Vestiges of Time

by Richard C. Meredith

  These were the beings whom Mathers had believed to be the founders and the coordinators of the Paratimers, the beings who had called themselves Albigensians when they disguised themselves as humans, the beings who appeared to hate all things human and Krithian and had set out across the Lines, much as had the Kriths, to change the parallel worlds—or to destroy them—to suit their own enigmatic purposes.

  But Albert von Heinen, who had worked for them and had once seen them in their natural, undisguised state, had said they came from the far Temporal-West, the products of laboratories, not wombs, artificial beings, androids who had risen to destroy their human

  masters and then to destroy all humankind on all the Lines. That was' what Von Heinen had believed them to be. But . . .

  Could it be, the Shadowy Man asked himself, that the Paratimers were not as alien as he had believed? Could it be that they are some variant of the Kriths themselves? Or some alternative race brought into being by the same people who molded the Kriths from human genetic material? Or could they be in a way analogous to the Magers, the companions of the Kriths, some sort of halfway point between human and Krith? Or are they, perhaps, a wild variation of natural evolution, a quantum leap in mutation that created a whole new species on a single, improbable Timeline in this maelstrom of paratemporal madness? Or ... ?

  And if these were the true Albigensians, the true Paratimers, as they certainly appeared to be, then what were they doing exactly here? Had they skudded into this world? Or had they, as he had just speculated, come from this world originally and then gone to the far T-West to begin their work from there?

  And how did all this figure into the disruption of the Timelines he was witnessing, the fragmentation of Line after Line after Line into multiplicities of worlds? Were they part of the cause, as he was? Or were- they merely an effect of it?

  There was too much here for even the Shadowy Man to begin to comprehend at once, though there was an overriding concern in his mind that came back to him, an awareness of the eventual consequences of such universal fragmentation.

  He remembered a part of the conversation that Eric Mathers had held with the Tromas. As he again moved uptime toward decision and further action, this came to him:

  The Tromas had said: “In the beginning, when the universe came into being, when there was only one master Timeline and it existed in and of itself, it con

  tained in itself all the chronal or parachronal energy, all the temporal potential that would ever exist. Then as the Lines, began branching, as the various alternative worlds came into being, that temporal potential began being divided among them.”

  The Tromas had said: “Each succeeding Timeline, as history progresses, is lower in potential than those which had existed earlier. . . . And ... the universe is limited. Something is either infinite or it is finite. . . . If it is infinite, there is no end ever. If it is finite, there is a limit that sooner or later must be reached.”

  The Tromas had said: “The probability energy, one might say, of the universe is large, large beyond imagining, yet it is not infinite, and for billions of years it has been spreading itself thinner and thinner as more and more Timelines come into being to further subdivide that potential.”

  Mathers had asked: “Are you saying then that there will come a time when the potential is spread between too many Timelines?”

  The Tromas had said: “Exactly, Eric, and when that time comes, the laws of conservation of energy—or something very like them—will come into play to rearrange the probability indices of the Timelines.

  “In order to maintain itself—though not exactly in the forms to which we have become accustomed—the universe will have to make major readjustments within itself.

  “Timelines vary in their probability. . . . Some are more likely than others, more probable, and possess, even now, greater values of parachronal energy than do Lines of lesser likelihood.

  “Those with lesser likelihood, with lower orders of probability, will cease to exist, and their parachronal energy will be redistributed among the Lines of higher orders of probability. That is to say that a vast number of Timelines will cease to exist in order that a smaller

  number, with greater likelihoods, will be able to continue to exist.”

  When the universe reordered itself and the lesser Lines ceased to exist, among them would be the Line that had spawned the Kriths, unless they were able to do something to increase their probability—which was exactly the purpose of their spreading across the Lines.

  But, the Shadowy Man asked himself, were they correct in their projections of when the reordering would come? They had said hundreds or thousands of years uptime. But . . . but did they fully realize how thinly the fabric was already stretched in some areas of space/time? Did they realize how much they themselves had done to weaken the matrix from which everything was built?

  Farther uptime he moved, crossing the twentieth century and then the twenty-first.

  Ultimate questions about the future of all the Timelines would have to wait, he told himself. That was not the immediate problem. The Tromas were. And the problem of their existence, and his own, must be settled before he could allow himself the luxury of such metaphysical speculation.

  And he thought he now knew where and how he could challenge the Tromas, the time and the place where they would be weak enough, inexperienced enough for him to hope to defeat them—if he had not stretched himself too far when he reached that place in space and time.

  That he would see.

  Uptime he plunged, into the future far beyond the point where he had come into existence, out into space and far away from the planet called Earth that circled a star called Sol. Into interstellar space . . .

  20

  UR-427-51-IV

  Had an observer been watching the Shadowy Man, had it been possible for human eyes to see him then and to follow the swiftness of his motion in some sort of coherent space/time framework, it would have appeared to the observer that the Shadowy Man moved away from Earth, toward the constellation of Gemini, the Twins.

