Time Loves a Hero

by Allen Steele

  The sun was starting to set behind the western side of the valley. With twilight closing in, the rings in the sky were beginning to change color, assuming muted shades of orange and red which vaguely resembled the autumn foliage that once graced New England at this time of year. “But these … this race, I mean … weren’t they the ones who destroyed the Moon?” Franc picked his words carefully, mindful that someone or something else was eavesdropping on their conversation. “That led to the destruction of our planet and everyone on it. Why shouldn’t we regard them as evil?”

  Again, Murphy shut his eyes and lowered his head, assuming the posture of someone listening carefully to an unseen voice. “It insists that it’s … I mean, they … that they’re not evil,” he said at last, speaking haltingly. “It’s speaking about its race. It claims that they’re destroying our satellite … the Moon, I mean … was necessary in order to prevent us from damaging spacetime any further. If they hadn’t done so, we would have caused more paradoxes to occur, until …”

  “So they snuff out five billion people?” Metz hurled a stick into the fire as he angrily rose to his feet. “You just can’t … I mean, who the hell elected them God? They’re …”

  “For chrissakes, shut up!” Hands clamped over his ears, Murphy bent forward as if in physical pain. “I didn’t … I can’t …!”

  “Vasili, sit down, please.” Lea moved closer to Murphy, wrapped an arm around him. “Take it easy,” she whispered. “It’s all right. Don’t rush, just take it easy …”

  She shared a meaningful look with Franc. Like him, she was concerned about the precarious state of the scientist’s sanity. No wonder he was frightened; for the last couple of hours, he had been forced to act as a telepathic channel between them and the … whatever it was. Indeed, watching Murphy lay his head against Lea’s shoulder like a frightened child, Franc wondered whether he wasn’t close to snapping.

  Metz regarded Murphy with disgust and loathing. “Sure,” he muttered. “Take it easy. We’ve got all the time in the world …”

  “Be quiet.” Franc locked eyes with the timeship pilot. “And if you can’t be quiet, then go back to the Oberon.” Perhaps there was some sort of washover effect associated with the telepathic link; whenever any one of them—particularly Vasili, the most irritable of all—had become emotionally aroused, Murphy had reacted accordingly. He returned his attention to the old man cradled in Lea’s arms. “Dr. Murphy,” he said as quietly as he could, “if you need some rest, we can continue this later.”

  Like it or not, he had to admit that Metz was right on one point: they did have all the time in world. Indeed, time was the only thing Earth had left.…

  Murphy surprised him by shaking his head. “No, no … this is too important. I just …” Opening his eyes, he sighed as he sat up straight. “I’m sorry, it’s just that … when I woke up this morning, it was 2024, and everyone I knew was still alive. And now …”

  “We understand,” Lea said. “If it makes any difference, it hasn’t been easy on us, either.”

  Daylight was beginning to fade, the fire quickly dying out. Franc found another branch behind him; he broke it in half, fed it into the low flames. “So tell us everything you know,” he said quietly, giving Metz an admonishing look. “We won’t interrupt again, I promise.”

  “Everything I know. Sure …” Murphy pulled off his baseball cap, absently ran his fingers across its embroidered logo. “Okay, for what it’s worth, here goes …”

  Again, a reticent moment. “The angels … the aliens, or whatever you want to call them … are an old race. I mean, very old … they were technologically sophisticated when we were still in the Stone Age. They won’t tell me what they called themselves, or where their home world is … was, I mean … located, because they wish to keep that secret. However, they will tell me that, for about a thousand years … our years, I think … they dominated a quadrant of our galaxy nearly two hundred light-years in diameter, and had explored most of the rest.”

  “So they were conquerors,” Metz said flatly.

  Franc shot him another look, but Murphy didn’t seem to mind. “At first they were, yeah, but as time went on they abandoned their ambitions for empire. I guess you could say they grew up. They realized it wasn’t much fun being the toughest kid on the block, because then nobody wants to play with you.” He smiled. “Those are my words, not theirs, but you get the point.”

