Asimov's SF, October-November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The ground shivered ever so slightly under my buttocks.

  Earthquake? Unlikely in northern Virginia, though not impossible. Maybe a big truck on a nearby street. Maybe I can see ... With an odd prickling in the back of my neck, I lifted my head and looked at the sky. There was an odd yellowish light fading away on the northern horizon. Another soft shiver, and another light bloomed just to the east of the first, brighter, arc of glowing light just a little bit bigger.

  The fire alarm sirens mounted on telephone poles all around Marumsco Village started to howl.

  I guess in the gray house below, Alan Burke's parents would be staring at the screen of their old Motorola black and white TV, where, if they were lucky, a Conelrad symbol would be displayed, along with a voiceover about “in the event of a national emergency..."

  In his bedroom, Alan himself would be looking out the window, knowing exactly what the glows and quakes and alarms would be about. What would he be feeling? Fear? Or elation?

  I stood, and Oddny came out of the woods behind me, shading her eyes.

  She said, “I guess those would be atom-kernel explosions?"

  I nodded. Baltimore, maybe? Someplace north of DC, anyway. Nobody knew how accurate the Soviet ICBMs were in those days. Maybe they missed?

  Something punched hard at the soles of my feet, making me stagger, making me flinch away from a blinding blue-violet flare in the sky. When I looked again, a fat, rolling ball of orange fire was climbing over the horizon, followed by a pillar of red smoke, smoke already taking on the form of a mushroom cloud.

  Without a word, we turned and ran back into the woods, back to our encampment. The world had been silent, but now I could hear a soft wind start to rush. How far? Is it going to be like in the films I'd been shown in school, the declassified movies I'd seen much later, blast overpressure slapping us down dead, trees whipping one way, then snapping back the other, breaking off, falling to the ground?

  We never even made it back to the camp. When we passed by the little clearing where the hyperdoor had been, there was a shimmering in the air, as of something coming and going.

  A deadly wind came and blew over us, making the trees moan and sway but ... right. Far enough away.

  Oddny turned to me, and said, “Atom-kernel explosions make a gravitic and electromagnetic disturbance across all portions of the aetherium."

  Gravitic and electroweak, at a minimum. “And the doors are not portable."

  "Not once the seed is planted."

  The ground slammed hard, white light seeming to shine right through my head, pins and needles crackling in my guts. I'm safe. Safe enough. Oddny though ... no lizardman drugs she...

  The trees started to bend and crackle all around us and I felt a hard pressure in my sinuses. The door in the air split open like some gaping, jagged mouth, the mouth of a toothy horror-comic monstrosity.

  I took her hand, or she took mine, and we stepped through, stumbled, tripping over who knows what. I let go of Oddny's hand to fall sprawling on green turf, rolling over, lifting my hand against a sky full of yellow-white glare, turning to look back toward the hyperdoor.

  It gaped open like pornographic lips on a scene of falling trees and blowing red fire, a world full of howling horror, and I thought, Alan. Alan Burke. Burke the Jerk. Me. Dead. Surely dead ... The hyperdoor gulped shut with a soft gurgle, turned to a wisp of blue smoke, and was gone.

  Overhead, the glary sky was merely pale, bright cornflower blue, long, soft grass emerald green under me, trees all around, a hiss of soft wind, gentle birdcalls, twittering, tittering, one discordant something uttering a periodic loud tweet.

  Oddny, hands on hips, was still standing, looking around, gaping up at the sky.

  When I stood, I said, “Still on Earth?"

  "I suppose,” she said, “though where? And when?"

  And which when, at that? “Let's hope there isn't a pack of allosaurs over the next hill...” Would there be allosaurs in a world with birds and grass? No. Birds might have been around in the Jurassic, but not songbirds. And grass didn't get started until the Cretaceous, so ... “Or some pissed off megatherium."

  "It smells funny here too. No burned hydrocarbons, but something ... unnatural."

