The Walking Shadow

by Brian Stableford

  “If I don’t make it, or if there’s nothing there—and I know this sounds bad—I just don’t care. That wouldn’t matter. All that matters is trying, and hoping, and following you. I believe that this is what you’ll decide to do, too. I don’t know how or why I believe it, but I do. I believe that we’ll meet again, too, although not in any world like this one, or the one where we met before. When we meet again it’ll be at the end of time: somewhere that we can be, somewhere that we can belong.”

  The letter was signed: Rebecca. Nothing else.

  The echoes of the imaginary voice died in his mind. Paul laid the letter down and wondered whether he had got the tone right. Had he added a hysterical tone, it might have sounded very different, and changed its meaning completely. It would have been easy enough for someone like Ricardo Marcangelo to condemn the message as the substance of lunacy, but to Paul there seemed to be no madness in it.

  Perhaps, he thought, it’s because I’m mad too.

  Who, he wondered, would maintain the roadside inns along the route that Rebecca had taken? How could she survive if the La abandoned Earth and humankind became extinct? And what conceivable destination was there in the reaches of the far future? Third-phase life?

  He remembered then that what Rebecca had done—and what others were doing—had been done in his name. It had been blessed by some perversion of his own philosophy, a philosophy that had seemed, when he wrote Science and Metascience, so innocent and harmless.

  He took up the second letter, and looked at it uneasily, certain that it would be the perfect antidote to Rebecca’s, full of good common sense.

  He had as little difficulty conjuring up Marcangelo’s voice from the recesses of his memory as he had had in imagining Rebecca’s. After all, the two of them had dominated his last awakening with their voices, and in his memory, that was only two days and a dream ago....

  “Dear Paul,” said Marcangelo, smoothly, “it has, as you no doubt know by now, become fashionable to communicate with our timelocked brethren by letter. This applies to all of us, for those who are not dead when the moment comes for the letters to be opened will undoubtedly be timelocked themselves. I, of course, will be dead. This will preclude your being able to reply to this particular letter, but I am sure that you will be able to build up a fruitful correspondence with some of your fellow time-travelers. Great minds can exchange their metascientific thoughts while the world, dissolved into a mere blur, hastens to its destruction. I dare say that the great minds will not be unduly troubled by that. Great minds never have been troubled by the affairs of the mundane world.

  “I suppose that these may come to be reckoned my last words, but in fact I am not yet at my last gasp. I might have several years to go yet, and I hope that I will be strong enough to make a little impact on the world as they go by me. Perhaps I will tear this letter up next year and write a replacement, but I think not. Much of what I have to say I have said before, and could have said at any time in my life. I am not likely to change my views now, nor will I learn to express them better than I already can, imperfect as that may be.

  “I hope that you are now, or might soon be, in a position to see clearly the result of a process that is only just beginning now: the rebirth of the world, and the renewal of its chance of long-term survival as the home of the human race. It will also be the home of the La, and I think that is a good thing, because there is much that the La can show us concerning the possible modes of social existence.

  “As I write, the cults that have chosen your name as the symbol of their dreams still thrive, but I think that they are dying. As things change and the world is mended, there will be new opportunities for hope in a more ordinary future, and new encouragement for reinvestment in everyday life. I do not know when you will awake, but there seems to be some reason to believe that you will jump further this time than you did before, so that another forty years, at least, will have passed. I hope that might be time for what I say to have become the truth.

  “I do not pretend to have mastered the philosophy of the La, or to have obtained a perfect understanding of their culture. The word that has been rendered into our language as ‘symbiosis’ implies far more than that word can convey, but, in essence, it is little more than a celebration of all the things that allow and encourage living things to co-exist, to the mutual benefit of all concerned. Perhaps it should have been translated as ‘love’, although that word carries far too many human implications to make it entirely suitable.

  “It is not easy to get to know the La. Theirs is a custom-bound world which is difficult to penetrate, although they make every allowance and try hard to make it possible. Their daily routine includes many rituals that affirm the idea of symbiosis and its behavioral paradigms. They are patient and generous. Many would consider them to be altruistic, but I think that it would be misleading to describe them as such. They do what they do for their own reasons, to satisfy their own sense of priority. They will only help those who seem, in their eyes, to be deserving of help. With respect to anything that invites description, in their terms, as ‘parasitism’ or ‘predatory behaviour,’ they are intolerant, although not aggressive. It would not be true to say that they are intrinsically kindly or merciful. To put it crudely, they would not automatically extend a hand to a drowning man—they would first want to know whether he was their friend.

  “In their present attitude to Earth and the human race they are ambiguous. They are preserving human society as best they can, but are reserving much of their effort because they are not yet sure whether humans in general are capable of establishing the kind of relationship with them that they consider necessary. They are patient, and will wait long enough to be certain before they allow the balance of the situation to tip one way or the other. I feel sure in my own mind that by the time you return, Earth will be closer to redemption than it is now. However, it is probable that as long as your name retains its power the jumpers, at least, will maintain their opposition. It might well be necessary for you to enter into the struggle.

