Gordon R. Dickson (44 page)

Under the artificial lights, the
library was still and comfortless. I sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs
and closed my eyes. My mind skittered off at all angles, throwing up pictures
of everyone for whom I felt responsible... Marie, Wendy, Ellen, the avatar....

Their images chased each other
before the vision of my imagination, like movie film played on the inner
surfaces of my closed eyelids. Even the shapes of people who were not around anymore.
I watched Tek, going down from the bullets of the machine pistol in Ellen's
hands; Samuelson, waiting with his rocket launcher for the outsize toy-like
attackers of his small town; Sunday, as I had first seen him; Sunday again,
with Ellen, back when I had called her only "the girl"; Sunday....

Sunday.

Suddenly, with the thought of him,
it all came together. My mind opened up like a flower at sunrise, and life
flowed back into me. The light and all things in the still room seemed to
change. Once more, I felt my identity with all my people and the cat who
slumbered; and I saw at once what could perhaps be done if there was time
enough. I got to my feet with my idea still in me and went as quickly as I
could to Porniarsk's lab.

Porniarsk was standing immobile
beside the vision tank, his eyes fastened on nothing, when I turned the lights
on in the dark room. It was impossible to tell whether he slept at times like
this, or whether in fact he slept at all. We had all asked him about that at
one time or another, and he had always answered that the question was
meaningless in his terms and unanswerable in ours. Now, when the lights went
on, he stayed as he was for a second, then turned his head to look at me.

"What is it, Marc?" he
asked.

"I think I might have it!"
I said. "It just came to me. Look, you can run this tank like a computer,
can't you? I mean you can extrapolate the storm forward and back?"

"Yes."

"How far forward?"

"Until extrapolation's no
longer possible," he said. "Until the time storm destroys the
universe, or the capacity of the tank's logical sequencing is exceeded."

"Look," I said. My vocal
cords were tight and my voice bounced loudly off the bare, white-painted
concrete walls. "There's always been the chance we might be able to get
help with the storm up forward, but I've never thought about that in terms of a
really long way forward. I remember now, when I was seeing the patterns in the
tank, I thought that if I could find a thousand like me something might, just
might, be done. We'd never find anything like that in the reasonably near
future. But, if we went as far forward as we could—maybe way up there, there
really are a thousand others like that. Away up there. As far into the future
as we can reach."

"And if there were," said
Porniarsk. "How could we contact them?"

"We might be able to go to
them." The words were galloping out of me and my brain felt wrapped in
flames. "If I could just see what the storm patterns were, up in that
time—just the patterns affecting this immediate area, the area right around
this house, maybe just even around this lab—I might be able to unbalance the
present forces enough so they'd correspond. I might be able to produce a time
change line; one single mistwall to move just us, far down the future-line to
them."

He neither moved nor made a sound
for five or six seconds, while my heart beat heavily inside me, shaking my
chest.

"Perhaps," he said.

The breath I had not realized I was
holding went out of me in something like a grunt.

"We can do it?"

"I can show you the ultimate
pattern possible to this device— perhaps," he said. "Are you sure you
can make use of it, if I do?"

"No," I said, "I can
try, though."

"Yes," he said. His head
went up, his head went down, in one of his nods. "I'll need time to work
out the storm patterns that far forward."

"How much time?"

He looked at me steadily, "I
don't know. Maybe days. Maybe, some years."

"Years!" I said. But then
the sense of what he was saying sank into me. The furthest pattern perceivable
by the vision tank could only be reached by going through all preceding
patterns.

"When I've reached the limits
of the device's capacity," he said, "I can call you in to see
it."

"Then we need to buy whatever
time that takes," I said. "That settles it. I'll tell Paula I'll go
with her."

"Probably that's best. But you'll
have to be able to come back here when I've found the final pattern."

"I'll get back," I said.
"Don't worry about that."

I felt wonderful. All my frustration
had vanished in a burst of energy and certainty. I would not have gone back to
bed even if I could have slept. I looked at my wristwatch, and it was
five-thirty in the morning.

"I'll wake up everyone who
needs to know and tell them," I said, "right now. Will you come
along?"

"You don't need me," he
said, "and any time wasted from now on delays the final moment of
achievement."

"All right."

I went out and started waking up the
others. A little under an hour later I had them all sitting around the dining
room of the summer palace, drinking coffee to get their eyes open and waiting
for an explanation. I had run into the meeting all those whom I thought must
know what would be going on, but nobody else. At the table were Ellen, Marie,
Bill, Doc, and Wendy—Wendy looking particularly sullen. She was grown up enough
now to have a fourteen-year-old boyfriend—or thought she was. I thought ten
years old ridiculously young for anything like that, though it was a fact she
was beginning to develop physically; and she had asked to have him take part in
this council as well. Naturally, I had spiked the notion. It was merely the
last in a series of efforts she had made recently to get her mother and the
rest of us to adopt the boyfriend into our inner family.

For the rest, Doc looked
unperturbed, as if he was the only person there, besides myself, who was wide
awake. Ellen looked concerned, Marie looked drawn and older than I had ever
seen her look, and Bill was still white-faced and shrunken-looking from
interrupted slumber.

"I'm going to tell Paula today
I'll go with her," I said, without preamble. "We'll probably take off
later today."

