Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  The lights came on. Five glistening inhuman creatures stared at him, rifles aimed at his head. In the big stuffed recliner chair sat a man he’d seen before, a blond man with a strong Nordic face, dressed all in black, leaning forward so that he didn’t have to sit back on his time belt.

  “Come, come, Sergeant O’Brien—or should I say Mr. Moosic? Surely that is not the kind of expression used to greet old friends.”

  UPTIME DOWNBEAT

  “Time,” said the blond man, “is very, very difficult to handle. Change one major thing, you wind up with the same mess—or one much worse. Change anything else, and it just grabs hold of you and gets you. Or you find out you’ve shifted something very subtly and wound up causing the nuclear war they narrowly averted. I, by the way, am Eric Benoni.”

  He had no intention of moving with all those guns on him. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.”

  Eric made a simple hand motion, and the guns went down and the creatures stepped back. “That better? I must say you’re looking very… sympathetic.”

  “And you’re looking much the opposite. In fact, you haven’t changed a bit since the last time we met, although that was very, very long ago.”

  “Very long—hmmm… We are in one of those cross-temporal problems. It probably was very long to you in relative time, but it seems only a short while ago to me—which it was. One of the hazards of this business.”

  “Mind telling me how you found me so quickly and so easily?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t difficult to anticipate. Admittedly, it takes a week or so relative time for the sensors to determine an anomaly with their random sweeps, but if one knows that someone else is likely to appear in a given time and place, it’s child’s play to set a permanent scan on it. It was still a bit of luck, but this was the one time and place that both of us knew precisely and which you’d have some likelihood of returning to. Our psychologial profile of you indicated that, if you ever received major injury or reached a critical age point, you would most likely choose this time and place for a trip point.”

  Moosic was not pleased at that. “Am I so easy to read?”

  “In many ways we all are, Mr. Moosic. Don’t take it so hard. Had you tripped in any other time or place, I might never have found you. Even if you’d shown up here after that, I’d merely know an enemy agent was here, not you. But—come. Let us be off. I’m afraid I’m overstaying my welcome in this period even now, and our power is far more limited than yours. Shall we get your belt now?”

  “I don’t think so. It’d lead you right back to the base, which you’ve already caused to jump around. Even if they could escape again, I doubt if I’d be any good in the ten years it’d take them to get the power back on. No, I think you might as well shoot me now and be done with it.”

  Eric Benoni’s manner was such that it was impossible to determine through the cool, aristocratic tone if he was serious or sarcastic, but he at least sounded surprised. “I have no intention of shooting you, Mr. Moosic, unless you make it an imperative. I could, however, use rather unpleasant means to make you reclaim that belt and give it to me.”

  Moosic returned a sardonic smile. “So why haven’t you? Partly because you’ve overstayed your welcome in this time frame, I’d say, and are in very close danger of getting assimilated here yourself. Those methods take time. And partly because you know, as I do, that this body couldn’t stand very much before it gave put.”

  “Brave talk. You’re going noble on me, and that’s unbecoming. However, I will be honest enough to say that you are correct in both assumptions. I can waste no more time here, nor can you stand harsh methods.” He turned to one of the gargoyles. “Strap a belt on him!”

  With those guns trained on him, Moosic couldn’t argue with them. He allowed the belt to be strapped to his waist because there was no alternative. “Where are we going? To make me a healthier torture victim?’’ he asked the blond man.

  “Well, yes and no. If you think I’m going to take the risk on assimilation just to get you in better shape, you are wrong. Too chancy. Come. Activate!” he commanded. The belt must have been voice actuated, because everything blacked out and he was falling once more.

  Ultimately, the world returned, a world of artificial light. It was not any place he’d been to before, but he could guess what it was. There was a delay of sorts on his belt as well, because they were all there just waiting for him to materialize.

  He materialized, of course, as the prematurely aged and terminally ill Moosic of the island.

  There was no mistaking Benoni’s shock and surprise at seeing him like this. He sighed. “Well, now it’s clear why you required a trip point.”

  “Failed again,” Moosic almost taunted him, feeling pretty good about it despite his desperate situation. “This body’s in at least as bad shape as the other one.” He looked around. “Your base in the Safe Zone, I presume?”

  Benoni nodded. “Yes. Exactly so. Founded, I might add, only two decades after those first experiences, as soon as they had the capability. The ultimate retreat and escape for the rich and powerful when and if the bombs are launched. The world’s most luxurious, and secure, bomb shelter. Never used for what it was intended, of course, but still here.” He sighed. “So what are we to do with you, Mr. Moosic? I suspect we could easily gain the location of the belt from you, but we could hardly force you to go up, retrieve it, and hand it to us. Either your body or your mind would give, and you are a trained security agent.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps a different tack is warranted.”

  “You’re going to be my buddy now, right?”

  “I wouldn’t insult you like that. But—consider. Why am I doing this? Money? What use is money to a nightsider? Power? What sort of power am I wielding beyond what I could have by other means?’’

  “I assume you’re a soldier doing your duty as you see it.”

