He rolled right along, smiling and telling them they knew nothing about time travel. Nothing. They were babes in the temporal woods! Having a time machine under construction meant that they were in the possession of what he referred to as mathematical conceptuosity plus above average hardware skills. But that didn't necessarily raise them above the level of the science fiction writers when it came to applications. Or the editors. The readers too, for that matter, all blithely playing their cosy little after-the-fact parts in a fantastic world-wide conspiracy of ignorance.
Blackburn and Shaheen, of course, thought he was out of his mind. They'd only agreed to listen to him because he had a letter from the Humanities department head, that and a wild, intense expression on his face which made them think it would be easier to hear him out than throw him out, so they sat at their back-to-back desks glancing at each other occasionally while Pendelton rambled on about the Great Implication and how it was one day going to separate the logical men from the paradoxical boys—and after about twenty minutes of this they were actually listening to him.
So that six months later Blackburn and Shaheen got into a violent argument in the office of the university president, Dr. Freylinghuysen, the two mathematical-physicists completely unable to agree on the color of a girl's dress, a girl they'd not only never seen in their lives before ten that morning, but one who subsequently leveled charges of assault and malicious mischief and attempted rape at the university along with a civil suit for $50,000. Although it had to be said in Pendelton's defense that it wasn't his fault. It was Chaplain Rowan who sprinted across Voltaire Mall and attempted to strip Miss Ethel Chattinger, purely in the interest of science of course but the young lady couldn't quite see it that way, especially since Rowan, the university chaplain, had gotten away with quite a swatch, a large jagged piece of knit woolen dress which he later on triumphantly deposited on Dr. Freylinghuysen's desk, only to find that he hadn't really proved anything at all other than that perhaps Miss Chattinger—otherwise known as the either/or proposition—was not a quick change artist and the Humanities department's 35-year-old prodigy of an air conditioner repairman Leopold Pendelton wasn't a practical joker.
"The first thing," Pendelton said that first day, "is for you to forget about paradox. Paradox has nothing to do with time travel. Nothing. It's a monkeying around with words for purposes of profit and it has no place in the office of two experimental physicists. Anyone who answers an honest question with a paradox is a guaranteed shifty character and the chances are he's writing on the sly."
Preoccupied with not sounding obnoxious, Pendelton missed Blackburn's ostentatiously bored expression, didn't notice the enormous sarcastic attention that Shaheen was giving him. Instead, he remarked: "Feel free to interrupt me with questions. I want to finish off paradox so we can get on to the Great Implication. Will that be a satisfactory procedure?" He hovered over the desks staring at them with big eyes until they slowly nodded their heads up and down.
"Okay. Now. A man travels in time," he said. "He travels in time and fifty million years ago he steps on a moth. Fantastic. You wouldn't believe the effect one humble moth could have! The man returns to the present and finds to his guilty astonishment that the Empire State building is now flying the Bolivian flag and gargoyles are sticking out of the 79th floor. This is cute so be careful of it. Boy meets moth, boy loses moth—gargoyles! Except that all those not completely devoid of common sense or debauched by poetic license would know that if the gargoyles were there they were there before he went back in time. His own body is a part of a continuum of which those gargoyles are a prior sequential segment; his entire life is so inextricably wrapped up in those gargoyles that he couldn't possibly be surprised by them, or by any other change he'd caused. As he returned to the present his memory would alter. To take any other view of this—to close your eyes and hide behind paradox—is going to get us all in trouble because you've got yourselves a real time traveler now and it's about time you started thinking about these things."
("Well why didn't you say so," Blackburn murmured. "Be glad to think about it, give it every consideration. We'll be in touch."
"I don't think he heard you," Shaheen said.)
"I won't even bother discussing the suicide-by-killing-old-grandpa myth," Pendelton buzzed on with a great deal of imperturbability, "other than to point out there is no such thing as negative feedback as applied to human beings. I realize that's only a small nuance. But then, take care of the nuances and the breakthroughs will take care of themselves, I always say."