Gordon R. Dickson (57 page)

Following this conversation, there
was a great deal of kissing and handshaking all around. In fact, our community
nowadays was more like one large family than anything else. I almost spoiled
the occasion by laughing out loud at the spectacle of Porniarsk solemnly
promising people that he would be careful and take good care of himself. It was
rather like a battleship assuring everyone that it would keep a wary eye out
for sharks and take care not to get bitten.

But even the saying of goodbyes had
to run down finally.

"We're all set," I told
Obsidian.

"All right," he said.
"Then, if you'll just stand close to me, here."

Porniarsk and I moved in until we
were almost nose to nose with him, leaving a ring of unoccupied ground about
ten feet wide around us. All at once, we were standing elsewhere, in a little
open space between the trunks of massive elms spaced about thirty feet apart.
We stood on something that looked like a linoleum rug, but felt underfoot like
deep carpeting, a solid dark green in color. About us were some walls at odd
angles, several large puff-type cushions ranging up to a size that would have made
a comfortable queen-sized bed, and several of what looked like control panels
on stands apparently connected to nothing.

I looked around.

"This is your living area and
working quarters?" I asked Obsidian.

"Yes," he said. "I
think you'll find it comfortable for the three of us. I can arrange the walls
so that you can have separate rooms for privacy, if you like."

"Don't bother," I said.
"I assume we won't be here long in any case, will we?"

"About the equivalent of five
days of local time."

"Five days?" I said.
"I thought we'd be leaving for wherever it is in a matter of hours, if not
minutes?"

"Oh, we've already left,"
he said. He waved his hand and something like a picture window appeared between
us and the trees to our left. The view in the picture window, however, was a
view of black space, bright pinprick stars as thick as pebbles on a beach, and
a blue and white earth-globe nearly filling the lower right-hand corner of the
view.

I stared at the earth-globe and
confirmed my first impression that it was visibly shrinking in size as I
watched.

"I thought you said this was
your working and living area?"

"It is."

"It's a spaceship, too?"

Obsidian waved a hand.

"I suppose you could call it
that," he said. "Actually, it's more accurate to say it's simply living
quarters. The process of travelling between the stars isn't much more
cumbersome if we bring it along, however; and it's a lot more comfortable if we
do so."

I turned about in a circle, on my
heel.

"The trees and all," I
said. "That's just an illusion?"

"Out here, yes," Obsidian
said. "Back when we first arrived, of course, you were looking at the
actual surrounding forest."

"When did we take off?"

"As soon as we arrived. But to
call it a takeoff—"

"I know," I said,
"—doesn't exactly describe what happened. Never mind. I'm not really
interested in the mechanics of it, right now. All right then, if we really are
going to be here for five days, I believe I'd appreciate a room of my own,
after all; and I'd imagine Porniarsk would too."

"It makes no difference to
me," said Porniarsk. "But I am interested in the mechanics of your
space flight. Can I examine those control panels?"

"By all means," said
Obsidian. "If you like, I'll explain them to you. They're for work back on
the planet we just left, actually. Our trip will be handled
automatically."

"I'm interested in all
things," said Porniarsk. "This is the effective result of being the
avatar of an individual, Porniarsk, who has always been interested in all
things—"

He checked himself.

"—I should probably say, was
interested in all things."

"Do you miss him?"
Obsidian asked. "This individual of whom you were an avatar?"

"Yes," said Porniarsk,
"in a sense I do. It's a little like realizing that part of myself is
gone, or that I had a twin I now know I'll never see again."

The tone of his voice was perfectly
calm and ordinary; but suddenly I found myself looking at him closely. I had
never stopped to think of Porniarsk as having emotions, or stopped to consider
what he might have lost in a personal sense by going forward in time with us.

"I should have asked you if you
wanted to come with us," I said.

"If you had, I'd have answered
yes," said Porniarsk. "The process of discovery and learning is what
I was constructed for."

"Yes," I said.

I was suddenly very tired, with an
almost stupefying feeling of fatigue. Part of it, undoubtedly, was the work
schedule we had been keeping in the community these last few weeks. But the
greater part was something more psychological and psychic than physical. In
spite of Obsidian's insistence that the testing I was about to take was that
and no more, I was at last certain that I had reached the last arena, the
moment of final confrontation.

I was like someone who had trained
physically for months and years for one battle. I felt loose, light and ready,
but drained and empty inside, hollow of all but the inevitability of the
conflict toward which I was now marching inexorably. Not even enthusiasm was
left—only a massive and silent acceptance of what would be.

"I think," I said to Obsidian,
"I'd like that private room now, if you don't mind. I think I'd like to
get some sleep."

"To be sure," he said.

Suddenly, the white walls were
around me. I had not moved, but now I was enclosed, alone with the picture
window, or screen, showing the innumerable stars and the shrinking Earth. I
turned to the largest of the cushions and fell on it. For a second the lighting
was still daylight strong, but just before I closed my eyes, it dimmed to
nonexistence; and the space in which I now rested was lit only by the star-glow
from the window.

I slept.

When I woke, the stars in the
picture window were different. Not merely a little different; they bore no
relationship to anything I had ever seen in the skies of Earth. Puzzled, I lay
there looking at them while gradually I came to full alertness; and either
automatically, or in response to some way of sensing my urge for better
visibility, the lighting in the room slowly increased, back to the level of
sunlight. I got up, explored, and found a doorway that let me into a bathroom,
which was too good a replica of what I was familiar with to be anything but a
construct created expressly for me by Obsidian.

