Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “No, sir. Of course not.”

  Urmuz touched the flight stud on his brass belt. The wings unfolded from the flat pack under his tunic, catching the light in a gauzy metallic shimmer. The noise of his takeoff resounded loudly among the willows.

  When he was out of sight, Ban took the girl’s hands. She tried to withdraw them. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t. I am her attendant—”

  “And someday you’ll be her successor,” he said bitterly, not letting go. “Oh, yes. But still, if the Covenant allowed me to come up here, again and again, and allowed you to sit by me and talk in the moonlight, surely I can touch you when I say good-bye!”

  She gulped and stopped pulling. Her head drooped.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “I haven’t any,” she said in a hurt, uncertain tone. “You know that.”

  “You must have had one once, before your mother gave you to the prophetess. What was it?”

  “Please,” she begged again.

  He released her. One hand smacked against his bare thigh, the other clamped on his gun. “All right,” he said harshly. “As you will. Goodbye.”

  “You aren’t—your man won’t be back till—”

  “I sent him off to get rid of him,” said Ban. “Someone has to go, and alone . . . she told me. It may as well be myself.”

  “No!” she cried. “Someone else, Ban!”

  “I am the Warden’s son,” he declared, “and you won’t tell me your name. So good-bye.”

  He opened his wings with a savage blow on the belt control, and whipped off the terrace while her mouth was still parting to speak.

  After a moment he realized how childishly melodramatic his exit had been. A mature man wouldn’t have sped off like this—the very absence of farewells underlining his self-sacrificing heroism and similar egotistic noises. But it was too late now. Stubbornness, resentment, the fear of looking foolish, were stronger than survival instinct.

  His wings rotated hard and steadily. He must squint into the speed of his own passage, and felt cold in a mere tunic. The brass belt contained, in its various compartments, basic field equipment and a few days’ emergency rations. But he should have gotten full kit. A helmet, at the very least—

  Well, he thought with sudden excitement, well, he wasn’t really about to embark on any one-man campaign of reconquest. The prophetess had only said to go secretly to the island. Doubtless that meant nothing but a spying-out expedition—closer, to be sure, than anyone had yet dared approach a stronghold of the Cloud People, but still, just a quick investigation. He might be back before dawn, and Urmuz would make him a stiff drink and—He shook his head, as if to clear the last of that oracular twilight from it, and tried to look sanely out on a sane world.

  Once or twice he passed a hovering citizen, and they hailed him, but he continued and soon had left them all behind. No one ventured far out over the sea any longer.

  Nonetheless, the realization broke through his thoughts with a shock: that he was now above the water. He looked behind, seeking a final view of home. The sun exploded in his vision. For minutes that burning after-image remained. When he could see again, there were no towers, no beach, only dark choppy waves.

  He didn’t need map or compass to tell him he was bound due east, cutting across the Gulf of Orea toward Mwyrland. He had flown this way often enough, in boyhood years before the Cloud People came. (Where now were the green Mwyrland hills, the cottage of Ilbur the Robot with smoke lazing up from its chimney, the girl who shyly brought him milk in a wooden bowl? He remembered the sound of bells, and the belling of hounds when he hunted, but now there was nothing there but fog, gray fog and the Cloud People flitting and singing in a cold formless gray—where had Mwyrland gone? Indeed Time was a mystery which men did not comprehend.) He had usually passed over the island which marked the halfway point. Even then it had been a swart volcanic desolation; now the mists had reached that far westward and the island could no longer be seen. Scouts flying close thought they had glimpsed black towers on it, through an occasional rift in the fog, but they were never sure—

  There!

  The vapor bank rose like a mountain. Ban swallowed panic and slanted downward. This was as close as those scouts who returned had ever ventured. A few had tried to fly into the swirling thick mass of the cloud itself, but they had not come home.

  It was very silent here.

