Gordon R. Dickson (61 page)

"We're after the root
cause."

"Are you, Dragger? But this
way—this is using sheer muscle to mend things."

"Do you know of a better
way?"

"But—using energy to reverse
the falling back of these physical bodies, to force them to move apart again?
There ought to be some way that wouldn't require tapping another universe.
Isn't that what you're doing—and tapping a tachyon universe at that? You're
working with forces that can tear this universe apart."

"I asked you," repeated
Dragger, "do you know a better way?"

"No," I said. "But
I've got to see this for myself. I can't believe you can control something that
powerful."

"Look, then," said
Dragger. "S Doradus is only a thought away from us here."

It was true. Merely by thinking of
it, we were there, with no time spent in the movement. Bodiless, with Dragger
bodiless beside me, I hung in space and looked at the great spherical darkness
that was the massive engine enclosing the young blue-white giant star called S
Doradus. It was an engine that trapped all the radiation from that vast sun, to
use it as a focus point, a lens in the fabric of our universe, through which
then flowed the necessary jet of energy from the tachyon universe that was
being tapped for power-to push not only stars, but galaxies around.

A coldness took my mind. Through
that lens, we were touching another place where every physical law, and time
itself, was reversed from ours. As long as the lens aperture was controlled, as
long as it remained small and unvarying, the reaction between the two universes
was under command. But if die lens should tear and open further, under the
forces it channelled, the energy flow could flash to proportions too great to
be constrained. The fabric between the universes would break wide open; it
would be mutual annihilation of both—annihilation in no-time.

"You see now," said
Dragger, "why we didn't think it was possible for you to do this work. In
fact, if you hadn't been able to make the conceptual jump that set you free to
survey the situation, like this, there'd have been no point in even considering
it."

"Made the jump? Just a
minute," I said. "This isn't something I've done all on my own. I
must be getting some technological assistance to let my point of view go
wheeling through infinite distances, like this."

"Of course you are," said
Dragger. "But the only person who could make it possible for your mind to
endure such assistance was you, yourself. You're strong enough to endure the
sense of dislocation involved. We didn't think you were. I didn't think you
were. I was wrong."

"I've got work I want to
do," I said. "That helps."

"A great deal, evidently. At
any rate, Marc, you're one of a select group now. Less than a millionth of one
percent of all our people have the talent to do this work and endure the
conditions under which it's done. Are you surprised we doubted that you could?
An individual has to be born with the talent to be a temporal engineer.
Evidently, you
were
born with it—millenia before there was such
work."

"I didn't know about
this," I said. "That's true enough. But there were other things that
called for the same kind of abilities."

I was thinking of the stock market
of that part of me which could never rest until it had tracked down what it searched
for; also, of that other part of me that had immediately recognized, in the
time storm, an opponent waiting for me....

My mind boggled suddenly and
strangely, and shied away from finishing that particular thought. Puzzled, I
would have come back to it; but Dragger was talking to me again.

"Are you listening to me,
Marc?"

"I'm listening," I said. I
returned my full attention to the moment, and our conversation, with an effort.
"Something bothers me, though. If it's pure technology at work, why is it
talent's needed at all? Why is it only a few can do this? There must be more
than a few who can endure the conditions, as you say."

"There are," she answered.
"And that's why you've got one more strength you have to demonstrate. We
need people with a special talent because when we move stars, and more than
stars, we make gross changes in the time storm forces. We don't have any
technological device quick enough to safely measure and assess the effect of
those changes on the stresses by which we control the flow of energy from the
tachyon universe. If the pressure against which we're exerting our energy flow
changes suddenly, the flow can increase, the lens may dilate, and you must have
guessed what can happen then, before any adjustment can be made."

"You mean the lens tearing
open," I said.

"That's right. Only minds able
to read the pattern of the time storm forces, directly, can see danger coming
fast enough to correct for it. We who are temporal engineers have to direct our
stream of extra-universal energy and, at the same time, make sure that it
doesn't get out of our control."

She stopped speaking. Eyeless, I
hung in space, watching the great darkness that was the engine, the dyson
sphere enclosing S Doradus. My imagination pictured the unbelievable holocaust
within that shell of collapsed matter and the Klein bottle forces, that made
the core of a star millions of times the mass of our sun into a tiny rent in
the fabric of a universe. I had thought I was equal to any dimensions that
might exist in the battle I wanted to join; but the dimensions here were beyond
imagination. I was less than a speck of dust to that stellar nucleus; and in
turn, it was infinitesimal, to the point of nonexistence, compared to the two
great opposed masses of energy between which it formed a bridge and a
connection.

And I was going to share in the
control of that bridge?

My courage stumbled. There was a
limit, even to imagination; and here that limit was exceeded. I felt my view of
the space around me growing obscured and tenuous. I was aware of Dragger,
watching, judging me; and with remembrance of her presence, my guts came back
to me. If she could stay and work here, so could I. There was nothing any life
born in this universe could do, that I could not at least attempt.

The view of the space before me, and
the mighty engine in it, firmed. It grew clear and sharp once more.

"You're still with us?"
asked Dragger.

"Yes," I said.

"Then there's only one more
step to take," she said. "We'll test you on the line. If you don't
succeed there, no one can help you. There'll be no way out."

"I'm ready."

