by E M Gale
“OK, but we need a meeting point this time.” Anna grinned at my frown. “We don’t want to lose Clarke again.”
“Gargh, too bloody right you don’t,” I growled.
“Of course, Anna is the only one who can speak Japanese,” said Jane.
‘I can speak Japanese, just not the dialect they use here.’
“OK, Anna, find us the tourist information office,” I declared. “There must be one here, it doesn’t seem too hostile a place.”
The morning was tiring. All I remember is the sun getting me down. It had lowered in the sky and looked like it was moving towards setting, but that just meant it hit us full in the face.
Following directions Anna had received from the waitress, we headed deeper into the city. It was, in my opinion, far too small to be called a city. But then, having grown up in London, all but about five of the cities on Earth would seem too small to me. In the golden-hour light, the city was truly beautiful, even through my headache I could appreciate that. As we moved further in, we found more built-up areas and even a district full of skyscrapers. Their glass windows reflected a thousand tiny orange suns, so I couldn’t look at them from some angles as I ended up blinded for about a minute.
After getting lost a few times, we finally found ourselves in the basement of one of the skyscrapers. It seemed a weird place to put a tourist information office to me. But it was one of the symbols Anna knew in Japanese, which made sense really. As we descended into the basement, it became apparent that the expat Japanese liked to put small shopping malls under their skyscrapers. Also, there seemed to be more aliens in this area–a few orcs and some others, like the thin blue-skinned aliens, for example. However, I had the feeling that in terms of what we knew about this planet, we had more in common with the aliens than with the human Ragnarokians.
The tourist information centre was a boxy room sandwiched between a noodle bar and a newspaper stand. As the others walked up to it, I detoured via the newspaper stand. They had some papers printed in English. I bought a couple, from the New Galactic Times to the more lurid Galactic News, and then followed after my friends.
Like all tourist information offices, it was staffed by efficient, tidy and neat people who knew how to speak slowly and resort to hand gestures if necessary. Spotting the papers under my arm, they greeted us in English.
“Hullo, can I help you?” said one.
“Uh… we’re…” Anna looked around at the rest of us, not quite sure what to say.
“Yes, I need all the maps you have of this area, please. Oh, and any tour guides and brochures you have, in English, if possible,” I said.
“Of course. This is what we have.” I was given a stack of brochures and a few maps on which the tourist guide scribbled our current position. “You’ll probably want to visit our bigger office for more–”
‘Ah, that explains it. I thought this was a rather small office for a city of this size.’
“–which is located here, by the spaceport.”
‘Ah ha! A what? A spaceport?’
“Thanks. Oh, and finally, is there a university here?”
She gave me an odd look at that.
“Are you students then?” she asked cautiously. “From Earth perhaps?” The other guide narrowed her eyes at me.
“Yes.”
“Ah, I see.” The guides exchanged a glance. “Well, we don’t have a university on Ragnarok IV unfortunately, but we do have a large library located here which was bequeathed to the planet by the grateful Solan Empire after the Tyrian Independence War.” She smiled politely.
‘The what Empire?’
“As students of Earth, you’ll be extended any help you might need. Just show them your ID.”
“Cool. Oh, and can you recommend any hotels? Something cheap like a youth hostel?”
* * *
Since there was not much room in the tourist information office, we took the brochures outside and sat on some benches in a gap between skyscrapers. Mercifully, it was in the shade.
“I thought we were being subtle?” asked Rob, frowning at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I thought we were supposed to be pretending we knew where we were. Y’know, to not give ourselves away. It was your suggestion.”
I shrugged. “It is a tourist information centre. They are used to people coming in, looking lost and asking strange questions. We’d probably stand out even more if we didn’t do that.”
I was flicking through some of the leaflets, just looking at the pictures. Mark had grabbed a stack of them and passed them out to the others. He now stood there and opened up the Galactic Times.
“And what was that about a university?” continued Rob.
“Well, where else would we get a Tesla coil and a helium-neon laser at short notice?”
Rob nodded as if to say ‘good point’.
“Uh… guys?” Something in Mark’s voice got us all to pay attention immediately, even though he had spoken quietly.
“What’s up?” asked Rob.
“Rob, you didn’t invent teleportation.” He passed Rob the newspaper. “You invented time travel.”