  When he landed, retracting wings through his tunic slits into the unit on his back, Ban felt the water chilly around his knees. A few streamers of fog curled and smoked; the waves were stilled. The sun was directly behind him, already blurred. Ahead was no sharp demarcation. The air simply grew murkier, until at last blackness loomed from water to sky, cutting off half the world.

  Ban hefted his gun and started wading.

  That was the idea which had sprung into his head, when the prophetess said to go alone to the island. Anyone else would approach from the air—would he not?—and the Cloud People would see him (or hear him, or whatever they did for awareness) and destroy him. But the island shelved very gradually toward open water. There were places where, at low tide, you could walk knee deep for miles until you reached shore. In fog and night, would even the Cloud People know of a single man walking through the sea?

  The water splashed with his passage. Its cold stung him. The air was frigid, too, with a dank taste. Despite all need for caution, he cherished his own little noise, for otherwise he was totally alone. Grayness thickened; the sun was a blur at his back, heatless and cheerless, toppling toward the night only minutes away now. Ban unclipped the flashlight at his belt and tested its beam. Already it helped him. Hard to tell without it where water left off and the bleak, eddying air began. Mist streamed through the cone of light. Somewhere out in the unseen, he thought he heard dripping, as if the bowl of the sky were chilled and wet and dripping into the sea.

  The sea felt heavy. He was getting higher all the time, now the water was hardly above his ankles, but it was an effort to shove it aside. He began stumbling more and more often on the irregular bottom, nearly dropping his gun. Seen by flashbeam and the last daylight, the weapon looked rusty. And it weighed in his hand. How it weighed! The flashlight, of thin inert metal, remained itself; but the gun barrel grew dull. Was there really a faint patina on his brass belt?

  And when had he torn his clothes? Ban squinted through deepening gloom at his tunic. It hung from his bent shoulders, damp and rotten. He jerked a hand in startlement. The sleeve ripped apart and hung in rags. His belt certainly was tarnished, no, it was corroded, close to crumbling from his waist. The air was like ice; as it entered his lungs he coughed and cleared the rheum from his throat. His legs hurt, the knees weren’t quite steady and he wanted to stop and rest but there was no place to rest. Was the sun down yet? Or had his eyes blurred on him? He rubbed them with the back of the hand that held the flashlight. He couldn’t see so well. His legs were twin blotches. But his gaunt liver-spotted hand was still visible, if he held it close. He stroked it down his wet white beard—slowly, ever so slowly.

  Time, he thought wearily, Time was the strength of . . . of who had she said? And with every step forward—His thoughts trailed off incoherently. He was too tired now to think, or be afraid, or anything except sleep. When he reached the black shore, maybe he could lie down and sleep. There had been something he meant to do there, but—He waded onward.

  Part Two

  By Isaac Asimov

  The land tottered under his feet, the last of the wavelets gone. Maybe—Maybe—

  To sleep—sleep—

  * * *

  It was like the soft sound of chimes in his dull ear, the distant sound of thin singing. Where had he heard something like that?

  A battle? A tall, rough man at his side? What was—his—name? Music—

  Like thin sweet wind-torn words.

  “There! He was almost gone!”

  Ban heard that. His eyes flickered open and suddenly he knew he was Ban
. Of course. What was wrong? Where was he?

  He could breathe more easily somehow. He lifted his hands and the tawny, yellowing hair of his chin caught on them and he stared foolishly at it, uncomprehending.

  “Help me hold him,” said the girl’s voice.

  How did he know it was a girl? There were no words, only a singing in his mind, and yet there were words and they were girl’s words.

  A different voice—different in what way?—but a boy’s, said, “He’s not that timevy.”

  “Timevy enough for me. Get under.”

  Ban struggled to his feet and stared about him. No one was holding him. No one was lifting him. The fog stretched out, luminously gray, not quite as dank as he remembered.

  The sun, he thought suddenly. The sun must be gone by now. Why was it not night? The fog was still gray, as gray as the Prophetess’ blank eyes. He remembered the Prophetess? What had she said?