  “We do,” Franc said. “Go on, please.”

  “There’s lots of intelligent races out there … no surprise, I guess we knew that all along … but very few reach the point of achieving space travel, and even fewer learn how to construct wormholes. The ones that do, though, soon discover that if they’re able to bridge space, they’re also able to bridge time. If you’re able to accomplish one, then the other comes naturally. Follow me so far?”

  “Sure. That’s the way it happened with us,” Franc said. Lea shook her head at him, but he ignored her. At this juncture, there was no sense in hiding anything from Murphy; his future was their past, even if on different worldlines, and right now none of them had anything left to lose. “Where we came from, humankind launched the first hyperspace starship in 2257. We started exploring chronospace about twenty-five years later. And you’re right … we’ve found plenty of eetees, but none of them are capable of space travel, let alone time travel. So far, at least.”

  Murphy nodded. “Well, they’re out there … or at least, the ones that survived. Apparently, time travel is the most dangerous thing an intelligent race can discover, because a civilization capable of exploring its own history is likewise capable of changing it. When that happens, more often than not they destroy themselves … and sometimes they take other races with them.”

  He paused to heave a deep sigh. “That’s what happened to the angels. First they began to explore chronospace, and then they began to change history. They caused paradoxes which eventually destroyed not only their own home world, but also those of all the worlds within their dominium, until virtually none of their kind were left. The handful that remain alive have taken it upon themselves to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again.”

  “So they’re … what? Time policemen?” Metz was skeptical. “Who appointed them?”

  Murphy raised his shoulders in an empty shrug. “If you want to call them that, sure. They seem to see themselves as sentries. As for who appointed them … I guess you could say they appointed themselves.” He smiled slightly. “Maybe you can argue with that idea, but I don’t think they’d listen.”

  “Well, if they’re listening right now, I’ve got two words for them …”

  “Metz, just shut up, all right?” Franc glared at Vasili until he pointedly turned away, then he turned back to Murphy. “So they see themselves as sentries. You mean they monitor other races who are capable of time travel?”

  “Exactly, yes. When they detect disturbances in space-time, they investigate the source, and if it turns out that they’re being caused by the creation of artificial wormholes, then they observe the race that constructed them to see if they’re using them to travel back in time. If that’s the case, and if they believe that race is acting irresponsibly then they … well, they intervene.”

  “That explains the other sightings.” Lea hugged her knees as she stared into the fire. “The angels other CRC expeditions reported … those were angels observing us, trying to determine what we were doing.” She looked at Murphy. “We’ve seen them before, but we didn’t know what they were.”

  “So now you know.” Murphy picked his cap, pulled it back on his head. “When you went back to 1937, you caused a paradox that changed history and created a new worldline, and when you crashed in 1998, you caused yet another paradox which compounded the mistake.…”

  “Which, in turn, led to humankind developing time travel two hundred years earlier than it originally had,” Lea finished.

  “Right, and the angels couldn’t let that happen. They …” Murphy clo
sed his eyes, his mouth pursing in concentration. “They say that … a race that values free will as strongly as we do … cannot be allowed to pursue time travel. We simply aren’t mature enough to understand the full consequences of our actions. This was why we had to be stopped.”

  “Even at the cost of our world,” Franc said softly.

  “Yes. Better the destruction of one world than many others.” When he raised his head once more, there were tears at the corners of his eyes. “They waited until we tested Herbert, and then they obliterated the Moon. Most of the human race perished virtually overnight when its larger fragments rained down on Earth. The survivors held on for a few more years, but by then the global climate had been damaged beyond the point of recovery. I’m … I’m the only person from my time to survive, and that’s only because the … I can’t call them angels, sorry … they brought me here, to tell you these things.”

  “And that’s it?” Metz swung around to face him. “That’s all? ‘Hey, we blew up the Moon and killed everyone on your planet … sorry, but it’s your fault’?” He gestured to the nearby bluff. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pitch you over.”

