The Time Traveller's Almanac

by Ann VanderMeer

  “Grief is the price of progress, you know that.” Leigh hurriedly left his desk, went to the port as something whirred outside. He picked up the phone. “Where’s the ’copter going?”

  “Taking Garside and Walterson some place,” replied a voice. “The former wants more bugs and the latter wants rock-samples.”

  “All right. Has that film been finished yet?”

  “Yes, commodore. It has come out good and clear. Want me to set it up in the projection room?”

  “You might as well. I’ll be there right away. Have somebody get to work on the magazine in the patrol wagon. About half of it has been exposed.”

  “As you order, sir.”

  Summoning the rest of the specialist staff, of whom there were more than sixty, he accompanied them to the projection room, studied the record of Ogilvy’s survey. When it had finished the audience sat in glum silence. Nobody had anything to say. No comment was adequate.

  “A nice mess,” griped Pascoe after they had returned to the main cabin.

  “In the last one thousand years the human race has become wholly technological. Even the lowest ranking space-marine is considerably a technician, especially by standards of olden times.”

  “I know.” Leigh frowned futilely at the wall.

  “We are the brains,” Pascoe went on, determining to rub salt into the wounds. “And because we’re the brains we naturally dislike providing the muscle as well. We’re a cut above the mere hewing of wood and drawing of water.”

  “You’re telling me nothing.”

  Down to telling it anyway, Pascoe continued, “So we’ve planted settlers on umpteen planets. And what sort of settlers are they? Bosses, overseers, boys who inform, advise, point and tell while the less advanced do the doing.”

  Leigh offered no remark.

  “Suppose Walterson and the others find this lousy world rich in the things we need,” he persisted. “How are we going to get at the stuff short of excavating it ourselves? The Waitabits form a big and probably willing labour force but what’s the use of them if the most rudimentary job gets completed ten, twenty or fifty years hence? Who’s going to settle here and become a beast of burden as the only way of getting things done in jig time?”

  “Ogilvy went over a big dam and what looked like a hydroelectric plant,” observed Leigh, thoughtfully. “On Earth the entire project might have cost two years at most. How long it required here is anyone’s guess. Two hundred years perhaps. Or four hundred. Or more.” He tapped fidgety fingers on his desk. “It worries me.”

  “We’re not worried. We’re frustrated. It’s not the same thing.”

  “I tell you I’m worried. This planet is like a lighted fuse long ignored but now noticed. I don’t know where it leads or how big a bang is waiting at the other end.”

  “That’s frustration,” insisted Pascoe, completely missing the point because he hadn’t thought of it yet. “We’re thwarted and don’t like it. We’re the irresistible force at long last meeting the immovable object. The bang is within our own minds. No real explosion big enough to shake us can ever come from this world’s life forms. They’re too slow to catch cold.”

  “I’m not bothered about them in that respect. They worry me by their very existence.”

  “There always have been sluggards, even on our own world.”

  “Precisely!” endorsed Leigh with emphasis. “And that is what’s raising my hackles right now.”

  The loudspeaker interrupted with a polite cough and said, “Ogilvy here, sir. We’ve picked up granite chippings, quartz samples and other stuff. At the moment I’m at sixteen thousand feet and can see the ship in the distance. I don’t like the looks of things.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The town is emptying itself. So are nearby villages. They’ve taken to the road in huge numbers and started heading your way. The vanguard should reach you in about three hours.” A brief silence, then, “There’s nothing to indicate hostile intentions, no sign of an organized advance. Just a rabble motivated by plain curiosity as far as I can tell. But if you get that mob gaping around the ship you won’t be able to move without incinerating thousands of them.”

  Leigh thought it over. The ship was a mile long. Its lifting blasts caromed half a mile each side and its tail blast was equally long. He needed about two square miles of clear ground from which to take off without injury to others.