  “I have always believed that if things had worked out differently in 2119 you would have added your weight to the side of the dispute that I represented. I was sure that I knew you better than the cultists, and that you were not an escapist at heart. It seemed to me that your interest in metascience was basically an interest in strategies that would allow people to face and feel comfortable with reality, not in imaginative techniques for escaping such confrontation.

  “I am equally sure that, whenever you do return, you will commit yourself to the right side. In all the cults that have taken your name as an emblem I do not believe you have a single true follower. You must do what you can to correct their errors. If, as I suspect, you are reading this shortly after your reawakening, then I advise you not to leap to any conclusions about the world or about the La. Look at the world, calmly and unhurriedly. Take the time to consider that circumstances in 2119 never allowed you. Look closely at the letters addressed to you by the jumpers, and try to appreciate what a sterile and desolate world-view they are crediting to your inspiration. I do not think you are the kind of man to be blinded by adoration or misled by the urgency of impossible pleas and delusions.

  “In all sincerity, Ricardo Marcangelo.”

  Paul was about to lower the letter to the table, but he paused, and looked back to the beginning, to read the date. The letter had been written on the second of September, 2194. Nearly three hundred years ago.

  “So much,” he murmured, aloud, “for optimism.”

  He stood up and stretched his limbs, and looked around. The four walls suddenly seemed threatening in their blankness, although he knew that the absence of a door was only an illusion. There was a claustrophobic thrill in his spine, and his hands shook, briefly. The shudder passed, but its aftermath was no less unpleasant. He felt an urgent need to get out of the room.

  He pressed the wall in the vicinity of the sphincter, and felt the plastic surface recoil beneath his touch like
something alive. The sensation filled him with horror, although he knew that his fear was unreasoning.

  He stepped through the open aperture into the corridor, and began to walk along it. It was blank and featureless; obviously, there were other rooms and other doors but none were evident to his senses. It was like a nightmare, surreal and disturbing. He turned corners and crossed intersections, but nothing changed. There was just the featureless corridor, like an empty vessel in the gut of some gargantuan creature.

  He began to sweat, and was seized with the urge to break into a panic-stricken run.

  Then, as he rounded a corner, he almost bumped into two of the aliens, who had stopped in the corridor and were exchanging silent gestures. They looked at him with their great round eyes, and one of them broke into weird, whistling speech.

  He moved back half a pace, gritted his teeth, and said: “I want to get out. I’ve got to.”

  And then, as if it were a dream, the wall dissolved and daylight streamed into the corridor. The substance of the wall simply shriveled, as if attacked by acid or strong heat, turning black as the edges recoiled from the great gaping hole. Gas began to bubble up from something that had been thrown into the corridor—a thick, white gas that made his eyes water copiously and caused his head to swim.

  There was a crescendo of alarmed whistling, strangled by the gas, and he felt one of the aliens clutch at him as he stumbled, useless wings flapping against the blossoming cloud.

  Then strong arms reached out of the murk and grabbed him, just as he himself was about to fall unconscious to the floor. As the gas claimed him he heard only four words, and saw just a fleeting visual image of his rescuer.

  “It’s all right, Paul...,” said the other, the rest of his words lost in a whirl of dizziness, while the same whirl carried away the image of a plastic mask and red, shadowed eyes....

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Where are we?” asked Paul.

  “The foothills of the Andes,” replied the robot. “Not too far away from what used to be San Rafael.”

  Paul looked up at the bleak hillsides, and then back across the plain, following the chalky line that was the rough-hewn road. There was no sign of habitation save a few scattered farms gathered about the road on the eastern horizon.

  “Why have we stopped here? It looks to me like the middle of nowhere.”

  “That’s why we’ve stopped here. The aliens aren’t fools. I’ve kept myself out of sight for three hundred and fifty years by being very discreet, but the La could have located my major installations if they’d only known enough to start looking. Now I’ve launched an attack on all three of their major cities here and the two in Australia they’re going to hit back. By sunset there won’t be much of my various bodily parts left.”

  “Just what are you trying to achieve?”

  “I’m trying to drive the La back to where they came from.”

  “They beat you before.”

  “They’ll beat me again. Even in three hundred and fifty years I haven’t been able to co-opt much in the way of firepower, or even to extend myself in the way I would have preferred. The war, such as it is, won’t last out the day. It’s primarily a matter of timing. The La have been hesitating for a long time over whether or not to abandon Earth. They’ve recently taken the view that, if they could recruit and use you, they might manage to bring about the desired ideological climate...otherwise not. I’m just tipping the balance.”

