Time Travel Omnibus Volume 1

by Anthology

  “You’re the only one who knows what happened to me . . .”

  “I guess I am, and I’m grateful to you, Herel. I owe you my life for designing the Arrowhead. I would have died out there without it. How did you come up with such an ingenious design?”

  “It was tricky, juggling space limitation, stress factors, and shielding while keeping costs down.”

  “See, your memory’s coming back strong.”

  “So it is,” Herel said. “I do remember emerging from the white hole.”

  “Floating on the waters of Lethe,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s the river of forgetfulness in classical mythology.”

  “I never had much time for literature,” Herel said. “Is the physicist you mentioned gone?”

  “Lillian? Yes, she’s gone. People never stay long . . . except for me.”

  “Except for you.” He struggled to remember her name. “—Mae?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do people get out of here?”

  “A ship comes and takes them.”

  “Who pilots the ship?”

  “No one, it’s completely AI.”

  “Where does it go?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe there’s another Kerr hole somewhere inside the time knot, an escape hatch, but I don’t know.”

  “Did robots build the time station?”

  “I think so, at the direction of the uptime people.”

  “But the uptime people don’t come here themselves?”

  “No, but they have a way of sending directives into the knot.”

  “It was very humane of them to have this station built.”

  “Well, that may have been their intention,” Mae said, “but the reality is something quite different.”

  He looked at her sad brown eyes and realized how inane his comment must have sounded to her. She’d already told him she was stranded here. He looked away, flushed and embarrassed. That awkward feeling was all too familiar, as if he never knew how to say the right thing.

  “Why can’t you leave?” Herel asked.

  “Because I’m a criminal,” Mae replied in sweet tones that belied her words.

  “What?”

  “I protested the System War,” she said, “a struggle between the regime on Earth and colonists on Luna, Mars, and the gas giants’ moons.”

  “You were against the regime?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this is a prison?”

  “For me it is,” she said. “For others it’s a way station.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “The court didn’t think so.”

  “But how could the court even know this station had been built?” Herel asked.

  “They couldn’t,” she said. “They didn’t care about that. The conventional wisdom held that there were too many people already, so they might as well get rid of the troublemakers.”

  “They just dropped people into the Kerr hole and washed their hands of them, not knowing if they’d die?”

  “When I first got here I thought someone would come for me. Then Lillian arrived and told me they couldn’t, maybe for the same reasons we can’t remember going up ahead.”

  “How do they run this place from uptime?”

  “They don’t. The station is self-sustaining.”

  “And it’s all for us?” he asked, thinking of the tendrils.

  “It’s a very lonely place.”

  “Well, at least we have each other.”

  “For now.”

  It was a dull life, just as Mae had warned him. Without any means of calculating the passage of time, Herel whiled away the hours with interactive dramas, reading, and watching the tendrils creep out of the walls, floor, and ceiling to clean and maintain the enclosed environment. He guessed that they were nanowire fashioned from potassium manganese oxide, easily able to absorb oil and grease, but that didn’t explain their independent movements. At first he followed them and tried to find out where they came from, where the mechanisms that controlled them were stored.

  The air was circulated through wall slashes so thin he couldn’t insert a finger between them.

  He searched the premises thoroughly. Other than the airlock hatches in the docking node, he found no entryway into the time station’s guts. Holes opened like mouths to receive the empty food and drink packets, and then closed again seamlessly. The tendrils seemed to grow right out of the solid walls, disappearing when they finished a job until the next time they were needed. They fascinated him, but once he’d seen them working a few dozen times he lost interest. After a while, he hardly noticed them, except for the occasional frisson provided by catching their movements in his peripheral vision.

  He spent hours drifting through the time station, making observations, never giving up on finding out what made it all hum. He noted that the pastel walls consisted of soft material and that there were no sharp corners, no tools or knives and forks. Herel estimated the time station’s interior at just over 2,000 square meters—2,028, as nearly as he could tell without precision instruments.

  He made it his purpose, his work, to learn about it. When he tired, he sought out Mae, because her company was the only genuine pleasure he derived from his new surroundings.

  “I feel rather frustrated,” he confided to her in the galley, “expending all this effort and learning so little. I have no idea what powers this place or how it reacts to our needs.”

  She nodded. “The time station seems to be alive, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, almost as if it’s been endowed with consciousness.”

  “Maybe it has.”

  “That would explain a lot, but I don’t see how it’s possible.”

  They talked often about their earlier lives. Herel got to know Mae. He thought she was wonderful—literate, kind, intelligent, and warm. They were nearly the same age, or had been when they were dropped into the Kerr hole. He was thirty-seven and she was thirty-five, even though he was born twenty-eight years before her. He admired her heart-shaped face, her dark eyes, her diminutive figure, the mole on her cheek. He enjoyed listening to her soft voice. She often read to him. He felt protective toward her.

  “Why didn’t you pay your taxes?” he asked during one immeasurable day as they chatted.

