The Time Traveler's Almanac (122 page)

He moved across to the trolley. He painfully lifted off the largest of the hammers and dragged it to the floor. A wheel of moderate size, about four feet across, was quite near to him. With all his strength he swung the hammer in a low arc and relaxed only as it smashed into the wheel. The giant hammer broke off one of the cogs completely, and bent part of the wheel at an impossible angle. He dropped the hammer, and, filled with emotion, crammed his fists against his opened mouth.

The Clock ticked.

He found that he was weeping; why, he didn’t understand.

The cog turned slowly, the damaged section moving nearer to its inevitable interaction with another wheel. He screwed up his eyes, and felt the warm tears running freely down his face.

“I’ve killed you,” he said. He stood, thin, bleached and naked, paralysed and sobbing. Something would happen soon.

The damaged section interacted.

The wrecked cog spun suddenly and rapidly before its teeth engaged again. A shower of sparks flew out, burning his flesh. He started, both at the pain and at the sheer noise of that dreadful contact. At the threshold of his hearing, far below the other sounds of the Clock, he could hear the buckling of metal, the scraping of part on part. The other wheel buckled and spun in its turn. A spring burst from somewhere behind the wheel and scattered metal splinters all over the Chamber. Strange smells were in the air; the death-smells of the Clock.

A trail of damage was running across the mechanism of the Clock like an earthquake fissure running across land. It could not be seen, and outwardly practically everything was normal, but his ears could hear the changes in what had been familiar sounds. The grinding and destruction spreading like a canker could be heard clearly enough.

The Clock ticked, and even the tick sounded slightly weaker.

Louder and louder came the sounds of invisible destruction. He stood, still weeping, shaking as if with fever. The changed sounds of the Clock plunged him into a new and unfamiliar world.

A different sound made him look up. Above him the Fast Wheel was running eccentrically. It was wavering from side to side in its supports, oil spurting from its reservoirs. As it spun, it whined, jarringly.

Abruptly it broke free of its supports and, still whining, it dropped to the floor. It screamed as it hit the floor and was covered by the roaring flame of its friction. And then it was gone, only the hint of a bright streak in the air indicating its trajectory. It smashed into the far wall scattering dust from the bones as the wooden wall dissolved into splintering wreckage.

An uluation came from the Small Chamber. Inside, the mass of wheels screamed as they were tortured by the new disorder spreading through their myriad ranks. The Clock shook in its ague, shivering itself to death. Suddenly through the open door of the Small Chamber came the wheels, thousands of them. The Great Chamber was full of smooth silver wheels, some broken and flying through the air, others rolling lazily.

The Clock ticked, gratingly, and then screamed again. The Escapement Mechanism jammed rigid, but the Pendulum wanted to continue its swing. It did, bending its great four-foot-diameter column in a grotesque shape.

Dust was everywhere, flying metal whistled about his ears. As the sound became unbelievable the destruction became complete.

His last sight was of light streaming brightly in as the whole Clock collapsed in a mass of falling wood and metal cogs.

3

And it was everybody else’s last sight, too. They may, for a brief period, have seen their world freezing itself in grotesque lack of activity. They may have seen water, solidifying in its fall to complete immobility; they may have seen birds flying through air that was like treacle, finally coming to rest above the ground; they may even have seen their own faces beginning to register terror, but never completing the expression …

But after that, there was no time to see anything.

TRAVELLER’S REST

David I. Masson

David I. Masson was a British science fiction writer and librarian.
The Caltraps of Time
is his only short-story collection, containing all of his fiction, all of the stories he published in
New Worlds,
and three additional stories. “Traveller’s Rest” was originally published in 1965 in
New Worlds
magazine.

