by Ann Williams
“A circuit blew?” Marina asked with questionable calm. “Are you telling me that my life was dependent on a circuit? That I could have been floating out there—” she gestured with one hand “—somewhere in time—in little bits and pieces?”
“Not exactly. Molecules are very small and cannot be seen with the naked eye—”
“Molecules?”
“Yes. MDAT—”
“You said that before,” she said impatiently. “What does it stand for?”
“Molecular displacement activator and transfer. MDAT converts an object to its basic structure, transports it to whatever setting has been programmed into the computer and then converts it to its original form.”
Marina examined her hands and arms. He was telling her he’d disassembled her into…molecules? “That isn’t possible,” she whispered softly.
“Certainly not in your world. And not in mine…until now.”
This was getting them nowhere. Marina was beginning to realize the man did indeed live in a different world. One of his own devising. How far would he go with this preposterous charade?
“All right, tell me about your world,” she demanded.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” Marina said. “How is your world different from mine?”
Sammell moved to the chair and sat down, putting a hand to the swelling on the side of his head. It still hurt.
Marina pulled herself up onto a nearby table and sat with her legs dangling over the edge.
“I do not know a lot about your world,” Sammell said, “only what I have read in the Government Archives. And that is very little. We are not allowed to study the past.”
“Why not?”
“I am not certain. Maybe because they do not want us to realize life on Earth under their regime is not the paradise they would like us to believe. And the past is not the hell they make it out to be.”
Marina felt a stirring of unease. “Is Earth a paradise?”
“It depends on your interpretation of paradise. Disease has been stamped out. People live long lives—”
“How long?”
“A hundred years. Famine, overpopulation and war have been abolished, but—”
“But?” Marina prompted.
“I do not want to talk about me and my world.” He sat forward in the chair. This was his chance to find out about the past. And if he was to accomplish his mission, he needed to learn all he could about the twentieth century. “Tell me about you. Tell me what life is like for you.”
“My life is boring. You wouldn’t find it in the least bit interesting.”
“No?” He studied her carefully. The riotous feelings inside had settled. He could even look into her blue eyes without experiencing that terrible apprehension.
He was very curious about this woman. She showed great courage—a thing his people knew little about. “What are you called?”
“You mean my name?”
He nodded.
“Marina—Marina Ross.”
“Two names. You have two names?”
“My given name and my family name.” She played along with him. “When I marry, my last name—my family name—will change to that of my husband’s.”
“Why is that?” Sammell asked with a frown.
Marina thought a minute. “I don’t really know—that’s just the way it is. Of course,” she added an instant later, thoroughly confusing her listener, “I don’t have to change it if I don’t want to. Some women don’t.”
“Will you?” he asked, watching the changing expressions flit across her face.
She shrugged, a curious light filling the blue eyes. And then she said, “Yes, I rather think I will. Taking my husband’s name would mean that I was leaving my past life behind and starting a new one with my husband. I think that’s what marriage is all about.”
“I like that,” Sammell found himself saying. “When do you take a…husband?” he asked uncertainly.
“I don’t know. When I find someone to love, who loves me.”
“Love?”
“Yes.” Marina cocked her head and stared at him through her lashes. “Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about love?”
“No.”
“But…you do marry?”
“We are matched with a mate.”
“Matched? Who matches you?”
“The State Computer.”
“Computer?”
“Yes. Everyone is required to marry at age thirty.”
“A computer-arranged marriage,” Marina murmured thoughtfully. “That’s interesting.”
“Who will pick your mate?”
“I will.”
“How will you know whom to pick?”
“I’ll know.”
“How?”
“When I fall in love.”
“That word again. Can you—”
“Tell me more about your world,” Marina interrupted quickly. She wasn’t about to get into a discussion about love. He almost sounded sincere. But could he keep up the pretense?
“What is a day like in your world?”
“You would not like my world,” Sammell said. “Most of the day is filled with work and then we return to our cell and sleep.”
“Cell?”
“Here.” He spread out his hands. “Our living space—our cell.”
“What do you do during your free time?”
“Read technical books or watch television.”
Television—now that was a familiar term. “What do you watch? Mysteries? Game shows? Sitcoms?”
“Sitcoms?” He looked thoroughly puzzled. “The programs are educational programs chosen by the government.”
“How long is your work week?” Marina asked, becoming interested in spite of herself.
“Six days. On the seventh day we rest.”
“Just like in the Bible.”
“Bible?”
“Our religious book. Do you go to church?”
“Yes, twice on Sunday.”
“When do you have time to do what you want?”
“According to the state, that is what we want.”
Detecting a note of bitterness in his voice, Marina asked, “And is it?”