“What?” I peered over Rob’s shoulder at the paper. I skimmed the headlines, noting the names. I didn’t recognise any of them. Then I looked at the date. The hair on my neck stood on end and a cold chill ran down my spine. A feeling of impossibility. A feeling of inevitability.
“Is that even possible?” I breathed.
“What, what?” asked Anna.
Mark passed her the paper. “Look at the date.”
“It cannot be possible,” I stated.
‘We have travelled approximately two hundred years into the future.’
‘That’s why there is an alien planet which has been colonised by humans and why there are aliens walking around with no-one paying them any attention. It makes far more sense than any of the other scenarios we came up with on the walk over.’
“It does make a kind of sense,” mused Rob.
“But… it… it can’t be possible! It can’t, can it?” I asked, hoping someone would agree with me.
“Wow, Clarke.” Anna was eyeing me with surprise. “You seem really shocked at this. You weren’t shocked at the idea of teleportation–”
‘Yes, I was.’
“–you realised that this wasn’t Earth first out of all of us, but you’re shocked at this.”
“What do you want, your money back?” I sounded more normal, but didn’t feel it.
She laughed. “No.” She shrugged. “It’s just nice to know that you can be taken unawares, that’s all.”
‘What the hell? Is this just because I pay more attention to what is around me, rather than assuming that I already know what’s there?’
“I’m sure Clarke is always aware when she’s taken,” said Mark smuttily.
“I guess time travel’s not that impossible a thought,” mused Rob, ignoring our conversation.
‘And don’t I like impossible thoughts? I’ve entertained the possibility of time travel before. In fact I even noticed when they threw an Einstein-Rosen bridge calculation at us in the final theoretical physics exam. I was one of the few who got the marks for realising that it would work as a time machine. But somehow it isn’t a possibility I entertained to explain the translocation. Really, I ought to have, it seems an obvious conclusion now Mark has suggested it.’
“So, Clarke.” Rob had put on his explaining tone of voice. “You’re familiar with the concept of space-time–”
‘Is he trying to insult me?’
Some of that sentiment must have shown in my face because he said: “Oooo-kaay, I s’pose you are. No need for the scary look!”
I sighed, looking down at the newspaper again.
He continued, mostly musing aloud. “But travelling in space must be about as easy as travelling in time. In fact, to travel between two points in space you would probably end up travelling in time too. Any space travel where you don’t arri
ve the exact instant of time that you left involves time travel.”
‘So many possibilities. All he did was fire a laser at ball lightning, no calculations, nothing. We have no idea of what effect caused us to move in time and space. We could have ended up anywhere! Given how much of the universe is vacuum, on the basis of probability, vacuum would be the most likely place to end up. Or the middle of a star, or the middle of a planet, or half in, half out of a rock. And then, if by some minute chance we ended up on the surface of a planet, we would be lucky to end up on a non-hostile one, where we could breathe the air, not be attacked by wild animals or aliens or at a point in time when something horrible happened. And somehow, we’d have to match the angular momentum from the rotating Earth to the rotating Ragnarok IV. Get it wrong and we’d arrive travelling at three hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction.’
I was shaking at this point and feeling a cold sweat despite the heat of the day.
‘From what I understand of physics and the universe–which admittedly isn’t much, I am discovering–the chances of surviving something like a random translocation in time and space are minute, tiny, vanishingly small!’
For a moment, I prayed heartfelt thanks to a God I didn’t have much to do with any more. Then I shook my head, trying to cover up just how disturbed I was. I was getting sick of my friends asking me if I was all right the whole time. They passed the newspaper around. I sighed and stretched my arms upwards. I was consternated, but I judged that I had succeeded in not showing it from the reactions of my friends.
‘If we are to get back from here, we will have to do that experiment again. Will we end up at the same point we left? Or will we not be as lucky this time and find ourselves floating, cold and in pieces out in the depths of space?’
“What now?” asked Anna, looking around the group. When no one said anything she looked at me. “Clarke?”
‘Since when did I become the leader? Why do they have to rely on me? Do I look like I want that responsibility?’
I sighed. “It’s obvious.” I held up my index finger and narrated for them. “Having recovered from our crippling shock, we discover nothing has changed. Thus, we continue as before.”
“What?” said Mark.
“She’s totally lost it this time,” muttered Jane.
“What exactly is your problem with me?” I fired, sending a glare her way along with my words.
“It would take far too long to explain,” she retorted, her eyes narrowed. We frowned at each other across poor Rob, who was leaning back and probably wishing he was anywhere else.