I told them about my hope, my talk
with Porniarsk and about what he was already at work on at this moment "...
The point is," I wound up, "Porniarsk and the rest of you are
probably safe here as long as Paula still considers me a friend and coworker.
If that changes, she might think of keeping me under control by picking up some
of you as hostages for my good behavior. So, if things get prickly between the
two of us I'll send you warning of it; and I want you all to clear out of here
immediately and scatter. Scatter all over the place, each one by yourself— and
don't let the rest of the community know you're going."

Wendy looked grim.

"I mean that," I said,
looking her in the eye. "Nobody. Wendy, you can stay with your mother; but
everybody else take off alone."

"Marc," said Marie,
"do you really need the rest of us to go into the far future with you, if
this works? Can't you just go alone, tell the people there what you want to
tell them, and then come back?"

"How can I?" I said.
"You know I need a monad gestalt to control the storm forces; and that'll
take all of you. So, listen. What I'll do is take the Old Man with me. If I
send him back to you or if he comes back under any conditions, that's your
signal. Take off and scatter."

"Marc," said Doc,
"you'll need some way of getting the message from us in a hurry when
Porniarsk finds what he's after. How's about I make regular runs to you, just
to bring in letters from the home folks and a box of cookies and such, so
Paula's people won't think anything of it when I pop in with the word?"

I looked over at him gratefully. It
was nice to hear a sensible mind at work around the table that morning.

"Good," said Ellen.
"Then if you need help getting away from wherever you are, Doc can help
you."

Another sensible mind.

"Fine idea, Doc," I said.
"You're right, Ellen. Anybody else have any suggestions?"

"How long will you be gone
altogether?" Marie asked.

"I can't tell," I said.
"It depends on how fast Porniarsk can reach the ultimate configuration in
his tank. Why?"

I knew why. She was having more and
more trouble controlling Wendy and was leaning on me more and more for that
task.

"Maybe Wendy could go with you.
She could see something of the rest of the world that way."

"No!" said Wendy and I,
simultaneously. That was all I needed, to have Wendy on my hands, while I was
trying to keep Paula happy and unsuspecting. I thought quickly. "Too
dangerous for her."

"I don't want to,"
whimpered Wendy, who was no slouch herself at picking up cues. Marie looked
from the girl to me, helplessly. She knew she was being doubleteamed, but she
was helpless to do anything about it.

"All right," I said.
"Then, if nobody's got any more suggestions, you can get busy putting
together what I'll need to take with me and spreading the word that I'll be
going. I'll break the news myself to Paula over breakfast in an hour or
so."

28

Paula took the news coolly. Whether
this was because some of her people had already picked up the word of it that
was spreading rapidly through the ranks of our own people, or simply because it
was a strategy on her part to act as if her enlisting me had never been in
doubt, was impossible to tell. In either case, it made no difference to me, who
was going with her for my own private reasons.

"All right," she said,
over the breakfast table. "How soon can you be ready?"

"Six hours, maybe," I
said.

"In that case, I'll wait for
you and you can join my staff right here. If you hadn't been able to move
quickly, I'd have needed to let you catch up with me. I'll send word to my
officers. No offense to your kitchen help, Marc, but I'll be glad to get back
to my own headquarters and have some decent coffee."

There was only one small incident of
interest in our leaving. Paula's people had already climbed aboard the
helicopters that had been sitting parked and waiting for them, and I was not
yet aboard the one carrying Paula herself. The Old Man, as I said, had shown no
liking for Paula; and now he had made himself scarce. Doc had found him,
finally, about half a mile from the summer palace among the rocks of the
hillside and literally held an automatic pistol at his head to get him to come
along back to the takeoff point. The Old Man knew what human weapons were and
came, but not happily.

When I finally saw him approaching,
squatting ominously beside Doc in the front of the jeep, I changed my mind
about taking him.

"Look," I said to Doc,
under my breath, when the jeep drove up and stopped by the entrance ladder of
the 'copter, "this isn't going to work. If he's going to bolt the minute I
take my eyes off him, this'll never work. Leave him here and you come along
instead while we figure things out. Then I can send you back with word."

"All right," said Doc,
climbing out of the jeep. "Do I have time to pick up any gear, or—"

But at that point, the Old Man
solved the problem for us. He had been staring at the 'copter, and at me, all
the while the jeep was driving out to us on the open area. He was not
unintelligent and he must have finally realized that I was actually going, with
or without him. At any rate, he took a sudden leap out of the jeep directly
onto the first step of the ladder, caught my hand and pulled me toward him and
the steps.

"That's all right, then,"
I said to Doc. "But why don't you come along anyway, at least until I've
had a chance to settle down. No, you won't have time to bring anything. Got any
kind of weapon with you?"

"Pistol."

"All right. I can shake down
Paula's people for what you'll need beyond that, and what you'll need to get
back here from wherever she's headed next. Let's get inside."

He followed me up the ladder, the
Old Man preceding us.

"What's this?" said Paula
when we were inside and the ladder was being taken in, the entry hatch being
shut behind us. She looked from Doc to me.

"There's some unfinished
business," I said. "I've got some decisions yet to make. He can carry
word back from wherever we stop, a couple of days from now—if that's all right
with you?"

"Certainly. Why not?" She
turned her attention to the Old Man who still clung to my hand. "This is
the creature? I thought I saw it around earlier. Is it housebroken?"

"Since long before I met
him," I said. "All his people learn to live like human beings while
they're growing up, just as our children do."

"People?" She smiled.
"Well, keep him out of the way. Find your seats now."

She turned away.