It was an apocalyptic sector. Out of the red-black curtain of the forward sight-barrier, which at this distance from the Frontier shut down a mere twenty metres north, came every sort of meteoric horror: fission and fusion explosions, chemical detonations, a super-hail of projectiles of all sizes and basic velocities, sprays of nerve-paralysants and thalamic dopes. The impact devices burst on the barren rock of the slopes or the concrete of the forward stations, some of which were disintegrated or eviscerated every other minute. The surviving installations kept up an equally intense and nearly vertical fire of rockets and shells. Here and there a protectivized figure could be seen sprinting up, down or along the slopes on its mechanical walker like a frantic ant from an anthill attacked by flamethrowers. Some of the visible oncoming trajectories could be seen snaking overhead into the indigo gloom of the rear sight-curtain, perhaps fifty metres south, which met the steep-falling rock surface forty-odd metres below the observer’s eye. The whole scene was as if bathed in a gigantic straight rainbow. East and west, as far as the eye could see, perhaps some forty miles in this clear mountain air despite the debris of explosion (but cut off to west by a spur from the range) the visibility-corridor witnessed a continual onslaught and counter-onslaught of devices. The visible pandemonium was shut in by the sight-barriers’ titanic canyon walls of black, reaching the slim pale strip of horizon-spanning light at some immense height. The audibility-corridor was vastly wider than that of sight; the many-pitched din, even through left ear in helm, was considerable.

“Computer-sent, must be,” said H’s transceiver into his right ear. No sigil preceded this statement, but H knew the tones of B, his next-up, who in any case could be seen a metre away saying it, in the large concrete bubble whence they watched, using a plaspex window and an infrared northviewer with a range of some hundreds of metres forward. His next-up had been in the bunker for three minutes, apparently overchecking, probably for an appreciation to two-up who might be in station VV now.

“Else how can they get minutely impacts here, you mean?” said H.

“Well, of course it could be long range low-frequency – we don’t really know how Time works over There.”

“But if the conceleration runs asymptotically to the Frontier, as it should if Their Time works in mirror-image, would anything ever have got over?”

“Doesn’t have to, far’s I can see – maybe it steepens a lot, then just falls back at the same angle the other Side,” said B’s voice; “anyway, I didn’t come to talk science: I’ve news for you, if we hold out the next few seconds here, you’re Relieved.”

H felt a black inner sight-barrier beginning to engulf him, and a roaring in his ears swallowed up the noise of the bombardment. He bent double as his knees began to buckle, and regained full consciousness. He could see his replacement now, an uncertain-looking figure in prot-suit (like everybody else up here) at the far side of the bunker.

“XN 3, what orders then?” he said crisply, his pulse accelerating.

“XN 2: pick em-kit now, repeat now, rocket 3333 to VV, present tag” – holding out a luminous orange label printed with a few coarse black characters – “and proceed as ordered thence.”

H stuck up his right thumb from his fist held at elbow length, in salute. It was no situation for facial gestures or unnecessary speech. “XN 3, yes, em-kit, 3333 rocket, tag” (he had taken it in his left glove) “and W orders; parting!”

He missed B’s nod as he skimmed on soles to the exit, grabbed a small bundle hanging (one of fifteen) from the fourth hook along, slid down the greasy slide underground ten metres to a fuel-cell-lit cavern, pressed a luminous button in the wall, watched a lit symbol passing a series of marks, jumped into the low car as it ground round the corner, and curled up foetuswise. His weight having set off the door mechanism, the car shut, slipped down and (its clamps setting on H’s body) roared off down the chute.

Twenty-five seconds after his parting word H uncurled at the forward receiver cell of station VV nearly half a mile downslope. He crawled out as the rocket ground off again, walked ten steps onward in this larger version of his northward habitat, saluted thumb-up and presented his tag to two-up (recognized from helm-tint and helm-sign), saying simultaneously, “XN 3 rep, Relieved.”

“XN 1 to XN 3: take this” (holding out a similar orange tag plucked from his pocket) “and take mag-lev train down, in – seventy seconds. By the way, ever seen a prehis?”

“No, sir.”

“Spot through here, then; look like pteros but more primitive.”

The infrared telescopic viewer looking north-west passed through the forward sight-barrier which due north was about forty metres away here. Well upslope yet still well clear of the dark infrared-radiation barrier could be seen, soundlessly screaming and yammering, two scaly animals about the size of large dogs, but with two legs and heavy wings, flopping around a hump or boulder on the rock. They might have been hit on their way along, and could hardly have had any business on that barren spot, H thought.

“Thanks; odd,” he said. Eleven seconds of the seventy had gone. He pulled out a squirter-cup from the wall and took a drink from the machine through his helm. Seventeen seconds gone, fifty-three to go.