  “It’s not his fault!” Franc scrambled to his feet.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Lea yelled. “Vasili, he didn’t …!”

  “No,” Murphy said quietly. “He’s right. It is my fault.”

  Remaining seated on the ground, he gazed into the amber coals. “I shouldn’t have kept that piece of paper,” he continued, “but I did, and I shouldn’t have let myself be forced into telling anyone else where I thought it came from, but I did, and I shouldn’t have spent the next twenty-six years developing Herbert, but …”

  He let out his breath, wiped tears from his face with the back of his hand. “Well, you know the rest. Maybe you guys made a mistake in 1937, but five billion people died because of mine.” He nodded toward the desolate valley spread out below them. “The folks who lived down there used to be my neighbors. Believe me, I’m tempted to jump myself. If it wasn’t because of …”

  He stopped, listening for a few moments, then he looked up at them again. “But the aliens didn’t bring me here just to fill you in. They say this is just a warning …”

  “A what?” Metz demanded.

  “Yeah, I know … some warning, huh?” Murphy smiled bitterly. “But they say that we can still undo everything, if we’re willing to do so.”

  He clambered to his feet, brushed off the back of his trousers. “I’m not hearing any more voices, but I think I can figure out the rest. This is only one worldline, right? That means there’s others. Other possible futures, I mean.” He glanced in the direction of the Oberon, then looked at Franc. “If I’m not mistaken, then that thing can still go back in time, right?”

  “Sure. Of course it can,” Franc said. “It’s a little damaged, but it’s still flightworthy.” He turned toward Metz. “You can finish the repairs, can’t you?”

  The pilot slowly let out his breath, scratched the back of his head. “Well, I don’t have …” Then he nodded. “Sure, I can do it. Give me a few hours, and we’ll be ready to go. What are you getting at, Lu?”

  Franc didn’t reply at once. Stepping away from the fire, he looked at the obscene rings rising above the distant mountains. The last light of day was upon them, the cold wind beginning to rise once more.

  “We made a mistake back there,” he said at last. “Now we’re going to undo it.”

  Thursday, May 6, 1937: 6:43 P.M.

  Twilight was settling upon the New Jersey coast, the last light of day gilding the breakers as they crashed against the beach. A pair of children building a sand castle at the edge of the surf heard the growl of engines just before an immense shadow passed over them. Looking up, they gaped in astonishment, then leaped to their feet and screamed in delight as a great silver ellipse cruised overhead.

  The Hindenburg had been following the Jersey shoreline for nearly three hours now, its arrival at Lakehurst Naval Air Station delayed until weather conditions at the landing field improved. Yet now, just as the giant airship was approaching the town of Forked River, its radio operator received word that visibility was up to five miles and the winds had fallen to twenty knots. Captain Pruss told the pilots to set course for Lakehurst.

  On the beach far below, one of the children watching the LZ-129 noticed a brief shimmer in the air just above the dirigible’s upper fin. Mystified, he raised a hand to shade his eyes against the sun, yet as the enormous craft slowed to make a northwest turn, the odd illusion was lost to sight. The boy decided his eyes were playing tricks; he grinned as the zeppelin gradually swung around. One day, he silently swore to himself, he was going to ride in one of those things.…

  “We’re almost in position,” Metz’s voice murmured in Franc’s headset. “Ready back there?”

  Sitting in the open airlock hatch, his feet dangling over empty space, Franc watched as the Hindenburg grew steadily closer. Although invisible, the Oberon still cast a shadow across the dirigible; the timeship hovered barely thirty meters above the airship, and now he could clearly see the ribbing beneath its taut canvas skin.

  “Ready,” he said. The palms of his hands were slick with sweat; he wiped them across his trousers, and tried not to think too much about what he was about to do. “Just get me above the aft flue vents.”

