The Other End of Time

by Frederik Pohl

  OTHER END OF TIME Copyright 1996 by Frederik Pohl

  BEFORE

  WHEN THE FIRST MESSAGE FROM SPACE ARRIVED ON EARTH, five people who were on their way to the eschaton were busy at their own affairs. For one, Dr. Pat Adcock was having a really bad day with her accountant in New York. For another, Commander (or, actually, by then already ex-Commander) Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin was on the lanai of his mother's estate on Maui, glumly running up his mother's telephone bill with fruitless begging calls to every influential person he knew. Major General Martin Delasquez had just been given his second star by the high governor of the sovereign state of Florida. Doctorat-nauk (emeritus) Rosaleen Artzybachova was discontentedly trying to make the time pass with chess-by-fax games against a variety of opponents from her boring retirement dacha outside of Kiev. And Dan Dannerman was holed up in a seedy pension in Linz, Province of Austria. He was hiding from the Bundes Kriminalamt with a woman named Use, who was by profession an enforcer for the terrorist Free Bavaria Bund, more commonly referred to as the Mad King Ludwigs. (Dannerman himself was a mere courier in the same group.) Most of these five people had not even met each other yet. Pat Adcock, being an astronomer by profession, might conceivably have had some rough idea of how the message would affect all their lives-though even she couldn't have known just how, or how very much. None of the others could have had a clue.

  All the same, all five of them were, in varying degrees, startled, thrilled or frightened by the message, because nearly everybody in the world was. What would you expect?

  It was a major historical event. It was definitely the very first time that the patient astronomers who tended the SETI telescopes, or for that matter anybody else, had received an authentic, guaranteed alien message from an extraterrestrial source.

  Of course, that left a lot of large questions. Not even the few dogged hangers-on in the nearly extinct SETI program had been able to interpret what the message said, either, except for a few fragments. The dits and dahs of the radio signal were not Morse code. They were certainly not in English, either-were not, in fact, in any recognizable language of any variety; unless pictures are considered to be a language of sorts. When the signals had been painstakingly massaged by some of the world's biggest and fastest computers, which they naturally were very quickly, it turned out that at least one chunk of the message wasn't in words at all. It was in pictures. When the bits were properly arranged, what they displayed was an animated diagram.

  In their hideout on the Bonnerstrasse, Dannerman and his girl watched it over and over on their wall screen, Dannerman with curiosity, Use with only cursory attention. She was one of the very few who didn't give a hoot in hell what the stars had to say. Even her cursory interest didn't last, since whatever this bit of drek from space was meant to convey, she declared, it certainly had nothing whatever to do with the unswerving determination of the Mad King Ludwigs to free Bavaria from the cruel Prussian grip-to which liberation at any cost, she reminded him, they had both agreed to dedicate their lives.

  As a matter of fact, the diagram really wasn't much to look at. That didn't keep the channels from repeating it endlessly, usually with some voice-over commentary provided by somebody who possessed several scientific degrees and a passion for seeing himself on TV. The commentaries varied, but the diagram was always the same. First the screen was dark, except for one tiny brilliant spot in the middle of it. Then an explosion sent a myriad smaller, less bright spots flying in all directions. The expansion slowed, followed by a general contraction as all the specks slowly, then more rapidly, fell back to the center of the screen. Then the central bright spot reappeared... and then the commentators took over.

  "Unquestionably" there is much more to the message," one said-this one an elderly Herr Doktor from the astronomy department of the University of Vienna, "but we cannot decipher the remainder as yet. That is a great pity, since as you see the diagram by itself is quite uninformative in the absence of the rest of the message. This segment, by itself, is no more than perhaps five per cent of the total transmission, merely the first few seconds. We have not been able to decode the rest. Still, I believe I can interpret what that fragment is intended to show. It is nothing less than a description of the history of our universe, compressing to a few seconds a process which in fact will require many tens of billions of years. The model begins by showing the tiny and-I must confess, even to those of us who have given our lives to the subject-the quite incomprehensible quantal-realm object that preceded the birth of the universe. Then the object explodes, in what is called the Big Bang, and the universe as we know it begins. It expands-as we actually do see the universe doing now, when we measure the red-shifts with our telescopes. Finally it contracts again in what the Americans call the 'Big Crunch.'"