We went forward, toward the dyson
sphere. Bodiless, we passed, like thought through its material shell, through
the Klein bottle forces, down into the sea of radiation beyond any description
that was the enclosed star. We approached the core that was the lens. Here,
ordinary vision was not possible. But with the help of the information that had
been pumped into me, the lens area rendered itself to my mental perception as
an elliptical opening, dark purple against a wall of searing blue-white light.
The energy stuff of the other universe pouring through that opening, was
invisible, but sensible. It rendered itself as a force of such speed and
pressure that it would have felt solid to the touch, if touch had existed in
that place and it had been safe to use it upon that inflow.

Dragger led me almost to the lip of
the lens.

"Do you feel anything?"
she asked.

"Yes," I said.

There was an odd counter force at
work here. In spite of the tremendous outflow, I felt something like an
undertow, as well, sucking us toward the lens. From where I felt it, it was
nothing I could not resist; but I did not want to get closer.

"The downdraft," said
Dragger—the word she used in her communication form was not a precise or
scientific term, but a casual one, almost a nickname for what I felt.
"Does it bother you?"

"Yes," I said; for the
touch of its pull toward the open lens filled me with uneasiness. "I don't
know why."

"It bothers us all," she
said, "and none of us is sure why. It's no problem here, but out at
operations point it becomes something you'll need to watch out for. Now, meet
the others working in this area."

She spoke in turn to at least a
couple of dozen other identities. My stored information recognized the symbols
that were their personal identification as they answered her and spoke to me.
Our conversation seemed to be mind to mind, here in the heart of the star. But
actually, as I knew, we were talking together through the purely technological
communications center of the space raft where my body and Porniarsk's were.
Most of those I spoke to had been at my full-dress argument session,
previously. I was a little surprised to realize how many, there, had been
temporal engineers; although, now that I thought of it, it was only logical
that most of them should have been, since they would be the ones most concerned
with me.

"Marc is going on line with us,
out at operations point," Dragger said. "If he works out, there,
we've got another operator. Marc, are you ready to go?"

"Yes," I said.

We withdrew from the lens, from the
star and the engine. I had expected that I, at least, would be returning to my
body on the raft, from which I would then go by ordinary, physical means to the
operations point. But our identities instead started moving out along the
energy projection from the engine, through interstellar space from the lesser
Magellanic Cloud, where S Doradus was, toward our own galaxy.

"Your bodies will be sent
back," she said.

"Bodies?"

I woke to the fact that the identity
of Porniarsk had just joined us.

"Porniarsk!" I said.
"You're going on the line, too?"

"Only as an observer, I'm
afraid," he answered. "As I think I've said to you in the past, I
lack creativity. And a certain amount of creativity is required for direct work
in temporal engineering. But in all other respects, I'm qualified; and our
instructors thought you, at least, might find me useful to have with you."

"Dragger?" I said.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"The decision wasn't
mine," she answered. "But I think it's a good one. In spite of the
fact you've passed all tests, Marc, you're still very much an unknown quantity
to us. Aside from whatever advantage it'll be to you to have your friend with
you, it'll make the rest of us feel more secure to know that there's an
observer ready to tell us what happens if you do have trouble."

"Enlightened selfishness,"
I said.

"Of course."

The trip we were now taking was a
curious one. My newly educated memory told me it would have been thoroughly
possible to make an immediate jump over the hundred and forty thousand
light-years of distance from the neighborhood of S Doradus to our own galaxy.
But Dragger evidently had a reason for taking me over the distance slowly,
following the route of the energy being sent from the engine to the retreating
matter of our galaxy; and now I began to understand what that reason was.

The energy from the tachyon universe
was not projected in the form it was received, like a light beam aimed over a
hundred and forty thousand light-years of distance. Instead, it was converted
to a time force line, itself—an extension across space of form without mass,
which would not be converted back into energy until it touched the solid
material at its destination; and even then, it would be absorbed, rather than
felt, as an outside force, by that material.

The form in which it was extended,
however, was designed to increase in cross section until it was as wide as the
galaxy to which it was being sent. Crudely, then, the energy flow could be
represented as a funnel shape, with the small end at the lens of S Doradus and
the width of the funnel increasing over the light-years of intergalactic
distance between lens and galaxy, until the large end could contain our whole
galaxy, including its spiral arms.

We were following, then, alongside
this expanding funnel; and as we travelled, I became acutely conscious of its
steady growth, and of a corresponding increase in the uneasiness I had felt
about the downdraft. And this was ridiculous; because here, with the energy
converted into a massless form, there was no downdraft to be felt. Dragger's
reason for moving Porniarsk and me this slowly along the route of the projected
energy was becoming apparent.

I set my teeth against the reaction.
It did not let itself be beaten down easily, because there was something very
old about it; as if I had suddenly come face to face with a dire wolf out of
prehistory, lurking among the shadows of some well-groomed, civilized park, at
sunset. But it was only one more enemy to conquer; and gradually, as I faced
it, it ceased to gain against me and then finally retreated. It was all but
gone when Dragger spoke.

"How do you feel,
Porniarsk?"

"I'm filled with wonder,"
said Porniarsk.

"Outside of that,
nothing?"

"Nothing," he answered.

"And you, Marc?"

"Something," I said.
"But I think I've got it licked."