  The Hindenburg swelled in size. Now he couldn’t see the ground anymore, only a vast expanse of silver-painted fabric. There was a limit to how close Metz could dare to bring the Oberon before the electromagnetic field of its negmass drive began to interfere with the dirigible’s diesel engines, yet he also had to take advantage of those few precious minutes over the town of Forked River when the airship made its turn toward Lakehurst, during which time it would be moving just slowly enough for Franc to safely board her.

  At least, so he hoped.…

  “Ready for the ladder?” Murphy squatted on the other side of the hatch, clutching a floor bracket as he held onto a rolled-up fire ladder with the other. The ladder, along with the crowbar Franc had slipped into his belt, had come from the ruins of a hardware store just outside Amherst. Franc nodded, and Murphy tossed the ladder through the hatch. Its stainless-steel links rattled as it fell, then it snapped tight against the bracket.

  Murphy leaned over the hatch and peered downward, then looked up again. “You’re about five feet short,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the keening whistle of the wind. “Can we get any closer?”

  Franc glanced over his shoulder at Lea. Squatting on the deck behind him, her face pale, she shook her head. He looked down just as the rectangular slotted panels of the flues came into sight. They were almost on top of the airship. He reached forward, grabbed the top rung of the ladder

  “I’m over the vents!” Metz yelled. “Go now!”

  He felt Lea’s hand on his shoulder, as if she was trying to hold him back. Yet he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of hesitation. Franc sucked in his breath, then gently pushed himself off the deck and through the hatch.

  There was a terrifying instant when, as he put his weight on the ladder, the rungs gave a few centimeters of slack. He fell backward, yet he held on, and then the ladder took his weight and stopped his plunge. The wind ripped at his clothes and threatened to tear him off; he felt a surge of panic, and for a few moments all he wanted to do was cling to the rungs until Lea and Murphy hauled him back to safety.…

  “Franc, you can do this.” Lea’s voice was calm presence in his headset. “You can do this. Don’t look down. Just take it one step at a time, and don’t look down.”

  “Right … okay.” Franc carefully lowered his right foot, blindly searched for the next rung down until the toe of his shoe found it. He reluctantly released his hand from the top rung, then reached down to grab the one below it. “Got it.”

  “That’s it,” Lea gently coaxed him onward. “You’re doing fine. Now the next rung …”

  Step by step, one rung at a time
, Franc made his way down the ladder. It seemed to get easier the farther down he went; although he dared not look down, he could hear the roar of the Hindenburg’s engines from far below. He glanced up, and almost laughed at what he saw: a square-shaped hole in the cloudy sky, with Murphy and Lea staring down at him. Incredibly, they were nearly twenty meters away.

  “You’re almost there,” Lea said. “C’mon, you can do it.…”

  “Franc, you’re going to have to hurry.” Metz’s voice came over the comlink. “They’ve completed the turnaround, and they’re throttling up the engines.”

  Now the ladder was swaying like a pendulum. Metz was trying to keep up with the Hindenburg. Disregarding Lea’s admonition, Franc looked down. Six more rungs to go, but the bottom of the ladder was still two meters above the top of the dirigible. Worse, the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer was less than thirty meters away. If the ladder swung any closer to it, he would be hurled against the huge fin.

  “Franc, hurry!”

  No time. Franc scrambled down the remaining rungs, until his feet had nowhere left to go. He took a deep breath, hesitated for a second, then released the ladder.

  Much to his surprise, he managed to land on all fours. The envelope sagged beneath him, the rough canvas burning the palms of his hands. The slipstream threatened to grab his body and pitch him over the side. Franc flattened himself against the envelope, then began to crawl forward on his stomach, making his way toward the twin flue vents rising from the top of the airship.

  The hinged wooden cover of the left vent was frozen shut. Still hugging the airship, he pulled the crowbar out of his belt and shoved the narrow end forward, wedging it between its cover’s lower slats. Bracing his feet against a rib and rising on his knees as high as he dared, he leaned against the crowbar, putting his weight upon it. The cover creaked in protest, then popped open, exposing the dark shaft below it.