by Larry Niven
There's a Wolf in My Time Machine
The old extension cage had no fine controls; but that hardly mattered. It wasn't as if Svetz were chasing some particular extinct animal. Ra Chen had told him to take whatever came to hand.
Svetz guided the cage back to pro-industrial America, somewhere in mid-continent, around 1000 Ante Atomic Era. Few humans, many animals. Perhaps he'd find a bison.
And when he pulled himself to the window, he looked out upon a vast white land.
Svetz had not planned to arrive in mid-winter.
Briefly he considered moving into the time stream again and using the interrupter circuit. Try another date, try luck again. But the interrupter circuit was new, untried, and Svetz wasn't about to be the first man to test it.
Besides which, a trip into the past cost over a million commercials. Using the interrupter circuit would nearly double that. Ra Chen would be displeased.
Svetz began freezing to death the moment he opened the door. From the doorway the view was all white, with one white bounding shape far away.
Svetz shot it with a crystal of soluble anaesthetic.
He used the flight stick to reach the spot. Now that it was no longer moving, the beast was hard to find. It was just the color of the snow, but for its open red mouth and the black pads on its feet. Svetz tentatively identified it as an arctic wolf.
It would fit the Vivarium well enough. Svetz would have settled for anything that would let him leave this frozen wilderness. He felt uncommonly pleased with himself. A quick, easy mission.
Inside the cage, he rolled the sleeping beast into what might have been a clear plastic bag, and sealed it. He strapped the wolf against one curved wall of the extension cage. He relaxed into the curve of the opposite wall as the cage surged in a direction vertical to all directions.
Gravity shifted oddly.
A transparent sac covered Svetz's own head. Its lip was fixed to the skin of his neck. Now Svetz pulled it loose and dropped it. The air system was on; he would not need the filter sac.
The wolf would. It could not breathe industrial age air. Without the filter sac to remove the poisons, the wolf would choke to death. Wolves were extinct in Svetz's time.
Outside, time passed at a furious rate. Inside, time crawled. Nestled in the spherical curve of the extension cage, Svetz stared up at the wolf, who now seemed fitted into the curve of the ceiling.
Svetz had never met a wolf in the flesh. He had seen pictures in children's books. . . and even the children's books had been stolen from the deep past. Why should the wolf look so familiar?
It was a big beast, possibly as big as Hanville Svetz, who was a slender, small-boned man. Its sides heaved with its panting. Its tongue was long and red and its teeth were white and sharp.
Like the dogs, Svetz remembered. The dogs in the Vivarium, in the glass case labeled:
DOG
CONTEMPORARY
Alone of the beasts in the Vivarium, the dogs were not sealed in glass for their own protection. The others could not breathe the air outside. The dogs could.
In a very real sense, they were the work of one man. Lawrence Wash Porter had lived near the end of the Industrial Period, between 50 and 100 Post Atomic Era, when billions of human beings were dying of lung diseases while scant millions adapted. Porter had decided to save the dogs.
Why the dogs? His motives were obscure, but his methods smacked of genius. He had acquired members of each of the breeds of dog in the world, and bred them together, over many generations of dogs and most of his own lifetime.
There would never be another dog show. Not a purebred dog was left in the world. But hybrid vigor had produced a new breed. These, the ultimate mongrels, could breathe industrial age air, rich in oxides of carbon and nitrogen, scented with raw gasoline and sulfuric acid.
The dogs were behind glass because people were afraid of them. Too many species had died. The people of 1100 Post Atomic were not used to animals.
Wolves and dogs . . . could one have sired the other?
Svetz looked up at the sleeping wolf and wondered. He was both like and unlike the dogs. The dogs had grinned out through the glass and wagged their tails when children waved. Dogs liked people. But the wolf, even in sleep...
Svetz shuddered. Of all the things he hated about his profession, this was the worst: the ride home, staring up at a strange and dangerous extinct animal. The first time he'd done it, a captured horse had seriously damaged the control panel. On his last mission an ostrich had kicked him and broken three ribs.