  There were eleven hundred men aboard the Thunderer. Six hundred were needed to attend the boost. That left five hundred to stay grounded and keep the mob at bay around the perimeter of two square miles. And they’d have to be transferred by ’copter, a few at a time, to the new landing place. Could it be done? It could – but it was hopelessly inefficient.

  “We’ll move a hundred miles before they get here,” he informed Ogilvy. “That should hold them for a couple of days.”

  “Want me to come in, sir?”

  “Please yourself.”

  “The passengers aren’t satisfied and want to add to their collections. So I’ll stay out. If you drop out of sight I’ll home on your beacon.”

  “Very well.” Leigh turned to the intercom. “Sound the siren and bring in those yaps outside. Check crew all present and correct. Prepare to lift.”

  “Rule Seven,” said Pascoe, smirking. “Any action causing unnecessary suffering to non-hostile life will be deemed a major offence under the Contact Code.” He made a derisive gesture. “So they amble toward us like a great army of sloths and we have to tuck in our tails and run.”

  “Any better solution?” Leigh asked, irritably.

  “No. Not one. That’s the devil of it.”

  The siren yowled. Soon afterward the Thunderer began a faint but steady shuddering as combustion chambers and ventur is warmed up.

  Hoffnagle rushed into the cabin. He had a roll of crumpled Keen charts in one fist and a wild look in his eyes.

  “What’s the idea?” he shouted, flourishing the charts and forgetting to say “sir”. “Two successive watches we’ve spent on this, given up our off-duty time into the bargain and have just got one of them to make the orbit-sign. Then you recall us.” He waited, fuming.

  “We’re moving.”

  “Moving?” He looked as if he’d never heard of such a thing. “Where?”

  “A hundred miles off.”

  Hoffnagle stared incredulously, swallowed hard, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it once more. “But that means we’ll have to start over again with some other bunch.”

  “I’m afraid so,” agreed Leigh. “The ones you’ve been trying to talk to could come with us but it would take far too long to make them understand what’s wanted. There’s nothing for it but to make a new start.”

  “No!” bawled Hoffnagle, becoming frenzied. “Oh, no! Anything but that!”

  Behind him, Romero barged in and said, “Anything but what?” He was breathing heavily and near the end of his tether.

  Trying to tell him the evil news, Hoffnagle found himself lost for words, managed no more than a few feeble gestures. “A Communicator is unable to communicate with another communicator,” observed Pascoe, showing academic interest.

  “They’re shifting the ship,” Hoffnagle got out with considerable effort. He made it sound dastardly.

  Releasing a violent, “What?” Romero went two shades redder than the Waitabits. In fact, for a moment he looked like one as he stood there pop-eyed and half-paralysed.

  “Get out,” snapped Leigh. “Get out before Nolan comes in and makes it three to two. Go some place where you can cool down. Remember, you’re not the only ones caught in this fix.”

  “No, maybe we aren’t,” said Hoffnagle, bitterly. “But we’re the only ones carrying the entire onus of— ”

  “Everybody’s carrying onuses of one sort or another,” Leigh retorted. “And everybody’s well and truly bollixed by them. Beat it before I lose my own temper and summon an escort for you.”

  They departed with unconcealed bad grace.
Leigh sat at his desk, chewed his bottom lip while he tended to official papers. Twenty minutes went by. Finally, he glanced at the wall chronometer, switched the intercom, spoke to Bentley. “What’s holding us up?”

  “No signal from control room, sir.”

  He re-switched to control room. “What are we waiting for?”

  “That bunch from the train is still lounging within burning distance, commodore. Either nobody’s told them to go back or, if they have been told, they haven’t got around to it yet.”

  Leigh seldom swore but he did it this time, one potent word uttered with vigour. He switched a third time, got Harding.

  “Lieutenant, rush out two platoons of your men. They are to return all those alien passengers to their train. Pick them up, carry them there, tuck them into it and return as quickly as possible.”

  He resumed with his papers while Pascoe sat in a corner nibbling his fingers and grinning to himself. After half an hour Leigh voiced the word again and resorted to the intercom.

  “What is it now?”

