The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 2: To the Dark Star: 1962-69

by Robert Silverberg

  Hahn had a cramped, crabbed handwriting that packed a maximum of information into a minimum of space, as though he regarded it as a mortal sin to waste paper. Fair enough. Paper was a scarce commodity here, and evidently Hahn had brought these sheets with him from Up Front. His script was clear, though. So were his opinions. Painfully so.

  He had written an analysis of conditions at Hawksbill Station, setting forth in about five thousand words everything that Barrett new was going sour here. He had neatly ticked off the men as aging revolutionaries in whom the old fervor had turned rancid. He listed the ones who were certifiably psycho, and the ones who were on the edge, and the ones who were hanging on, like Quesada and Norton and Rudiger. Barrett was interested to see that Hahn rated even those three as suffering from severe strain and likely to fly apart at any moment. To him, Quesada and Norton and Rudiger seemed just about as stable as when they had first dropped onto the Anvil of Hawksbill Station, but there was possibly the distorting effect of his own blurred perceptions. To an outsider like Hahn, the view was different and perhaps more accurate.

  Barrett forced himself not to skip ahead to Hahn’s evaluation of him.

  He wasn’t pleased when he came to it. “Barrett,” Hahn had written, “is like a mighty beam that’s been gnawed from within by termites. He looks solid, but one good push would break him apart. A recent injury to his foot has evidently had a bad effect on him. The other men say he used to be physically vigorous and derived much of his authority from his size and strength. Now he can hardly walk. But I feel the trouble with Barrett is inherent in the life of Hawksbill Station, and doesn’t have much to do with his lameness. He’s been cut off from normal human drives for too long. The exercise of power here has provided the illusion of stability for him, but it’s power in a vacuum, and things have happened within Barrett of which he’s totally unaware. He’s in bad need of therapy. He may be beyond help.”

  Barrett read that several times. Gnawed from within by termites…one good push…things have happened within him…bad need of therapy…beyond help.

  He was less angered than he thought he should have been. Hahn was entitled to his views. Barrett finally stopped rereading his profile and pushed his way to the last page of Hahn’s essay. It ended with the words, “Therefore I recommend prompt termination of the Hawksbill Station penal colony and, where possible, the therapeutic rehabilitation of its inmates.”

  What the hell was this?

  It sounded like the report of a parole commissioner! But there was no parole from Hawksbill Station. That final sentence let all the viability of what had gone before bleed away. Hahn was pretending to be composing a report to the government Up Front, obviously. But a wall two billion years thick made filing of that report impossible. So Hahn was suffering from delusions, just like Altman and Valdosto and the others. In his fevered mind he believed he could send messages Up Front, pompous documents delineating the flaws and foibles of his fellow prisoners.

  That raised a chilling prospect. Hahn might be crazy, but he hadn’t been in the Station long enough to have gone crazy here. He must have brought his insanity with him.

  What if they had stopped using Hawksbill Station as a camp for political prisoners, Barrett asked himself, and were starting to use it as an insane asylum?

  A cascade of psychos descending on them. Men who had gone honorably buggy under the stress of confinement would have to make room for ordinary Bedlamites. Barrett shivered. He folded up Hahn’s papers and handed them to Latimer, who was sitting a few yards away, watching him intently.

  “What did you think of that?” Latimer asked.

  “I think it’s hard to evaluate. But possibly friend Hahn is emotionally disturbed. Put this stuff back exactly where you got it, Don. And don’t give Hahn the faintest inkling that you’ve read or removed it.”

  “Right.”

  “And come to me whenever you think there’s something I ought to know about him,” Barrett said. “He may be a very sick boy. He may need all the help we can give.”

  The fishing expedition returned in early afternoon. Barrett saw that the dinghy was overflowing with the haul, and Hahn, coming into the camp with his arms full of gaffed trilobites looked sunburned and pleased with his outing. Barrett came over to inspect the catch. Rudiger was in an effusive mood, and held up a bright red crustacean that might have been the great-great-grandfather of all boiled lobsters, except that it had no front claws and a wicked-looking triple spike where a tail should have been. It was about two feet long, and ugly.

