Vestiges of Time
Page 21
As the triggers of the Turothians’ energy weapons completed their travel and electrical circuits closed inside the weapons, the Shadowy Man began what he knew to be the last act of his existence.
Psionic fingers grasped the fabric of space/time that surrounded the physical form of Eric Mathers, tightened, pulled, jerked, flexed, tore, retreated. One last parachronal convolution was opening, one last spot of blackness swelling to encompass the man who soon would be all that was left of the Shadowy Man.
He pulled the bubble out of its context, still not fully understanding how he was doing it, but knowing that he was doing it. The bubble crossed the nothingness of everything, touched another strand of space/ time, and joined the convolution through which the skudder had recently gone. He released his grip on the bubble, left it to fall, twist, spin, and snap through the joined convolutions across time and space and paratime to the Far World. Eric Mathers was safe,
as safe as he could be in a universe about to undergo cataclysmic reorganization.
Then he flickered his dying awareness back into the Underground, back to where enough replicates still lived to sustain some portion of himself, back to where the Krith and the two black-clad men and the two women who had worked for the Paratimers now stood, all in dumbfounded astonishment as they struggled with .the after-effects of the implosion caused by the sudden disappearance of the physical matter of Eric Mathers’ body. The sphere of blackness had appeared and then vanished so quickly that none of them could have really seen it.
“Damn you!” Cal-sarlin cried as he picked himself up ofi the floor, his Krithian dignity hurt more than anything else. “Damn you, Eric Mathers, damn you . .
Pall and Marth looked at each other with incomprehension on their faces. Their energy blasts had done nothing but sear the far wall.
The implosion had ripped OrDjina’s thin gown, half torn it from her body, but she hardly seemed aware that her breasts were exposed and her beautiful coiffure destroyed. Her face showed only fear.
Against the console that housed the still-operating mnemonic recorder leaned.G’lendal, gasping for breath, but on her face there was a tiny smile, as if she understood better than any of the others what had happened, and her smile was given to the common enemy of the Kriths and the Paratimers, who was winning this very last battle of them all.
Although his strength was fading rapidly, his exis- tence'winking out as replicate after replicate died under the bullets of Kjemi Stov and the Magers, the Shadowy Man found the strength within what was left of himseif to make the air speak Qne last time.
“Cal-sarlin,” said the voice out of the air, the voice of Eric Mathers, “we have come to, the end of the
road, all of us. There is not the strength within me now to tell you all of it, so this will have to do: you and your kind, and the Paratimers too, all of you have lost, lost now and forever. Tell your Tromas that. If there is still time.”
Fear now replaced incomprehension on the Krith’s face. His voice was weak and faltering when he said, “W-what do you mean?”
“The end of the world is at hand,” the Shadowy Man said, and laughed, and died.
G’lendal laughed with him, a laughter that bordered on hysteria.
OrDjina screamed.
Cal-sarlin’s hands made and then unmade fists. But he never had the time to begin to comprehend the meaning of the Shadowy Man’s last words.
The reorganization of the universe had already begun. And in moments there was not/never would be any such thing as a Krith.
It was 14:07:21, 4 March 1973.
23
The Far World
It was morning, 15 January 1972, as time is recorded on some worlds, when I awoke and found out who I was.
Even as I started to pull myself to my knees and rise enough to observe my surroundings, once again wholly and only Eric Mathers, I was struck by an appalling sense of loss, a terrible poignancy, and a realization of my own human limitations. I, who had once been a part of the Shadowy Man—or would be, if you want to look at time that way—was now just a man again, and after the experience through which I had just passed, that didn’t seem like a great deal to be: human and so terribly finite.
From my knees I finally drew myself to my feet, pulling myself up with my hands around the trunk of a slender, graceful tree, something a bit like a willow, which grew beside a small, quickly flowing stream. A breeze moved along with the stream, across my naked hips, and I realized that I had arrived there, wherever there was, without clothing. And this realization came too: I had arrived without the chair I had been in, without the straps that had held me in the chair while drugged. Somehow the Shadowy Man had discarded them along the way, along with my clothing. I silently thanked him for getting me out of the Underground alive and well, and found my eyes moving toward the sky, as if now I identified him with some sort of heavenly deity. But I knew he hadn’t been that. Less than a god. But, if he’d had the time . . .