  “Still no signal, commodore,” said Bentley in tones of complete resignation.

  Onto the control room. “I gave the order to lift immediately there’s clearance. Why haven’t we done so?”

  “One alien is still within the danger area, sir.”

  Next to Harding. “Didn’t I tell you to get those aliens onto their train?”

  “Yes, sir, you did. All passengers were restored to their seats fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Nonsense, man! They’ve left one of them hanging around and he’s holding up the entire vessel.”

  “That one is not from the train, sir,” said Harding, patiently. “He arrived in a car. You gave no order concerning him.”

  Leigh used both hands to scrabble the desk, then roared, “Get him out of it. Plant him in his contraption and shove it down the road. At once.”

  Then he lay back in his chair and muttered to himself.

  “How’d you like to resign and buy a farm?” Pascoe asked.

  The new landing-point was along the crest of the only bald hill for miles around. Charred stumps provided evidence of a bygone forest fire which had started on the top, spread down the sides until halted, probably by heavy rain.

  Thickly wooded hills rolled away in every direction. No railroad tracks ran nearby but there was a road in the valley and a winding river beyond it. Two villages were visible within four miles’ distance and a medium-sized town lay eleven miles to the north.

  Experience of local conditions enabled a considerable speed-up in investigation. Earnshaw, the relief pilot, took out the ’copter with Walterson and four other experts crowded inside. The patrol wagon set off to town bearing a load of specialists including Pascoe. Three botanists and an arboriculturalist took to the woods accompanied by a dozen of Harding’s men who were to bear their spoils.

  Hoffnagle, Romero and Nolan traipsed cross-country to the nearest village, spread their explanatory charts in the small square and prayed for a rural genius able to grasp the meaning of a basic gesture in less than a week. A bunch of ship’s engineers set forth to examine lines strung on lattice masts across hills to the west and south.

  A piscatorial expert, said to have been conditioned from birth by the cognomen of Fish, sat for hours on the river bank dangling his lines without knowing what bait to use, what he might catch, or whether it could be caught in less than a lifetime.

  Leigh stayed by the ship during this brief orgy of data-gathering. He had a gloomy foreboding concerning the shape of things to come. Time proved him right. Within thirty hours Earnshaw had handed over to Ogilvy twice and was flying for the third time. He was at fifteen thousand above the Thunderer when he called.

  “Commodore, I hate to tell you this, but they’re coming again. They seem to have caught on quicker. Maybe they were warned over that visi-screen system they’ve got.”

  “How long do you give them?”

  “The villagers will take about two hours. The mob from the town want five or six. I can see the patrol wagon heading back in front of them.”

  “You’d better bring in whoever you’re carrying and go fetch those three communicators right away,” said Leigh. “Then pick up anyone else on the loose.”

  “All right, sir.”

  The siren moaned eerily across the valleys. Over in the village Hoffnagle suddenly ceased his slow-motion gesturing and launched into an impassioned tirade that astonished the Waitabits two days later. Down in the woods the arboriculturalist fell off a tree and flattened a Marine who also became vocal.

  It was like the ripple effect of a stone cast into a pond. Somebody pressed an alarm-stud and a resulting wave of adjectives spread halfway to the horizon.

  They moved yet again, this time to within short range of the terminator.

  At least it served to shift the sun which had hung stubbornly in mid-sky and changed position by no more than one degree per Earth-day.

  The third watch took to bed, dog-tired and made more than ready for slumber by a semblance of twilight. Data-hunters went out feeling that paradoxically time was proving all too short on a planet with far too much of it. Ogilvy whirred away for a first look at the night-side, discovered half a world buried in deep sleep with nothing stirring, not a soul, not a vehicle.

  This situation lasted twenty-one hours at the end of which all natives for miles around had set out for the circus. Once more the sight stimulated enrichment of Earth-language. The Thunderer went up, came down four hundred miles within the night-side.

  That tactic, decided Leigh, represented a right smart piece of figuring.

