Dryden and Marnie both stared at him, waiting for more.
“There’s something you have to appreciate here that’s not so obvious. It wasn’t obvious to me. The people we’re dealing with … they’ve been obsessed with the idea of this technology for their entire lives. They grew up with the secret of it, and the talk of it, like it was a religion: this impossible thing that existed once, and might return someday—like a savior. It was different for my father, and later myself. For us it was a technical goal, like stealth planes or cruise missiles. Something we wanted for the military—for the country. It was never going to be just ours. But the Group did want it for themselves. It was a personal obsession, and they’ve had seventy years to dwell on it. To dream up the things they would do with it—and the things they wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t they send information back in time to themselves?” Marnie asked. “That would be the most powerful way to use this stuff. By far.”
“Because they’re terrified of trying it,” Whitcomb said. “I’ll show you the e-mails later. You’ll see what I mean. It’s the one thing they absolutely will not do.”
“But why?” Dryden asked. “Why does that scare them?”
“Picture yourself doing it,” Whitcomb said. “Imagine you type a text message to send to yourself one week in the past—a warning about something. Maybe you’re in Florida on vacation, and the weather’s sucked all week, so you’re going to tell your past self to go to Colorado instead.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve got the message ready to go. All you have to do is tap SEND. Now think about it. What exactly is going to happen when you hit that button? From your point of view, standing there in Florida … what’s going to happen? Are you going to disappear from there, and reappear in Colorado? Something is going to happen. But what?”
Dryden stared. He thought about it. He traded a look with Marnie and saw her wrestling with it, too.
At last he said, “I don’t know what would happen to me.”
“Neither do they,” Whitcomb said. “Seventy years trying to get their heads around it, and they don’t have a clue. The only way to find out would be to try it, and nobody wants to do that. It scares them like nothing else in the world.”
“But you wouldn’t always be a thousand miles from where you would have been,” Marnie said. “It wouldn’t have to be that extreme.”
Whitcomb shrugged. “What if it’s a foot? The problem is the same. There would always be some difference in the present, if you changed your past. The instant switchover to that difference … what it would feel like to you … that’s the unknown. I wouldn’t try it myself for a million dollars.”
A few feet away, the name Almodovar came over the Explorer’s speakers. Next up to bat.
Brennan, leaning beside the open driver’s door, glanced down at the page in his hand.
It was 2:49 by Dryden’s watch.
“I think it’s important to know their weaknesses,” Whitcomb said. “Again, like a chess game. Their fear of screwing with the past is a big one.”
“Do they have any other weaknesses?” Marnie said.
Whitcomb smiled. “Oh, yes.”
“Like what?”
Before Whitcomb could answer, Dryden said, “Radio waves.”
He had voiced the thought even as it crossed his mind. The others turned to him.
“What do you mean?” Marnie asked. “Radio is how it all works in the first place. How would it be a weakness—”
She cut herself off, catching at least part of what he meant.
“Exactly,” Dryden said. “It is how it all works. So it’s a weakness. The Group uses radio station broadcasts to grab information from the future. Could we use that against them somehow? Jam the signals, set up some kind of interference?”
“It might have worked in the beginning,” Whitcomb said. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” Dryden asked.
Over the speakers, Almodovar came to the plate.
“Because they knew that was a vulnerability,” Whitcomb said. “Using radio stations. It was a weak link. Sooner or later, some stations would have noticed the software hacks. Or routine upgrades would erase them. Or a hundred other problems. Too much room for error, especially in the long run—like using the system to get news articles from ten years in the future.”
Almodovar swung and missed. Strike one.
“But how could they avoid using radio stations?” Marnie asked.
“They built one for themselves,” Whitcomb said. “Sort of. This system of theirs … it’s a boxed-in setup: their own little antenna sending out FM signals, with their machines right there to receive them. All of it together in a package about the size of a refrigerator, buried underground. According to the e-mails, it has a geothermal generator to power it, zero maintenance. They wanted it to be … future-proof. That way, in any version of the future, their system will still be there, underground, doing its job. That’s why they can look ten years ahead in time.”