  “It was a matter of principle,” she said. “I was an activist in the peace movement.”

  “How did you get involved in that?”

  “I was part of a triad marriage, and we were all in it together—or so I thought.”

  “What happened?”

  “Suzanne and Lodzi, my partners, relented and paid their taxes. They got suspended sentences, but I wouldn’t do it. I never heard from either of them again.”

  “I’m sorry, Mae.”

  “I was foolish enough to believe what my attorneys told me.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “That I’d get probation. They didn’t count on the court’s hard line,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “The state made an example of me.”

  “But why you?”

  “Because the court thought everyone would see that if they’d do this to a nonviolent person, they’d do it to anyone. It cost a lot to wage war on the colonies. Imagine if billions of people refused to pay their taxes.”

  “So they cast you into the darkness.”

  “You could say that,” she said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “But I’d like to know more about you, Herel.”

  “I volunteered.”

  “Yes, I know, but why?”

  “I wanted to lead the way through the Kerr hole.”

  “You’re an idealist,” she said.

  “No, I’m a mechanical engineer.”

  “And an explorer,” Mae said with an admiring smile.

  “Call me Magellan.”

  She frowned. “You should be proud of what you did.”

  “Why, because I stumbled on a new kind of prison?”

  “It could be worse
.” She shrugged. “There’s only one prisoner so far.”

  “I know, Mae, but it’s you.”

  Mae looked at him with appreciation. “Thank you, Herel,” she said. “But I have my function here.”

  “Caring for lost travelers,” he said, his heart pounding so violently that it hurt. “Yes, I suppose it is important, and you’re the perfect woman for the job. They made you into an example, all right, a beautiful example.”

  Their eyes met, reminding Herel of lines from a poem, “The Ecstacy” by John Donne, that Mae had read to him several times:

  Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

  Our eyes, upon one double string;

  So to entergraft our hands, as yet

  Was all the means to make us one,

  And pictures in our eyes to get

  Was all our propagation.

  He took her warm hand in his. She didn’t look away. It was then that Herel knew he loved her. He hoped to consummate that love very soon.

  It still hadn’t happened when a man was brought to the time station.

  The robot was much taller than a human being and more slender. Herel felt as if he were seeing a figure from his falling dream when it came through the airlock carrying the barely conscious man in its long, segmented arms. The examination room was right off the airlock’s inner hatch.

  Four gleaming hands stripped the traveler of his pressure suit and thermal underclothing, calipers extended from slender fingers to measure him, and other instruments slid in and out of its hands and torso to pierce him and tweak him, to take blood, stool, and urine samples, to swab the inside of his mouth and to record his temperature. Tests were quickly administered to determine the condition of his organs, nervous system, circulation, and respiration. Herel identified with the robot’s efficiency. Watching it work was like observing some superior species.

  When the robot finished the job, it silently made its way to the airlock and went back outside, firing jets built into its elbows and heels to direct it back toward the white hole’s tractor radius.

  The new guest was a stocky young fellow with titanium plates embedded in his temples and bas-relief tats adorning most of his body. He gaped, his head lolled on his thick neck, and his eyes were unfocused. His head was shaved but the rest of him was hirsute. Herel didn’t like seeing the young man’s muscular, nude body.

  But Mae didn’t mind. She rubbed his wrists and fetched him water, explaining to him that he’d been yanked back from the future and spat out of a white hole. He looked at her as if she were speaking in tongues.

  “What’s your name?” Mae asked.

  “Conway.”

  “I’m Mae and this is Herel.”

  “We inside?” he asked. His voice was surprisingly high and light.

  “Yes,” Mae said. “How did you know?”

  “I been inside before,” he said.

  “You have?”

  “Uh-huh, third time.”

  “You mean you’ve been in prison three times?” Herel said.

  Conway’s sleepy blue eyes regarded him. “Yeah, what else?”

  “I thought you meant inside time,” Mae said.

  “I don’t blink.”

  Herel didn’t understand what Conway meant, but Mae kept on trying to explain the time knot to him.

  “Just three of us here?” Conway asked, as if he hadn’t been listening to her.

  “That’s right,” Mae said. “And Herel won’t be here much longer.”

  Conway’s eyes cleared as he began to understand that he was not dead or sentenced to some hellhole, but alive in a safe place with a lovely woman, soon to be alone with her.

  “What were you convicted of?” Herel asked, intending to make Mae see what kind of man this was.

  “Armed robbery,” Conway said with an unmistakable sense of pride. “Chipped it true.”

  Herel glanced at Mae, but he couldn’t tell what effect this admission had on her, if any.

  “It was on Ogle,” Conway went on. “Had it skivved. Gonna slide right after the chip. Got slapped at Customs.”

  No colony had existed on that massive world in Herel’s time. In fact, OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb had barely been explored in those days.

  “Yeah, heavy world,” Conway said, “I chipped a gravity case and slipped speedy. Headed back to Mars, maybe Earth. Live big and true.” He sighed. “But slip into slap instead.”

