The Other End of Time

by Frederik Pohl

  "It wasn't a personal matter. I had orders."

  "Orders to do what? To steal whatever there was on Starlab for the damn Feds?"

  He said uncomfortably, "Well, I suppose that's one way you could put it."

  "Is there some other way? So tell me, just how far were you prepared to go for the good old Bureau, Dan? Liquidating me if necessary, for instance?"

  "Oh, hell, no, Pat. What kind of a person do you think I am? I've only, uh, shot two people in my life, and I couldn't help that; both of them were doing their best to kill me at the time. Nobody ordered you liquidated."

  "And if they had?"

  "They wouldn't," he said stubbornly, and that was all he would say.

  When Pat curled up on the floor with her face to the wall and her eyes shut tight, she didn't go to sleep. She wasn't planning to. She just wanted to be alone for a bit, as alone as you could get in this place. The National Bureau of Investigation! Everybody knew what that was all about- cloak-and-dagger stuff, with all too much emphasis on the dagger. Now her own cousin turned out to be one of them.

  It wasn't just Dan Dannerman, she told herself, feeling abused. Every last one of her comrades had in some way betrayed her trust-Delasquez and Jimmy Lin trying to hijack the goodies on Starlab for another country, even Rosaleen Artzybachova hitting her up for a bigger share of the pie. If Pat Adcock had been a weeping woman she would have allowed herself a few tears of self-pity. As she wasn't, she simply went to sleep.

  When raised voices woke her, nothing had improved. She lay with her back to the room, unwilling to turn around and join the others, while Martin and Jimmy Lin were arguing about the food. "But it is nothing but party leftovers," Jimmy Lin was complaining. "It's the stuff nobody wants to eat. What kind of people would have ordered all this stuff?"

  Then there was Rosaleen's voice, patiently trying to keep the peace: "There were astronomers from a dozen different countries on Starlab in the early days. I imagine each chose the sort of menu they preferred."

  "And ate all the good stuff, and left the remainders for us."

  Then Martin's voice, deeper but equally irritated: "I am tired of breaking my teeth on bricks of filthy, uncooked Russian stew."

  Rosaleen offered, "I've told you, if you do what I do and soak it for an hour or so it gets softer. A little."

  "And then it is cold grease."

  She didn't try to deny it. "Try the fruit compote, at least."

  "I've had enough of the fruit compote," Jimmy Lin said. "Who knows how long this stuff has been in storage, anyway?" Pat turned away from the familiar bitch session. She had her own feelings about the dehydrated beef (or was it goat?) Stroganoff. She found herself thinking wistfully of a fried-egg sandwich, perhaps with a couple strips of crisp bacon, on whole-grain toast. Or a fresh salad, lettuce with the dew still on it, perhaps some slices of avocado, maybe even a few curls of green pepper....

  There wasn't any help for it. She got up and headed for the food, ignoring her companions. That wasn't hard to do. Rosaleen had begun quietly exercising, off by herself, and Martin and Jimmy had moved away to whisper together over the water tank. Only Dannerman was by the larder, and he looked apologetically at her but didn't speak.

  Neither did she. She was not yet ready to talk to the duplic-itous spy, Dan Dannerman. Ignoring him, she took her time studying the available choices, reading labels, peering at the foods that were visible through glass or plastic. None of them looked attractive, but there were many she hadn't yet tried. She settled on a packet of irradiated chili; at least it would not require soaking to be chewable.

  Martin had been right; cold, it was fairly nasty. She had turned her back on Dannerman as she ate, but was not surprised to hear his voice. "Are you still mad?"

  She didn't answer. "Because," he said, "I'll apologize if you want me to."

  She didn't answer that, either, and apparently he gave up. When she finally peeped around he was over with Rosaleen, doing his best to learn some of her exercises. That was another annoyance for Pat. It had been on her mind to do the same thing, because she could feel herself gaining fat on their preposterously unbalanced diet, but how could she do that while he was there?

