The Fury Out of Time

by Biggle Jr. , Lloyd

  “This is a grievous disappointment to me,” Bluebeard announced, fretfully combing his beard with his long fingernails. “I had hoped—but never mind. The historians will be pleased.”

  “This historian is not pleased,” the longest pinkbeard said. “He comes from a time before history began. He can tell us nothing, nothing at all. He says—” Pinkbeard glared icily at Karvel. “He says that in his time man had not yet colonized the moon.”

  Bluebeard combed his beard again. “So remote a time as that?”

  “He said colonized. And when I told him that man reached Earth from the moon, he would not believe it!”

  “Indeed.” Bluebeard eyed Karvel suspiciously. “You presume to deny the facts of our recorded history?”

  “Before man could reach Earth from the moon, he had to reach the moon from Earth,” Karvel said stubbornly. “Human history—”

  “Prehistory,” Bluebeard said. “You really know nothing but prehistory, and precious little of that. What a disappointment after our high expectations! I doubt that you were worth the trouble. Still…prehistory. Give him to Prehistory, and let them see what they can do with him.”

  “Prehistory does not want him, Sire,” Pinkbeard said. “Prehistory 1 does not believe that he comes from prehistory.”

  “What are we to do with him, then?”

  “Languages has requisitioned him, Sire. At least temporarily. His own language, or what he claims to be his own language, is unknown to them.”

  “Very well. Let Languages have him. Tell them to find out the truth about him, if they can.”

  Karvel took a step forward. “Sire, I must return to the city you call Galdu.”

  Bluebeard’s head jerked. “Galdu? Barbarous place. Its people worship their physical selves, and neglect their minds disgustingly. Galdu would have no use for such an imperfect specimen as yourself.”

  “Galdu wants him, Sire,” Pinkbeard said.

  “Indeed! What do they offer?”

  “Nothing, Sire. Galdu demands him. Galdu says that he and his machine arrived in Gald territory, causing much destruction, and he rightfully belongs to Galdu. Galdu says we stole him illegally.”

  “Tell Galdu he is not available for trade. We will consider their offer, but only when we have quite finished with him.”

  Bluebeard huffed himself from the room. The others followed, leaving Karvel alone with Languages 9-17, his tutor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I really don’t care whether they believe me or not, if only I can make contact with the city that sent out the U.O.’s. How certain are you that it wasn’t Galdu?”

  “Galdu has no scientists, and no technicians above the fifth level. Its technicians would perhaps be able to build uncomplicated replacement parts, but I am certain that they would not have the knowledge and skill to make the thing that you describe.”

  “I must find out where the U.O.’s come from,” he said despairingly. “Can’t you understand that what happened to Galdu could happen here—and worse?”

  She could not understand. Her people had no conception of catastrophe. They did not even have a word for it, though the Galds might recently have invented one.

  They found the pilot waiting for them in the Languages Tower. “Nothing,” he said unhappily. “The thing you call U.O. is no longer in the park. The Galds probably took it into the city, but no one knows for certain.”

  “Galdu demanded me,” Karvel said. “Couldn’t I demand the U.O.? It’s mine.”

  They stared at him, as shocked at his bad manners as by his faulty grammar. He had not yet reconciled himself to the fact that in this strange university city of Dunzalo there was no concept of personal property. He could refer to his arm, but not to his clothing, and certainly not to his U.O.

  In practice the citizens took whatever they needed from the city’s stores, and no one would have thought of molesting the personal possessions of another—which undoubtedly accounted for the fact that Karvel’s equipment was left in his possession. But the language did not permit him to call it his. It belonged to the city.

  So did Karvel.

  So did all of the citizens, up to and including Bluebeard, who was dean of all he surveyed by virtue of his number, zero-zero.

  Karvel corrected himself. “Dunzalo could demand it. Dunzalo has me, and the U.O. brought me here. Isn’t that sufficient basis for a claim?”

