The Walking Shadow

by Brian Stableford

  Paul was shivering now, too weak to resist. She tried to wrap her arms around him, to surround him and keep the cold at bay. There was no way to do even that.

  The voices were getting closer.

  “Run,” said Paul. “It’s all right.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she said, as the sobs finally broke through and the tears began to flow. “I won’t...not ever.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “They’ve taken him,” said the silvery voice. “He’s been taken to the state prison, to the hospital wing. There was no way to get to him—not without the risk of hurting him.”

  “I know,” said Adam Wishart. “But thanks for calling. Would you like to tell me who you are now?”

  “Do you have men inside the prison? Is there any possibility of your getting him out?”

  Wishart scowled at the telephone receiver as though it were a repulsive insect of some kind. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m the one who warned you to get out when he came out of stasis. I tried to get him away from the stadium.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question. Nor does it prove that you’re on our side in this affair. You could have told us in advance if you knew when he was due to come out. We could have got him out of the cage and away from the stadium. You weren’t trying to get him out for our benefit. You wanted him yourself. Why? Who are you?”

  “There is no time to tell you, nor time to make you believe me. Within a week, an alien spacefleet will arrive in Earth orbit. It has come a long way, and its journey has been a long one. I am talking in terms of hundreds of years. Their intention is to colonize your world. I will try to defend it. I do not know what will happen should I fail, but if I should succeed, you will need Paul Heisenberg. We will need him.”

  Wishart looked up at the man who was sitting on the other side of the desk, whose name was Max Gray. Gray was listening in on an extension, and he silently mouthed the word “crazy”.

  “It all sounds rather unlikely,” said Wishart.

  “It is true. The presence of the ships can be established if you can pick up the radio signals they arc using for communication. I have informed President Lindenbaum of the appropriate frequencies. The information is being checked. You will not act until you are sure of the truth, I know, but what I am saying is true.”

  “And how do you know all this?”

  “I detected the spacefleet more than a year ago. At that time I did not have the means to communicate with you, and you would not have been able to pick up the signals. During that year I have been preparing for the confrontation. I do not know whether I can destroy the invaders, but I will try.”

  “You’re not human,” said Wishart, following the implication of the words. “You’re from somewhere else—not Earth.”

  “That is true. But I want to help you. I do not know exactly what the aliens intend, but I do not want them to take control of your world. Neither do you, I think. I am concerned for the future of your race. That is why I am concerned for Paul Heisenberg. It is important that he should be safe. That is why I want to know what you intend to do. It might be to our mutual advantage to co-operate.”

  Wishart looked again at Gray, who simply shook his head in bewilderment.

  “I don’t know,” said Wishart. “I don’t know what to believe, or what to think.”

  “You must decide,” said the mellifluous voice. “There is not much time. I will speak to you again.”

  There was a click as the connection was broken, and Wishart lowered the phone quickly, as if it were suddenly too hot to hold.

  “It’s a hoax,” said Gray, who was still holding his own receiver. He didn’t seem to be very confident of what he said.

  “It’s too absurd to be a hoax,” replied Wishart. “It’s either some weird kind of performance, or true. You’d better try to find out what Lindenbaum is doing to have the story checked. Make enquiries at the University. In the meantime, we go ahead as if nothing had happened, except....”

  “Except what?”

  “Spread the word that we’d better be careful about using phones. Diehl hasn’t got a tap on this line, but I wouldn’t bet that he hasn’t.”

  “Up on the street,” said Gray, softly, “there are crazies running around trying to persuade everybody that the end of the world is nigh. They think Heisenberg’s return is the signal for the day of judgment.”

  Wishart didn’t smile when he said: “I don’t think God and his archangels would need a fleet of spaceships.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “How are you feeling now?” asked Marcangelo.

  “Better,” admitted Paul. He had rested and he had eaten, and for the first time since his re-emergence into the world he felt warm. He was a good deal better.

  “I’m Ricardo Marcangelo. The man outside the door, who will undoubtedly listen to everything that passes between us, is Samuel Laker. You might have formed an unfortunate opinion of Mr. Laker’s colleagues, because of the way they had to...hunt you down. I’m here to put our side of the case.”

  “I see,” said Paul. He studied the other’s rounded features, knowing that he was supposed to fall under the spell of his affability and preparing himself to resist any feeling of liking that might arise within him. Laker he had already seen—a slightly-built man with a face that seemed incapable of carrying any expression. He was stationed outside the door along with another security man, but the door was not locked—and, in fact, stood slightly ajar. It was a heavy door, built to be impregnable when locked. Paul knew well enough that he was inside a prison, even though the room he was in was by no means a cell.

  Marcangelo sat down in the chair beside the bed. Paul really didn’t want to be in bed, but for the moment he was content not to make an issue out of it.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve been told by the various people you’ve met on your travels,” said Marcangelo, “but I’d like you to bear in mind that some of it might be untrue, or at least misleading.”

