Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  He had to get away, get to the suit and away from this time, place, and existence, he knew—and quickly. Still, there was little chance to do much on the way down.

  Her companion kept the silence admirably, but it wasn’t until they stopped for a while to give the mules a rest and snack on the bread loaf they’d brought along that she saw why. The other nun, it appeared at least, had little or no tongue. It seemed that way, anyway.

  It was sobering to Moosic. That’s what you get for breaking that vow.

  The village itself was a tiny, ramshackle affair that showed its poverty and its primitiveness in every glance. Chickens ran down the lone street, and there was the smell of human and animal excrement everywhere.

  The man who seemed to be in charge of the tiny outdoor market in front of the church looked more German than Italian, which was to be expected in this area. The language was harsh and barely understandable at all to her ears, but the people were emotional, seemed genuinely pleased to see them, and extended them every courtesy. They responded with smiles and signed blessings, which seemed to be payment enough.

  The sister who came with her began acting a bit strange, though, as they went through the assigned tasks. Although the village was tiny and quite poor, even by the standards of the day, it seemed to awaken in the other long-suppressed memories. The sight of fruit, and even some wines, seemed to draw her, but it was the simple normalcy of the place that was the real kicker. It was certainly a far cry from the gloom-and-doom, end-of-the-world scenarios painted in the services. The implications of the simple village were strong indeed, and questioned the dogma upon which the convent was based.

  Surely, Moosic thought, the Mother Superior must have suspected that this was a potential rebel before sending her down. Why do it? As a test of faith and loyalty? It was possible, of course, but more likely the girl was expected to run away. The only thing standing between the other and some measure of freedom was—her companion. Did the Mother Superior suspect two rebels, and decide to try and get rid of them? But that, too, hardly made sense, since she in whose body Moosic was trapped was totally committed and, with her amnesia, truly had no place else to go. She expected that one was to run away, the other to bring back the food.

  Thus, it was with some surprise that, with the cart fully loaded, the tongueless one climbed meekly back aboard and they set out again for the distant mountain lair. They had spent more time than they should have in the village, but it was impossible to fend off the townspeople and not give them their blessings, particularly so with a vow ol silence.

  They were only a bit more than halfway back at dusk, and they soon had to stop on the steep and winding trail to wait for the rising of the moon. They had no flintstone to make a torch to lead the way, so they just had to wait.

  They unhitched the mules to let them graze, and Moosic, at least, took the opportunity to lie down in the tall grass. She was tired, and grateful to God for the opportunity to have some extra rest. Tomorrow, back at Holy Mount, it would start all over again.

  She was startled first by a strange noise that grew increasingly close and which Moosic’s mind identified as electronic. She sat bolt upright. Electronic? In this day and age?

  Suddenly one of the mules brayed a protest, and she heard the noise like someone was over there. The moon was not yet up, but her eyes were accustomed enough to the darkness to see a shape trying to mount one of the animals. Her first thought was thieves, but suddenly two larger, hulking shapes rose up out of the darkness on either side. The rider saw them and screamed a horrible, deep scream and kicked the mule fiercely.

  Moosic knew those shapes now, particularly as one adjusted something on what seemed to be a belt and then soared into the air after the fugitive nun. The other stood and watched for a while, then went over to the cart and started examining the contents. Moosic crept slowly towards the figure, getting as close as she dared. Her time-frame personality identified the creature as a demon from Hell, and it was entirely possible that it wasn’t too far off the mark. Whatever future had spawned these creatures was certainly no earthly paradise.

  The gargoyle found food in the cart, and after a quick glance in the direction his companion had gone, it put down its rifle and picked up an apple.

  Now the sister understood for the first time why God had placed the unhappy soul in her head to accompany her. Some soul had been plucked from the tortures of Purgatory to give her the knowledge and strength to meet the demonic threat.

  There was no time to get the best angle, for the creature’s companion could return any moment now. With a silent and fervent prayer to God from the both of them, she ran, rolled, came up with the rifle, and as the thing dropped its apple and roared, she fired, holding down the trigger.

  Tiny little tracer balls leaped out and struck the thing in the chest. It fell backwards against the cart, screaming in agony, twitched for a moment, then died.

  Moosic wasted no time. The noise, if nothing else, would certainly bring the companion back, and this time they wouldn’t be so lucky. The creature had come to rest on its side, and she saw the belt and clasp securing the time mechanism and undid it.

  It was tough for the slight girl to roll the thing over, particularly with it oozing blood and body parts, but Moosic saw his chance and, through sheer will to survive, beat back his saintly host.

  It was far too large for her, of course, but the straps bracing it allowed it to be worn by almost anyone. She saw with panic that one shot had struck off the top of the mechanism, burning a deep groove in it, but the rest of the lights and symbols were still on. She twisted the dials at random, just wanting to be anywhere and any when from here. Nothing happened, and, off to one side, she heard a whooshing noise nearby and the sound of a heavy object landing. That was enough. She just started pushing everything on the belt.