  The girl’s voice sang, “I never saw one before.”

  “I did,” said the boy. “I came out once where the fog closes in and saw one on—on—like—change—like—different—come and go.”

  Fly, thought Ban, catching the dim thought intuitively. The boy had no proper expression for it. We fly, he thought, we fly. He whirled around and spoke for the first time since the fog had closed him in. “Who are you?”

  There was nothing, at first, just the voices, and as he turned and tried to beat the fog aside by force of eyes alone, there was a short smothered chime without words.

  Then, “Here we are, Changeman.”

  They were like two coagulations, two clottings in the cloud; two shrouds with nothing inside.

  He felt a chill and the hairs rose on his arms, so that he could feel their pressure against the sleeve of his tunic.

  Oddly, his mind jumped backward. Hadn’t the tunic been torn, shredded? He remembered feebly for it was all as foggy as the fog. He shone the flashlight on his sleeve and it was whole, thinned and worn with age, but whole.

  Suddenly, he flashed the light in the direction of the Cloud People and there was nothing there. Musical wordless chimes in his ears was all. He moved the light away and the shrouds were there again.

  He said, “What has happened to me?”

  The boy’s voice said briefly, “You fell.” Then, “You Change People always fall, don’t you know that.”

  “Fell?” He looked down, shrinking automatically from an unseen and non-existent cliff.

  “Fell,” said the girl. “You are so silly.”

  “They don’t know,” said the boy.

  “Tell him,” said the girl.

  “I don’t think we ought to.”

  “Who cares? I want to watch his top move when he talks. Do you see it in among the fringe, there.”

  “The fringe came when he fell. It always does.”

  Ban stared, feeling worn with the accumulating strain. They were discussing him and by fringe they must mean his beard.

  It hit him with the shock of cold water colliding after a dive. His beard. He had no beard. He felt it and it was there and was yellow but it had been white.

  He said, “Even so, I’ve grown old.” He felt the brittleness in his knees, so noticeable against the lithe strength he remembered.

  “You fell,” said the boy, explaining.

  I fell, thought Ban, and I grew old. He said, certain, “I fell through time. How?”

  “I don’t know. You Change People always fall. You can’t lift up.”

  Again Ban was remembering: Time is the strength of the Cloud People.

  She had said that. The Prophetess had said that. Hadn’t she said more?

  But he wasn’t as old now as he had been. His beard was no longer white. His uniform was no longer in shreds. They had held him, the boy and the girl. They had gotten under.

  “Are you holding me now?” he demanded.

  “Of course,” said the boy, “or you’d fall.”

  “Lift me higher, then.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can talk.”

  It was like feeling air come into clogged lungs, or slowly straightening a cramped muscle. The beard shrank to a yellow inch and his gun was almost glossy. He looked at it and at his jagged fingernails, then pointed the gun in the direction of the figures, automatically.

  The girl’s voice said, “What’s that, ______ ____ ________?”

  (She concluded with a clear musical triad which did not resolve itself into words. Was it the boy’s name?)

  The boy said, “It throws a piece of metal. It can’t hurt, but if he tries I’ll drop him at once.”

  Ban put the gun down hastily. He had to find out. He might get back. The Prophetess had sent him to find out. And if he didn’t get back, even so—He might not get back—He would not—

  Drearily, he thought that after all he might not die in some flaming instantaneous holocaust or under the crush or cut of steel, but peacefully of sleep and old, old age.

  He was young enough now to laugh shortly. He said, “Why do I fall here? I don’t fall back there.” He jerked his head, not knowing in the least if he were gesturing in the right direction.

  The girl said, eagerly, “The fog holds you up.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said the boy at once. “Keep quiet, ________ ____ ______, you know nothing about it.”

  The girl made a spiteful little discord, a sound that resolved itself into nothing in Ban’s mind.

  The boy disregarded it. He said, “You do fall. Slowly.”

  Ban said, “Fall?”