  He nodded. “Exactly! But unlike you, I have had an advantage. I have been on both sides in this terrible conflict.”

  That piqued Ron Moosic’s interest. “Both sides?”

  “Indeed. In fact, I lived with the Outworlders for some time before getting directly involved. Have you ever seen the Outworlders, sir?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I have. Many of them. We went too far in our quest to colonize, Moosic. Much too far. They are monsters. I’ve seen creatures with glistening exoskeletons who breathe poisonous gases and glide along in a sea of methane. I’ve seen tentacled things that can take the oxygen out of rocks and transmute granite. The first generation was already lost, as soon as they accepted what they were. The second had no human origins. We are fighting the third.”

  Moosic had to admit he was shocked. “Biology went that far that fast?”

  “Not so fast. Consider it was but sixty-six years between the first powered flight and the first man on the moon. Consider the genetic manipulations and the medical wonders in your own lifetime, and use the same developmental scale. In the technological era, a decade is revolutionary; a century is radical.”

  He had to admit he’d never thought of it that way before, but there was truth to what the blond man said. There was, however, a rather compelling counterargument standing not so far away. “Those creatures of yours—they’re the humanity you want to save?”

  Eric looked slightly embarrassed. “A technological revolution, I fear, is not limited to one side. However, these are different in a hundred ways. For one thing, no one was changed into them. They are laboratory created and bred. They save lives. One can make the poor your cannon fodder, as it has always been, or one can artificially raise cannon fodder. An interesting moral choice, is it not?”

  He had no answer for that.

  “So,” Eric continued, “it becomes a matter of us versus them. When it was decided by the Outworlders that all remaining humans would be converted into their own kind, a few of us rebelled and planned. We stole a ship and got it to Earth. The story is a true adventure in and of itself, but
it is not relevant. We got here and, somehow, avoided being shot down, although we were, of course, captured. They were quite surprised to find us as human as they.”

  “I’ve heard about Earth up then. I didn’t much like my own time anymore, after what we’d both done to it, but I think I like it better than what I hear of the edge.”

  “Indeed, it is miserable. The Outworlders wish conquest, not elimination, so they do not extinguish life as they could easily do with their present command of space. Instead, they sit up there and hurl rocks at us, some hundreds of kilometers in size. The rocks are broken up by Earth defenses, but they still hit in large chunks. They destroy as surely as nuclear bombs destroy, but without the mess. Of course, they are mostly random, but when you get several a day for years, it tends to leave things pretty

  ugly.”

  “If they’re so inhuman, what do they want with the Earth?”

  “Control. So long as Earth exists, it is a potential dagger at their throats, if not now, then in the future. They have plans for the Earth. An adaptive Earth, they call it. A population all changed into monsters, all working for extraterrestrial overlords. An enslaved Earth populated with practical monsters adapted to various needs. The end of humanity, Mr. Moosic. The end. I’m not going to pretend that the Earth I know is a nice place. Wars make nice places ugly. The cost in human suffering is enormous, on a scale that almost makes the annihilation of the human race by nuclear arms seem preferable. Those old warheads still exist, Moosic. Not in the numbers they used to, but they are still there. Earth has suffered too much to surrender to the monsters, to become monsters and make misery permanent.”

  “You mean that they’re willing to wipe out humanity if they lose?” He was aghast at the idea. “Commit racial suicide? But is there no hope for a reconciliation?”

  “None. But like all things in time, it is a possibility, not a certainty. Earth is losing. It cannot win against the massive power of the Outworlders. It no longer has the power to even move more than a handful of people back into the Safe Zone, let alone the equipment and staff required here to build up this base and increase its power. It’s too late. Either Earth wins by changing the equations so that it does win, or humanity is wiped out. Except for the very elite, of course, who will be able to sneak out the back door to here before it blows. There is no way to bring more. Oh, we’ll bring a huge number of fertilized eggs and try a new race here, but, even then, if a sufficient human presence is truly established for a civilization back here, the Outworlders will be able to know it and come for it.”

  Moosic sat down on the cold floor, feeling weak and dizzy, not so much from his health as from what he’d been told. It was always true that there were two sides to every story, and this one was a doozy. If both sides were to be believed, there were no good guys at all in this, only tragedy for all humankind, no matter what the result.

  If Benoni could be believed, and his words had the very ring of truth in them, then the fate of human civilization, of all humanity, rested with him. That was something he’d never bargained for, something he was not prepared to accept.

  “Why Marx?” he asked the blond man. “Why all this stuff in the first place?”

  “Because we have so little to work with. It was a way, a device, to cause the other side to act. A chance, perhaps, to catch them, to trace them back. Bait.”

  “I really want no part of this. A pox on both your houses.”

  Eric nodded. “I know how you feel. I really do. But understand, you were not originally in the desperation move. All of those antique suits of yours were supposed to be destroyed. The Outworlders were supposed to be the ones tracking our young radicals, not you. But—here you are. The loop was formed around you rather than they, and that puts you center stage. Now you see our moves, and our desperation. Tell me—what reward would you like? You have all of time, you know. Within the minimizing ripple effect, we can make you whatever you want wherever and whenever you want to be.”

