Vestiges of Time (21 page)

the outside, he found ample evidence of the technology he had seen before. The low, rambling, brick and wooden structure reminded him very much of some portions of the Underground of the BrathelLanza. Rooms here and there were filled with white-smocked figures—humans! Microscopes and centrifuges, incubation units and culture containers, equipment for the analysis and study of unicellular life, row after row of liquid-filled containers that brought to his mind the term “encanters,” for in these vessels embryos almost human in their appearance developed outside the wombs of their mothers. Within this building, as unprepossessing as it was, human scientists and technicians, supervised by adult male Kriths, Were growing clones, Krithian replicates.

Of course, he said to himself, the very first thing they would do is see to* it that their numbers increase: a race that numbers but a few thousand is hardly ready to begin remodeling hundreds and hundreds of parallel Earths. And he remembered the words that the Tromas had spoken to Eric Mathers once he had realized how terribly few there were of the female Kriths: “We all are pregnant. We each give birth at least once a year. Yet still we are few, terribly few to maintain a race as widely spread as ours. ... There are other means of maintaining our race, of propagating our species. . . . Once our chances of survival were minimal. You might find it a wonder that there are Kriths in this universe at all.”

For the first time, the Shadowy Man realized that the majority of the members of the Krithian race must be replicates. Perhaps a dozen new individuals would be bom each year, but millions would be needed for the ever-increasing number of worlds they dominated. Cloning would be the only answer.

But in a race numerically dominated by clones, he thought, had there ever occurred a situation analogous to his own? But then, he thought not. The conditions

that conspired to create the Shadowy Man were, perhaps, unique in all the universes.

He withdrew from the first structure, turned his attention to the second, probed, entered.

Eleven female Kriths, gross, fat, ugly, sat in wheeled chairs in a circle facing onward, carrying on a silent conversation among themselves, when the Shadowy Man entered the room they occupied.

For an instant he was aware of bits of their silent conversation:
For the fifth Line to the TemporaUEast of the first Indus Line, I would suggest
. . .
Would be a very wise move, for our initial objectives there are .
. .
What we shall call a “Prime Line" the first of many that we must . . .

Then the conversation ceased in midstream. Before, they had been dimly, vaguely aware of a presence outside themselves, but had not concerned themselves greatly with it. Now they knew
he
was there. Their attention, now focused into what might be considered a single consciousness, turned to him.

Who are you?
the Tromas asked.

You don’t know?
the Shadowy Man asked them.

We do not know. Answer us, who are you?

Have you not looked into your own future? Have you not scanned far uptime?

We have, and .
. .

A pause in the voiceless reply. Then what could be described as a soundless cry, an astonishment, a gasp. A babble of separate mental voices:
... It cannot be ... It is
him
. . .
But the orders of probability are so
low . . .
Those probabilities can be altered, we know this . . . Then is it? ... It isl

The Shadowy Man realized his mistake. He had waited too long; he had given them an opportunity to recognize him for what he was, could be, would be.

Together, sisters!
. . .

Now he was forming a psionic bolt, a mass of furi

ous energy to use against them; he drew it back, launched it toward the clustered female Kriths.

The atmosphere within the building was charged with tension. Balls of lightning skittered across the floor. The smell of ozone grew thick in the air.

The psionic blast slapped against the Tromas, but already their shields were coming up, deflecting most of the energy, converting it to other forms, radiating heat, light, X-rays, and microwave radio energy back into the air, into the sky, into' space.

The Shadowy Man dodged backward, prepared another bolt of psionic energy, brought up his own shields . . . only to feel the lash of the Tromas striking out against him, splashing against his shields, sending him reeling.

His shields came up again and once more he rushed toward them, launching his bolts and finding them met by bolts of even greater strength hurled at him by the Tromas.

A second time he retreated, pulled farther away, and felt the Tromas seeking him, probing outward, upward, across time and space. As yet he had suffered no pain, for no significant energies had gotten past his shields, but he could weigh his power against theirs, and he saw that, despite the comparative youth of the Tromas as a psionic entity Here and Now, it was still far older and more experienced than he. Even Here and Now, the Tromas had the capability to defeat
him
.