  And had the observer’s eyes been able to follow him out of the solar system and into the limitless blackness between the stars, he would have seen the Shadowy Man aiming himself directly toward the second-brightest star in that constellation, Beta Gemini, an orange KO star that had an absolute magnitude of +0.8, a star somewhat brighter than Earth’s Sol, a star often called Pollux on a number of Earths, but known by other names on other worlds, a star listed in the fabled Breston Survey Catalog as UR-427-51.

  Had the observer, Uke the Shadowy Man, been able to step outside the conventionally understood configurations of space and time, had his eyes been able to transcend lightspeed by means of some nonphotonic vision, had he seen by tachyons, perhaps, and had he in this fashion followed the Shadowy Man across the twelve parsecs that separated Sol from Pollux, he would have eventually seen that a host of planets revolved around that orange sun: five of them so-called terrestrial planets, Earthlike in that they were primarily cold balls of stone and perhaps had cores of molten nickel-iron, two of them with gaseous envelopes sufficient to' warrant the name “atmosphere.” Beyond them,

  188

  farther out from the star, five more planets revolved on their axes, followed long elliptical orbits around their primary, though these planets were of the type often called “gas giants,” worlds not greatly unlike Jupiter or Saturn, though none was as large as Jupiter; in the planetary system of UR-427-51, the total mass of the outer planets was more evenly distributed among the five bodies.

  The observer would have seen that the Shadowy Man paid scant attention to the large, gaseous worlds, but swept past them across the plane of the ecliptic and centered his attention on the planet that lay fourth from its sun, a world more distant from Pollux than Earth is from Sol, but at such a distance that it received only a little less heat and light, at least in its upper atmosphere.

  The observer would have seen that the nucleus of mental concentr
ation that was the Shadowy Man slowed as he approached UR-427-51-IV, slowed and then swept around it in a great spiraling orbit, examining the planet as the first interstellar probes must have examined it when they discovered the star’s planetary system.

  The Shadowy Man was in no hurry now, or so he insisted to himself. He must approach slowly, carefully, examining the world below him and determining as much about it as possible before actually pushing his focus of consciousness toward the surface. No hasty rushing in this time. He must be careful; he must be certain, absolutely certain, of everything before he once again challenged the Tromas, or what might now be the proto-Tromas, for as yet he doubted that the Krithian females had full awareness of their potentially enormous power.

  In terms of Earth’s calendars, one particular calendar that Eric Mathers had often had reference to, it was sometime in the twenty-fourth century, he believed,

  though, he was uncertain of the exact year, perhaps between 2340 and 2350, although the exact year was not a matter of great importance. The Kriths had been here for about a century, genetically modified colonists sprung from human stock, and adapted, by the scientists and technicians of their particular Earth, to survival in the unpleasant environment of the world he saw below him. It would be another fifty or sixty years, as time was measured on Earth, before they would be ready to commandeer a supply ship and in it return to the planet that had created them and then sent them out here.

  Now they would be wondering, asking questions, growing within themselves a bitterness toward Earth- norm humans that they would probably never fully express. At least the Kriths had never shown the fullness of their hatred, as far as he knew. But then they had never shown great love toward normal humankind either.

  (And what of the blue-skinned ones? he asked himself. If they were akin to the Kriths, if their origin was similar to or identical with that of the Kriths, had they not shown their hatred toward mankind? And he remembered the horrible desolation of world after world among the Albigensian Lines, worlds blasted by thermonuclear hell to lifeless balls of burning stone. Compared to them, the Kriths actually seemed beneficent.)

  Around the planet and around again he orbited, each circuit of the planet bringing him closer to the surface. From this distance, UR-427-51-IV was a beautiful world, yet unlike Earth, a dazzling radiance under Pollux, not greatly unlike Venus as seen from a distance, although its cloud cover was less than that of Venus, greater than that of Earth. Beneath those clouds, which did show occasional breaks through which the surface was visible, the greenhouse effect had been at work for long ages, though not with the cataclysmic kind of temperature building Earth’s sister

  world had seen. Enough breaks existed in this cloud cover, sufficient forces were at work to allow at least some of the infrared of the lower atmosphere to leak back into space. Had this not been so, even Kriths could not have survived here. To the best of the Shadowy Man’s knowledge, no one on any Line had ever been able to survive unprotected on Venus’ surface, no matter how greatly his genes had been modified.

  Below the almost but not quite perpetual covering of clouds, the planet was hot, far too hot for Eric Mathers or his kind to have endured for long without extensive refrigeration and air-conditioning facilities. Kriths, or the proto-Kriths who dwelt there now, could endure it, though they might not have found it the most pleasant of climates.

  It was a world with an axial tilt greater than Earth’s, a world where winds of high velocity swept through the atmosphere, where great storms boiled, where thunder played a nearly continual tune and lightning frequently illuminated the underside of the dark, heavy clouds. It was a world where rain fell as often as it did not, where great oceans spread across most of. the surface, untroubled by lunar tides, churned only by the pull of Pollux and its companion planets and by the frequent storms that lashed across uncounted leagues of water. Where there was land on UR-427-51- IV, it was mostly swamp, forever wet to a greater or lesser degre, for whatever volcanism the planet had, whatever slipping continental plates might have crushed together, whatever mountain ranges might once have reared toward the dark skies, constant rain and wind had quickly eroded them, tumbling stone and earth and mud back into the sea from which they had come.