  “A new species!” Rudiger crowed. “There’s nothing like this in any museum. I wish I could put it where it would be found. Some mountaintop, maybe.”

  “If it could be found, it would have been found,” Barrett reminded him. “Some paleontologist of the twentieth century would have dug it out. So forget it, Mel.”

  Hahn said, “I’ve been wondering about that point. How is it nobody Up Front ever dug up the fossil remains of Hawksbill Station? Aren’t they worried that one of the early fossil-hunters will find it in the Cambrian strata and raise a fuss?”

  Barrett shook his head. “For one thing, no paleontologist from the beginning of the science to the founding of the Station in 2005 ever did dig up Hawksbill. That’s a matter of record, so there was nothing to worry about. If it came to light after 2005, why, everyone would know what it was. No paradox there.”

  “Besides,” said Rudiger sadly, “in another billion years this whole strip of rock will be on the floor of the Atlantic, with a couple of miles of sediment over it. There’s not a chance we’ll be found. Or that anyone Up Front will ever see this guy I caught today. Not that I give a damn. I’ve seen him. I’ll dissect him. Their loss.”

  “But you regret the fact that science will never know of this species,” Hahn said.

  “Sure I do. But is it my fault? Science does know of this species. Me. I’m science. I’m the leading paleontologist of this epoch. Can I help it if I can’t publish my discoveries in the professional journals?” He scowled and walked away, carrying the big red crustacean.

  Hahn and Barrett looked at each other. They smiled, in a natural mutual response to Rudiger’s grumbled outburst. Then Barrett’s smile faded.

  …termites…one good push…therapy…

  “Something wrong?” Hahn asked.

  “Why?”

  “You looked so bleak, all of a sudden.”

  “My foot gave me a twinge,” Barrett said. “It does that, you know. Here. I’ll give you a hand carrying those things. We’ll have fresh trilobite cocktail tonight.”

  Eight

  A little before midnight, Barrett was awakened by footsteps outside his hut. As he sat up, groping for the luminescence switch, Ned Altman came blundering through the door. Barrett blinked at him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Hahn!” Altman rasped. “He’s fooling around with the Hammer again. We just saw him go into the building.”

  Barrett shed his sleepiness like a seal bursting out of water. Ignoring the insistent throb in his left leg, he pulled himself from his bed and grabbed some clothing. He was more apprehensive than he wanted Altman to see. If Hahn, fooling around with the temporal mechanism, accidentally smashed the Hammer, they might never get replacement equipment from Up Front. Which would mean that all future shipments of supplies—if there were any—would come as random shoots that might land in any old year. What business did Hahn have with the machine, anyway?

  Altman said, “Latimer’s up there keeping an eye on him. He got suspicious when Hahn didn’t come back to the hut, and he got me, and we went looking for him. And there he was, sniffing around the Hammer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. As soon as we saw him go in, I came down here to get you. Don’s watching.”

  Barrett stumped his way out of the hut and did his best to run toward the main building. Pain shot like trails of hot acid up the lower half of his body. The crutch dug mercilessly into his
left armpit as he leaned all his weight into it. His crippled foot, swinging freely, burned with a cold glow. His right leg, which was carrying most of the burden, creaked and popped. Altman ran breathlessly alongside him. The Station was terribly silent at this hour.

  As they passed Quesada’s hut, Barrett considered waking the medic and taking him along. He decided against it. Whatever trouble Hahn might be up to, Barrett felt he could handle it himself. There was some strength left in the old gnawed beam, after all.

  Latimer stood at the entrance to the main dome. He was right at the edge of panic, or perhaps over the edge. He seemed to be gibbering with fear and shock. Barrett had never seen a man gibber before.

  He clamped a big paw on Latimer’s thin shoulder and said harshly, “Where is he? Where’s Hahn?”

  “He—disappeared.”

  “What do you mean? Where did he go?”

  Latimer moaned. His face was fishbelly white. “He got onto the Anvil,” Latimer blurted. “The light came on—the glow. And then Hahn disappeared!”