It was not cowardice but wisdom that led the Shadowy Man to make his decision to withdraw not only from the direct confrontation with the Tromas but from that space/time itself.

Another place, another set of circumstances more to his liking, would have to be found. He was still meeting the Tromas on their own ground, their own terms, and there was no way he could hope to best them there.

He fled outward, upward, across time and space, toward . . .

He was not yet certain. He would think, consider, decide, and then . . .

Before him, as he moved in the direction he called “uptime,” he was again aware of the flux of space/ time that he had encountered before, the vortexes and loops, the spirals and pinwheels, the shades of blackness that became great splashes of mingled colors, the sounds of a maddened symphony orchestra, the wave- front of confusion, now followed by still another such wavefront that engendered still more confusion, more loops and swirls in the universal substance.

He paused in his flight, considered, then probed. He reached out, grasped one particular piece of space/ time, froze it, peered into it, then sought another and did the same, trying as he did to< build within his composite mind some picture of what was taking place within this area of madness in the universal matrix.

What he found was a multitude of conflicting and confusing worlds lying side by side in paratime.

One world, a KHL-000 a century or more uptime from his conflict with the younger Tromas, a place in time that could perhaps have carried the label
a.d.
1740 had anyone been able to place the world within the framework of a calendar: a world without intelligent life at all; a world on which men had once lived, long before, but from which they had been removed by forces not totally comprehensible even to the Shadowy Man; a world where forests engulfed ruined castles and hamlets, while the bones of men were dust within ancient tombs.

And beside this world in' paratime, a world that would have had the same calendrical label: it was the focus of a conflict, yet not a conflict between men but between Kriths. The Shadowy Man found himself rocked by the improbability of it: Kriths do not fight among themselves. Yet there it was—a Krith who had

a large red disk painted on his chest and whose genitals were painted the same color stood silently, with his back to a tree, his eyes scanning the forest before him. Silently another Krith appeared, one with blue- painted genitals and a blue star on his chest, skudding in from another Line (or from another place on this Line? the Shadowy Man wondered), then making a sudden, deadly leap, planting a sharpened stick in the throat of the red-painted one. The victorious Krith gave out a great war whoop; but, as suddenly as he had appeared, two more self-skudded into this place, their genitals and chests painted red. They saw the slain Krith, one of their own kind, and his slayer, decorated with blue, and they pounced on him, driving him to the ground with wooden staffs, battering him until his arms were broken and his skull cracked and a reddish gray muck spilled onto the ground beneath the trees.

Still other worlds, as insane and improbable, in wild juxtaposition, seeming to have no relation to one another as did normal worlds in paratime. He saw worlds where men fought rearguard actions against numerically inferior but technologically superior Kriths; armies of men with muskets and crossbows being wiped out by a single Krith with an energy rifle! Worlds where Krithian overlords, with no apparent desire to dominate other worlds, worked human slaves in vast plantations that grew esoteric crops such as no Earth had ever seen before. Worlds where semibarbaric humans worshiped the sole survivor of the Krithian race, an ancient, nearly senile, alien god-king who knew that when he died, with him: would die all the dreams of his vanished race.

An uncountable multitude of worlds branching, splitting, proliferating.

And other worlds of encapsulated time: a world whose history began about
a.d.
1610 and would end about
a.d.
2500, looping back upon itself and begin

ning again, meaninglessly; a world so isolated from the rest of the universe that its Krithian inhabitants could not even skud away from it to places of sanity, but were doomed to repeat that slice of 890 years forever.

Another encapsulation: frozen time, no movement at all. There is no life on this Earth. Barren stone, frozen water, unimaginable gulfs of loneliness. Not death. Just nonlife.

The Shadowy Man shuddered in terror, and asked himself how it was possible for such worlds to be. Then realized. As the Kriths should have realized. At least part of it.

