Keith Laumer - The Great Time Machine Hoax

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

v1.0

September 2006

The Great Time Machine

Hoax

Keith Laumer

"We'll need a mobile speaker," Chester said to the computer.

There was a faint sound behind them. Chester turned. A young girl stood

looking around as if fascinated by the Victorian decor. She caught Chester's

eye and stepped around to stand before him, a slender, modest figure

wearing a golden suntan and a scarlet hair ribbon.

Chester gulped audibly. Case dropped his cigar.

"Mr. Chester," the computer said, "the mobile speaker you requested is

ready."

Chester gulped again.

"Hi!" Case said, breaking the stunned silence.

"Hello," said the girl. Her voice was melodiously soft. She reached up to

adjust her hair ribbon, smiling at Case and Chester. "My name is Genie."

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

THE GREAT TIME MACHINE HOAX

inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

This printing: July 1978 Printed in U.S.A.

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

For Janice

^ »

A LIGHT RAIN spattered against the bubble-canopy of the helicar, obscuring

the view of the terrain below. Chester W. Chester IV set the controls on

HOVER and pressed his nose against the cold plastic, peering down at the

brown tents and yellow-painted vehicles of the Intercontinental Wowser

Wonder Shows, drab against the spread of gray-green meadow. To the left,

the big top bellied wetly under a gusty wind; next to it, Chester could make

out the tiny figures of roustabouts double-pegging the long menagerie tent.

Along the deserted midway, sodden pennants dangled cheerlessly.

Chester sighed and tilted the heli in a long slant toward the open lot behind

the side-show top, settled it in beside a heavy, old-model machine featuring

paisley print curtains at the small square windows lining the clumsy

fuselage. He climbed out, squelched across wet turf, and thumped at the

door set in the side of the converted cargo heli. Somewhere, a calliope

groaned out a dismal tune.

"Hey," someone called. Chester turned. A man in wet coveralls thrust his

head from a nearby vehicle. "If you're looking for Mr. Mulvihill, he's over on

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

the front door."

Chester grunted and turned up the collar of his conservatively cut pale

lavender sports jacket, thumbing the heat control up to medium. He made

his way across the lot, bucking the gusty wind, wrinkling his nose at the

heavy animal stink from the menagerie, and squeezed past a plastic panel

into the midway. In a low stand under a striped canopy, a broad tall man

with fierce red hair, a gigantic mustache and a checkered suit leaned against

a supporting pole, picking his teeth. At sight of Chester, he straightened,

flipped up a gold-headed cane and boomed, "You're just in time, friend.

Plenty of seating on the inside for the most astounding, amazing, fantastic,

weird and startling galaxy of fantasy and—"

"Don't waste the spiel, Case," Chester cut in, coming up. "It's just me."

"Chester!" the redheaded man called. He stepped down, grinning widely,

and slapped Chester heartily on the back. "What brings you out to the lot?"

He gripped Chester's flaccid hand and pumped it. "By golly, why didn't you

let me know?"

"Case, I—"

"Sorry about this weather; Southwestern Control gave me to understand

they were holding this rain off until four A.M. tomorrow."

"Case, there's something—"

"I called them and raised hell; they say they'll shut it down about three.

Meanwhile—well, things are pretty slow, I'm afraid, Chester. The marks

aren't what they used to be. A little drizzle and they sit home huddled up to

their Tri-D sets."

"Yes, the place isn't precisely milling with customers," Chester agreed. "But

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

what I—"

"I'd even welcome a few lot lice standing around today," Case said, "just to

relieve the deserted look."

"Hey, Case," a hoarse voice bellowed. "We got troubles over at the

cookhouse. Looks like a blow-down if we don't get her guyed-out in a

hurry."

"Oh-oh. Come on, Chester." Case set off at a run.

"But, Case," Chester called, then followed, splashing through the rain that

was now driving hard, drumming against the tops with a sound like rolling

thunder.

Half an hour later, in the warmth of Case's quarters, Chester cupped a mug

of hot coffee in his hands and edged closer to the electronic logs in the

artificial fireplace.

"Sorry about those blisters, Chester," Case said, pulling off his wet shirt and

detaching the sodden false mustache. "Not much of a welcome for a visiting

owner—" He broke off, following Chester's gaze to the tiger-striped single

shoulder strap crossing his chest.

"Oh, this," Case said, fingering the hairy material. "This isn't my usual

underwear, Chester. I've been filling in for the strong man the last few days."

Chester nodded toward a corner of the room. "Duckpins," he said. "Fire-

juggling gear. What-chamacallum shoes for wire-walking. A balancing

pole." He dipped his fingers into a pot of greasy paste. "Clown white," he

said. "What is this, Case, a one-man show? It looks as though you're

handling half the acts personally."

"Well, Chester, I've been helping out here and there—"

"Even driving your own tent pegs. I take it the big break you were

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

predicting last time I saw you didn't materialize."

"Just wait till spring," Case said, toweling his head vigorously. "We'll come

back strong, Chester."

Chester shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Case."

Case froze in mid-stroke. "What do you mean, Chester? Why, the Wowser

Wonder Shows are still the greatest old-fashioned outdoor attraction on

earth."

"The only outdoor attraction, you mean. And I'm dubious about the word

'attraction.' But what I came to talk to you about is Great-grandfather's will."

"Why, Chester, you know folks are still fascinated by the traditional lure of

the circus. As soon as the novelty of Tri-D wears off—"

"Case," Chester said gently, "my middle name is Wowser, remember? You

don't have to sell me. And color Tri-D has been around for a long, long time.