“XN 1 to XN 3: how are things up there?”

Naturally a report was called for: XN 2 might never return, and communication up-time and down-time was nearly impossible at these latitudes over more than a few metres.

“XN 3. Things have been hotting up all day; I’m afraid a burst through may be attempted in the next hour or so – only my guess, of course. But I’ve never seen anything like it all this time up here. I suppose you’ll have noticed it in VV too?”

“XN 1, thanks for report,” was all the answer he got. But he could hear for himself that the blitz was much more intense than any he had known at this level either.

Only twenty-seven seconds remained. He saluted and strode off across the bunker with his em-kit and the new tag. He showed the tag to the guard, who stamped it and pointed wordlessly down a corridor. H ran down this, arriving many metres down the far end at a little gallery. An underslung rail-guided vehicle with slide-doors opening into cubicles glided quietly alongside. A gallery-guard waved as H and two others waiting opened doors whose indicators were unlit, the doors slid to, and H found himself gently clamped in on a back-tilted seat as the mag-lev train accelerated downhill. After ten seconds it stopped at the next checkhalt; a panel in the cubicle ceiling lit up to state
DIVERSION
,
LEFT
, presumably because the direct route had been destroyed. The train now appeared to accelerate but more gently, swung away to left (as H could feel) and stopped at two more checkhalts before swinging back right and finally decelerating, coming to rest and opening some 480 seconds after its start, by Had’s personal chronograph, instead of the 200 he had expected.

At this point daylight could again be seen. From the top bunker where XN 2 had discharged him, Had had now gone some ten miles south and nearly 3000 metres down, not counting detours. The forward sight-barrier here was hidden by a shoulder of mountain covered in giant lichen, but the southern barrier was evident as a violet-black fog-wall a quarter of a mile off. Lichens and some sort of grass-like vegetation covered much of the neighbouring landscape, a series of hollows and ravines. Noise of war was still audible, mingled with that of a storm, but nearby crashes were not frequent and comparatively little damage could be seen. The sky overhead was turbulent. Some very odd-looking animals, perhaps between a lizard and a stoat in general appearance, were swarming up and down a tree-fern near by. Six men in all got out of the mag-lev train, besides Had. Two and three marched off in two groups down track eastward. One (not one of those who had got in at VV) stayed with Had.

“I’m going down to the Great Valley; haven’t seen it for twenty days; everything’ll be changed. Are you sent far?” said the other man’s voice in Had’s right ear through the transceiver.

“I— I— I’m Relieved,” tried Had uncertainly.

“Well, I’m … disintegrated!” was all the other man could manage. Then after a minute, “Where will you go?”

“Set up a business way south, I think. Heat is what suits me, heat and vegetation. I have a few techniques I could put to good use in management of one sort or another. I’m sorry – I never meant to plume it over you with this – but you did ask me.”

“That’s all right. You certainly must have Luck, though. I never met a man who was Relieved. Make good use of it, won’t you. It helps to make the Game worthwhile up here – I mean, to have met a man who is joining all those others we’re supposed to be protecting – it makes them real to us in a way.”

“Very fine of you to take it that way,” said Had.

“No, I mean it. Otherwise we’d wonder if there was any people to hold the Front for.”

“Well, if there weren’t, how’d the techniques have developed for holding on up here?” put Had.

“Some of the Teccols I remember in the Great Valley might have developed enough techniques for that.”

“Yes, but think of all the pure science you need to work up the techniques from; I doubt if that could have been studied inside the Valley Teccols.”

“Possibly not – that’s a bit beyond me,” said the other’s voice a trifle huffily, and they stood on in silence till the next cable-car came up and round at the foot of the station. Had let the man get in it – he felt he owed him that – and a minute later (five seconds only, up in his first bunker, he suddenly thought ironically and parenthetically) the next car appeared. He swung himself in just as a very queer-looking purple bird with a long bare neck alighted on the stoat-lizards’ tree-fern. The cable-car sped down above the ravines and hollows, the violet southern curtain backing still more swiftly away from it. As the time-gradient became less steep his brain began to function better and a sense of well-being and meaningfulness grew in him. The car’s speed slackened.