Still, I was grateful for the fact
that it looked so familiar. Part of my waking up had always been a morning
routine involving a sharp razor blade, soap and a good deal of hot water. This
out of the way, I left my private quarters and found Obsidian sleeping quietly
on one of the larger cushions of the main area, Porniarsk busy doing
incomprehensible things with one of the control consoles.

"Good morning, Marc," he
said, turning to look at me as I came up.

"Morning, if that's what it
is—" I lowered my voice, glancing at Obsidian. "Sorry, I forgot about
him sleeping there."

"I don't think you need
worry," said Porniarsk at ordinary conversational volume. "I don't
believe he hears any noise he doesn't want to hear until he wakes at the time
he wants to wake."

I looked at Obsidian curiously.

"Good trick," I said.
"What's the breakfast situation?"

"There's food of various kinds
in a room there," said Porniarsk, pointing a tentacle at a doorway in one
of the walls that had been there when we arrived.

I went to look and found he was
right. It was a pleasant, small room, apparently surrounded completely by the
illusion of the forest in forenoon sunlight. There were chairs, my style, and a
table, my style; and a piece of furniture that looked like a heavy, old
fashioned wooden wardrobe.

When I opened the door of this last
piece of furniture, however, I found it filled with shelves full of all kinds
of fresh earthly fruits and vegetables. There were fruit juices in transparent
vessels, milk, and a pitcher of black liquid that turned out to be hot coffee;
although what was keeping its temperature up was a mystery. There were no meat
or eggs; and although I looked around carefully, I could not find a stove or
any means of cooking any of the other foodstuffs. Well, at least the coffee was
hot. I found a small empty vessel to pour it into and settled down to eat.

It was an interesting meal. There
were no shocks, but some surprises. For one thing, the already-sliced loaf of
bread I discovered turned out to be hot. Not toasted. Hot, like the coffee. The
glass of what I had assumed was orange juice turned out to be slightly fizzy, as
if it had been carbonated. There was no sugar and the honey tasted as if it had
been spiked with vodka.

I finished up and went back into the
other room. Obsidian was still asleep and Porniarsk was still at work.

"Have you eaten?" I asked
Porniarsk. I knew he did eat; although Porniarsk and nutrition were something
of a puzzle; because apparently he could go for weeks at a time without food.
He had told me once that his bodily fueling system was almost as much a mystery
to him as it was to the rest of us; since that was an area of information in
which Porniarsk, the original Porniarsk, had no interest whatsoever. Apparently
our Porniarsk, at least, had some way of getting a great deal more energy out
of the sustenance he took in than we humans did. I had played with the picture
of a small stainless steel fission engine under the thick armor plating of his
body—although he had assured us he was pure animal protein in all respects.

"No," he said now.
"There's no need. I'm greatly interested in this equipment."

"It looks like we built up
quite a velocity while I was asleep," I said. "Where are we
now?"

"That's the fascination of
this," he said, nodding heavily at the control console. "Apparently,
as Obsidian said, our trip's completely under automatic control. But this
console, since he showed me how to operate it, has been furnishing me with
information on our movements as we make them. Right now we're something like
three million years in the past, and consequently, far displaced from your
solar system—"

"Displaced?" I said. But
even as I said it, even as he began to explain, my mind was jumping ahead to
that explanation.

"Why, yes. Obsidian and his
community," said Porniarsk, "have evidently done a superb job of,
first, balancing the large areas of time forces; and second, an equally
excellent job of charting specific force lines in between the balanced areas.
In fact, I'm inclined to think that the process of balancing was designed to
leave just the network of working force lines that remain. The result has been
that, although they can't actually cross space at more than light speeds, by
using the force lines they can jump distances equivalent to some hundreds or
even thousands of light years, and arrive at their destination in a matter of
hours, or even days. Watch the present stellar arrangement."

He touched the console in front of
him with a tentacle tip. Another picture window appeared, showing the starscape
beyond. My memory for patterns now was too good to be deceived. This was a
different view again of the galaxy than the one I had seen in the other room on
waking up.

"We should be coming up on
another transfer, momentarily…" said Porniarsk. "There!"

The starview abruptly changed,
without jar, without sound, and so instantaneously that I did not even have the
sensation of having blinked at the scene.

"We've gone down the ladder in
time in order to make large shifts through space," said Porniarsk.
"In the smaller node of forces on Earth, the time jumps were also much
smaller and the physical displacement was minor. Here, of course, when we take
a large step forward or backward in time, the surrounding stars and other solid
bodies move around us. What's that phrase I once learned from 'Marie about
Mahomet not being able to go to the mountain, therefore, the mountain must come
to him? Obsidian's people have learned to use the time storm to bring their
mountains to them, instead of themselves making the journey to the
mountains-"

He glanced at me. Porniarsk could
not be said to have the most readable facial and body expressions in the
universe; but I knew that hang of his tentacles well enough by now to tell when
he was being apologetic.

"—I mean, of course," he
said, "to refer to the stars and other solid bodies of the universe as
'mountains'."

"I'd guessed you did," I
said.

"I'm afraid I'm sometimes a
little pedantic," he said. "So was Porniarsk himself, of course. It's
a failing that often goes with an enquiring mind."

"Don't let it bother you where
I'm concerned," I said. "One of my worst habits is telling other
people what the situation is, at great length."