  “Where’s Rebecca?” asked Paul.

  “She’s still here.”

  “Imprisoned? For trying to help me?”

  “She’ll be released. We’d like to know who it was that took you from the stadium and left you at the house where she lives, but we’re not going to beat it out of her, even if she knows. You can see her before she’s released, if you want to.”

  “You’re being very careful.”

  “Yes, we are. We need your help, as you presumably know. I’d like to explain why.”

  “Feel free,” Paul replied, with casual irony.

  “Do you remember 1992—speaking in the stadium?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you know that it’s now 2119, that you’ve shifted forward in time.”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to have taken that news very well—a good deal better than most of the emergent jumpers I’ve spoken to, including the ones who knew what they were doing.”

  “I’m surprised. I dare say that it will take time for the news to sink in, but there wouldn’t be much point in my denying it, would there? It might be all a dream, but I don’t seem to be in imminent danger of waking up. And there was something else—another dream....”

  caustic sand blown by a terrible wind....

  a current dragging at his sense of time, his sense of self....

  Without quite knowing why, Paul looked at his fingers, surprised that they were uninjured. He flexed his wrists, then looked at Marcangelo.

  “I know,” said the presidential aide. “They all dream the same dream. No one knows why. It scares some of them so badly that they don’t want to jump again. Some of them are in a pretty bad way when they come out. Disorientation, amnesia—even psychosis. You got off very lightly, considering the time you were frozen.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Time doesn’t stop...it just slows down. That’s what they say.”

  “How does it happen?”

  “Nobody
knows. When it happened to you, it was taken to be a kind of miracle. It helped to spread your word in no uncertain terms, although, without you as an interpreter, some pretty weird beliefs sprang up with supposed warrants taken from your book—which practically no one could understand. Then it started to happen to others, and people began to set out to make it happen. No one knew how, but they tried prayer and they tried meditation and they tried every mental trick they could think of. A flourishing market in invented techniques grew up. People began to succeed—it wasn’t easy to figure out how, because the people who did succeed couldn’t say. Nobody came out for about twenty-five years, and it wasn’t until then that we realized that what was happening was a kind of time-travel rather than some weird kind of apotheosis. Most people who try to do it find that they can, in the end. Over the years, the number of silver statues littering our streets and our houses has grown steadily. We have more here than anywhere else. It has become the last resort of the unhappy, the incompetent, the insane, the sick and the criminal. Some find that, no matter how hard they try, they can’t do the trick. The reasons people have for not trying to project themselves into the future are, as you can probably imagine, just as various as the reasons people have for trying it. It’s a funny world we live in. Some people think it’s a world you made.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. I think your influence is vastly over-rated. Most of the people who call themselves your followers haven’t even read your book, and don’t give a damn what it says. They’re not capable of affiliating themselves to ideas. They just need some talisman in which to invest their faith, and fate happened to pick you. I think it would all have happened in much the same way whoever had been first, except that their name would have replaced yours as the futile magic formula, the meaningless abracadabra. It’s only the name that has become important, not you.”

  “Except for the fact that I’m the person wearing it,” Paul observed.

  “Don’t fall into the trap of overestimating your importance,” said Marcangelo, quietly. “It’s true that there are a lot of people who claim to be your followers, in one sense or another. It’s true that there are a lot of people who’d like to believe that your return is going to herald better times, and are relying upon your words to tell them what to do. But the simple fact is that you can’t save the world, and there’s nothing you can say that won’t be a disappointment. The hopes that have gathered about the myth of your return are ones that can’t be fulfilled. You—the real you—are as much a victim of the situation as anyone else. You don’t have any more miracles up your sleeve. All you can do is fall in with one or other of the political movements that already exist, and add your endorsement to it. I’m here to make every attempt to recruit you to mine, but from your point of view, it really doesn’t matter much. Whichever side you join, you’re going to disappoint ninety per cent of the people who think you’re a messiah...because, let’s face it, you’re not. You’re just a clown, who got caught up in something you don’t understand any better than anyone else.”

  Marcangelo was speaking in a level tone, and his manner had a certain forced amiability, but Paul sensed the cold current of hostility beneath the easy flow of the words. Marcangelo did not approve of Paul Heisenberg’s followers, or of him.

  “How do you know that?” said Paul, his voice slightly mocking.

  “I have read your book,” replied Marcangelo. “And I did understand it.” He paused for a moment, and when Paul didn’t reply, he went on: “You don’t even have a real message, although you couldn’t tell that to most of the people who believe in you. In the final analysis, you simply contend that it doesn’t really matter what people believe. Your speculative flights of fancy are really no more than suggestions, aren’t they?”

  “They were attempts to create metascientific beliefs appropriate to the day,” said Paul. “Ones that could fit in with the scientific knowledge of the day. Apparently, your wars put an end to progress in the theoretical sciences, in which case they should be just as well adapted to the present day.”