  I sniffed. A faint smell of ... hell, I don't know. Electricity? Ozone, maybe? I said, “Might as well wander about. At least this time we've got shoes.” It'd been easy stealing shoes for myself. The guy I'd taken them from had been so scared of me, he'd taken them off as soon as I pointed, and run away blubbering in his bare feet. I had to break into a shoe store to get a pair for Oddny, happy most places didn't have burglar alarms yet.

  Still, the little story in the Potomac News about the “disfigured prowler” had let me know our time here was growing short. Time there, anyway, wherever here might be.

  The woods ended sooner than I expected, no more than a kilometer or so from where we'd come through. We were at the top of a long slope once more and ... I managed a long, low whistle of amazement. Green grass covering many hectares, grass with scattered picnickers on bright blankets here and there. Groups of children playing. Some young men and women I swore were playing baseball. A big, black dog, barking happily, chasing a red frisbee.

  Beyond them, a complex cityscape of white, tan, and red brick buildings stretched out to the misty horizon. We turned and walked along the edge of the woods, and as we walked, more slope and more cityscape came into view, variant, but always variations on a theme, adding up to sameness.

  Eventually, I said, “Well, definitely not North Am. Not Trantor, nor even the capital world in that damn Star Wars movie, whatever it was called..."

  Oddny said, “Ylva loved those movies. And the TV shows, the comics, the media-tie novels. All the toys and fake histories..."

  When we walked down the long hill and into the city proper, it wasn't hard to guess approximately where and when we were. Earth, obviously, and...

  Well, all of the people were picnickers. And people, more or less. Some quite human looking, others lizardy like me. Some wore clothes, others were naked, and everyone seemed indifferent to which was which. Certainly, nobody cast a second glance at a beady-eyed, scaly old lizardman, in the company of a gorgeous blonde dressed in overlarge men's work clothes from the middle of the twentieth century. There was a scattering of girls among them, little boy-girls who looked oddly alike.

  When we were in the city, walking down a long, broad avenue, I said, “It's damned quiet here."

  Soft breeze making faint sounds around the corners of buildings. Occasional cars rolling along making a sticky sound, rolling friction of soft tires on pavement. Cars without engine noises, though, not even the electric hum of hybrids from the early twenty-first, or the clatter of compressed air reciprocating engines from later on.

  The scuff of feet from the hundreds of people walking along with us. The occasional sniff or snort of somebody clearing their nose.

  I said, “How come no one's talking?"

  When I said it, one of the boy-girls near me turned and gave me an odd look, then turned to the boy-girl beside her and shrugged, the two of them smirking, giving each other amused looks before walking on.

  Oddny said, “When I go to max gain, I can detect quite a bit of radio traffic, but nothing I can decode.” A momentary haunted look, then, “It makes me feel even more ... lost."

  At least back in the real world, she'd had her link with Ylva to comfort her. That promise of eternity in a world to come, even if the life she lived was little more than as a pantograph extension of a dead girl who wanted her to be little more than my sex toy.

  She visibly shook off whatever she was feeling, and said, “I don't know whether it's sheer luck or not, but we seem to have fallen into some version of the Machine Man Era. If there's any probabilistic thread in which we can find someone to help us, this would be it."

  Luck? I doubt the hell out of that!

  But I said, “Maybe so. I'm starving. Let's see if we can find someplace to eat.�
�� We walked on and, in the eerie silence of the multitudes, I began looking at the tops of people's heads, wondering if, sooner or later, I'd see some golden tendrils after all.

  The restaurant was easy enough to identify. There were cafe tables out front, open doors blocked by a screenlike shimmer that proved no more than an ethereal tingle when we passed through...

  I remembered it from a million stories. Force field. One of those great enabling technologies from all the old tales, things that proved impossible in the real world because they boiled down to fantasy. What's a force field, after all? The intermolecular or interatomic forces of matter, preserved in the absence of matter?

  I'd had a million self-appointed geniuses scornfully explain to me why it was possible, you see, but ... right. No damn force fields in no damn real world, not then, not ever...

  Inside, we stood waiting, watching people at tables commune silently while they ate. Okay, knives and forks and spoons, so they're not eating via telekinesis, but ... no wait staff. No robots. No little elevators bringing food up out of the tables. Just ... someone would go, someone else would come, and when I glanced away, glanced back, they'd be eating different food from different plates.