  There was the sensation of falling a great distance very fast through near-total darkness. It was quite different than the sensations of the time suit, but Moosic was only dimly aware of the comparison. He seemed frozen, immobile, not even breathing.

  Suddenly she suffered a drop of several inches and came down hard on rocky ground. It was still night, but the scene had changed dramatically. There was a paved stone road off to one side, and off in the immediate distance was the unmistakable glow and skyline of a low city.

  Moosic relaxed a bit and was surprised to find that he was still in the body of Sister Nobody, and that she was still very much with him, although too scared and in awe of anything to give even a peep of protest.

  The refined time mechanism, then, was far more versatile than the suit. No air supply was needed, and it apparently wrapped the body in some sort of energy shell to protect it. Arrival, too, had been different. This was not any frozen tableau, but a moving city. Time was progressing at its normal rate, yet the time traveler was unchanged.

  Again Moosic remembered the woman in London. It took a great deal of energy, she said, to maintain someone without assimilation. So it was not only possible; it was done all the time—the woman had done it, as Blondie had done it in Trier, and those creatures, whatever they were, also did it.

  Those creatures… How had they found him back in that randomly selected time and place? And, more important, why?

  He remembered the noise, the electronic noise, earlier. They had been using some sort of device to sort him out among all the others. It wasn’t perfect—when the other one had run off, they’d naturally assumed she was he—but it was close enough.

  Energy bands. One led from the suit to the power source, but another had to lead from the suit to the traveler who came with it. Power was needed not only for travel, they’d said, but to maintain yourself against assimilation. Somehow, the body of Sister Nobody was not quite like all the others of her time. Some little part of it was… out of phase? As good a term as any. But what good was Ron Moosic to them? Certainly, he hadn’t mattered much in the square at Trier until…

  Until everything had gotten so fouled
up.

  “I recharged your suit,” she’d said. But how? Not with the folks back at Calvert, that was for sure. She’d done more than recharge it—she’d changed its power source from Silverberg’s crew to her own!

  That explained a lot. His assumption since Trier had been that two groups were fighting a war against each other in time. If they both had devices to scan the time stream and find anomalies—unassimilated people—they would be targets for the other once they took off their belts. Hence, all this business with contacting Sandoval and his people and getting them in position to do the dirty work. Early time-travel experiments would tend to be ignored or discounted by the monitors even when discovered.

  Why hadn’t concealed time suits, belts, whatever, ever been discovered? It had to be because they couldn’t be discovered. Perhaps they were only real, only tangible, to people out of phase with the time frame. Maybe that was why you got assimilated after a certain point! After that point, you were in phase with your time frame, and so no longer could access the suit.

  Not being in phase, the time suits couldn’t be adequately tracked or pinpointed by their sensors—but slightly out-of-phase people could. That would mean that they weren’t really after him at all—they were after his time suit! A suit which now was linked to their enemy’s power supply. With it, perhaps, they could track down that power supply, send an army of these gargoyles to it, and destroy it. Time would be left at the mercy of the other side.

  He was sure he had it right, as far as it could be taken, but that didn’t help; it only raised more unpleasant possibilities. He had on one of the enemy’s time belts. They could turn it off or bring him back involuntarily, as soon as they knew it—and if they didn’t know it already, they soon would. The longer he wore it, the greater the possibility that they would do so—or worse, since with their devices they would know exactly when and where he was. Even Silverberg could do that.

  There was no question in his mind that he had to get rid of it, to take his chances in this new time and place no matter what. He would then appear on the sensors of both sides, and they might well come after him—but at least it would be even odds.

  Unhesitatingly, he unloosed the straps and let the belt fall to the ground, then stepped over it.

  He was hit almost instantly by the nausea and dizziness, and passed out in less than a minute.

  Time continued to play its sick sense of humor upon him, and his luck continued to be really bad. Now, at last, he knew he was trapped for good. After several tries, time at last had killed him in its sardonic way.

  At least, this time, he had no worries about assimilation. He would not last that long.

  Even without the elaborate and sad past of Marcus Josephus, he would have known that this was the end.

  They were roused once more by the Roman soldiers and lined up. They were not fed, as usual, and the lack of both food and water was taking its own toll on the prisoners. It made for some will power, some extra strength on the part of those for whom hope never fled, for the ones that collapsed or could not go on in the chains they wore were the first.

  It had been but two weeks since the final battle, the one they had so decisively lost, and now they walked, thousands of them in a line six across, down the Appian Way, guarded by two combined Roman legions. The men who had defeated them this last time were curiously merciful, even sympathetic. They did not goad or harm, and some even occasionally would offer a marcher a sip of water or a crust of bread in defiance of orders. It wasn’t just that they respected their fallen foe for a battle well fought or that they felt the merciless punishment for rebellion was too terrible, although clearly many did. Six thousand prisoners, although starving men, women, and children, could still be formidable death-dealers, should they be goaded into a last suicidal attempt.

  The crosses had begun at Capua, at the start of the Appian Way. They now stretched out behind them as far as the eye could see, but there was no hurry. It was still quite a ways to Rome, and the column of the condemned was still huge. He was a young and strong man, and near the end of the line of marchers. He might have three or four days yet, before it was his turn.