  The worst part was that it seemed all four of them had decided that Pat was in a bad mood and better left alone. As long as they were ignoring her how could she effectively shun them? She went back to the larder, for lack of anything better to do... and was glad when, while she had almost decided to try some more of the damned fruit compote, the patch on the wall suddenly fuzzed and bulged and Dopey came in, oddly without Docs. He was pushing ahead of him a thing that looked like a portable top-loading washing machine. It moved easily on spherical bearings. "This device is to heat your food, as you wish," he said. "If you put things into it they will become hot. This is not the device from your Starlab, however. That object was far too primitive to be of any use here."

  They all clustered around while he demonstrated the use of the cooker. Pat hadn't forgotten that she wasn't speaking to any of the others, but put that matter on hold for a while. Operating the cooker looked simple enough. You put things in from the top and left them for a while, and in a minute or two they were hot. When Rosaleen reached to take the container of spaghetti and meatballs out Dopey stopped her. "No, be careful! You will do yourself harm if you put a part of your body into the device. Use these." He plucked a pair of sticks from under one arm and showed them how to lift the packets out without putting their hands in the cooker. Rosaleen eagerly popped the packet open and sniffed the steam that was coming out of it. "I think it's actually too hot to eat!" she said happily.

  "It will cool if you wait for a moment," Dopey informed her. "In any case, this instrument will be useful when you have renewable food supplies in the next phase."

  Dannerman was suddenly alert. "What next phase? What's going to happen?" Silence. "Well, when will it happen?"

  Dopey looked evasive-or simply uncertain; how could you tell with a kitten-faced chicken? "That is unclear. That sequencing is not my decision to make. There are also-" He hesitated. "-some technical problems which have hampered communications."

  Pat asked the question for all of them. "What technical problems are you talking about?"

  Dopey turned his large kitten eyes on her, then did again the thing with the muff: jammed his hands into it, gazed vacantly into space for a moment, then said, "There are bad people who would harm our project. I may not say more at this time."

  "What kind of bad people?" No answer; only that continued stare. Pat bit her lip. The alien was at least answering some questions now, but she was running out of the right questions to ask and Dopey was volunteering little. Nor was she getting much help from her fellow prisoners. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Delasquez and Jimmy Lin, though they seemed to be listening intently, were strolling slowly around behind the alien. It crossed her mind that they were up to something.

  Not in time.

  By the time she began to guess what that something was, and long before she had even begun to decide what, if anything, to do about it, Dopey was turning to leave. The wall began to cloud, preparatory to letting him through.

  He didn't get that far. "Grab him!" Delasquez shouted, hurling his weight against the milky place in the wall. Lin did as ordered-threw himself on the alien, who squawked once in astonishment and then was still.

  If Delasquez was trying to escape, he failed. The wall was not deceived. He struck against it and was hurled violently back into the cell, as the wall turned mirror-bright again against him. Delasquez didn't walk away; he was catapulted backward, staggering into the pile of Dopey and Jimmy Lin on the floor. He sat down heavily on top of them and gasped dismally, "Mother of God, that hurt!"

  From beneath him Lin, breathless and equally dismal, begged, "Get off me." He struggled to his feet and backed away, Delasquez at his side, the two of them looking apprehensively at the alien.

  Dannerman gave them both a hard look, but said nothing as h
e knelt by Dopey's side. "Is he breathing?" Martin asked.

  "I don't know. It didn't feel like it," Jimmy Lin said uneasily.

  "Maybe he just had the breath knocked out of him," Martin offered, but Dannerman looked up and shook his head.

  "Knocked out of him for good, I'm afraid. I don't know much about his anatomy, but there isn't much doubt about it. He's really dead."

  Ever since they had been taken captive there had been no times for Pat Adcock that she could think of as really good, but there had never before been one quite as bad as this. She had a pretty good idea of what was done to zoo animals who murdered their keeper. Was it going to be done to them?

  Dannerman was saying, "Well, that was stupid," and even Rosaleen was looking reproachfully at the two, Jimmy Lin shamefaced, Martin belligerent but-crossing himself? Pat couldn't be sure. The general's right hand was fingering the left shoulderboard of his uniform jacket as he answered.

  "It was your suggestion, Dannerman," Delasquez said.

  "Bullshit! I never said anything about attacking Dopey!"

  "You spoke of taking hostages. Well, we decided to try it. The other part, trying to crash out, that was my own idea, I just thought of it at the last minute."