The wolf was stirring restlessly . . . and something about it had changed.
Something was changing now. The beast's snout was shorter, wasn't it? Its forelegs lengthened peculiarly; its paws seemed to grow and spread. Svetz caught his breath.
Svetz caught his breath; and instantly forgot the wolf.
Svetz was choking, dying. He snatched up his filter sac and threw himself at the controls.
Svetz stumbled out of the extension cage, took three steps and collapsed. Behind him, invisible contaminants poured into the open air.
The sun was setting in banks of orange cloud.
Svetz lay where he had fallen, retching, fighting for air. There was an outdoor carpet beneath him, green and damp, smelling of plants. Svetz did not recognize the smell, did not at once realize that the carpet was alive. He would not have cared at that point. He knew only that the cage's air system had tried to kill him. The way he felt, it had probably succeeded.
It had been a near thing. He had been passing 30 Post Atomic when the air went bad. He remembered clutching the interrupter switch, then waiting, waiting. The foul air stank in his nostrils and caught hi his throat and tore at his larynx. He had waited through twenty years, feeling every second of them. At 50 Post Atomic he had pulled the interrupt switch and run choking from the cage.
50 PA. At least he had reached industrial limes. He could breathe the air.
It was the horse, he thought without surprise. The horse had pushed its wickedly pointed horn through Svetz's control panel, three years ago. Maintenance was supposed to fix it. They had fixed it.
Something must have worn through.
The way he looked at me every time I passed his cage. 1 always knew the horse would get me, Svetz thought.
He noticed the filter sac still in his hand. Not that he'd be- Svetz sat up suddenly.
There was green all about him. The damp green carpet beneath him was alive; it grew from the black ground.
A rough, twisted pillar thrust from the ground, branched into an explosion of red and yellow papery things. More of the crumpled colored paper lay about the pillar's base. Something that was not an aircraft moved erratically overhead, a tiny thing that fluttered and warbled.
Living, all of it. A pre-industrial wilderness.
Svetz pulled the filter sac over his head and hurriedly smoothed the edges around his neck to form a seal. Blind luck that he hadn't fainted yet. He waited for it to puff up around his head. A selectively permeable membrane, it would pass the right gasses in and out until the composition of the air was-was-Svetz was choking, tearing at the sac.
He wadded it up and threw it, sobbing. First the air plant, now the filter sac! Had someone wrecked them both? The inertial calendar too; he was at least a hundred years previous to 50 Post Atomic.
Someone had tried to kill him.
Svetz looked wildly about him. Uphill across a wide green carpet, he saw an angular vertical-sided formation painted in shades of faded green. It had to be artificial. There might be people there. He could- No, he couldn't ask for help either. Who would believe him? How could they help him anyway? His only hope was the extension cage. And his time must be very short.
The extension cage rested a few yards away, the door a black circle on one curved side. The other side seemed to fade away into nothing. It was still attached to the rest of the time machine, in 1103 PA, along a direction eyes could not follow.
Svetz hesitated near the
door. His only hope was to disable the air plant somehow. Hold his breath, then- The smell of contaminants was gone.
Svetz sniffed at the air. Yes, gone. The air plant had exhausted itself, drained its contaminants into the open air. No need to wreck it now. Svetz was sick with relief.
He climbed in.
He remembered the wolf when he saw the filter sac, torn and empty. Then he saw the intruder towering over him, the coarse thick hair, the yellow eyes glaring, the taloned hands spread wide to kill.
The land was dark. In the east a few stars showed, though the west was still deep red. Perfumes tinged the air. A full moon was rising.
Svetz staggered uphill, bleeding.
The house on the bill was big and old. Big as a city block, and two floors high. It sprawled out in all directions, as though a mad architect had built to a whim that changed moment by moment. There were wrought iron railings on the upper windows, and wrought iron handles on the screens on both floors, all painted the same dusty shade of green. The screens were wood, painted a different shade of green. They were closed across every window. No light leaked through anywhere.