  “Ecological mysticism? In a world where at least a fifth of the land surface is radioactive? Grandiose evolutionary schemes, and empty waffle about the cosmic mind? Apocalyptic doubletalk? I don’t see that kind of thing helping anyone to get along in our kind of world. We’re living in a decaying civilization, Paul. Even in Australia, which is supposed to be holding its ground, the plagues and the fallout did more damage than the Aussies care to admit.

  “The worst of it is that everyone knows that things are on the slide. They all believe, as firmly as they believe anything at all, that the rot has set in, and that there’s no way to reverse it. That’s why they all seek solutions for themselves, whether through some warped version of transcendental mysticism or by straightforward anti-social behavior. While people think and act that way, then the rot has set in; it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but we could turn it around, if only we can make people believe that we can.

  “A re-affirmation of faith in society, in worldly solutions: that’s what’s needed. And that’s why we need you, even though you’re nothing but a clown with delusions of grandeur. That’s why the other side needs you, too. The dispute isn’t about spiritual values or prophecies or metascience—it’s a crude struggle for political power. It’s essential that you realize that, if you’re to do any good here. The members of the so-called Movement claim to be your followers, and they form the main organizational structure within the cults that have grown up around your name and your book, but they’re not your side. They’re just opportunists, out for themselves.”

  “No different from you,” said Paul, ironically.

  “Not really,” admitted Marcangelo. “Except that we already have a governmental structure, a system. They haven’t. They want to tear us down and start again from scratch.”

  “And Adam Wishart is their leader.”

  Marcangelo acknowledged the fact with a nod of the head, and his gaze rested on Paul’s face as he searched for some indication of what that fact might mean to Paul.

  “He jumped as well?” prompted Paul.

  “Some years after you did,” Marcangelo agreed. “He’s been back for some time. I’d guess that he’s fifteen or twenty years older now than he was in 1992. He’s about seventy, maybe a little older. It didn’t take him long to get into the Movement. He and a man named Max Gray have been its kingpins for some two-and-a-half years now. They’ve been preparing for the day of your return for thirty or forty years, but Wishart seems to have overhauled their plans completely since he joined up. He’s some propagandist, but I wouldn’t trust him to run a revolution for me.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “We’d like to have him here, but this is America, and we pride ourselves on not putting our political opponents in prison, if we can possibly help it.”

  “I’m not going to do anything for anyone until I talk to Adam,” said Paul, firmly.

  Marcangelo nodded. “I was afraid you might say that.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s not my decision. I’ll make your views known to the president and his advisors. We might be able to arrange something.”

  There was a pause. Then Paul said: “What about the other people I used to know? Is there anyone else still around that I might know.”

  “Not that I know of. It’s possible—we haven’t been able to keep accurate account of all the jumpers. The war...and afterwards...we could probably find some refugees from the twentieth century for you to compare notes with. People wake up all the time, some of them second time around.”

  “I want to talk to Rebecca as well—other members of the so-called Movement,” Paul spoke defensively, but with some confidence. It seemed to him that he was in a position to make demands if he wanted to.

  “Again, I’ll refer the request back,” Marcangelo said, stalling.

  Paul hesitated for a moment, and then said: “You say that you don’t know who it was that got me out of the
stadium?”

  “Not for certain, although we know a little more than we did last night. Some time after you were abandoned at the house, a car went through one of our barricades and set off for the north. It was going too fast, and came off the road on an iced-up bend. Before the police got to it, it blew up. Witnesses at the barricade saw someone in the driving seat, and we’re certain he didn’t get out, but we haven’t found anything in the wreckage that looks like a body—at least, not a human body. We found some plastic and some bits of electronic circuitry that didn’t belong.”

  “What does that signify?”

  “Maybe that the body evaporated, bones and all. Maybe that the driver was a robot.”

  “You have humanoid robots?”

  “We don’t, but somebody might. Somebody, it seems, has a fleet of spaceships coming in from the direction of Sagittarius. We don’t have any spaceships, either, nor anything with which to defend ourselves against an attack from space, if attack is what the invaders have in mind.”

  Marcangelo was still watching him, eager for some kind of significant response. Paul could only stare.

  “Was it a robot?” asked Marcangelo.

  “It had a plastic mask, and a strange voice. It was very strong. It could have been.”

  Marcangelo nodded. “Sheehan said that it was unnaturally strong, and quick in its movements. He was one of the policemen at the stadium. He got hurt.”

  “Badly?”

  Marcangelo shook his head. “Nasty bruise around one eye. Concussion, but no fracture. Your friend tried to chloroform him first—he obviously doesn’t believe in needless slaughter. But then, robots are traditionally supposed to be full of goodwill towards men, aren’t they?”

  “I seem to have arrived at an inopportune moment,” said Paul, matching the other’s tone of calculating triviality. “If Earth is about to be invaded. Maybe I’m not going to get a chance to save America after all.”