“No.” Sammell stood and crossed the room to her. “I know you do not believe these things I have told you, but I am telling you the truth. This is not your world, it is mine, and you are in great danger here.”
It was hard not to believe him. Yet it still sounded too fantastic to be real.
“I wish you no harm. Do you at least believe that?”
Marina studied his face, noting the smooth lines of his forehead and the earnest expression in the dark eyes. Suddenly she wanted to believe him. If he’d wanted to hurt her, he could have by now.
“I believe that,” she conceded. “I just want to go home.”
And he meant to send her there as soon as possible, before her presence was discovered by the government. There was another reason, too. He’d been giving a great deal of thought to the explosion of the vase. And he was beginning to wonder if it had resulted from an overloaded circuit or a miscalculation on his part.
The woman apparently hadn’t noticed yet, but the squirrel wasn’t eating. And it was acting rather odd. That could have been a result of being confined in a building or symptoms of something having gone wrong in the transfer.
But that wasn’t his only worry. He’d taken MDAT’s mother board to work that morning so he could duplicate the circuit. But there had been such a heavy concentration of guards everywhere he looked that he’d been unable to gain entrance to the storage room without a written order from Bartell.
Was this further proof that he was under investigation by the government? Until today he’d been able to remove from stock the needed components for their work without written consent. And on the way home, before they had reached the city sector, he’d seen a group of people being herded into a wagon by a squad of police.
It was
becoming evident that the government’s veneer of freedom for all was wearing thin. Would his people soon be reduced to living in a military state, where it would not be safe to walk down the street without fear of arrest?
His mission to the past was becoming crucial. Yet he couldn’t begin it until the woman and her small companion were safely back where they belonged.
“It will take some time to repair MDAT. When it is ready, I will send you and your furry friend back to your own time.”
“How long will that take?” She went along with him, and it seemed to appease him. That gave her hope that eventually he would tire of his game and set her free.
“I do not know. We are watched closely at work. And even here. That is why I protect you and the animal with the shield built into the Recep.”
“Recep?”
“There.” He pointed to where she’d first awakened to find herself lying on the floor. “That is the Recep. From there the vase departed on its long journey, and it is there that you and your companion appeared.”
Marina looked with a jaundiced eye to the place where he pointed. “It looks like a metal frame,” she said flatly.
“But it is an extraordinary frame. It keeps everything contained so nothing splits apart and gets lost during transference.”
Marina shivered. The idea of any part of her anatomy splitting off and getting lost in another realm of time was too unpleasant to contemplate even in jest.
“That’s all very interesting. But if your machine doesn’t work, why can’t you sneak Monday and me into your lab at work and beam us home?”
“There are strict security measures at work. You would never be allowed into Government House. And the machine there is not capable of getting you back all in one piece.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said you worked on—”
“I do. But I have made greater progress with my machine than the one in the government lab.”
Marina had a sudden unpalatable thought. “Are you telling me you’re a criminal?”
Sammell stared at her without answering.
“You are, aren’t you?” And by his own admission.
“The state would terminate me if they knew about MDAT,” he admitted. “But it is nothing compared to what they would do to you,” he reminded her in a voice edged with steel.
Marina gasped. “What do you mean?”
“I told you, in this paradise you would be…different…individual. The state does not like individuality. Conformity—that is what it breeds.”
Sammell turned and paced away from her. “You want to know what my world is really like?”
He strode back to within a foot of her, the dark eyes glittering with resentment. “I will tell you. We dress alike, we look alike, we talk alike, we act alike.
“Everything we do is decided upon by the state. We go to school, study, work and mate according to the state.
“The state keeps telling us it has freed us from the need to make choices so we may live long lives of happiness and fulfillment. But in truth, for nearly four hundred years we have lived in chains of bondage forged by one man’s desire to free us, only to make us his prisoners. And that is why I built MDAT.”
“Who is this man?”
“Our Founding Father, Carson B. Wyndom, president of the United States of America. He wanted to be king of the world and he succeeded. We are his subjects, subject to whatever whim he desires to make law. That is the only past we are allowed to know. It is taught to us while we are children in school.”
“Wait a minute! I thought you only had one name.”
“We do, but the royal family have two.”
“One man, nearly four hundred years old and still king? Do you expect me to believe that?”
“It is true. He lives and breathes—I have seen him.”
“That’s fantastic.” Marina shook her head in disbelief. He’d had her there for a while with his speech, but this was a bit too much to believe.
“It is true. When he became president, he was already a very powerful man. He had been a scientist himself before he turned to politics. And he had been working on several drugs that were to change the course of history.
“Before his election he turned the work over to the other scientists who were his trusted confederates. One of the drugs was a Methuselah drug—one that prolonged life. Another was a drug that controlled men’s minds, rendering them incapable of insurrection. I call it the Wyndom drug, named after the monster who first discovered it. It is responsible for making my people slaves to King Wyndom.”
