by Anthology
The blue woman says, “I know. I wanted a veteran of the final battles”— she says it without disapproval—“but they all died, too.”
This time Jenny does stop. “You brought them here to die.”
The woman lifts her chin. “I wouldn’t have done that. I showed them the final battle, the very last one, and they chose to fight. We’re going there now, so you can decide.”
Jenny read the stories where you travel back in time and shoot someone’s grandfather or step on some protozoan, and the act unravels the present stitch by stitch until all that’s left is a skein of history gone wrong. “Is that such a good idea?” she asks.
“They won’t see us. We won’t be able to affect anything.”
“I don’t even have a weapon,” Jenny says, thinking of the girl in the minicomics with her two swords, her gun. Jenny is tolerably good at arm-wrestling her girl friends at high school, but she doesn’t think that’s going to help.
The woman says, “That can be changed.”
Not fixed, as though Jenny were something wrong, but changed. The word choice is what makes her decide to keep going. “Let’s go to the battle,” Jenny says.
The light in the sky changes as they walk, as though all of winter were compressed into a single day of silver and gray and scudding darkness. Once or twice, Jenny could almost swear that she sees a flying car change shape, growing wings like that of a delta kite and swooping out of sight. There’s soot in the air, subtle and unpleasant, and Jenny wishes for sunglasses, even though it’s not all that bright, any sort of protection. Lightning runs along the streets like a living thing, writing jagged blue-white equations. It keeps its distance, however.
“It’s just curious,” the blue woman says when Jenny asks about it. She doesn’t elaborate.
The first sign of the battle, although Jenny doesn’t realize it for a while, is the rain. “Is the rain real?” Jenny says, wondering what future oddity would translate into inclement weather.
“Everything’s an expression of some reality.”
That probably means no. Especially since the rain is touching everything in the world except them.
The second sign is all the corpses, and this she does recognize. The stench hits her first. It’s not the smell of meat, or formaldehyde from 9th grade biology (she knows a fresh corpse shouldn’t smell like formaldehyde, but that’s the association her brain makes), but asphalt and rust and fire. She would have expected to hear something first, like the deafening chatter of guns. Maybe fights in the future are silent.
Then she sees the fallen. Bone-deep, she knows which are ours and which are theirs. Ours are the rats with the clever metal hands, their fingers twisted beyond salvage; the sleek bicycles (bicycles!) with broken spokes, reflectors flashing crazily in the lightning; the men and women in coats the color of winter rain, red washing away from their wounds. The blue woman’s breath hitches as though she’s seeing this for the first time, as though each body belongs to an old friend. Jenny can’t take in all the raw death. The rats grieve her the most, maybe because one of them greeted her in this place of unrelenting strangeness.
Theirs are all manner of things, including steel serpents, their scales etched with letters from an alphabet of despair; stilt-legged robots with guns for arms; more men and women, in uniforms of all stripes, for at the evening of the world there will be people fighting for entropy as well as against it. Some of them are still standing, and written in their faces—even the ones who don’t have faces—is their triumph.
Jenny looks at the blue woman. The blue woman continues walking, so Jenny keeps pace with her. They stop before one of the fallen, a dark-skinned man. Jenny swallows and eyes one of the serpents, which is swaying next to her, but it takes no notice of her.
“He was so determined that we should fight, whatever the cost,” the blue woman says. “And now he’s gone.”
There’s a gun not far from the fallen man’s hand. Jenny reaches for it, then hesitates, waiting for permission. The blue woman doesn’t say yes, doesn’t say no, so Jenny touches it anyway. The metal is utterly cold. Jenny pulls her fingers away with a bitten-off yelp.
“It’s empty,” the blue woman says. “Everything’s empty.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenny says. She doesn’t know this man, but it’s not about her.
The blue woman watches as Jenny straightens, leaving the gun on the ground.
“If I say no,” Jenny says slowly, “is there anyone else?”
The blue woman’s eyes close for a moment. “No. You’re the last. I would have spared you the choice if I could have.”
“How many of me were there?”
“I lost count after a thousand or so,” the blue woman says. “Most of them were more like me. Some of them were more like you.”
A thousand Jenny Changs, a thousand blue women. More. Gone, one by one, like a scatterfall of rain. “Did all of them say yes?” Jenny asks.
The blue woman shakes her head.
“And none of the ones who said yes survived.”
“None of them.”
“If that’s the case,” Jenny says, “what makes you special?”
“I’m living on borrowed possibilities,” she says. “When the battle ends, I’ll be gone too, no matter which way it ends.”
Jenny looks around her, then squeezes her eyes shut, thinking. Two significant figures, she thinks inanely. “Who started the fight?” She’s appalled that she sounds like her mom.
“There’s always an armageddon around the corner,” the blue woman says. “This happens to be the one that he found.”
