The Walking Shadow

by Brian Stableford

“I’ll see you again, no doubt.”

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe, when I’ve seen them all, there’ll be time in hand to do what we want to do. We needn’t wait to give you a second bite. When you return there might be a dozen of us en route for the new world, and you’ll have missed the ship.”

  “Maybe,” said Paul. “Either way, bon voyage.”

  “Thanks,” said Herdman, bitterly.

  “Even you must have believed for a while,” said Paul, quietly. “Not necessarily in me, and certainly not in the talismanic power of my name. But you must have believed in something, in order to propel yourself through time at all. You must have had some reason for trying, some reason for beginning the long trek. It hasn’t sustained you, but you must have had it once. You weren’t just running from the delirium.”

  “Sure,” said Herdman. “It seemed like a good idea even when I was sober. I should have known then that it was a bust. Never trust yourself sober.”

  He put his hands up, palms outwards, to show that there was nothing there. He watched Paul disappear into a Paul-shaped hole, which seemed to shine as it repelled all light and all heat, aloof from the very fabric of existence.

  “You put them on a stage,” he muttered, “and they get delusions of grandeur. Every last fucking one.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The snake had form now. The desert had given birth to it: a creature of immense size, with scales of silica and coils that writhed like time and eyes that stared like the bloodied stars. It was hooded like a cobra, and its hood eclipsed the night sky when it reared its head to strike. Its starlit eyes were hypnotic, and its fangs spat poison that could shrivel the flesh on human bones, drowning its victims in black corruption.

  He crawled, heedless still of the laceration of his skin and the fragmentation of his fingernails, careless of the stinging sand. He saw nothing, but his ears caught the sound of scale scratching stone, and the wind was the breath of the serpent, hot and reeking.

  From far away came the thin sound of screaming.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  He came, at last, to his senses, and realized that the sound of screaming had not died with the dreams. It echoed in the underground chamber, and then began to change into a series of bubbling sobs as the screamer realized that she, too, had returned from hell to the last enclave of the long-dead ancient world.

  Paul was at her side within seconds, lifting her head from its foam-plastic pillow in order to cradle it in his arm. Her flesh seemed colder than it should or could have been—much colder than the stone of the sarcophagus or the dull, still air. Her muscles were very tense, those in her arms and legs making the limbs rigid. Her stomach was taut, her nipples erect. Her eyes stared wildly into his, without recognition.

  He turned, and his eyes searched the vault for the robot.

  The machine was already at his elbow, carrying garments ready for them to put on. Paul started because of the machine’ nearness; he had not heard the other approach. Then he snatched the clothes, and began to drape them over Rebecca’s body, trying to urge some warmth and life back into her terror-stricken body.

  He lifted her out of the sacrophagus, surprised by her weight. He tried to carry her towards the staircase, but he was too weak. Instead, the robot took over, and carried her out into the open air. Paul followed.

  The air outside was warm, and carried the scent of apple-blossom from the trees across the clearing. There was a faint background of sound: the movement of birds in the branches, the sound of insects’ wings. There were yellow flowers growing beside the entrance to the vault.

  Paul looked back once at the room from which they had come. All the stone vessels were now empty. There were other rooms, but he sensed that they, too, would be empty now.

  The robot was helping Rebecca to dress herself. The rictus that had gripped her facial muscles was gone, now, and she looked very pale and weak, but she seemed to be fully conscious. Paul began to put on his own garments, although his head was swimming with incipient nausea.

  He managed to control himself. He looked down at Rebecca, and saw that she knew him now. She nodded, very slightly, and then lay back to look up at the patterned dome enclosing the sky.

  “Is it always like this?” he asked her.

  She looked at him again, and shook her head. He helped her to her feet, and they embraced.

  “It was the dream,” he murmured. “Something in the dream.”

  He felt her head, pressed against his chest, move to indicate agreement.

  The images burst in his head:

  ...black corruption....

  ...breath, hot and reeking....

  ...the thin sound of screaming....

  “You were there,” he said. “Through all that time, I thought I was alone—even though others dreamed the same dream, I felt that I was alone there, that it contained only me and nothing else. I even thought that the whole of it extended only as far as my perception of it.” He looked at the robot, and said: “Are we the only ones?”

  The robot nodded. “The old man died. The younger one disappeared.”

  “Any news of Herdman?”

  “The ship will reach the new world in seven years. All seven passengers are still alive. There is no reason to suppose that they cannot be successfully revived.”

  “Three Adams and four Eves...what are their chances?”

  “It’s impossible to judge. They will live out their own lives...all of the women are capable of conceiving and bearing children, and with my help, they can have as many as they want, as many as they feel they need...but in the long term, the odds are heavily weighted against them.”