The door was built for someone twelve feet tall. The knob was huge. Svetz used both hands and put all his weight into it, and still it would not turn. He moaned. He looked for the lens of a peeper camera and could not find it. How would anyone know he was here? He couldn't find a doorbell either.
Perhaps there was nobody inside. No telling what this building was. It was far too big to be a family dwelling, too spread out to be a hotel or apartment house. Might it be a warehouse or a factory? Making or storing what?
Svetz looked back toward the extension cage. Dimly he caught the glow of the interior lights. He also saw something moving on the living green that carpeted the hill.
Pale forms, more than one.
Moving this way?
Svetz pounded on the door with his fists. Nothing. He noticed a golden metal thing, very ornate, high on the door. He touched it, pulled at it, let it go. It clanked.
He took it in both hands and slammed the knob against its base again and again. Rhythmic chinking sounds.
Someone should hear it.
Something zipped past his ear and hit the door hard. Svetz spun around, eyes wild, and dodged a rock the size of his fist. The white shapes were nearer now. Bipeds, walking hunched.
They looked too human-or not human enough.
The door opened.
She was young, perhaps sixteen. Her skin was very pale, and her hair and brows were pure white, quite beautiful. Her garment covered her from neck to ankles, but left her arms bare. She seemed sleepy and angry as she pulled the door open-manually, and it was heavy, too. Then she saw Svetz.
"Help me," said Svetz.
Her eyes went wide. Her ears moved too. She said something Svetz had trouble interpreting, for she spoke in ancient american.
"What are you?"
Svetz couldn't blame her. Even in good condition his clothes would not fit the period. But his blouse was ripped to the navel, and so was his skin. Four vertical parallel lines of blood ran down his face and chest.
Zeera had been coaching him in the american speech. Now he said carefully, "I am a traveler. An animal, a monster, has taken my vehicle away from me."
Evidently the sense came through. "You poor man! What kind of animal?"
"Like a man, but hairy all over, with a horrible face- and claws-claws-"
"I see the mark they made."
"I don't know how he got in. I-" Svetz shuddered. No, he couldn't tell her that It was insane, utterly insane, this conviction that Svetz's wolf had become a bloodthirsty humanoid monster. "He only hit me once. On the face. I could get him out with a weapon, I think. Have you a bazooka?"
"What a funny word! I don't think so. Come Inside. Did the trolls bother you?" She took his arm and pulled him in and shut the door.
Trolls?
"You're a strange person," the girl said, looking him over. "You look strange, you smell strange, you move strangely. I did not know that there were people like you in the world. You must come from very far away."
"Very," said Svetz. Ho felt himself close to collapse. He was safe at last, safe inside. But why were the hairs on the back of his neck trying to stand upright?
He said, "My name is Svetz. What's yours?"
"Wrona." She smiled up at him, not afraid despite his strangeness . . . and he must look strange to her, for she surely looked strange to Hanville Svetz. Her skin was sheet white, and her rich white hair would better have fit a centenarian. Her nose, very broad and flat, would have disfigured an ordinary girl. Somehow it fit Wrona's face well enough; but her face was most odd, and her ears were too large, almost pointed, and her eyes were too far apart, and her grin stretched way back...and Svetz liked it. Her grin was curiosity and enjoyment, and was not a bit too wide. The firm pressure of her hand was friendly, reassuring. Though her fingernails were uncomfortably long and sharp.
"You should rest, Svetz," she said. "My parents will not be up for another hour, at least. Then they can decide how to help you. Come with me, I'll take you to a spare room."
He followed her through a room dominated by a great rectangular table and a double row of high-backed chairs.
There was a large microwave oven at one end, and beside it a platter of...red things. Roughly conical they were, each about the size of a strong man's upper arm, each with a dot of white in the big end. Svetz had no idea what they were; but he didn't like their color. They seemed to be bleeding.
"Oh," Wrona exclaimed. "I should have asked. Are you hungry?"