  Teleportation?

  Be nice if I could at least see a plate of scraps vanish to be replaced by steaming heaps of fresh whatever. So ... what? Some variation of the observer effect, of the anthropic principle? It can't happen while I'm looking?

  I looked sidelong at Oddny, watching to see if she noticed anything strange. No? Christ. I sighed, and said, “I feel like a Cro-Magnon in McDonald's."

  She looked at me and smiled. “What does that make me, a Neanderthal?"

  Another long look around at the room full of diners. “I'm guessing the lizard folk are Machine Men, and the skinny girls are early Immortals, but there are plenty of normal people around too. If only they'd say something...” But they didn't. They ate, they gesticulated, made facial expressions at each other. But the only movement of their jaws was chewing. “It's just radio, isn't it?"

  She nodded. “Most likely. I think if they could read each other's minds, they wouldn't need body language anymore."

  "So, everyone has a dataweb connection in their head.” It was a lot like that in the real world we'd left behind, virtual reality having continued to evolve on Earth, leaving the old Internet behind as technologies got better and better. Not many people could afford implants, but neural induction circlets were standard headwear most places.

  She said, “It makes sense. I've tried hard to decode the traffic I can detect. No use. Too much has changed."

  And no telling how far we are in conformal years from the day we descended into Uranus. As for probabilistic years ... God knows, probably no one else. Maybe the kaldane? Probably not. I'd say he screwed the pooch and has pinched off himself, not us. “Have you tried transmitting into their web?"

  A slow nod. “If I'm even static to them, there's no way to tell. We're getting more reaction just by talking.” Glances from around the room, disapproving looks. She said, “I think talking out loud in public may be ... bad form here."

  Like picking your nose or scratching a delicate itch? “What say we sidle up to a freshly loaded table and just take what we want?"

  She grinned. “Maybe we can get arrested or something!"

  A patch of air turned glassy between us then, and the familiar image of Ylva Johannsen scrolled open. “At last,” she said, with evident relief.

  All around us, perturbed-looking diners were rising from tables and heading for the door, steaming plates of food suddenly forgotten. Well, am I surprised? I can't tell anymore. I sighed. “Guess this is one way to get a meal.” I sat down at the nearest empty table, looking down at bowls and plates of goo and stuff like rice. Persian? Is this crap shawirma?

  Oddny sat down opposite me, but had eyes only for the image of her real self. Something like adoring worship, mixed with ... I don't know? Regret?

  Ylva laughed, then, looking at her long-lost Body Double, said, “Still in good shape, I see. I'm sorry I can't link with you and provide a new overlay, dearest one. The technology has changed a little too much."

  Oddny's look was downcast, but ... that little ray of hope? What the hell can she be hoping for, to die unshriven? Is her self worth that much? What's it worth to me? Would I give up me for immortality through enosis? I say no, but I'm not faced with that choice. So long as I can get my drugs, the lizard man lives on, willy-nilly.

  Oddny whispered, “You mean..."

  Ylva's image looked stricken. “Oh, no, dearest! I can provide some upgrades to get you started on uplift before I send you back. I've learned a thing or two in the past few millennia."

  Past few millennia! Softly, I said, “What do you mean, before you send us back?"

  * * * *

  Ylva Johanssen named her palace, the capitol of the solar system, Venus Forum, as an homage, and a bit of a joke.

  When Alan Burke and Larry Pernotto were children, just before being vaporized in World War III, or just before growing up to become more or less worthless adults, they wrote a novella called “The Venusians.” In it, Larry played Riteryon, viacor of the continent of Citnalta, while the more grandiose Alan played Alendar, viadet of Venus.

  This world mostly partook of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but with a subtle flavoring of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. I suppose Alendar could have called his capital city Venusberg, then grown up to get that joke. Instead, he called it Venus Forum, which was another sort of joke entirely.

  Oddny and I stood at the wall of a high balcony, looking out over amber plains, backed by purple mountains’ majesty, twined through and through with misty, magical cityscape. Her palace was on a high, flat-topped peak, maybe Gathol, maybe even Venusberg. I was afraid to ask after finding out she'd renamed Mars as Tatooine in honor of you-know-what.