  “Joe will be satisfied. He’ll have made his point, in his way of figuring the score. And he was right about the others. They didn’t even make it to coincidence...maybe I should have helped him, added my argumentative weight to his recruiting drive instead of just stepping out of the way.”

  The machine made no answer, and Paul shrugged.

  All three of them began to make their way slowly towards the house. It was still much as it had been when Herdman had intercepted Paul after the first cryonic time-trip, although it had been renewed several times over. The interior had altered somewhat, but not greatly. It had become familiar, over the millennia, and as the length of each jump had shortened from thousands of years to hundreds its lack of change had become a curious symbol of reassurance: a guarantee that their flight through time really was slowing to a halt, and that they would meet again at the moment of coincidence. Now they were here, and the house seemed exactly right. It was home.

  Paul’s memory reached back to the moment when he had last seen Rebecca in the flesh, when the window of the room blew out and the sky had been on fire. It seemed less remote than it ought to have been. There was nothing at all in existence that had not been touched by change since then, save perhaps the sun. It had been a billion years. In Paul’s own time there had been no traces left of a world as remote as this: not a single fossil visible to the naked eye to testify to the nature of life on the ancient Earth. Now, outside the domes, there was likewise no trace of Paul’s world. Gaea had obliterated them all.

  He tried hard to think of something to say, but could only | stare. It was Rebecca who finally said: “Hello.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “There’s no one else now,” said Paul, as they lay together on the bed after making love. “We’re finally alone. I feel free for the first time. There are no longer hundreds of people around in my wake by the accidental magic of my name. There’s only you, and you’re real. Between us, we constitute reality. There’s nothing outside of us but the Garden of Eden and the god-machine.”

  Rebecca said nothing, though he paused to let her say something.

  “What do we do next?” he prompted, gently.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “We could book a passage on a starship,” he said. “We could arrive on the new world just as Herdman’s descendants are
beginning to mount their own space program, ready to take the story of the human race into a new phase. I wonder what they’d think of us?”

  “They’d hail you as the messiah,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. There’s no outrunning destiny. Can you imagine being doomed to reincarnation on world after world as a false and futile redeemer?”

  “No.”

  “The machine could find us another world. One of our own, where we could have as many children as we wanted or thought we needed, and then die in our own good time and pass safely into the stuff of legend.”

  “Don’t talk about it”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to think about it. Not now. Let’s just be here, for a while. Let’s not think about what’s in front of us—let’s think about what we’ve got.”

  Paul realized that behind the words lay fear. She didn’t want to face the question of what to do next. She couldn’t For her, there was only the present, and no future at all. She’d be happy if time stood still—as, indeed, it did, in the world that cradled the house. Only inside was the march of time proceeding, unrestrained. Inside him—and inside Rebecca too, no matter how hard she might try to deny it.

  A billion years, thought Paul, and what have we found? No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. How could we ever have hoped for anything else?

  “Don’t look like that,” said Rebecca, faintly.

  “Like what?”

  “Sad.”

  He laughed, briefly. “Post-coital triste,” he said.

  She didn’t know what that meant.

  “I’m suffering from human contact,” he said. “It’s a long time since there was another person so close to me. In a way, it frightens me.”

  That was worse—she looked hurt.

  He shook his head, and said: “I don’t know. It’ll pass. Forget it. Let’s do as you say, and think about where we’re at rather than where we’re going.”

  He smiled, and she relaxed a little.

  “Was it worth it?” he asked, softly. “To get from there to here? Was it worth the dream—and the death of Earth—and living the days of your life like beads on a string, with no one else but a plastic-masked machine?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You aren’t even disappointed, are you? You don’t feel denied because there’s no Heaven, no Isle of the Blessed, no land of Cokaygne. This is enough. Just this.”

  “I don’t want anything else,” she said, hesitantly. “And you mustn’t, either.”

  He had to look away when she said that. He had the feeling that she was right, or at least being realistic. She had attained her goal. She had asked for no more than circumstances were prepared to deliver. That was wisdom. Only a fool could imagine there might be more, and only a fool would ask for it.

  “The thing is,” he said, speaking in an audible whisper and feeling reckless in doing so, “this isn’t what it was for. I only wish I knew what it was for....”

  She took him by the wrist, and pulled him round so that she could stare mesmerically into his eyes.

  “You mustn’t,” she said, in a brittle tone. “You mustn’t.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “How’s the game?” asked Paul, of the machine.

  “What do you mean?” asked the smooth, sexless voice.

  “You know what I mean. What’s the state of play? Are we near the end, or only half way? And who’s winning? Has it all been worthwhile?”

  “Those questions have no answers.”

  “You’ve devoted a lot of time to this project—the greater part of your exceedingly long life. How has it changed you, if at all?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Can anyone really estimate the degree or kind of change that has taken place in himself? I feel that I am changed. I feel that I know a great deal more about the possibilities of life than I did when I first came to Earth. I have different perspectives now on many things. What else could I say?”