  "Obviously it wasn't a real good idea," Dannerman said. "Taking a hostage wasn't much better. That only works if you don't kill the hostage."

  "His death was simply an accident. How could we know the thing was so delicate? In any case, it's done. And we have an opportunity." The general reached down to the corpse-but with his left hand, Pat saw in puzzlement; his right hand was still close to his lapel. He was trying to pick the coppery metal-mesh muff from Dopey's slack hands.

  "Wait!" Dannerman cried warningly, but too late. As soon as Martin's hands touched the metal he screamed, jolted erect and fell unconscious to the floor.

  "Damn fool," Dannerman snarled, leaping to his side. But ancient Rosaleen was there before him, her ear pressed to the general's chest.

  "No breath. No pulse," she reported. "Electrical shock, I think. Dan, do you know CPR?" She didn't wait for an answer, simply bent her mouth to the general's for artificial respiration. Dannerman didn't speak, either, as he dropped to his knees and began pounding a fist rhythmically on Martin's chest. Beside Pat Jimmy Lin was muttering to himself, but it was Pat who caught the first flicker of a reflection in the mirror wall. "Watch out!" she cried as a pair of the great, ungainly Docs came lumbering in. But the creatures paid no attention to their prisoners. If there was any expression on their white-bearded faces Pat could not identify it; they were strictly businesslike. They bent down to Dopey's body, disentangled his fingers from the coppery muff and bore it away through the wall without a sound, leaving the corpse abandoned behind.

  Rosaleen had paid no attention, continuing to breathe for the general. Pat watched, nervous, unsure of what to do; she knew what CPR was, of course, but she had never seen it done before, had not expected it to be so violent. Beside her Jimmy Lin was glumly watching. "What do you guess they'll do to us now?" he asked the room in general. No one answered.

  It was a good question, Pat thought dismally, shifting from one foot to another. The two Docs had shown no punitive intention, but then the Docs never spoke, never seemed to show any independent thought or emotion at all.

  Then Dannerman sat back on his heels, regarding the patient. He placed one finger at the base of Martin's neck and held it for a moment. "It's irregular, but it's beating," he informed Rosaleen; and then, as she lifted her head for a moment, Martin gasped and coughed and opened his eyes, staring wildly about. He struggled to sit up, but Dannerman pushed him back. "Stay put," he ordered.

  "What- What-" Martin tried.

  "You got yourself killed, Martin," Dannerman informed him, "Lie still for a while. I think you'll live, but don't push it." He tested the pulse with a finger again; then, Pat was puzzled to observe, Dannerman's fingers moved to the lapel of Martin's uniform jacket, as though feeling for something. When he stood up he looked almost amused, but all he said was "Keep an eye on the walls for me while I see if Dopey had anything we can use." He walked over to the corpse of the alien and looked down at it. The slack mouth was open, so were the eyes; the peacock tail, half erected, seemed to have lost some of its scales.

  "Are you going to search the body?" Pat asked.

  He gazed at her for a moment. "Unless you'd rather do it yourself? Don't worry. I've done it before, though of course the others were at least human."

  "Be careful," she begged. He nodded and knelt beside Dopey's corpse. The creature had worn only the one garment, and, though Dannerman poked at it-diffidently at first, then with more assurance as there was no punishing electrical shock-it seemed to have no pockets. It did have some sort of decoration, things like glassy buttons sewn on it; Dannerman tugged at them experimentally. The Dopey had also worn a bangle over the base of its tail, and a wristlet of the coppery metal, but Pat caught only a glimpse of them as Dannerman completed his search of the corpse.

  He sat up and shrugged. "I guess he carried everything he had in that muff," he said. "At least, I can't find anything."

  "Maybe he carried some stuff internally," Jimmy Lin offered.

  "Good thinking, Jimmy. Do you want to give him a body-cavity search? Because I don't think I'd like to."

  "I wonder why the Docs didn't take his body away?" Rosaleen mused, squatting beside the semiconscious Martin.

  Dannerman shrugged. "Maybe they'll come back for it. Maybe we'll wish they would, because I imagine it's going to decay pretty rapidly."