  "Big Crunch! What nonsense. Come to bed now," Use said crossly. "You have seen all that a hundred times at least, Walter."

  "You don't have to call me by my party name here," Dannerman said absently, watching the screen. The Herr Doktor had begun talking about Stephen Hawking's theory of repetitive universes, just as he had the last three times Dannerman had watched that particular interview.

  "Do not tell me what to do. You are a dilettante," she said severely, "or you would not say a thing like that. It is basic doctrine, which you have not adequately studied: There is no security ever unless there is security always."

  "I suppose so," he said, his attention still on the screen. He switched channels until he found the diagram on another newscast.

  "You are impossible," she told him. "At least turn down that totally useless sound. I am going to sleep."

  "Fine," he said, but he did as she asked. He didn't look away from the wall screen, however, in spite of the fact that he was beginning to be as tired of the damn thing as she. What Dannerman wanted was something different. He wanted her to go to sleep without him; and when at last her gentle, ladylike snores assured him that that had happened he moved silently to the door, collecting his down jacket on the way, and slipped out.

  He wasn't gone long, but when he came back Use was sitting on the edge of the bed, arms crossed, wide awake, greeting him with a glare. She was quite a pretty woman most of the time, but, in this mood, not. "Where were you?" she demanded.

  He said apologetically, "I just wanted some fresh air."

  "Fresh air? In Linz?"

  "Well, a change of scene, anyway. And, all right, I stopped in the bierstube for a drink. What do you want from me, Use-I mean, Brunnhilde? I get tired of being jailed twenty-four hours a day in this dump."

  "Dump! Your words show your class origins, Walter. In any case, what I want from you is proper dedication to our cause. Also, if you were seen you would become far more tired, because in five minutes they would have you in a real jail."

  "Hell, uh, Brunnhilde. The Bay-Kahs aren't looking for us in Austria, are they? Anyway, that was part of the reason I went out. I wanted to see if anybody was watching the pension. Nobody is."

  "And how would you know if they were, dilettante? Security is my task, not yours, Walter. Did you telephone anyone?"

  "Why would I go outside to telephone?" he asked reasonably. It wasn't a lie; Dan Dannerman preferred not to lie when a simple deception would do.

  "So." She studied him for a moment; then, "All the same," she said, softening slightly, "you are not entirely wrong. I too would like to leave this place. It is in Bavaria that we are needed, not here."

  "We'll be there soon," he said, trying to make her feel better. The funny part was that he did want her to feel better. All right, the woman was a criminal terrorist, a known killer with blood on her hands, but he had to admit to himself that he was-almost-fond of her anyway. He had noticed that about himself before. He often came to lik
e the people he put in prison, though that didn't keep him from putting them there anyway.

  He reached for the control for the wall screen, and Use moaned. "Oh, my God, you are not going to turn that on again? It is not of any importance to us."

  "It's just interesting," he said apologetically.

  "Interesting! We have no room in our lives for what is only 'interesting'! Walter, Walter. Sometimes I think you are not a true revolutionary at all."

  Of course, she did not know then just how right she was about that, and by the time she found out much had happened. For one thing, the second message from space had arrived. That was the one that showed the furry, Hallowe'en-grinning scarecrow creature with the twelve sharp talons on each fist crushing the Big Crunch in his paw, and, one after another, the seven other aliens, picture-in-picture like little cameos surrounding a central figure, that went with it.

