Conrad's Time Machine by Leo A Frankowski Page B

staff, there's bound to be a leak."
    "They will be quite reliable people, selected from my own personnel here. Many of them are very competent, technically, and Haskins will set up the organization along the lines of the Manhattan Project."
    "Haskins? The angel?" I said.
    "Yes, she'll be going with us as General Manager. You'll find that she's quite efficient."
    I pondered maybe twenty milliseconds.
    "Ian," I announced, "if you're against it, you're outvoted." Arizona suddenly sounded good.
    "Don't worry, gentlemen," Hasenpfeffer said. "Soon, I'm sure you will be successful and we will soon be able to travel in the fourth dimension."
    "Fourth? Jim, we are working with at least nine."
    "Yeah, and I figure there's got to be at least two more that we can't use, just for the sake of symmetry," I added.
    "Having eleven dimensions is symmetrical?"
    "Sure, when you think about it properly," I said. "Look, you can't go straight back in time. If you tried to, you'd run into yourself before you left. You got to go sideways through dimension five first, then work yourself back through four, six and seven to your destination, then back through five to our own continuum."
    "Indeed? I didn't realize that. But you said eleven dimensions. What about the rest of them?"
    "There are only nine that we are really sure about, Jim," Ian said. "The other two exist only in Tom's current half-baked theory. He'll change his mind about them tomorrow."
    "The hell you say. Tomorrow's Wednesday."
    "Right. Jim, we've decided that until further data is in, there are eleven dimensions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and nine of them on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It shortens the arguments that way."
    "On Sunday, God Himself doesn't know," I added.
    "Hush! On Sunday, it's indeterminate."
    "I am still confused, gentlemen. Whether it is nine or eleven, you have still only mentioned using the first seven."
    "Oh, you wouldn't like those other two." Ian said. "You wouldn't like them at all."
    "What?"
    "Uh, he means that when we tried to use them, things go away and don't come back," I said. "Ever."
    "I wish I understood all that," Hasenpfeffer said. "Perhaps if I had studied some more technical field."
    "Well, don't let it trouble you. We don't know what we're doing, either."
    "I suppose that your last statement should cause me some relief, but somehow it doesn't."
    The angel popped in and announced that Standard Oil had arrived. The problem was that the V.P. brought along four corporate lawyers, each of whom tried to justify his existence by delaying the proceedings. Those bozos are paid by the hour and like to sandbag it. It was 3:45 before the deal closed.
    Haskins popped in again. "Texaco is waiting in Office Nine, Mobile is in Eighteen, and Bradford is in Twelve."
    "Lord!" Hasenpfeffer said as we ran to Office Nine. Texaco's lawyers delayed us an additional twenty-five minutes and Hasenpfeffer looked like he was getting ready to chew a hole in the conference table. We had five minutes left to close two deals and get the money to the bank.
    "Just maybe!" Hasenpfeffer shouted as he rounded the corner to Office Eighteen. He ran crunch into a man who was running in the opposite direction. They both went sprawling on the floor.
    "Excuse me! But I've got to run!" Hasenpfeffer jumped up. His nose was bleeding.
    "Relax. Everything is all right." The stranger felt his own bandaged nose. "Shit! Twice!"
    "He's you!" Ian's mouth was open.
    "Obviously," the two of them said in unison.
    "But you can't do that, Jim! We don't have it working for short time periods yet!"
    "Of course not," they said in unison again. Then the bandaged Hasenpfeffer, who had been there before, stopped talking. "But you will."
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Arizona by the Sea
    Ian and I quickly signed the remaining two deeds and the bank's courier ran out with the checks. Then we drove the bleeding Hasenpfeffer to the hospital and got his broken nose fixed up. He promptly ducked out of the side door of