“What can you do about it?” This was all slightly more than Marina could swallow.
“I will stop him before he destroys the past as he has destroyed the future.”
Kneeling before her, eyes blazing, he said in earnest, “You see, in my time, there are no new peoples to conquer on planet Earth. Wyndom has spread his poison throughout the world.”
Marina shivered and drew back, frightened as much by his intensity as by what he was saying.
Sammell continued. “Now Wyndom wants to travel back in time and conquer the people of the past. We here are all robots and he would make robots of everyone down through history.”
“Are you serious?” she asked with fear-widened eyes. But it was obvious that he believed it. And somehow, despite herself, she was beginning to take what he said seriously.
“Deadly so.”
“What can one man do? How will a time machine help free your people?”
“In order to free my people, I must go back to the time when this all began. I must prevent Wyndom from developing his drug.”
“But I thought you couldn’t change the past.” Marina dredged up what she’d learned in college about the fabric of time. “Isn’t there something about creating a paradox that prohibits time from being changed?”
“That is an out-of-date theory. Time is like a cloth made of living thread. If you snag a thread, pull it or break it, another thread simply moves into place, thereby eliminating the hole and propagating the continuity of the cloth.”
“I’m not certain I understand.”
“Time itself cannot be changed, but events can be altered. The fabric of time merely flows around them.”
She looked puzzled, so he tried to explain. “If you were to remain here for a period, then made a short visit back to your own time, you would find that you were no longer a part of that life. All evidence of your existence would be wiped out. But in this time you would have a past—a beginning—and a future.”
“What if I were supposed to have married and have children? What of my family?”
“That would no longer be your fate. How could it, when you are here? Those children would be born to someone else and they would live out their lives as planned. You see? Time absorbs change, thereby creating a new space for a new event and absorbing an aborted one.”
“You sound very certain of that. But how can you be, when you yourself said that you’ve never traveled in time?”
“You do not have to be a part of a machine to know how it works.”
“Are you telling me that if I don’t get back before long, all trace of my existence—my life—will disappear?”
Sammell couldn’t look at her. He was overwhelmed by guilt for bringing her here and not wholly convinced that he could get her back. But he hadn’t meant to add to her fears.
Instead of answering, he shrugged. It was a gesture he’d seen her make and it seemed appropriate in the circumstances.
Marina decided she would have to think about this conversation. It wasn’t something she could assimilate all at once. She wasn’t even certain she believed half of what he had said. It was all so…outside her previous realm of thought and understanding.
Was he telling her that fate was fate and you couldn’t change it? That whatever happened—even if it was something so uncommonly bizarre as what was happening to her right now—it was all part of the great plan?
“I’m very t
ired,” she murmured faintly. “I’m hungry again, too.”
“I will get you more food.”
“Apples and tomatoes?” she asked with a marked lack of enthusiasm. What she wouldn’t give for a nice thick juicy steak.
“You would like something else?” He had no idea where he would get anything else, but if she wanted something in particular, he would try to find it. He owed her that.
“No, the fruit is fine. But where do you get it? I thought you didn’t eat.”
“We do not. But fruit and vegetables grow in abundance in the public gardens not far from here.”
Sudden interest lit her eyes. “Public gardens?”
“Yes.”
“Can we go? Please,” she added before he could refuse. “I need fresh air and so does Monday.” She turned to look for the squirrel. “Look, he’s moping about like he’s lost his best friend.” She looked back at Sammell to see him eyeing her curiously. “Please?”
He gave a slight nod. “Tomorrow night—I will take you and your little friend out tomorrow night.”
“At night?” Marina asked, suspicion returning to her voice. “Why at night?”
“It would not be safe for you in the daylight. You…” He stumbled over an explanation. “You are not like the women of my world.”
“You mean my clothes?”
“Yes, but that is not all.”
“No?” Marina slid off the table and stood with her hands on her hips. “Then what?”
“Well, there is all that hair.” He motioned toward her head. “And the color.”
Marina put a hand to her head. “What about the color? It’s natural, I assure you.”
“We do not have hair that color. Everyone has my color of hair.”
“Everyone?” she asked skeptically.
“All except the ruling class.” His glance touched on and skittered away from her chest. “And you are fuller—” he motioned with his hand “—up here.”
Marina folded her arms across her chest in sudden embarrassment.
“And down here.” Sammell indicated his own narrow hips.
“Are you trying to tell me I’m fat?” Marina demanded peevishly.
“No—there is just more of you. The women in my world are like this.” He held his hands out a few inches apart. “You see? They are more like this.”