  “No,” Barrett said. “It isn’t possible. You must be mistaken.”

  “I saw him go!”

  “He’s hiding somewhere in the building,” Barrett insisted. “Close that door! Search for him!”

  Altman said, “He probably did disappear, Jim. If Don says he disappeared—”

  “He climbed right on the Anvil. Then everything turned red and he was gone.”

  Barrett clenched his fists. There was a white-hot blaze just behind his forehead that almost made him forget about his foot. He saw his mistake, now. He had depended for his espionage on two men who were patently and unmistakably insane, and that had been itself a not very sane thing to do. A man is known by his choice of lieutenants. Well, he had relied on Altman and Latimer, and now they were giving him the sort of information that such spies could be counted on to supply.

  “You’re hallucinating,” he told Latimer curtly. “Ned, go wake Quesada and get him here right away. You, Don, you stand here by the entrance, and if Hahn shows up I want you to scream at the top of your lungs. I’m going to search the building for him.”

  “Wait,” Latimer said. He seemed to be in control of himself again. “Jim, do you remember when I asked you if you thought I was crazy? You said you didn’t. You trusted me. Well, don’t stop trusting me now. I tell you I’m not hallucinating. I saw Hahn disappear. I can’t explain it, but I’m rational enough to know what I saw.”

  In a milder tone Barrett said, “All right. Maybe so. Stay by the door, anyway. I’ll run a quick check.”

  He started to make the circuit of the dome, beginning with the room where the Hammer was located. Everything seemed to be in order there. No Hawksbill Field glow was in evidence, and nothing had been disturbed. The room had no closets or cupboards in which Hahn could be hiding. When he had inspected it thoroughly, Barrett moved on, looking into the infirmary, the mess hall, the kitchen, the recreation room. He looked high and low. No Hahn. Of course, there were plenty of places in those rooms where Hahn might have secreted himself, but Barrett doubted that he was there. So it had all been some feverish fantasy of Latimer’s, then. He completed the route and found himself back at the main entrance. Latimer still stood guard there. He had been joined by a sleepy Quesada. Altman, pale and shaky-looking, was just outside the door.

  “What’s happening?” Quesada asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Barrett. “Don and Ned had the idea they saw Lew Hahn fooling around with the time equipment. I’ve checked the building, and he’s not here, so maybe they made a little mistake. I suggest you take them both into the infirmary and give them a shot of something to settle their nerves, and we’ll all try to get back to sleep.”

  Latimer said, “I tell you, I saw—”

  “Shut up!” Altman broke in. “Listen! What’s the noise?”

  Barrett listened. The sound was clear and loud: the hissing whine of ionization. It was the sound produced by a functioning Hawksbill Field. Suddenly there were goosepimples on his flesh. In a low voice he said, “The field’s on. We’re probably getting some supplies.”

  “At this hour?” said Latimer.

  “We don’t know what time it is Up Front. All of you stay here. I’ll check the Hammer.”

  “Perhaps I ought to go with you,” Quesada suggested mildly.

  “Stay here!” Barrett thundered. He paused, embarrassed at his own explosive show of wrath. “It only takes one of us. I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for further dissent, he pivoted and limped down the hall to the Hammer room. He shouldered the door open and looked in. There was no need for him to switch on the light. The red glow of the Hawksbill Field illuminated everything.

  Barrett stationed himself just within the door. Hardly daring to breathe, he stared fixedly at the Hammer, watching as the glow deepened through various shades of pink toward crimson, and then spread until it enfolded the waiting Anvil beneath it.

  Then came the implosive thunderclap, and Lew Hahn dropped out of nowhere and lay for a moment in temporal shock on the broad plate of the Anvil.

  Nine

  In the darkness, Hahn did not notice Barrett at first. He sat up slowly, shaking off the stunning effects of a trip through time. After a few seconds he pushed himself toward the lip of the Anvil and let his legs dangle over it. He swung them to get the circulation going. He took a series of deep breaths. Finally he slipped to the floor. The glow of the field had gone out in the moment of his arrival, and so he moved warily, as though not wanting to bump into anything.