But Great-grandfather's will changes things."

Case brightened. "Did the old boy leave you anything?"

Chester nodded. "I'm the sole heir."

Case gaped, then let out a whoop. "Chester, you old son-of-a-gun! You

know, you almost had me worried with that glum act you were putting on.

And you a guy that's just inherited a fortune!"

Chester sighed and lit up a Chanel dope stick. "The bequest consists of a

hundred acres of rolling green lawn surrounding a fifty-room neo-Victorian

eyesore overflowing with Great-grandfather's idea of stylish decor. Some

fortune."

"Your great-grandpop must have been quite a boy, Chester. I guess he

owned half of Winchester County a hundred years ago. Now you can bail

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

out the show, and—"

"Great-grandfather was an eccentric of the worst stripe," Chester said

shortly. "He never invested a cent in the welfare of his descendants."

"His descendant, you mean. Namely, Chester W. Chester IV. Still, even if

you don't admire the place, Chester, you can always sell it for enough to put

the show on its feet."

Chester shook his head. "He was too clever for us—which is the only reason

the place still remains in the family, more or less. The estate was so snarled

up that, with the backlog in the courts, it's taken four generations to

straighten it out."

"Still, now that they've decided you're the legal heir—"

"There's the little matter of back taxes—about a million credits worth, give or

take a few hundred thousand. I don't get possession until I pay—in full."

"You, Chester? Except for the circus, you haven't got the proverbial pot or a

disposal unit to throw it into."

"True." Chester sighed. "Therefore, the old place will be auctioned off to the

local junk dealers. It's built of genuine natural wood and actual metallic

steel, you know. Scrapping it will cover the bulk of the tax bill."

"Well, it's too bad you won't get rich—but at least we won't be any worse off

then we were. We've still got the show—"

Chester shook his head. "I said the bulk of the tax bill, not all of it. By selling

off the circus stock and equipment, I can just about cover the rest."

"Chester! You're not serious… ?"

"What else can I do? It's pay up or off to solitary confinement."

"But the circus, Chester: it's at least been paying you a living—until lately,

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

anyway. And what about Jo-Jo and Paddy and Madam Balloon and all the

rest of the crowd? What about tradition?"

"It's an old Chester family tradition that we never go to jail if we can help it—

even for a harmless prank like income-tax fraud. I'm sorry, Case, but it looks

as though the Wowser Wonder Shows fold."

"Hold on, Chester. I'll bet the antiques in the house alone would bring in the

kind of money we need. Neo-Victorian is pretty rare stuff."

"I wonder if you've seen any neo-Victorian? Items like a TV set in the shape

of a crouching vulture, or a water closet built to look like a skull with gaping

jaws. Not what you'd call aesthetic. And I can't sell so much as a single

patented combination nose-picker and pimple-popper till I've paid every

credit of that tax bill."

"Is that all there is in the place?" Case eased a squat bottle and two glasses

from a cupboard.

"Unhappily, no. Half the rooms and all the cellars are filled with my revered

ancestor's invention."

The bottle gurgled. Case capped it and pushed a glass across to Chester.

"What invention?"

"The old gentleman called it a Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator. G.N.E.

for short. He made his money in computer components, you know. He was

fascinated by computers, and he felt they had tremendous unrealized

possibilities. Of course, that was before Crmblznski's Limit was discovered.

Great-grandfather was convinced that a machine with sufficiently extensive

memory banks, adequately cross-connected and supplied with a vast store

of data, would be capable of performing prodigious intellectual feats simply

by discovering and exploring relationships among apparently unrelated

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The Great Time Machine Hoax

facts."

"This Crmblznski's Limit. That's where it says if you go beyond a certain

point with complications, you blow your transistors, right?"

"Yes. But of course Great-grandfather was unaware of the limitations. He felt

that if you fed to the machine all known data—say, on human taste reactions

to food, for example—then added all existing recipes, complete

specifications on edible substances, the cooking techniques of the chefs of all

nations, then the computer would produce unique recipes, superior to

anything ever devised before. Or you could introduce all available data on a

subject which has baffled science—such as magnetism, or Psi-functions, or

the trans-Pluto distress signal—and the computer would evolve the likeliest

hypothesis to cover the facts."

"Ummm. Didn't he ever try it out and discover Crmblznski's Limit for

himself?"

"Oh, he never progressed that far. First, you see, it was necessary to set up

the memory banks, then to work out a method of coding types of

information that no one had ever coded before—for example, smells and

emotions and subjective judgments. Methods had to be worked out for the

acquisition of tapes of everything ever recorded—in every field. He worked

with the Library of Congress and the British Museum and with newspapers

and book publishers and universities. Unhappily he overlooked the time

element. He spent the last twenty-five years of his life at the task of coding.

He spent all the cash he'd ever made on reducing all human knowledge to

coded tapes and feeding them to the memory banks."

"Say," Case said, "there might be something in that. We could run a reference

service. Ask the machine anything, it answers."

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TheGreatTimeMachineHoaxv1.0September2006TheGreatTimeMachineHoaxKeithLaumer"We'llneedamobilespeaker,"Chestersaidtothecomputer.Therewasafaintsoundbehindthem.Chesterturned.Ayounggirlstood\lookingaroundasiffascinatedbytheVictoriandecor.ShecaughtChest\er'seyeandsteppedaroundtostandbeforehim,aslender,mode...

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