Svetz was, suddenly. "Have you dole yeast?"
'Why, I don't know the word. Are those dole yeast? They are all we have."
"We'd better forget it." Svetz's stomach lurched at the thought of eating something that color. Even if it turned out to be a plant.
Wrona was half supporting him by the time they reached the room. It was rectangular and luxuriously large. The bed was wide enough, but only six inches off the floor, and without coverings. She helped him down to it. "There's a wash basin behind that door, if you find the strength. Best you rest, Svetz. In perhaps two hours I will call you."
Svetz eased himself back. The room seemed to rotate.
He heard her go out.
How strange she was. How odd he must look to her. A good thing she hadn't called anyone to tend him. A doctor would notice the differences.
Svetz had never dreamed that primitives would be so different from his own people. During the thousand years between now and the present, there must have been massive adaptation to changes in air and water, to DDT and other compounds in foods, to extinction of food plants and meat animals until only dole yeast was left, to higher noise levels, less room for exercise, greater dependence on medicines . . . Well, why shouldn't they be different? It was a wonder humanity had survived at all.
Wrona had not feared his strangeness, nor cringed from the scratches on his face and chest. She was only amused and interested. She had helped him without asking too many questions. He liked her for that.
He dozed.
Pain from deep scratches, stickiness in his clothes made his sleep restless. There were nightmares. Something big and shadowy, half man and half beast, reached far out to slash his face. Over and over. At some indeterminate time he woke completely, already trying to identify a musky, unfamiliar scent.
No use. He looked about him, at a strange room that seemed even stranger from floor level. High ceiling. One frosted globe, no brighter than a full moon, glowed so faintly that the room was all shadow. Wrought iron bars across the windows; black night beyond.
A wonder he'd wakened at all. The pre-industrial air should have killed him hours ago.
It had been a futz of a day, he thought And he shied from the memory of the thing in the extension cage. The snarling face, pointed ears, double row of pointed white teeth. The clawed hand reaching out, swiping down. The nightmare conviction that a wolf had turned in
to that.
It could not be. Animals did not change shape like that.
Something must have gotten in while Svetz was fighting for air. Chased the wolf out, or killed it.
But there wire legends of such things, weren't there? Two and three thousand years old and more, everywhere in the world, were the tales of men who could become beasts and vice versa.
Svetz sat up. Pain gripped his chest, then relaxed. He stood up carefully and made his way to the bathroom.
The spiggots were not hard to solve. Svetz wet a cloth with warm water. He watched himself in the mirror, emerging from under the crusted blood. A pale, slender young man topped with thin blond hair. . . and an odd distortion of chin and forehead. That must be the mirror, he decided. Primitive workmanship. It might have been worse. Hadn't the first mirrors been two-dimensional?
A shrill whistle sounded outside his door. Svetz went to look, and found Wrona. "Good, you're up," she said.
"Father and Uncle Wrocky would like to see you."
Svetz stepped into the hail, and again noticed the elusive musky scent. He followed Wrona down the dark hallway. Like his room, it was lit only by a single white frosted globe. Why would Wrona's people keep the house so dark? They had electricity.
And why were they all sleeping at sunset? With breakfast laid out and waiting...
Wrona opened a door, gestured him in.
Svetz hesitated a step beyond the threshold. The room was as dark as the hallway. The musky scent was stronger here. He jumped when a hand closed on his upper arm- it felt wrong, there was hair on the palm, the hard nails made a circlet of pressure points-and a gravelly male voice boomed, "Come in, Mister Svetz. My daughter tells me you're a traveler in need of help."
In the dim light Svetz made out a man and a woman seated on backless chairs. Both had hair as white as Wrona's, but the woman's hair bore a broad black stripe. A second man urged Svetz toward another backless chair. He too bore black markings: a single black eyebrow, a black crescent around one ear.
And Wrona was just behind him. Svetz looked around at them all, seeing how like they were, how different from Hanvifie Svetz.