The dark-skinned man. Who was he, that he could persuade people to take a last stand like this? Maybe it’s not so difficult when a last stand is the only thing left. That solution displeases her, though.
Her heart is hammering. “I won’t do it,” Jenny says. “Take me home.”
The blue woman’s eyes narrow. “You are the last,” she says quietly. “I thought you would understand.”
Everything hinges on one thing: is the blue woman different enough from Jenny that Jenny can lie to her, and be believed?
“I’m sorry,” Jenny says.
“Very well,” the blue woman says.
Jenny strains to keep her eyes open at the crucial moment. When the blue woman reaches for her hand, Jenny sees the portal, a shimmer of blue light. She grabs the blue woman and shoves her through. The last thing Jenny hears from the blue woman is a muffled protest.
Whatever protection the blue woman’s touch afforded her is gone. The rain drenches her shirt and runs in cold rivulets through her hair, into her eyes, down her back. Jenny reaches again for the fallen man’s gun. It’s cold, but she has a moment’s warmth in her yet.
She might not be able to save the world, but she can at least save herself.
It’s the end of the school day and you’re waiting for Jenny’s mother to pick you up. A man walks up to you. He wears a coat as gray as rain, and his eyes are pale against dark skin. “You have to come with me,” he says, awkward and serious at once. You recognize him, of course. You remember when he first recruited you, in another timeline. You remember what he looked like fallen in the battle at the end of time, with a gun knocked out of his hand.
“I can’t,” you say, kindly, because it will take him time to understand that you’re not the blue woman anymore, that you won’t do the things the blue woman did.
“What?” he says. “Please. It’s urgent.” He knows better than to grab your arm. “There’s a battle—”
Once upon a time, you listened to his plea. Part of you is tempted to listen this time around, to abandon the life that Jenny left you and take up his banner. But you know how that story ends.
“I’m not in your story anymore,” you explain to him. “You’re in mine.”
The man doesn’t look like he belongs in a world of parking tickets and potted begonias and pencil sharpeners. But he can learn, the way you have.
BROOKLYN PROJECT
>
William Tenn
The gleaming bowls of light set in the creamy ceiling dulled when the huge, circular door at the back of the booth opened. They returned to white brilliance as the chubby man in the severe black jumper swung the door shut behind him and dogged it down again.
Twelve reporters of both sexes exhaled very loudly as he sauntered to the front of the booth and turned his back to the semi-opaque screen stretching across it. Then they all rose in deference to the cheerful custom of standing whenever a security official of the government was in the room.
He smiled pleasantly, waved at them and scratched his nose with a wad of mimeographed papers. His nose was large and it seemed to give added presence to his person. “Sit down, ladies and gentlemen, do sit down. We have no official fol-de-rol in the Brooklyn Project. I am your guide, as you might say, for the duration of this experiment—the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. My name is not important. Please pass these among you.”
They each took one of the mimeographed sheets and passed the rest on. Leaning back in the metal bucketseats, they tried to make themselves comfortable. Their host squinted through the heavy screen and up at the wall clock, which had one slowly revolving hand. He patted his black garment jovially where it was tight around the middle.
“To business. In a few moments, man’s first large-scale excursion into time will begin. Not by humans, but with the aid of a photographic and recording device which will bring us incalculably rich data on the past. With this experiment, the Brooklyn Project justifies ten billion dollars and over eight years of scientific development; it shows the validity not merely of a new method of investigation, but of a weapon which will make our glorious country even more secure, a weapon which our enemies may justifiably dread.
“Let me caution you, first, not to attempt the taking of notes even if you have been able to smuggle pens and pencils through Security. Your stories will be written entirely from memory. You all have a copy of the Security Code with the latest additions as well as a pamphlet referring specifically to Brooklyn Project regulations. The sheets you have just received provide you with the required lead for your story; they also contain suggestions as to treatment and coloring. Beyond that—so long as you stay within the framework of the documents mentioned—you are entirely free to write your stories in your own variously original ways. The press, ladies and gentlemen, must remain untouched and uncontaminated by government control. Now, any questions?”
The twelve reporters looked at the floor. Five of them began reading from their sheets. The paper rustled noisily.
“What, no questions? Surely there must be more interest than this in a project which has broken the last possible frontier—the fourth dimension, time. Come now, you are the representatives of the nation’s curiosity—you must have questions. Bradley, you look doubtful. What’s bothering you? I assure you, Bradley, that I don’t bite.”
They all laughed and grinned at each other.
Bradley half-rose and pointed at the screen. “Why does it have to be so thick? I’m not the slightest bit interested in finding out how chronar works, but all we can see from here is a grayed and blurry picture of men dragging apparatus around on the floor. And why does the clock only have one hand?”