The Kriths had come across the parallel worlds and settled on KHL-000 and for a time had lived there, then had decided to go downtime to begin their remaking of the histories of the parallel worlds as early as possible. From their decision to pluck themselves out of space/time and hurl themselves, as a race, backward into the historical past had come this fragmentation. Moving backward in time, passing themselves, as it were, moving through already established historical eras of solely human habitation, they had brought into being a fragmentation of paratime, the waves, the whirlpools, the eddies in space/time that had brought about further fragmentation, further duplication, further multiplication of world after world after world. The Kriths had done a lot of it themselves.

And yet, he realized, as he prepared to move uptime again, some of it was
his own
doing: in going downtime, in challenging the Tromas on KHL-000 in A.D. 1610, he had set into motion still another “new” set of probabilities, more
possible
ways that things
could have been.
In the chronological period
a.d.
1610- 2500, a vast and still increasing number of possible worlds had come into being, and as each moved forward in time, approached still more possible alternatives, they fragmented further, moving further and

still further from probability into improbability, demanding more and more from the substance of space/ time, drawing the fabric of the universe thinner and thinner, ever closer to its bursting point.

The fear was still in
him
as he launched himself uptime again. And as he moved he continued to scan the worlds around
him
, he found the Lines more and more confused, the fabric of space/time thinner and thinner still. How much more would it take to tear it? he wondered. And what would happen if it tore?— when it tore? What would a hole in the universe, in the universe of the universes, become?

The Tromas had once had an answer to that too, he thought.

He paused again in his movement uptime, and scanned the parallel worlds.

Some calendars would have recorded the date in time as
A.D.
1920.

A world here: KHL-000 much as Mathers had known it, a highly civilized world of cities and landscaped parks, of Kriths and their companions; yet, for all that, it was a world over which hung the pall of doom, dark and heavy, eminently menacing.

And beside it in paratime: a blasted, desolate world, created like the moon, seething with radioactivity.

And beside it: a world of men and women huddled in caves, looking with incomprehension at the night sky in which there was no moon, but a series of glittering bands that looked much as the rings of Saturn might look to an observer on that planet.

And beside it: a world where Kriths were the ones who huddled in foul caves, fearful of the sounds in the night, unaware of the powers their ancestors had once possessed.

And beside it: a world dominated by humankind, building a technological culture, a world where airplanes were beginning to take to the sky and iron rails spanned continents, where radio was more than just a

curiosity, and where a savage world war loomed on the horizon of history, a war in which biological and chemical weapons might well destroy the human race.

And beside it: a world in which strange, unhuman, unholy figures stalked the forests, alien, asymmetrical things out of nightmares and drug-distorted hallucinations, monstrous things with only the barest glimmerings of intelligence in their grotesque eyes.

And beside it: a world dominated not by humans or by Kriths or by nightmare monsters, but by mammalian humanoids whose skin had a bluish tinge and who had the mastery of a high order of technology, who had craft capable of going to the stars and other craft capable of crossing the Lines of Time . . .

The Shadowy Man felt another chill enter the fear that already filled him. From out of Eric Mathers’ memory came these words:

“Their heads and faces were half hidden by transparent helmets, but I saw enough, more than enough: their eyes were too big and their noses too flat and their jaws hinged wrongly and there was an unmistakable tinge of blue to their skin. Oh, they were about the size and shape of men, as far as I could tell from the bulky suits they wore, but there the resemblances ended.”

These were the beings whom Mathers had believed to be the founders and the coordinators of the Paratimers, the beings who had called themselves Albigensians when they disguised themselves as humans, the beings who appeared to hate all things human and Krithian and had set out across the Lines, much as had the Kriths, to change the parallel worlds—or to destroy them—to suit their own enigmatic purposes.

But Albert von Heinen, who had worked for them and had once seen them in their natural, undisguised state, had said they came from the far Temporal-West, the products of laboratories, not wombs, artificial beings, androids who had risen to destroy their human