  No one knew quite what to make of it, though there were plenty of speculations. In their nightclub routines the world's standup comics had a wonderful time with this brand-new material. It was one of them who christened the seven peripheral aliens the "Seven Dwarfs," and another who claimed that the whole message was either an alien political broadcast or part of some ET children's horror animation film, inadvertently transmitted to all the billions of nonpaying viewers on Earth. The more easily frightened scientists-plus every buck-hustling guru of every bizarre religious cult in the world-thought it was more likely to be some kind of a warning.

  They didn't know just how astonishingly right they were, either.

  For all of the persons involved, by that time a great deal had changed in their personal lives as well. Dan Dannerman, having finished his assignment with the Mad King Ludwigs, was busily infiltrating a dope ring in New York City. And Use, glumly marching around the exercise yard of the maximum-security prison at Darmstadt, was cursing the day she'd ever met the man.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dan

  When Jim Daniel Dannerman heard the WHEEP-wawp of the police sirens, he was on the way from his family lawyer's office to his cousin's observatory to beg for a job. The sirens gave him a moment's confusion, so that for the blink of an eye he could not remember which one he was going to see, the autocratic career woman who was the head of the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory or the five-year-old girl who had peed her pants in the tree house on his uncle's estate. He was also already en route to the eschaton, though, to be sure, with a weary long way still to go. He didn't know that was true yet, of course. He had never heard of the eschaton then, and after the first moment he didn't pay much attention to the sirens, either. City people didn't. Cop chases were a normal part of the urban acoustic environment, and anyway Dannerman was busy accessing information that might come in handy on his new assignment. He had been listening to the specs of the Starcophagus, the abandoned astronomical satellite that had suddenly seemed to become important to the Bureau, when the shriek of the stop-all-traffic alarm drowned everything else out. Every light turned red, and he was thrown forward as the taxi driver slammed on the brakes.

  Every other vehicle at that intersection was doing the same thing, because the ugly stop-all enforcer spikes were already thrusting up out of the roadway. In the front of the cab his driver cursed and pounded the wheel. "Goddam cops! Goddam spikes! Listen, they blow one more set of tires on me and I swear to God I'm gonna get rid of this crappy little peashooter I been carrying and get me a real gun. And then I'm gonna take that gun and-"

  Dannerman stopped listening before she got to the ways in which she was going to take the city's police system on single-handed. He was watching the drama being played out at the intersection. The car that was being pursued had tried to make it through the intersection in spite of the spikes, and naturally every tire had been stabbed flat; the three youths inside had spilled out and tried to get away on foot, dodging among the jam of stalled vehicles. They weren't going to make it, though. Police were coming at them on foot from all directions. The running cops were weighed down by radio, sting-stick, crowd-control tear-gas gun, assault gun and body armor, but there were too many of them for the criminals. The police had the kids well surrounded. Dannerman watched the fugitives being captured with mild professional interest-after all, he was in the law-enforcement business himself, sort of.

  His driver perked up a little. "Looks like they got 'em. Listen, mister, I'm sorry about the delay, but they'll have the spikes down again any minute now-"

  Dannerman said, "No problem. I've got time before my appointment."

  It didn't placate her. "Sure, you've got time, but what about me? I'm stuck trying to make a goddam living in this goddam town-"

  The thing was, she had one of those Seven Stupid Alien figures hanging from her rearview mirror and it was singing out of its picochip the whole time she was talking, a shrill obbligato behind her hoarse complaints. That wasn't particularly odd. There were pictures of the aliens all over the place. On the kids being arrested, belly-down on the pavement: the backs of their jackets displayed little cartoon figures of the alien they called Sneezy-gang colors, those were; but even his lawyer's secretary had had a coffee mug in the shape of another on her desk. The taxi driver's singing good-luck piece was the fat one named Sleepy, for its half-closed eyes-well, there were three of the eyes, actually, on a head that was maned like a lion's. It wasn't much like the ancient Disney original, but then neither were the secretary's Doc or the gangbangers' Sneezy.

