Calculated Risk Pt1

[Leslie]

Calculated Risk
Part 1

Wayner Bullen turned the page of his desk-pad diary and, still leaning forward in his chair, fixed the new day’s date with a gaze of respect, almost it might be said, of adoration. On this date, two hundred years ago in 1865, Henry Forthled had been born.
Probably no one else in the whole of Government Chronology Control Centre had any interest in Henry Forthled, but to Wayner he was a hero, a pioneer. It would be untrue to say that no one else in the department had ever heard of Henry; every-one in the Statistics Section had received from Wayner at least a brief history lesson on the man and his part in the development of the maths related to the Section’s occupation.
Forthled had been the local boy who made good from the small Iowa town of Wayhalt; not only had he developed brilliant mathematical theories and methods, he had designed, and often made, machines to assist in complicated calculations. Unfortunately, none of his machines achieved any great efficiency and none became a commercial proposition. Wayner had read about them in technical journals and had even tried to make a copy of one of the simpler ones, even so his most treasured possession was an item more modern: one of the first solar-powered pocket calculators, now over one hundred years old! He carried it everywhere with him and sometimes demonstrated it at work.
Wayner ceased his contemplation, stood up and turned to look out of his window in the large office where he and nineteen other statisticians toiled. The view of that part of Washington from his fiftieth-floor work-place was very attractive, but Wayner had found that from a certain position he could see his own reflection in the glass. He moved to that position.
It wasn’t exactly Narcissism: he had read so much about the man, seen so many pictures, that looking at the reflection, Wayner really did not see himself but imagined it was Henry Forthled.
He had not made a pilgrimage to Wayhalt; he was afraid it would disappoint him. There was little of the old town left, new building had erased most of it. Forthled’s birthplace was gone; the original school house was gone. The man himself had died in 1920. A memorial room in his honour in the town library, with its souvenirs, had disappeared when a new library was constructed on the site in 1930. Wayner’s great desire was to go back to a time when the buildings still stood and the memorial room was in existence. It irked him that here he was working in the Government Centre that operated time-travel and he was not allowed to use the facility. There were extremely strict regulations governing those who went on missions into the past; only highly trained personnel, tested and approved, qualified to go. Wayner was not one of them.
He looked around the office; there was no one upon whom he had not already inflicted his enthusiasm. The great building was full of offices and people, but he couldn’t wander into some other department and start haranguing them about a person of no consequence to their work or lives. Out of his disappointment a bright idea occurred to him, a way of reaching many more people: he would contribute an article about Henry Forthled to the Centre’s monthly magazine!
He liked the idea and carried it around in his mind for a day or two, and it prospered and grew. ‘Hey!’ Wayner said to himself, ‘What better research than a visit to the memorial room, maybe to meet Forthled himself, actually speak to the man!’
So Wayner wrote a letter to the Director of Chronology Control Centre explaining the importance of Forthled to the Centre’s work, and the idea of writing an article, and his wish to go back to Wayhalt in the 1920’s for research purposes.
The result was a meeting with the Director, in the presence of Wayner’s Department Head, who clearly had said a few cautionary words beforehand. None the less, the meeting was friendly, though the Director gave nothing away that wasn’t tightly packaged.
“You are not a trained Traveller, Bullen. You know how stringent the training and regulations are for those who go on missions. Mr Grobvitch (waving a hand at the Department Head) has told me of your enthusiasm for your subject, and I like the idea of the magazine piece, but I’m a bit worried as to whether that enthusiasm may get the better of you – especially if you should meet this hero of yours.”
Wayner felt that the friendly atmosphere was planned to let him down gently. But the Director continued, “ So I’m going to approve a mission for you . . .”
Wayner was half-way out of his seat to jump for joy, but was waved back down.
“ . . . to visit the memorial room you want to see, and take a look around the town. However, the date is to be after the death of Forthled. I’m not prepared to risk your meeting him. First of all, you’ll do a crash-course in preparation, and when you go you’ll be accompanied by a trained and experienced Traveller who will keep close company at all times. Agreed?”
Agreed at once, even the prohibition on meeting his hero did not outweigh the satisfaction at being able to see the town as it had been, and the memorial room containing things that Forthled himself had made.
Three weeks later, Wayner and his watchdog Benguy Benson, entered the Transfer Chamber. Costume Department had kitted them out in clothes appropriate to the 20’s and Monetary Department had provided them with suitable currency. Both already had good knowledge of the customs, language and current affairs of the era they were to visit.
Wayner had provided the co-ordinates at which they were to appear, based on a 1950’s map he owned, and had chosen the summer of 1926, since a good collection of memorabilia had been made by then. Time transfer had not reached precision, they might arrive within a couple of months either side of a target date – in this case it didn’t matter.
The door of the Chamber closed, generators ran up, their ears were stressed by intense humming noises and all things solid around them dissolved into mist. In seconds, the mist cleared. Wayner stood as if frozen, simply unable to express his emotions in words or in movement; he had made it; he was in Wayhalt, in the 1920’s!
Except that he wasn’t! “Where’s the damn town then?” said Benguy.
They were in pasture land, their only company being some uninterested cows. Quite a way off they saw buildings. Wayner had miscalculated. He had put them on the outskirts of the town as it was in the 1950’s; but Wayhalt had expanded enormously through the construction of factories during World War 2. The 1950’s outskirts were a long hike from the 1926 edge of town, and it was a warm July day. They started to walk.