It was a morning sky that was above me. Somehow 230
I was certain of that. A clear blue sky with wispy patches of clouds here and there. In my nudity the sun was comfortably warm.
Around me were forest and meadow. Graceful, thin- leafed trees, not quite like any I’d ever known anywhere else, clustering clumps of grasses, scattered mushroomlike growths, some of which might have been as much as ten feet tall. Remotely, a birdlike creature sang from the limb of a tree, calling his mate or maybe marking the limits of his territory, I thought And I now knew where I was. I’d been there before. And an earlier version of me, along with Sally, would be coming soon.
And I knew what the Shadowy Man had left for me to do. A couple of little things he hadn’t been able to do himself, just to round out what I remembered of the past. I could do that much for him, couldn’t I?
After a quick dip in the cold, clear water of the creek, I set out to do those things.
The skudder sat not far from the little stream, a few hundred feet, no more, a bright and untarnished craft, the product of a “future” world that would soon cease to exist, soon being March of next year. The skudder wouldn’t be built until years after that, but that didn’t matter. Until next March that future would exist, at least in potentiality, and for now that was enough for me. If the Shadowy Man hadn’t been able to fully understand Time, how could I ever hope to?
I went into the skudder he had delivered there, and for a moment sat before the controls, wondering what would happen if I were to start it up and in it leave this world. What would have become of that other Eric Mathers if he had had no skudder? How could he ever have gone to the world of the BrathelLanza and become the Shadowy Man? But then, would it even be possible for me to use the skudder if I wanted to? Possibly. Probably. For this is a universe of probabilities, never of certainties.
Inside one of the skudder’s lockers I found clothing, and dressed, and then had myself a quick meal from the skudder’s provisions, which were decidedly better than skudder fare usually is.
As I ate, I thought: Some distance to the west of where the skudder sat was a small, rather primitive village inhabited by people who could have been called civilized. The village was on the frontier of a small kingdom of people who were just beginning to work iron into weapons and jewelry, the smelting of iron a newly discovered art Here and Now. Although semibarbarians, they weren’t a bad lot. I’d lived with them for a while—or I would. Sally and I hadn’t been— wouldn’t be-—really uncomfortable there, but then they had treated us like godlings. They’d been expecting us, I remembered. And how had they known we were coming? I’d told them, I suppose. Or I was about to tell them.
The Shadowy Man was right. This business of time travel can be very confusing.
So my first order of business was to go to the village and give the people there a little speech; I knew their language, of course. I’d tell them I was an emissary of a pair of deities who would be arriving in a few days— and with an energy pistol and a couple of other gadgets from the
skudder, it shouldn’t be too hard for me to convince them that I was something of a god myself. Then I’d prepare them for the man and woman, dazed and battered, naked and tired, who would come into their village soon. By the time I was finished I’d have them convinced that they were about to have a major miracle occur in their hometown, something that would really put it on the map. And when the next (or first) Eric Mathers got there, with Sally along with him, there would be no problem. At least that’s how it had been with Sally and me when I’d come here the first time.,
Then, when that was done, I would go back to the skudder and compose a note for the two fugitives from
the Kriths, a note to my previous self and to Sally, which would read something like this:
“Dear Eric and Sally,
“If you read this note you will have escaped from the Tromas and have found the refuge I selected for you.” I would write “I,” though perhaps it would have been more honest to write “he” or “the Shadowy Man.” “You’re safe here as long as you wish to stay.” Which was true within certain limits.
Still using the first-person singular, I would go on to say:
“I know you’re curious about your means of transportation from KHL-000 to here, and I would explain it to you if I could, but none of us has the proper mathematical background to really understand it.” Which was very true. I certainly didn’t understand it. “I could tell you it’s a ‘parachronal convolution,’ but what would that explain? Labeling something doesn’t necessarily define it.