  Like his host, Ron Moosic felt now a totally defeated man, one who no longer had anything left to fight for or live for. He had precipitated the death of a great man, possibly altering history far more drastically than if he had not gone back at all. For that, he had been cast adrift, flying blindly backwards in time, pursued not because he was of any value, but because he alone knew the location of a time suit that held a possible key to victory in a war being fought by two groups he did not know over things he could not know.

  He considered ending it quickly, but knew he could not. Where life remained in him, he had to cling to it, no matter how terrible the end might be.

  It was sickening to march slowly past that endless line of crosses. He almost had to wonder where the Romans had found enough wood for them. Wood and nails. For these were not routine crucifixions, where one was strapped on and left to slowly starve or die of shock and exposure. The army could not afford to tie up so many men to guard such a line. If the nails, and wood, held out, all, even the women and children among them, were to be nailed on, their cries and screams of pain and pleas for mercy so commonplace now that his senses were dulled to them.

  Had they known this would be the result, they would have fought to the last, every one of them, but who could ever have imagined that a civilized society would order this terrible death for six thousand people?

  But the Spartican Rebellion was more than a simple revolt or war; it was, in fact, a threat to the slave basis of that very system. Six thousand who could never again be trusted, who had Roman blood on their hands, would be sacrificed in order to set an example, to reassure the citizenry and to so terrify the slaves that it would not happen again.

  In fact, it took four days before they got to him, and even then he had a feeling of unreality about it. They grabbed him, and when he fought, they knocked him half unconscious with clubs. Then they strapped him to the cross on the ground, and in rapid fashion drove the nails in his wrists, waist, and legs. They were fast and professional; they had been getting a lot of practice.

  The terrible pain of the nails was nothing to the pain felt when the cross was raised and gravity tugged on his body. Shock quickly set in, not ending the pain but somehow making it bearable. He still passed out, and came to only intermittently. He was no longer rational or wholly able to see or concentrate, and he knew he was slipping fast. Some of them lingered on for days, but he knew he would not be one of them.

  Lord God, I will be with you tonight, if the time maniacs have not killed you as well, he thought. It would take a squad of Marines to get me out of this now.

  THE TIME HAS COME, THE WALRUS SAID, TO SPEAK OF MANY THINGS

  The squad of Marines landed just off the Appian Way, and quickly they took up positions. There were eleven of them, clad in boots and camouflage uniforms, but they were not the Marines Ron Moosic was used to, nor were their weapons and belts standard issue.

  The Romans had posted guards every twenty crosses, mostly in order to make sure that none were freed before death overtook them, for all the good rescue would do. The shock, loss of blood, and crushed bones would make them useless, and perhaps hopeless, in any case.

  The squad spread out, each taking the five guards closest to either side of Moosic, while the eleventh stood poised, waiting for a clear path. On a signal transmitted to each member of the squad, they fired as one, their rifles issuing brief bursts of light. As they struck the guards, those guards went down; then each advanced to the guard’s previous position and assumed it. There were few torches along the Appian way at this point, and it was hoped that the Romans nearest to the fallen guards would simply see a figure there in the dusk. It wouldn’t have to be for long.

  Waiting a couple of minutes to make certain they had not been discovered, and prepared for a display of firepower if they were, they relaxed and all but the o
utermost guard replacements moved in to aid the leader, who was already at Moosic’s cross. Quickly they lifted it up, then gently lowered it to the ground. Moosic had passed out by that time and had seen none of this.

  The leader, a huge, fat man with Oriental features who resembled a Sumo wrestler, whispered, “Doc—check on him. Are we in time?”

  Another figure approached and ran a few checks with some portable instruments, then nodded. “Barely,” she told him. “No way we’re going to risk taking him down, though. Get this spare belt around him and I’ll program it. He hasn’t reached a trip point yet, so I think we can get him back to the base as his original self.”

  Quickly they strapped the belt around him, and around the cross as well. He groaned lightly, but otherwise remained unaware of the activity.

  “Hurry!” somebody else whispered. “Those guards will be coming to in a couple of minutes!”

  Doc nodded. “All set. Chung, you sound recall. I’ll set his and mine for the same point. Let’s move! He can die on us at any moment!”

  Chung, the huge leader, unhooked a small wireless microphone from his time belt. “Recall to Base. Ten seconds, everybody. Acknowledge!”

  As the acknowledgments were still coming in, Doc reached over and with one hand tripped Moosic’s belt, and with the other her own.

  Both vanished into time.

  Ron Moosic awoke slowly, as if from a very bad dream. He lay there for a while, confused and disoriented, as strange sounds around him began to resolve themselves into voices.

  “Shock is as much mental as physical,” Doc told a couple of worried-looking young men in the small base hospital. “He’ll be O.K., as we know, but don’t expect an immediate recovery. We were very lucky with him, I can tell you.”

  Moosic understood none of the words, not because of his condition but because they were spoken in a language he did not understand. Still, he recognized the language as real, opened his eyes, and groaned.