  Rosaleen nodded, then checked herself, staring at the body. "Perhaps not," she said. "Look at that!"

  Pat peered at the dead alien, and saw what Rosaleen meant. Something was happening to the corpse. The bottom of it, where it touched the floor, was soaked with a dark brown liquid, and Pat noticed a sharp, nasty smell, as of some foul brew cooking on a stove.

  Dannerman knelt for a closer look. "The floor's dissolving it away," he announced incredulously.

  "Please, Dan, don't get too close to it," Pat pleaded.

  "Don't worry," he said dryly. "Although it's kind of interesting. That's a great waste removal system; I bet if I lay down right next to Dopey the floor would leave me alone-but, no, I'm not going to try it." He stood up and looked around. "How's the patient doing?"

  Rosaleen was supporting Martin's head while holding a cup of water to his lips. "Seems to be improving. He opened his eyes and looked at me."

  Dannerman nodded. "So the question now," he said, "is what we do when, and if, somebody takes a dim view of this. Do we just take our punishment, whatever it is? Or do we try to fight back?"

  "What have we got to fight with?" Pat demanded.

  He looked at her quizzically. "Whatever we can find," he said.

  From her post by the patient Rosaleen called, "I do not think that fighting back would be advisable. Not now, anyway."

  "I think you're right," Dannerman agreed. "After all, if they want to hurt us they wouldn't have to get into hand-to-hand combat. They wouldn't even need weapons. The easiest thing would be just to leave us here until we run out of food and starve. Speaking of which," he said, "why don't we see what cooking can do for some of those rations?"

  Pat stared at him unbelievingly. "You want to eat now?" she demanded. "With this dead body turning into mush right here?"

  "Well," he conceded, "maybe we might as well wait until it's gone. It seems to be going pretty fast right now, anyway."

  Indeed it was, Pat saw, as she gazed down on it, holding Dannerman's arm for reassurance; more than half of Dopey had already turned liquid and been sucked away. The smell was still there, but no worse than before; and actually, Pat admitted to herself, Dannerman was right. The process was kind of interesting to watch, not to mention that it implied a kind of technology she had never before imagined. "Just one more damn thing," she murmured to Dannerman, "that would have been worth a fortune if we could have taken it back to Earth."

/>   Dannerman looked down at her, seeming almost amused; tardily she remembered that she wasn't speaking to him. She looked away. Dopey's body was nearly gone, one of the little arms sticking up and then collapsing into the general mulch. Pat frowned. Something was missing. What had happened to the wristlet? "Dan?" she asked. "Did you notice-"

  But he was giving her a scowl and a quick headshake. Puzzled, she opened her mouth to complete her question... just as the wall turned milky again.

  They all spun around to face it as another Dopey walked in- this time not alone. Two of the golem-like Docs followed him and stood silently protective behind him as the Dopey glanced incuriously at the almost disappeared remains of his own body, and then said in reproach, "You should not have done that."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Pat

  "But they killed you." Pat gasped; and, "Yes, they did," Dopey confirmed, sounding impatient. "Please. One moment." It did not seem to be a subject that interested him greatly. He turned his great eyes on the two Docs, who instantly moved forward to pluck Martin out of Rosaleen's hands. Naturally the general squawked and protested; naturally it did no good. One of the things picked the general up from behind, the two great upper arms holding him, the other four restraining his arms and legs; the other golem methodically stroked and patted Martin all over, each touch lingering for a moment and then moving on. The whole process took no more than a minute or two. Then, without warning, the Docs dropped Martin sprawling. They retreated to stand, silent and impassive, with their backs to the wall, apparently no longer interested in their environment.

  "Yes," Dopey said, as though one of the Docs had reported to him-but Pat hadn't heard a sound, "the examination shows that General Delasquez is not seriously injured. It will not be necessary to replace him, as it was me due to your ill-advised action."

  "About that," Jimmy Lin said at once, swallowing hard. "You know that was just an accident, don't you? I mean, we didn't want to hurt you...."

  Dopey gave him a severe look. "Whatever your intentions, your action caused the loss of some data, which I must restore for this copy. Please inform me of the nature of our discussion just prior to my death."