  “And what happens now—if it’s over? What do you do next?”

  “For a while, I shall be content to explore, and to grow.”

  “Have you found other sentient creatures in the galaxy?”

  “Of course.”

  “But they don’t attract you sufficiently to begin another game?”

  “If you want to put it in those terms.”

  “What about Herdman and his little colony?”

  “They shall have such help as I can give them. It will not be a great deal, but they will not want more. There is so little of me in the starship, and the potential for rapid growth and diversification will be limited, given that they will not want me to rule them as a tyrant, however benevolent. Theirs is, after all, a virgin world. They will want its destiny to be in their own hands, as soon as they feel capable of bearing it.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” said Paul, “that you might be God? That you might have created all of this—the whole universe—as an experiment, and reincarnated yourself as an observer, forgetting your own omnipotence in order to be part of it all?”

  “The same might apply to you,” replied the machine.

  “Yes indeed,” said Paul. “Or to any one of us. Even Gaea, the mindless one. How is she, by the way?”

  “Stronger. She invaded one of the domes. In expelling her therefrom virtually everything was destroyed.”

  “How?”

  “She has acquired the habit of shaping the landscape. She can pulverize rock. She can extend roots into cracks, or surround outcrops with fibres that simply squeeze until the structure gives way.”

  “She could do that to the domes?”

  “Yes. They are built to withstand great strain, but in time there will be nothing that can withstand her efforts. She could crack any of the domes like an eggshell, if the stimulus was there to make her do it.”

  “And how much warning would we have?”

  “Two minutes. Warning enough—but you have the perfect escape route. You alone are untouchable.”

  “Except that there might be nowhere to land,” Paul pointed out. “As Marcangelo took such delight in pointing out, it’s no good leaping out of trouble if you have to come down no better off and probably worse. And we wouldn’t be together any longer. We’d be separated, forever.”

  “I could save you even from Gaea,” the machine assured him.

  “I’m sure you could,” said Paul, dryly. “But what for? Herdman was right, you know—I am afraid, and desperately so. Afraid that it is all a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing. He said that I was running toward coincidence simply because I was afraid to face matters before then. And now I’m here...I remember what he said about the man and the curtain. In vino veritas...I wonder whether the drunkenness was real, or just part of the act.”

  The machine was silent.

  “Nothing to say,” observed Paul. “Nothing to be said.”

  “Something else that Herdman said is true,” said the silky voice. “I could give you immortality. I could give you a body that could grow forever.”

  “And then,” said Paul, “you wouldn’t be lonely ever again.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “No,” said Paul, “but it’s still a proposition I’d have to think about. Why is it, do you think, that you can do everything except jump through time?”

  “Why should I need to jump through time? I have no need.”

  “But you still can’t do it. Of all living things on Earth, only we can. And I still don’t know how or why. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t it be ironic,” said Paul, “if all along it had been a mistake—if we had it wrong way round? For a billion years we’ve thought of what was happening as a kind of time-travel, and the other factors of the experience we’ve left aside as side-effects. But what if it were the other way around? What if the time-jumping is the accidental side-effect? What if the real essence of what’s happening isn’t that
at all, but simply the opening of a door to a different mode of experience—a gateway into something beyond time and space? Wouldn’t that be a joke? A billion year pilgrimage reduced to a hesitant faltering in the threshold of infinity...just a stupid mistake, because we were too blind to see what was before our very eyes, albeit in the fifth dimension. It’d be a joke on you, too, wouldn’t it? All the time and effort you’ve put into the game, and it might yet turn out that, from the very first move, we’ve been playing by the wrong rules.”

  “Is that what you believe?” asked the machine.

  “I don’t know,” said Paul, lightly. “I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth the commitment.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “I think that we need to try an experiment,” said Paul, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible. “We have to determine whether it’s actually possible to go on. Otherwise, we can’t be sure just what the options are.”

  She deliberately looked away from him, at the great dome of the sky that was darkening with the twilight. She struggled hard to contain her tears, and to pretend that he had not spoken. As he watched her, he wished that he had not—that he had lived with the compulsion just a little longer.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  He placed one hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t move any closer. She shied away, her hands fluttering aimlessly as she tried to find something to do with her arms. Eventually, she let them hang limply at her sides.

  “It’s just one jump,” he said. “We can meet again, using the cryonic chamber. But I don’t know, you see—I don’t know whether we’ve really come to the end or whether there’s another cycle beyond this one. I need to be sure.”

  “You don’t have to know! You don’t have to be sure. It’s over and it’s finished, for me. This is all there is, for me. It’s all I’ve ever been able to want, since...anyway, I can’t begin again. I couldn’t jump no matter how I tried—I’m too frightened.” Her voice had lost its vehemence very quickly. By the time she got to the last sentence it held hardly any force at all.