  Aroused aliens on the day-side would now require about twelve days to reach them. And they’d make it only if some insomniac had spotted and phoned the ship’s present location. Such betrayal was likely enough because the Thunderer’s long rows of ports poured a brilliant blaze into the darkness and caused a great glow in the sky.

  It wasn’t long before he gained assurance that there was little danger of a give-away. Nolan entered the cabin and stood with fingers twitching as if he yearned to strangle someone very, very slowly, much as a Waitabit would do it. His attitude was accentuated by possession of unfortunate features. Of all the personnel aboard the Thunderer, nobody better resembled the popular notion of a murderer.

  “You will appreciate, commodore,” he began, speaking with great restraint, “the extreme difficulty of knocking sense into or getting sense out of creatures that think in hours rather than split-seconds.”

  “I know it’s tough going,” Leigh sympathized. He eyed the other carefully. “What’s on your mind?”

  “What is on my mind,” informed Nolan in rising tones, “is the fact that there’s one thing to be said in favour of previous subjects.” He worked the fingers around. “At least they were awake.”

  “That is why we had to move,” Leigh pointed out. “They’re no nuisance to us while dead abed.”

  “Then,” Nolan burst forth, “how do you expect us to make contact with them?”

  “I don’t. I’ve given it up. If you wish to continue trying, that’s your affair. But you’re under no compulsion to do so.” Crossing the room, he said more gently, “I’ve sent a long signal to Earth giving full details of what we’re against. The next move is up to them. Their reply should come in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, we’ll sit tight, dig out whatever information we can, leave what we can’t.”

  Nolan said morbidly, “Hoff and I went to a hamlet far down the road. Not only is everyone asleep but they can’t be wakened. They can be handled like dolls without stirring in their dreams. The medics came and had a look at them after we’d told them about this wholesale catalepsy.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They’re of the opinion that the Waitabits are active only under stimulus of sunlight. When the sun goes down they go down with it.” He scowled at his predicament, suggested hopefully, “But if you could run us a power line out there and lend us a couple of sunray lamps,
we could rouse a few of them and get to work.”

  “It isn’t worth it,” said Leigh.

  “Why not?”

  “Chances are that we’ll be ordered home before you can show any real progress.”

  “Look, sir,” pleaded Nolan, making a final effort. “Everyone else is raking in results. Measurements, meterings and so forth. They’ve got bugs, nuts, fruits, plants, barks, timber-sections, rocks, pebbles, soil-samples, photographs, everything but shrunken heads. The communicators are the only ones asked to accept defeat and that’s because we’ve not had a fair chance.”

  “All right,” Leigh said, taking up the challenge. “You fellows are best placed to make an accurate estimate. So tell me: how long would a fair chance be?”

  That had him tangled. He shuffled around, glowered at the wall, examined his fingers.

  “Five years?” prompted Leigh.

  No answer.

  “Ten maybe?”

  No reply.

  “Perhaps twenty?”

  Nolan growled, “You win,” and walked out. His face still hankered to create a corpse.

  You win, thought Leigh. Like heck he did. The winners were the Waitabits. They had a formidable weapon in the simple, incontrovertible fact that life can be too short.

  Four days later Sector Nine relayed the message from Earth.

  37.14 ex Terra. Defence H.Q. to C.O. battleship Thunderer. Return route D9 calling Sector Four H.Q. Leave ambassador if suitable candidate available. Position in perpetuity. Rathbone. Com. Op. Dep.

  D.H.Q. Terra.

  He called a conference in the long room amidships. Considerable time was spent coordinating data ranging from Walterson’s findings on radioactive life to Mr. Fish’s remarks about creeping shrimps. In the end three conclusions stood out clearly.

  Eterna was very old as compared with Earth. Its people were equally old as compared with humankind, estimates of life-duration ranging from eight hundred to twelve hundred for the average Waitabit. Despite their chronic sluggishness the Waitabits were intelligent, progressive and had advanced to about the same stage as humankind had reached a century before the first jump into space.