“This skudder, from some decades into the future, as you two have been reckoning time, is yours. It’s fully provisioned and ready to take you wherever you might wish to go, spatially or paratemporally. You may use it when you will.
“Some miles to the west of here you will find a village. It is an outpost of a kingdom barely out of the Bronze Age, though its inhabitants are friendly and pleasant people. You.will find yourselves welcome there, though don’t be too surprised if you’re treated as something a bit more special than a pair of naked wanderers. They’re expecting a couple of exiled godlings. Try to act the part.
“In time you’re a few weeks downtime from our recent conflict with the Tromas. In the past, as you see it.
“In space, you’re still in North America, the Florida peninsula.
“In paratime, well, you’re one hell of a long way to
the T-East, far beyond the Line the Kriths call KHL- 000. It’s as safe a place as any you can hope for, but try not to be disturbed by the oddness of some of the things you find here. There are some aspects of the evolutionary process that have worked out differently here.”
I’ll say! Ten-foot-tall mushrooms and fat unicorns!
But I would scribble on, and finally conclude with something like:
“As for advice, I can give you none, as much as I would like to.” That was true.
“The future is yours to do with as you wish.
“I think.” And that was a kind of truth too.
“Yours”—and I would sign my own name—“Eric Mathers.”
That’s the note I would write, but first I had a couple of other things to do.
From the skudder’s locker I got several packages of provisions, took them to a place near the stream, and placed them in a small, neat pile where they were sure to be found by the two I knew were coming. If some animal didn’t get them first. But I was certain they’d be waiting for Eric and Sally when they got there. I remembered them having been.
Then, feeling much better than I could remember having felt in a long, long time, I set out toward the west, where there was supposed to be—would be! I’d been there—a village that would give Eric and Sally a warm reception.
And as I walked I thought about the things that the Shadowy Man had experienced, the inexplicable paradoxes of a probabilistic universe. Nothing really was. Everything was just might be. Maybe that was a hell of a way to run a railroad, but it did keep things interesting.
And I wondered what the universe would be like afterward, when there were no Kriths or Timeliners or Paratimers to foul things up even worse than human
beings fouled things up. Things might not be so bad. Maybe . . .
And I made a few plans of my own. After I got finished at the village and wrote my note, then I’d go off by myself for a while, do a little wandering, see the country, maybe finally get my mind together and try to understand a little of it. Then, in a few months, in late April, I’d go back to Sally and tell her what had happened. To her I’d have been gone only a few days; to me it would be more than a year.
Then . . .
Well, I wasn’t certain then. I’d come back to her in April 1972, and the reorganization of the universe wasn’t scheduled to happen until March 1973. We’d have almost a year to do whatever we wanted, to eat and make love and sing songs and recite poems and tell stories and make love ... to dream and wish and hope and . . .
And wonder about 4 March 1973.
That day would come eventually.
We’d have to face it.
The Shadowy Man hadn’t been certain what would happen to us, so neither could I be. Maybe there was a chance for us, way oS here in the sidelines. Maybe, somehow, when the universe reordered itself, it would miss us. Maybe we could go on and have those babies after all, and be the godlings the people here thought us to be. There would be a lot of things we could do to help these people: introduce them to the concept of sanitation, tell them their world wasn’t the center of the universe and help them develop this world’s first constitutional monarchy. There was a lot we could do. Like the poor Timeliners used to say of themselves: they have a lot of history in front of them.
But maybe it wouldn’t work out that way.
I wasn’t going to be frightened about it. And I wouldn’t let Sally be frightened either. Even if we did
wink out of existence, come next March, it had been one hell of a life.
I wouldn’t have missed it.
And as I walked toward the village, I actually felt happy.
What the hell!
I began to whistle.
And once I glanced over my shoulder in a nondirection that I imagined to be the Temporal-West and the Lines of Men, and I yelled to them:
“Good luck, you silly bastards. You’re going to need it. I won’t be there to help.”