  It was an odd thing, when you thought about it, that the hideous space aliens had become children's toys and everybody's knickknacks. Colonel Hilda had had an explanation for it. It was like the dinosaurs of a generation or two earlier, she told him on the phone: something so horrible and dangerous that people had to translate it into something cuddly, because otherwise it was too frightening. Then she had gone on to tell him that the space message might, or might not, be relevant to his new assignment, but it wasn't his job to ask questions about it, it was his job only to close out his assignment to the Carpezzios' drug ring and get cracking on the new job.

  It wasn't the first time she'd explained all that to him, either, because that was the way it was in the NBI.

  That, of course, Dannerman didn't need to be told. After thirteen years in the National Bureau of Investigation, he knew the drill.

  The funny thing was that Dannerman had never set out to be a spook. When the college freshman Jim Daniel Dannerman signed up for the Police Reserve Officers Training Corps he was nineteen years old, and the last thing in his mind was the choice of a career. What he was after was a couple of easy credit hours, while he went about the business of preparing himself for a career in live theater. He hadn't read the fine print. All the way through his undergraduate program and even in graduate school it had meant nothing but a couple of hours a week in his reserve uniform, plus a few weekends; By the time he did read it-very carefully, this time-it was his last day of graduate school, and he had just received his orders to report for active duty.

  By then, of course, it was a lot too late to change his mind. But it hadn't been a bad life. When you worked for the Bureau you went to interesting places and you got to meet a lot of interesting people. The downside was that sometimes you had a pretty good chance of getting killed by some of those interesting people, but so far he'd been lucky about that.

  The other downside was that when you had to go under cover there was always the problem of remembering all the lies about who you were and where you'd been all your life. That was one of the things that made the new assignment look pretty good. As the colonel had explained, the only identity he had to assume was his own. Indeed, the fact that he was a sort of relative of the person under investigation was what made him the best choice for the job.

  Dannerman snapped off the portable and leaned back, closing his eyes. He hardly noticed when the traffic jam began to dissolve, because he was working out just what he wanted to say in the interview with his cousin. There wasn't much doubt that he would get the job he
was going to apply for-the lawyer had all but promised that. Dannerman was pretty sure the old man meant it, if only because he had a little bit of a guilty conscience over Dannerman's lost inheritance. But it would be embarrassing if he was turned down. He was surprised when the taxi stopped. "Here you are, mister," the driver said, friendlier now when tipping time was near. She pulled the slip with the ten-o'clock fare update out of the meter and handed it to him, peering over his shoulder at the plaque over the building door. "Hey. What's this T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory business? I thought telescopes were, you know, like on the top of a mountain someplace."

  Dannerman glanced at the midtown skyscraper that housed the observatory and grinned at the woman. "Actually," he said as he paid the bill, "until this morning, so did I."

  Time was, indeed, when astronomers shared the night with the bats and the burglars, huddling their freezing buns in drafty domes on the tops of snow-clad mountains. If they wanted to peer far into space, they had no choice. That was where the telescopes were. That was time past. In time present the camera had made the all-night vigils unnecessary. The spread of electronic communication and control exempted the astronomers from having even to show up anywhere near their telescopes-and the best of the world's telescopes, or at least the ones of that kind that were still working, weren't where they were easy to visit anyway. Like the Starcophagus, they were in orbit. But wherever the data came from, they arrived-processed, enhanced, computerized, and digitalized- at an observatory comfortably located in some civilized place.

  Uncle Cubby's final gift to the world of astronomy occupied the top floors of the building, but of course there were turnstiles and guards between the street door and the elevators. Danner-man presented himself at the lobby desk and announced his name. That drew interest from the guard. "You a relative?" he asked.

  "Nephew," Dannerman admitted. "Mr. Dixler made an appointment for me to see Dr. Adcock."

  "Yes, sir," the guard said, suddenly deferential. "I'll have to ask you to wait over there until someone can show you to Dr. Adcock's office. It'll just be a moment."