibson rolled his eyes but said nothing.
“Now, if there are no further objections, then I would say Professor Burns has the green light for the second phase of his project.” Lemmas stared at Gibson, waiting for him to object.
Gibson heaved a loud, disgusted sigh and crossed his arms defensively across his chest, but said nothing. Lemmas turned to Raymond. “Once you submit a detail of your plans,” she said, “you shall have what assistance you need and free use of Temporal Transfer Chamber number three.”
Raymond exited from the meeting gleefully, carefully avoiding Steve Gibson’s smoldering stare.
#
Forty-two years was a long time to be alive. His face lined, his hands hard and stiff with arthritis, Elko the potter could no longer work. His wife was long dead, and his sons had already taken over his trade. He was nothing but a burden on them, now, and so one night with the moon full in the sky – and having the distinct feeling that he was being watched – Elko scraped up with dignity he still had and took a walk along one of his late father’s canals to the river. There on the shore, he removed his shirt, headpiece, skirt, and sandals, and waded out into the churning muddy water. “I give myself to the gods of Earth and Water,” he said, “in thanks for the gift of my life.”
The current grew strong and swept him off his feet. He treaded water as he was carried along past the city and out beyond the farmlands. To either side of him were great expanses of moonlit desert, calm and peaceful. Elko felt relaxed, and floated easily. He wasn’t in a rush to get it over with. He was reliving memories of his wife and his children.
A ring of lights glared down at him, and there was a harsh sloshing sound as a lot of water tried to climb up the side of a silver wall. It only reached so far, then came surging down in a wave that came back at Elko. He bobbed with it as it passed him, then amazingly the wave hit another silver wall on the other side and came back again. There was a round silver wall completely surrounding him. The ring of lights from above seemed to be mounted on a ceiling. He was in a room!
The water drained quickly and left him splayed in dismay on a cold metal floor. He took a breath and sat up, wincing with the pain and stiffness. Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet and shuffled back and forth, looking at the metal and wondering how he’d arrived here. “Hello?” he said. His voice echoed with a ringing quality. There was no response, so he stood and patiently waited.
A round hole opened in the ceiling and a ladder dropped into view. A strangely-dressed man climbed down and spoke to him with a thick accent. “I am a friend,” he said. “Nothing here will hurt you.”
Elko looked him up and down, seeing finely woven cloth of thread so thin you could barely see it, and sandals that covered all of the feet in a black shell like a foot-sized dung beetle.
The man’s face and smile were oddly disconcerting, and his eyes were a watery green. Without a doubt, this was a god. Which god, Elko had no idea – but definitely a god. “I am your humble slave,” Elko said.
“No, you are my friend. You will understand in time. Come with me.”
With difficulty and fear, Elko followed the god up the ladder.
#
They jabbed brightly-polished metal thorns in his arms, which oddly enough brought pleasant waves of relief from the pain in his joints and hands. In four days, they told him, the pain would be gone forever. In the mean time they had provided him with a large rectangular room in a building that seemed to be so big it went on forever, and in this room one whole wall was fashioned out of the purest crystal. Through it he could see a land lush with green grass and gnarled trees, rolling hills, and a reassuring blue sky.
Black roads painted with broken yellow lines crossed the landscape. Graceful buildings bigger than any he’d ever seen thrust up out of the ground toward the sky, so skillfully crafted they brought tears to his eyes.
He sat on a soft, high bed and watched as brightly-colored, wheeled machines raced at astonishing speeds along the black roads. Machines also flew through the air, some close and slow, some very far away and traveling very fast. Some of these left long, thin, straight clouds behind them, and as Elko watched these clouds grew fat and translucent and then drifted away.
A smiling, brown-skinned woman and the man who’d first greeted him came to visit and asked how he was adjusting. Elko had no idea what they meant by this, but he told them how grateful he was for the wardrobe of fine, new clothes. They asked him if he would like to learn their language. He said, “Yes, I would be honored.”
“We have different methods of teaching than you are used to,”
the dark-skinned woman said. “They are much faster.”
“I am humbled by your vast knowledge,” he said, hoping this was appropriate.
“With the language lesson will come knowledge of things you will need in order to understand this new world. The lesson will change the way you view things. Do you understand this?”
“I am anxious to understand your new world,” he told them.
“You do not object to the lesson, then?”
“I have no objections.”
They led him though a maze of carpeted hallways, spent time in a room called “an elevator” – which seemed like great magic to Elko – and finally to a room full of comfortable beds. They had him lie down in one and told him to relax.