  When you're a humanized supercomputer in charge of everything and everyone, you do what you want. Nobody says otherwise. What the living hell can the last three thousand years have been like?

  Oddny was showered, sweet smelling and redressed in a gown of diaphanous silk that was billowing gently in a warm breeze blowing from the fruited plain below. I had my arm around her waist, enjoying the soft feel of her though the delicate fabric. Thinking you-know-what. Not the same you-know-what as Tatooine, but nonetheless, thinking.

  I'd enjoyed a shower too, but given up on clothing, standing there in my bare, beady, gray-green lizardskin, defiant of ... whatever the heck there was to be defied, here and now.

  From a rippling cameo floating beside us, Ylva said, “I'm really sorry this is such a flat image. People have been born with neurological radiotelepathy transceivers in their brainstems for twenty-three centuries, so the old com technology has really gone by the board. This was the best I could whip up on short notice."

  Born with? I tried to imagine the genetic engineering program that would lead to that, then decided I was better off thinking about something else. Anything else.

  Oddny turned in my arm to look at the image, and said, “If we were to stay here, could we get implants?” Not hard to see what she was thinking. The dybbuk would take its seat in her mind once more, and she would become whole. Then I thought about my own “implant,” and what that would mean. Made me shiver.

  Ylva said, “Oh, quite easily. I've been able to grow fractional Body Doubles since not long after your time, and you should see what we can do nowadays!” Her eyes brightened to a sparkling affect.

  I had a sudden vision of times to come. Not just Oddny resubsumed in the greater whole of the Goddess Ylva, but me, my head laid open, organic machinery put inside, awakening to find ... what?

  Ylva said, “I'm sorry. You can't stay."

  Oddny, eyes downcast, said, “Oh.” Death then. Real death. Pretty soon.

  But I felt a selfish pang of relief for myself. “Where do we go? Back through the door to Uranus? What good will that do?"

  Ylva smiled. “Wark Fan'shih has trie
d to track down and destroy all the hyperdoors throughout human history, on all the probabilistic timelines except the one he controls. His goal is to seal off metahistory so nothing can influence his own fate. My avatars are all that stand in his way."

  Imagine that. Changewar? Not quite, but pretty close. I said, “So...?"

  "The spaceship inside Uranus is gone. When I sent crews to retrieve Benthodoyne II, it was empty and alone. It took me quite a long time to figure out what was happening and start looking for you, Mr. Zed."

  "So we can't go back,” said Oddny, and you could see that horrible commingling of hope and despair in her eyes. Jesus. I wouldn't want to have to make that choice for her.

  "We can't go straight back along a conformal timeline anyway. Assuming,” I looked at Ylva, “this is the one we left from."

  "No. The past doesn't exist anymore. All we have of it is a residue written on the substance of the present. However, the kaldane missed a hyperdoor, the one left hidden on Venus by the Titanides. The Jovians didn't know it was there, so Wark Fan'shih didn't know to look for it. Eventually, I found it."

  Oddny said, “So you'll put us through a hyperdoor to ... where?"

  Ylva looked at us seriously, “To a version of your own timeline."

  "Version,” I said.

  A slow nod. “I've identified a segment of your original thread immediately adjacent to the cusp from which you left, separated from it by nothing more than the twinning event Wark Fan'shih created when he retrieved the stolen paratime vessel from Uranus, cutting off your return."

  "What will that accomplish?"

  She smiled. “It's also the root node from which this timeline springs. In my version, you never found your way back, until now. In your version..."

  I said, “We'll have come home after all."

  Oddny said, “What good does that do you? You'll be pinched off from us and...” You could see oh in her eyes. In this timeline, Ylva is goddess supreme. She can slam the door behind us.

  "Where you're going, you'll have theory and mechanism to work with. You know as well as I do the flip side of the paratime coin is FTL. If you use probabilistic theory to transit conformal space, causality closes paratime travel to you forever. If the starships fly, all the timelines where kaldanes meddle and goddesses reign over humanity will be pinched off."