  “In your world,” said the boy, “everything is a gentle slope, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Ban.

  “Yes, it is,” said the boy. “Our Knower has told us. Your world is a slope and you roll down it all the time. Down and down until you wear out and die.”

  Time, thought Ban, the inexorable flow of time. What had he said to the Prophetess? No man can swim Time’s river. Or climb up Time’s slope. One could only roll downward, or slide and slip downward, or, if one were at complete peace, walk downward.

  “Time,” he said aloud, as the Prophetess had said to introduce their recent meeting.

  “And here,” said the boy’s chiming voice, “there is no slope. Here it is free and we can move as we wish, up and down—”

  No, he didn’t say “up and down.” Ban caught at the nuances of the chimes. This was different. His mind seized on “up and down” because the musical tones put the thought in his mind, but the thought was not quite “up and down.” The words were different; the meaning—

  “Up and down in time,” said Ban, breathlessly.

  “Up and down,” said the boy, with again that difference.

  “And I fall down, only down.”

  “It’s the only way you Change People ever move. So if you come here, you fall.”

  Because here there is no slope, only a precipice; a plunging gap into which all life and matter fell, changing and aging and falling apart and dying. Rock might survive unchanged and water and air and all the fundamental fabric of the universe, but metal would rust and fabric disintegrate and—all living things would die.

  Ban’s heart beat faster. No wonder men penetrating the fog never returned. No wonder armies and arms were useless. How hit a creature or how beat one who could evade you by moving in a direction you could not even conceive.

  He could go back now and tell them there was no victory.

  But could he go back?

  They were holding him now, the boy and the girl, and under him was the black remorseless pit of eternity.

  He said, “How do you move upward?”

  “You just ____ ______ ____ __ ______.”

  They went on and on but the chimes were chimes, not words. He lacked the ability to make meaningful concepts out of meaningless ones. As well, he thought bitterly, ask a fish how to breathe water or a tree how to live on sunlight.

  “Teach me,” he said earnestly, desperately. “Teach me.”

  Teach me to
breathe water, fish, for I must or drown. Teach me to live on sunlight, tree, or I starve.

  “I’m showing you. See, you are moving. See, up and down.”

  Ban held his breath, closed his eyes. Was there any sensation at all other than what he felt in the way of strength. Now he felt his muscles harden, then slacken. There was no movement, no feeling of up and down. He was simply standing on the beach; he could even hear the faint noise of the surf. There was only the change within, the physiological concomitants of old age coming and going. That was all.

  He said, “Isn’t there any way I can see better?” What good would seeing do?—He didn’t care, seeing was man’s chief sense. While the fog closed in, nothing could be clear.

  “See?” asked the girl.

  “See!” said the boy, changing the word too subtly for Ban to catch the nature of the change.

  “You mean he’s so used to the fog that—” began the girl.

  “I want no fog,” said Ban, with a sense of physical loathing at the very word. “I want it clear.”

  “But it is clear. Your people have the fog.”

  Ban fell silent. Here was a world in which all levels of time were commingled, in which people could move up and down—NO, he wondered if the words they were trying to say were “pasted” and “futured”—in such a world with up and down and past and future all commingled, surely all would be a fog to a man condemned to an eternal soft travel down a slope.

  He pleaded, “Hold me. Hold me.”

  He had to work it out in case—in case he could get back. And on earth, with Time a mere slope that bound all creatures and all matter to a limited inexorable downward wash, it was fog to them, to the Cloud People.

  Earth was a world in a universe of open space and bound time. Space is the strength of man, had said the Prophetess.

  Had she known all this? he wondered suddenly. Had she understood? Then why had she not said so?

  And did she know how to fight them, the Cloud People, as the Cloud People were fighting us?

  His youngish heart leaped. But it was hard for them, too. It was for that reason that they, irresistable as they were, unfightable, undefeatable, didn’t take over at once. The time-limited universe fought them and they advanced only slowly.