  Mae and Herel didn’t speak. Conway’s eyes glanced furtively from one to the other.

  “I hurt nobody,” Conway said, a whine creeping into his braggadocio.

  “I thought you said it was armed robbery,” Herel said.

  “I spill crediscs,” Conway said, “not blood.”

  “What if someone had done something you didn’t like during the robbery?” Herel persisted. “Would you have killed her?”

  Conway didn’t answer the question. He glowered, understanding that Herel was his enemy, but not fearing him at all.

  Mae fetched a red jersey for Conway.

  “Hungry,” he said, after she helped him put it on.

  They took him into the galley to get him some food.

  “Once you’ve eaten,” Mae said, “you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m all right, just tired,” he said, taking a squeeze of brown glop in his mouth. “What’s this?”

  “It’s synthesized food,” Mae said. “I know it doesn’t taste like much, but it’s good for you.”

  “Sweet.”

  They ate quietly for a few minutes.

  Conway whistled when the tendrils came out of the walls and ceiling.

  “They do all the cleaning,” Mae explained.

  He laughed, pleased that he would have no chores in this prison.

  “So where am I?” Conway asked, as if they’d never told him.

  They explained it all to him again. He didn’t seem to comprehend what they were telling him, except for one salient detail.

  “I’m here—” he said, “—forever?”

  Mae didn’t say anything.

  “Looks that way,” Herel told him.

  Unexpectedly, Conway grinned at Mae, revealing filed incisors and canines. “And Conway thought this would be skiv.”

  Feeling depressed, Herel showed Conway to his bunk after the meal, choosing the cell across the corridor from his own, all the way on the other end of the station from Mae’s stateroom. He intended to keep an eye on Conway.

  Herel strapped Conway into the bunk and watched him fall asleep. He went to his room and brooded for a few hours. After thinking things over, he found Mae reading in her room and said to her, “We’ve got to talk, Mae.”

  “All right,” she said, letting her reader float away, its projected words swimming above it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Herel pulled himself inside her room and said, “I don’t like the way Conway leers at you.”

  She shrugged. “He’s just a kid.”

  “Young, yes, but he’s a felon, not a political prisoner.”

  “Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “He’s a sociopath.”

  “A sociopath?” she said, laughing at the dated term.

  “Look, I understand that you’re sympathetic, but Conway’s going to make trouble.”

  “What trouble can he make here?”

  “That’s what I don’t want to find out.”

  “There’s nothing for him to steal, and there aren’t any weapons.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” Conway asked from behind him.

  Herel shut up as Conway hauled himself into the room to face him. He floated so close by that Herel could smell the stale sweat on him.

  “So what is it?” Conway demanded, sticking out his chin.

  “We were having a private conversation,” Herel said.

  “About me.”

  “Conway—” Mae said.

  “Not blaming you, Mae,” Conway said. He never took his eyes off Herel. “He’s skivvin me.�
��

  “No, it’s just—”

  “I blink what’s just,” Conway said. He turned toward Mae, the plate on his left temple gleaming. “People skiv me all my life. Never give me true.”

  “So it’s always someone else’s fault?” Herel said, failing to keep the sneer out of his voice.

  “You blink,” Conway said, as if reciting lines from a melodrama. “Born in a whorehouse. Momma bad. She got slapped, and I chipped to live. Had to.”

  “Did you ever try anything else?” Herel asked. “Did you make any attempt at bettering yourself, at educating yourself?”

  Conway ignored the question. He stared straight at Herel, until Herel saw his own reflection in the blue eyes.

  Herel turned and pulled his way out of the room. He was ashamed of letting Conway get to him, but he had to think this through. He went to the observation window near the docking node and stared out into the dark.

  How many more like Conway would be sent here? Why were Mae and Conway the only two prisoners here, each from a different century? Was this place intended to eventually house miscreants from different eras, a means of thinning out the overcrowded population? Was it an experimental penitentiary, maybe the prototype?

  It did him no good to speculate. All that really mattered was that Herel was going to be taken away when the next ship came, leaving Mae alone with Conway. Would she read poetry to this thug? Would she civilize him?

  No, instead he would brutalize her in this most isolated of all places. She would be at his mercy, and he would break her down no matter how much she tried to make him understand compassion and beauty—just as she had failed to make the court understand that her principles were more important to her than the state’s power.

  Herel knew he had to do something. But what? How could he stop it? He’d be gone soon.

  He had to act before then.

  Mae spent more and more time with Conway, giving Herel the opportunity to do something he’d had little time for before—reflect. He’d never been good at dealing with people socially. He didn’t know how to talk to women, for one thing. His mother had died in childbirth and Herel had no siblings. He’d studied hard—structural analysis, chemistry, thermodynamics, kinematics, metallurgy—to please his father, who’d been proud of his accomplishments. The old man hadn’t lived to see Herel’s finest engineering accomplishment, the Arrowhead, or his subsequent selection by the Time Travel Institute.