  “It might be,” Languages 9-17 said, “but I doubt that anyone would be interested.”

  “You would. In that machine is a communication in forty languages.”

  “Forty…languages?” she repeated breathlessly.

  “Forty languages, all different and all of them guaranteed indescribably ancient. My own language is one of the forty.”

  “I’ll see what can be done,” she said, and hurried away.

  The pilot, Communications 4-5, was regarding Karvel with amusement. He belonged to the city’s service and maintenance contingent, rather than to the faculties of sanctified knowledge, and he seemed less than wholly sympathetic with their more obvious idiosyncrasies. “You’re learning,” he remarked.

  “Languages 9-17,” Karvel mused, looking after the tutor. “What a disgusting name for a young woman. Doesn’t she have any other name?”

  “You might call her Wilurzil.”

  “That’s much better. Quite nice, in fact. What does it mean?”

  “It means, ‘Woman teacher of the one-sixteenth beard class.’”

  “I shouldn’t have asked. What about yourself? Surely your best friends don’t call you Communications 4-5.”

  “Sometimes they call me Marnox, which means—”

  “Something about a bird?”

  “Bird-chaser.”

  “Very appropriate. Marnox you shall be. Couldn’t the forest people find out anything about the U.O.?”

  “No. The Unclaimed People do not get on well with the Galds. Long ago the Galds enlarged their fields at the expense of the forest, and the Unclaimed People have never forgotten.”

  “They were kind to me.”

  “You were fleeing from the Galds. The Unclaimed People do not often go near Galdu, and especially not now. There was a skirmish when the Galds attempted to enter the forest to find my plane—and you.”

  “Who won?”

  Marnox grinned. “These days, no one defeats the Unclaimed People in their forest.”

  “You’ve traveled about a great deal, haven’t you?”

  “I have permission to practice flying,” Marnox said. “We’ve convinced Old Zero-Zero that we need lots of practice. It’s an excuse to get away from Dunzalo, where nothing ever happens.”

  “While you’ve been practicing, have you seen anything like the U.O.?”

  “No.”

  “Or heard of anything like it?”

  “No.”

  “Someone designed the thing, and built at least two of them, and presumably tested them, and finally sent them to the remote past—sent them out three times, with passengers, and got them back twice before I arrived, and they must have done some damage each time they returned. Isn’t there any form of communication between cities?”

  “What a city builds is its own business,” Marnox said. “It wouldn’t be talking about it to other cities unless it wanted to trade it.”

  “One of the passengers was a nonperson. An unhuman being, probably from a distant world. Do you know of such a creature?”

  “The Overseer and his people are from distant worlds, but they are not nonpeople.”

  “What do they look like?”

  The pilot’s long forehead puckered in surprise. “Like people!”

  “Then it couldn’t have been one of them. Who is this Overseer?”

  “Why he’s…the Overseer!”

  Karvel touched two stools from the walls. “Let’s sit down,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is desperately important, and Wilurzil doesn’t want to talk about anything except word inflections. Tell me about the ci
ties you have seen.”

  They were city-states, fiercely independent of each other in all except their disagreements, which were arbitrated by the mysterious entity whose title Karvel translated as Overseer.

  Each city was the center of its own mechanized farm, and deep within its vitals each contained the automated factories that received the products of the farm and processed them into products and byproducts and byproducts of byproducts.

  Because they were so nearly self-supporting, they were able to specialize. Dunzalo was a university city; and somewhere there was a medical city, and a city of mechanics, and a city of agriculturists, and so on, through the entire professional spectrum. The largest city-states, such as Galdu, apparently specialized in producing the one thing all the others needed: people.

  Most of the trade between cities was a trade in people. There were no children at Dunzalo. The university city traded its educated young people, and an occasional older specialist, to cities that needed teachers, or linguists, or mathematicians, or whatever Dunzalo could supply. In return Dunzalo received the doctors and mechanics and agriculturists and workers it needed to maintain itself and its farm—and more young people to educate.