  But you can’t give me back Dawn and the kids, he thought sourly. Neither side is willing to do that. Aloud he answered, “What I want is not within your power, and the other side denies it to me and holds it over me like a club. I’m going to be frank, Benoni. I don’t give a damn who wins or loses your dirty little war. I grew up under the nuclear threat, so I’m really only surprised to find it took so long. You ask me to make a choice, and I refuse. You have no right to ask it, and I have no right to grant or not grant it. I’ve never seen your Earth, but I think I’d hate it. I’ll grant your Outworlder version, so I’m not too thrilled about them, either. But I’ve never seen or talked to them any more than I have your Earth. I’m being asked to take the facts on faith and to maybe decide the war on that. I can’t and I won’t. Piss on it and bring out your torture. I’d rather just die now and get it over with.”

  Eric stood up and walked over in front of him, looking down, a curious expression on his face. “I’m not going to kill you. In fact, out of your own mouth you have guaranteed this. I was going to take you forward to the edge, show you what your loyalty has wrought, but I think not. Your mind-set is not prepared to make the adjustments, to see that an issue of human survival surpasses all else, including the present quality of life, or lack of it.” He turned to the gargoyles. “Feed him and make him comfortable but secure. Keep him in Room 226 until I return.”

  Moosic found himself being lifted by powerful arms, and shook them off. He preferred to do this on his own as much as possible, and he followed the hulking creatures up a stairway and into a comfortable, motel-like room. In a few minutes, some food was delivered that appeared mostly synthetic, but it did taste something like the meat and vegetables it was supposed to be. The beer he found surprisingly good, although it had been quite a while since he’d sampled any. Then they cleared away the trays, closed and locked the door, and left him alone.

  He felt very tired, almost achingly so, and suspected that the beer or food had been drugged in some manner. Well, let them. They could make him talk under the influence, but he knew full well that if they moved him up to the sergeant’s time, he would once again become the sergeant and once again be awake and alert. Benoni had been very nervous in that time frame, and Moosic suspected that his captor could ill afford another trip there. Yet, with the multi-shifts of the military compound and the patrols all about, they would have to call up humans to shepherd a drugged and wheelchair-bound man, one known to almost all in the area, out to the fossil cliffs. Nothing else they could learn from him mattered.

  In fact, nothing really mattered to him anymore. The other side denied him the only people he had ever loved. This side had less to offer. More, they might have to move fast—the Outworlders could easily discover him kidnapped and then cut power to the belt, bringing it back to their base and denying Eric the trace to their new headquarters indefinitely.

  He did not fight sleep nor fear it; he was oddly at peace with himself, although hardly happy. He had been happy; now he was not and could never be again, but he was out of it. He was no longer the pawn in their game, and if he died, well, that was enough.

  He never did really know if they’d drugged him. The drugs of the future surely were far more dependable, sophisticated, and undetectable than those of his own time. It didn’t matter, although the time he spent there was certainly boring. He had no idea how long he was left there, but it seemed far too long almost from the start. At least, he thought more than once, they could have left a couple of books or something.

  He had the impression that the human master of this place had gone somewhere, possibly uptime for consultations. It was both easy and difficult to understand Eric Benoni. Easy, in that he’d experienced, if he could be believed, both systems and found them both horrible, but he’d been born a human and wished to die one. Perhaps a case could be made that the Outworlders were not the end of humanity; certainly, no matter how alien they had become, they retained their cultural heritage, their history. No matter that they were monsters, th
ey sprang from the same roots as man and might be mankind transformed, mankind changed, but certainly they were a continuation of the race. Perhaps the Neanderthal, looking at Cro-Magnon, had thought much the same as Eric Benoni.

  Yet he was also difficult to know. His polyglot accent was the individually unique signature of the veteran time traveler, his manner bespoke the power and egotism that one with such a profession acquired. Yet he did not ring true, as kin as he might be to the Outworlder agents. He was a true believer with a cause, but he was no fanatic like Sandoval. He simply didn’t seem the type to be on the losing end of things, gambling with the past because he had not the resources to be decisive. Comparing the two sides he’d now known, the conclusion was obvious. Eric could do an awful lot of harm and damage, but he was still on the losing side even in this battle. Not being a fanatic, he was miscast in this role.

  His thoughts returned most often to Dawn and the children. He loved them all so very much, and he missed them terribly. He realized with more sorrow than surprise that be would willingly go back to the island and to that primitive existence, even if it was killing them. They were the happiest years of his life, and he’d trade almost anything for them again.

  And that, of course, was the one reason why, if he ever got the chance, he’d return to the Outworlders. The chance was highly unlikely, but if it came, he knew he’d go. The Earthsiders held his body hostage; the Outworlders held his heart.

  Seven meals and two sleeps of indeterminate lengths and Eric was finally back from wherever he’d been. He seemed less confident and some of that aristocratic impassiveness was missing, yet it was clear that he was a man with instructions.