  It was not a pleasant world, either to the humans who had discovered it and its potential value or to the colonists they had adapted from their own flesh and blood, their own fertilized ova, to dwell here, doing tasks that unmodified men and women of Earth did not

  wish to do. It had been largely a cold, economic decision, he suspected, to send genetically modified colonists here rather than send unmodified Earth-norms who would have required elaborate life-support systems, complex protection from the environment, insulated, bubble-enclosed housing, and much more. It was simply cheaper to send the genetically modified, who could get by without these things.

  The Shadowy Man moved still closer to the surface, noting in his passage the observation satellites strung across, the skies, satellites, with electronic eyes, with cameras and antennae that constantly watched the turning world below.

  And he noted the single inhabited platform that circled the world in a polar orbit. Not a large station by any means, but sufficient to hold four Earth-norm humans in some degree of comfort and safety. It was the four inhabitants of this platform who monitored the world of the colonists below, who directed their tasks, who sent down to' the planet robotic cargo shuttles to carry supplies to’ the colonists, mat6riel essential to their survival that they could not produce themselves, and to carry back into orbit for transshipment to Earth the results of the colonists’ labor: a particular and rather esoteric drug manufactured by a plant that grew in the shallow swamps; the lovely, multicolored fur of a near-mammal that looked something like an otter and something like a cat, but differed from both; the beautiful gemlike stones created inside the bodies of certain deep-sea crustaceans, amphibious creatures that returned to the shore annually to breed, and to be captured by the colonists.

  While still outside of all but the most rarefied portions of the atmosphere, the Shadowy Man began to probe into the psionic world, into the darkness that was something other than the absence of fight, the absence, rather, of intellect, and within that darkness

  began to search out the bright points of consciousness, of self-awareness.

  On the surface of the planet below he found those points of light, a familiar kind of mind now, the Krithian mind. He found clusters of these lights, apparently strung out along an archipelago, clusters that in most cases consisted of no more than a few dozen individuals each, though toward the center of the curved line they formed was a larger cluster, and within that cluster was a group of ten minds that glowed more brightly than the others, that were more aware, more powerful, that reinforced one another through psionic interchange, through something that might have been called resonance but was not quite the same as that.

  In their total, the Shadowy Man thought as he lowered his focus of consciousness still closer to the surface, as he withdrew his probes so that the ones below would not yet become aware of his presence, there were no more than a few hundred of the colonists, and knowing what great handicaps had been placed on their reproduction, he wondered how it would be possible for so small a group to survive even the next fifty or sixty years, much less commandeer a spaceship to carry them to Earth. But they would do that, both survive and eventually leave this world, he was certain. The histories of hundreds of Timelines bore ample witness to that.

  With electromagnetic vision but remotely akin to human sight, the Shadowy Man looked as he lowered himself through the perpetual overcast and saw below him the dark world under .the clouds, saw the wind- whipped rain charging in near-torrents across the far southern archipelago, as thunder rolled across the sky and great bolts of lethal lightning crackled between the clouds and the stunted growths of trees that huddled close to the damp land.

  On one of those islands, amid a cluster of supple reeds that bent with the force
of the wind, a dozen or

  more naked Kriths, bigger and physically stronger than most men, were struggling in the downpour to draw in a net that contained a score or more large crustaceans, lobsterlike animals with bulging eyes and long, dangerous-looking pincers that snapped at the ropes that held them and at the fingers that held the ropes. More than one of the Kriths was missing a finger or two from each of his hands.

  As the Shadowy Man watched, one of the struggling Kriths lost his footing on the muddy soil as he tugged at the net, stumbled, fell, then slid, foundering into the water, flailing about with his arms and prehensile tail, to no avail. His companions saw -what had happened, but none of them dared release his grip on the net. The struggle was already so awkwardly balanced that the loss of another pair of hands would have certainly meant the loss of the net and its contents. They fought to pull the net from the water, perhaps hoping their companion could regain land without their help.

  The Krith who had fallen into the water surfaced, gasped for air, and fought to stay afloat. He did not cry out for help. He seemed to know that his companions would help him if they could, but now could not. For a few moments he seemed to have gained some control over the situation. It appeared that he might be able to make his way back to land without help. But that changed in moments. As he half swam, half crawled toward the higher ground, an expression of astonishment, then pain, crossed his flat features. He flailed again and fell backward, the water around him turning to a muddy crimson. He screamed, again screamed, again struggled awkwardly toward land.

  Now the other Kriths had managed to conquer the struggling crustaceans within the net, exerted an enormous final effort, and drew the net from the water onto the soggy land. While three of them hurried to secure the net to pegs driven into the ground and hold the crustaceans within their fibrous prison, the others

  dashed back to the edge of the water, formed a living ladder of themselves, moved toward the weakening, wounded Krith, touched hands with him, and pulled him to safety.