  “And yet, there is a sort of centralized authority,” Karvel mused. “Where does this Overseer have his headquarters?”

  “On the moon,” Marnox said.

  “Could I ask to see him?”

  The thought shocked Marnox into speechlessness.

  “How could I go about traveling to the moon?” Karvel asked.

  “No one travels to the moon unless the Overseer’s people take him there.”

  “Somewhere,” Karvel said slowly, “there is a city of extraordinarily talented engineers, who built the U.O.’s. How do I go about finding it?”

  “I don’t know. We can keep looking, and asking people—”

  “That would take too long.”

  Karvel was experiencing a disquieting sensation of uncertainty. If he had arrived in the wrong time, or the wrong place, how could he possibly go about finding the right one?

  Dunzalo petitioned the Overseer, demanding the surrender by Galdu of one unidentified spherical object, Dunzalo’s by token of its lawful ownership of the object’s pilot. Galdu had already petitioned the Overseer, demanding the return of Karvel by token of its lawful ownership of the unidentified spherical object that had landed him in Gald territory.

  “When will this Overseer act?” Karvel asked.

  The tutor replied indifferently, “When he is ready.”

  “Will he come here?”

  “Who knows? He travels where he is needed, but he is not likely to be needed to act on a simple petition. Probably he will send a message.”

  “Would I be able to see him if he came here?” He had shocked her again, so he changed the subject. “Do you mind if I call you Wilurzil?”

  “Why do you wish to call me that?”

  “I like it better than Languages 9-17.”

  “But Languages 9-17 is my name! There are many wilurzils—”

  “I know. I just happen to like Wilurzil better.”

  Karvel received a name of his own. He became Languages 20-249, the lowest number in the lowest classification. It carried no distinction and few privileges, and the wearing of a beard was not one of them. Because of this Karvel made his own modest contribution toward the rupture of the city’s social structure—for he was wearing a beard. It was his own, and no amount of protest could halt its growth. He had left his razor in the U.O., and Dunzalo’s otherwise ample resources were unequal to the task of supplying him with one. As the beard grew, the few Dunzals with whom Karvel came into close contact began to call him after a nickname of their own invention, which he painfully translated as “Little Fuzzy One.”

  During the next few days, while Marnox ranged far making futile inquiries, Karvel found himself forced into a decision. He did not know where he would go, but he had to leave.

  And he would have to walk. He had reluctantly abandoned the idea of stealing a plane. Dunzalo might take little note of a missing Languages 20-249, but it would stir up all kinds of tiresome complications over a missing aircraft; and in any event Karvel could not get himself checked out on the weird keyboard controls without arousing suspicion.

  He donned the native dress to make himself less conspicuous, and at every opportunity he went exploring. Bearded scholars paced the maze of corridors and ramps, engaged in endlessly ruminative discussions but never in arguments unless their beards were of equal length. They ignored the illegally bearded Karvel. He thought their status symbols ridiculous until he remembered the university ceremonials of his own time, and the colored robes by which professors flaunted their rank.

  So large was the city, and so complicated its layout, that in three days of search Karvel made no progress at all in finding his way to an exit.

  In three days of English lessons, Wilurzil proved herself a linguistic genius. There was no other way to account for the progress she made in the face of Karvel’s inept teaching. No matter how carefully he expounded a point, her incisive questions soon had him muttering profanely that Haskins should have sent a linguist.

  During the fourth lesson, while he was vainly attempting to explain the subtle distinction between I walk, I am walking, and I do walk, it occurred to him that a textbook would be an immense help. He decided to make one for her, but he had no words with which to ask for pencil and paper.

  Neither had he learned a word for write.

  He traced words in the air and on the floor, he described the nature of the U.O.’s messages, he explained and demonstrated to the extreme limit of his vocabulary and imagination, and finally it dawned on him that Dunzalo had no written language. Wilurzil only vaguely comprehended what it was.