“A good question,” the acting secretary said. His large nose seemed to glow. “A very good question. First, the clock has but one hand, because, after all, Bradley, this is an experiment in time, and Security feels that the time of the experiment itself may, through some unfortunate combination of information leakage and foreign correlation—in short, a clue might be needlessly exposed. It is sufficient to know that when the hand points to the red dot, the experiment will begin. The screen is translucent and the scene below somewhat blurry for the same reason—camouflage of detail and adjustment. I am empowered to inform you that the details of the apparatus are—uh, very significant. Any other questions? Culpepper? Culpepper of Consolidated, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Consolidated News Service. Our readers are very curious about that incident of the Federation of Chronar Scientists. Of course, they have no respect or pity for them—the way they acted and all—but just what did they mean by saying that this experiment was dangerous because of insufficient data? And that fellow, Dr. Shayson, their president, do you know if he’ll be shot?”
The man in black pulled at his nose and paraded before them thoughtfully. “I must confess that I find the views of the Federation of Chronar Scientists—or the federation of chronic sighers, as we at Pike’s Peak prefer to call them—are a trifle too exotic for my tastes; I rarely bother with weighing the opinions of a traitor in any case. Shayson himself may or may not have incurred the death penalty for revealing the nature of the work with which he was entrusted. On the other hand, he—uh, may not or may have. That is all I can say about him for reasons of security.”
Reasons of security. At the mention of the dread phrase, every reporter straightened against the hard back of his chair. Culpepper’s face lost its pinkness in favor of a glossy white. They can’t consider the part about Shayson a leading question, he thought desperately. But I shouldn’t have cracked about that damned federation!
Culpepper lowered his eyes and tried to look as ashamed of the vicious idiots as he possibly could. He hoped the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations would notice his horror.
The clock began ticking very loudly. Its hand was now only one-fourth of an arc from the red dot at the top. Down on the floor of the immense laboratory, activity had stopped. All of the seemingly tiny men were clustered around two great spheres of shining metal resting against each other. Most of them were watching dials and switchboards intently; a few, their tasks completed, chatted with the circle of black-jumpered Security guards.
“We are almost ready to begin Operation Periscope. Operation Periscope, of course, because we are, in a sense, extending a periscope into the past—a periscope which will take pictures and record events of various periods ranging from fifteen thousand years to four billion years ago. We felt that in view of the various critical circumstances attending this experiment-^international, scientific—a more fitting title would be Operation Crossroads. Unfortunately, that title has been—uh, preempted.”
Everyone tried to look as innocent of the nature of that other experiment as years of staring at locked library shelves would permit.
“No matter. I will now give you a brief background in chronar practice as cleared by Brooklyn Project Security. Yes, Bradley?”
Bradley again got partly out of his seat. “I was wondering—we know there has been a Manhattan Project, a Long Island Project, a Westchester Project and now a Brooklyn Project. Has there ever been a Bronx Project? I come from the Bronx; you know, civic pride.”
“Quite. Very understandable. However, if there is a Bronx Project you may be assured that until its work has been successfully completed, the only individuals outside of it who will know of its existence are the President and the Secretary of Security. If—if, I say—there is such an institution, the world will learn of it with the same shattering suddenness that it learned of the Westchester Project. I don’t think that the world will soon forget that.”
He chuckled in recollection and Culpepper echoed him a bit louder than the rest. The clock’s hand was close to the red mark.
“Yes, the Westchester Project and now this; our nation shall yet be secure! Do you realize what a magnificent weapon chronar places in our democratic hands? To examine only one aspect—consider what happened to the Coney Island and Flatbush Subprojects (the events are mentioned in those sheets you’ve received) before the uses of chronar were fully appreciated.
“It was not yet known in those first experiments that Newton’s third law of motion—action equalling reaction—held for time as well as it did for the other three dimensions of space. When the first chronar was excited backward into time for the length of a ninth of a second, the entire laboratory was propelled into
the future for a like period and returned in an—uh, unrecognizable condition. That fact, by the way, has prevented excursions into the future. The equipment seems to suffer amazing alterations and no human could survive them. But do you realize what we could do to an enemy by virtue of that property alone? Sending an adequate mass of chronar into the past while it is adjacent to a hostile nation would force that nation into the future—all of it simultaneously—a future from which it would return populated only with corpses!”
He glanced down, placed his hands behind his back and teetered on his heels. “That is why you see two spheres on the floor. Only one of them, the ball on the right, is equipped with chronar. The other is a dummy, matching the other’s mass perfectly and serving as a counterbalance. When the chronar is excited, it will plunge four billion years into our past and take photographs of an earth that was still a half-liquid, partly gaseous mass solidifying rapidly in a somewhat inchoate solar system.
“At the same time, the dummy will be propelled four billion years into the future, from whence it will return much changed but for reasons we don’t completely understand. They will strike each other at what is to us now and bounce off again to approximately half the chronological distance of the first trip, where our chronar apparatus will record data of an almost solid planet, plagued by earthquakes and possibly holding forms of sublife in the manner of certain complex molecules.