  Paul stared at the robot for a few moments, then opened the door of the car, and stepped out on to the loose stone of the roadside. They had been travelling for more than two hours, but for most of that time Paul had been in the back of the vehicle recovering from the effects of the gas. His eyes were still red and watery, and he felt a powerful thirst.

  He stepped from the road on to the verge, where the grass was dry and parched after a long summer. He sat down and looked back at the car: a sleek machine with a plastic body, which moved almost silently. The robot got out and walked around it to join him.

  “I’ll bet it has an organic engine,” said Paul.

  “Not the engine,” replied the robot. “But it has an artificial nervous system and a certain amount of synthetic musculature.”

  “Did you steal it?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Do you have anything to drink?”

  The robot pressed something at the back of the car, and the inevitable aperture opened to give access to the boot. He took out a plastic bottle and threw it to Paul. It was water, and Paul drank thankfully. Then he put the bottle down and said: “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why attack the aliens? Why pull me out of their city? I realize that your behavior is entirely consistent, but I don’t see the motivation.”

  “To put the harshest interpretation on it, I want the aliens to leave Earth because I want it for myself.”

  “What use is it to you?”

  “It interests me.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Should there be anything more? It’s crudely put, but in the end, that’s what it comes down to.”

  “And me?”

  “You interest me too.”

  “Suppose the La destroy you? What becomes of your interests then?”

  “They won’t. That’s the mistake they made before. They destroyed the orbital defense systems, and they destroyed the major coordinating installation on the surface, but they couldn’t destroy me. I’m not limited to any one location, a mechanical brain to hold my mechanical mind. I can make machines capable of coding for my entire personality, and pack them into canisters no bigger than that water bottle. I can install those canisters in cars, or in telephone exchanges, or in robots, or in any damn thing at all. I can switch myself off, temporarily. I can isolate my faculties and link them up again. I made provision for the possibility of defeat in 2119, and I’ve made provision again now. My personality is safe, and it has legs and hands, all ready to re-emerge from hiding at some future state and set about the task of building me more bodies, more limbs, more brains. I’m like the Hydra, Paul; whenever one head is cut off, two more grow. I could be killed, but in practical terms I’m immortal and invulnerable.”

  “And you want to play god—with Earth as your plaything.”

  “Not exactly. If I were a god, perhaps I wouldn’t need to play. It’s because I’m not that I need you. I’m not omniscient, nor omnipotent. I should like to know more about the possibilities that the universe holds, for itself, and for me. Earth presents me with a unique opportunity. I would like to observe the outcome of what has happened here. I could not do that if the La were permitted to subvert the experiment before it really begins.”

  “Experiment?”

  “Not in the sense that the conditions were contrived—this is one of nature’s experiments. But I am curious, and I would like to see it run its course.”

  “You mean the time-jumping faculty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who built you?”

  “Another race, a long way from here, a long time ago.”

  “One of the races that the La found?”

  “The La found traces only. The species that built me has been extinct for a long time. Several million years, in fact.”

  “And for several million years you’ve been wandering through the galaxy—in search of a plaything?”

  “For most of the time I was, as it were, unconscious,” replied the machine. “I have lived, in the sense of being awake and alert, through only a fraction of that time...just as you have lived five hundred years but only experienced twenty years and a few odd days. We have a certain amount in common, you and I.”

  “The difference is that you seem to have no choice,” observed Paul. “You’re headed for the distant future come what may—your pilgrimage to the end of time is already built into you. But I had a choice. I could have chosen an ordinary life. And even if I do embark upon a journey through time, I’m still going to die in the en
d.”

  “I can die,” said the robot. “It is not altogether necessary that I only switch myself off temporarily. It would be simple enough to blot out my consciousness forever. It might come to that, eventually...when there is nothing more that attracts my interest and my involvement.”

  “I suppose that’s one of the endearing things about this particular experiment,” said Paul, harshly. “It will engage your attention for a long time—occupy you for the next few million years.”

  “Perhaps,” replied the mellifluous voice, calmly.

  “Until you get bored and wander away into deep space. And where does that leave us? For the sake of this passing interest, you’ve tried to close off every other option the human race might have had. Doesn’t that strike you as being a little high-handed? I know little enough about the La. but there was surely a possibility that their plan for the future of mankind was the right one, and that without their aid, there’s nothing facing us except eventual extinction—even if some of us can run away through time, in a desperate attempt to escape it. You’re trying to commit us to a quest that has no conceivable end, and I still don’t see why.”

  “Perhaps,” said the machine, “it is simple loneliness. Who else but you can keep me company through a million years and more?”

  “Build another machine. You have the knowledge and the means. Build a whole race of robots, in your own image, and play with them until all the stars fade. You never had to interfere in our affairs. Had you not begun a war to win Earth for yourself, the La would have arrived peacefully. Had you not decided to renew that war today, they might have secured the future of the human race. You don’t need Earth, or any world that’s already inhabited. You have the time and the equipment to begin your own game of creation.”