  “The silent speech,” she said. “They say that the Overseer uses it.”

  And how did the university city preserve its accumulated wealth of human knowledge? In books, naturally. Talking books. Even the city’s records were voice-recorded.

  “I walk, I am walking, I do walk,” he said resignedly.

  Somewhere in the distance a gong sounded, and continued to sound. Wilurzil sprang to her feet and whispered an unfamiliar word.

  Her obvious terror alarmed him. He opened the door and looked out, and above the deep reverberating boom of the gong he could hear distant shouts.

  Marnox sprang into view at the end of the corridor. “The Galds!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

  Wilurzil seized his arm. “The Galds have come for you. You must hide!”

  Karvel jerked free and sprang to a storage bin for his equipment. He knew at once that he had a decision to make, and while he strapped on his pack and slung his rifle his mind worked anxiously.

  He wanted to go to Galdu. He had to go there.

  The Galds had come to capture him.

  What could be simpler than to outwit the Dunzals, and give himself up?

  And yet, though he had to go to Galdu, he did not want to go there as a prisoner. Probably a prisoner would command no more attention in Galdu than a Languages 20-249 did in Dunzalo. As long as he enjoyed even a limited freedom of movement, his mission had a glimmer of a chance. If he were to be thrown into a dungeon and forgotten, it would have none at all.

  His mind made up, he let Wilurzil hurry him away.

  The Galds were upon them before they reached the ramp. Marnox attempted to fend them off, and was flipped with the prettiest wrestling trick Karvel had ever seen. Karvel drove his rifle butt into the chin of one Gald, smashed another in the groin, and fired a shot past the ear of a third. The report rang out thunderously, and the Galds fled in terror toward the top of the tower. Wilurzil, equally terrified, darted off in the opposite direction. Marnox stared up at Karvel in stupefaction. The gong continued to boom gloomily.

  Karvel stepped over an unconscious Gald and calmly strolled away.

  The lower corridors were jammed. The nonbearded were attempting to reach the towers where they migh
t be of some use; the bearded were in frenzied flight to the depths of the city. Arms flailed, beards were torn off, and the crowd surged back and forth in search of exits. The din was tremendous.

  Karvel pushed through to the park and stood there for a moment, watching a large aircraft hover over the city. He could hear gongs booming on all sides. He circled the park until he found an exit that led into a deserted corridor, and followed it. A few nonbearded men passed him, hurrying toward the center of the city.

  He strolled on. The noise of battle and flight receded into the distance, and soon he could hear nothing but the ubiquitous alarm gongs. The corridor divided, intersected others, turned, turned again. It led him into an enormous, vaulted room in which he counted twenty exits. He selected the one directly opposite, and kept going.

  An hour later he stood at the mouth of a tunnel, looking out across a park at the city’s undulating fields. An unmanned machine worked on in ignorance of the invasion, making unerringly straight furrows.

  Karvel followed the city’s outer wall for a short distance and seated himself in a fluted recess. A tree rendered the position invisible from above, and from the ground unless someone came within a few feet of him. He made himself comfortable and waited to see what would happen next.

  When darkness fell he was still waiting incredulously. The Galds had achieved complete surprise, terrorized the city, and sucked its defenders up into the towers. They needed only a coordinated assault on the unmanned perimeter to take possession of the city. That assault never came.

  He wondered if they were equally inept in their own defense. If the people of Dunzalo decided to retaliate—but he could not imagine Bluebeard planning an invasion. Given a few hundred adventurous men with a solid grudge against Galdu, Karvel thought he could capture the city.

  Or at least the U.O.

  He got to his feet and looked about. In the darkness the city gleamed with a ghostly phosphorescence. He hurried through the park to escape the effused halo of light, and then set off at an easy, plodding pace across the newly plowed ground.

  The forest was less than ten miles away, and he had all night in which to reach it