  Abruptly Barrett switched on the light and said, “What have you been up to, Hahn?”

  The younger man recoiled as though he had been jabbed in the gut. He gasped, hopped backward a few steps, and flung up both hands in a defensive gesture.

  “Answer me,” Barrett said.

  Hahn regained his equilibrium. He shot a quick glance past Barrett’s bulky form toward the hallway and said, “Let me go, will you? I can’t explain now.”

  “You’d better explain now.”

  “It’ll be easier for everyone if I don’t,” said Hahn. “Please. Let me pass.”

  Barrett continued to block the door. “I want to know where you’ve been. What have you been doing with the Hammer?”

  “Nothing. Just studying it.”

  “You weren’t in this room a minute ago. Then you appeared. Where’d you come from, Hahn?”

  “You’re mistaken. I was standing right behind the Hammer. I didn’t—”

  “I saw you drop down on the Anvil. You took a time trip, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me! You’ve got some way of going forward in time, isn’t that so? You’ve been spying on us, and you just went somewhere to file your report—somewhen—and now you’re back.”

  Hahn’s forehead was glistening. He said, “I warn you, don’t ask too many questions. You’ll know everything in due time. This isn’t the time. Please, now. Let me pass.”

  “I want answers first,” Barrett said. He realized that he was trembling. He already knew the answers, and they were answers that shook him to the core of his soul. He knew where Hahn had been.

  Hahn said nothing. He took a couple of hesitant steps toward Barrett, who did not move. He seemed to be gathering momentum for a rush at the doorway.

  Barrett said, “You aren’t getting out of here until you tell me what I want to know.”

  Hahn charged.

  Barrett planted himself squarely, crutch braced against the doorframe, his good leg flat on the floor, and waited for the younger man to reach him. He figured he outweighed Hahn by eighty pounds. That might be enough to balance the fact that he was spotting Hahn thirty years and one leg. They came together, and Barrett drove his hands down onto Hahn’s shoulders, trying to hold him, to force him back into the room.

  Hahn gave an inch or two. He looked up at Barrett without speaking and pushed forward again.

  “Don’t—don’t—
” Barrett grunted. “I won’t let you—”

  “I don’t want to do this,” Hahn said.

  He pushed again. Barrett felt himself buckling under the impact. He dug his hands as hard as he could into Hahn’s shoulders, and tried to shove the other man backward into the room, but Hahn held firm and all of Barrett’s energy was converted into a backward thrust rebounding on himself. He lost control of his crutch, and it slithered out from under his arm. For one agonizing moment Barrett’s full weight rested on the crushed uselessness of his left foot, and then, as though his limbs were melting away beneath him, he began to sink toward the floor. He landed with a reverberating crash.

  Quesada, Altman, and Latimer came rushing in. Barrett writhed in pain on the floor. Hahn stood over him, looking unhappy, his hands locked together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have tried to muscle me like that.”

  Barrett glowered at him. “You were traveling in time, weren’t you? You can answer me now!”

  “Yes,” Hahn said at last. “I went Up Front.”

  An hour later, after Quesada had pumped him with enough neural depressants to keep him from jumping out of his skin, Barrett got the full story. Hahn hadn’t wanted to reveal it so soon, but he had changed his mind after his little scuffle.

  It was all very simple. Time travel now worked in both directions. The glib, impressive noises about the flow of entropy had turned out to be just noises.

  “How long has this been known?” Barrett asked.

  “At least five years. We aren’t sure yet exactly when the breakthrough came. After we’re finished going through all the suppressed records of the former government—”

  “The former government?”

  Hahn nodded. “The revolution came in January. Not really a violent one, either. The syndicalists just mildewed from within, and when they got the first push they fell over.”

  “Was it mildew?” Barrett asked, coloring. “Or termites? Keep your metaphors straight.”

  Hahn glanced away. “Anyway, the government fell. We’ve got a provisional liberal regime in office now. Don’t ask me much about it. I’m not a political theorist. I’m not even an economist. You guessed as much.”