“Guys, guys.” Anna had her hands up. “Calm down now. We’re all a little put out. Let’s all just calm down.”
I glared at Jane, glared at Anna for good measure, then pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut.
“OK, I’m calm.” I opened my eyes.
‘Oh, no. Anna’s about to ask me if I’m OK.’
So I cut her off. “We need more information. I vote that we split up. One group goes to the bigger tourist information office, and maybe swings by the spaceport–”
“The what?” asked Mark.
“The spaceport. Weren’t you listening in the tourist information office?”
Mark looked to the others for help.
‘Obviously not then.’
“Maybe someone can wander round, keeping an eye out for useful information, discarded helium-neon lasers, things like that.” I shrugged.
‘Not that I really want to be anywhere near Rob’s second experiment.’
“And I’ll be heading to the library with whoever wants to go with me.” I looked at Anna, hoping she would volunteer to join me. She didn’t get the hint. “But before all that, we need to book into a hotel for this evening. We can meet up there later.”
“Ah,” said Rob, “good ideas.” His tone implied that he had already thought of them, but thought he’d let someone else outline them.
‘I hate it when he does that. If he’d had a good idea, he’d have said it.’
“See?” Anna was smiling at Jane. “I said she had a plan.” Jane had her arms crossed but didn’t look like she was going to incite an argument.
“What are you going to do at the library?” asked Mark.
“Heh, I’m a research student. I’ll do research.” I got a blank look. I counted off my questions on my fingers. “I want to know what happened in the last two hundred years, where Earth is from here, what things have changed, if there are other planets populated by humans, when mankind met aliens, what races of aliens there are. All sorts of useful things like that. I hate walking around without any intel, not knowing what’s going on or where the next threat is coming from.”
“Wow,” said Jane, rolling her eyes. “You speak like you’re in the army. This is probably one of the most peaceful places we could have ended up. Didn’t you notice that whole row of bikes up the road? They were just left there, not chained up or anything, and no one had stolen them.”
I nodded and tried not to shudder. It was that sort of little detail that let me know I was a very long way from London.
Anna smiled. Presumably she thought that Jane and I were now getting on again, since Jane was now subtly insulting my observational skills, rather than overtly questioning my sanity.
* * *
Annoyingly, I ended up heading to the library by myself. In my opinion that was the best place to go for information. I had hoped that Anna would come with me, but she’d decided that travel books would be more relevant than what was in the library. I think that everyone was eager for a bit of space to think things through. Plus, they all had different ideas of where would be the best place to get useful information. In addition to that, they seemed to want to stop to eat again. I mean honestly, we’d only just had breakfast.
After Anna booked two rooms for us all at something called a ryokan–some sort of traditional Japanese inn–I doled out some money. Admittedly, this place seemed to be cheap and the pelfre I’d gotten did seem to be going quite far, but it was all we had and I wasn’t sure when we would get some more. I told them to pawn something as well, though I suspected that I would be told that they hadn’t found a pawn shop until I walked them to the one I had found.
I found the library easily enough. It was a big building set back from the road in a beautifully tended garden. There were steps up to big glass doors, with some sort of high-tech gate at the entrance. People would swipe a card or wave it at the attendants to be let in. I wandered into the lobby. There were two attendants: one who spoke English to the few aliens and foreigners, and the other who spoke a language I didn’t understand to the natives.
I wandered outside and decided to wait. I could try to look like I was enjoying the sunlight, but I wasn’t. The late afternoon light slanted in sideways, backlighting the plants. The effect was pretty, but it meant that I was looking into the sun: not good. At the bottom of the steps there was a smoking area. I was mildly surprised to see one; I guessed two hundred years in the future smoking hadn’t been banned yet. A Japanese man stood there smoking. I wandered over. We nodded to each other and I lit up a menthol cigarette and smoked it slowly, watching through the glass door.
I was lucky. Shortly after the Japanese smoker had gone back to work, the English-speaking library attendant left the desk. I hoped he was going for a break. I casually left the smoking area and ascended the steps, walking purposefully towards the gate that let people into the library. I smiled at the Japanese-speaking attendant, then looked at the gate and started going through my handbag and pockets. I patted my pockets, then tipped makeup out of my handbag in a good impression of searching for something. The library attendant still hadn’t waved me through.
‘Damn! Why are some people so hard-hearted?’
I spoke to him very fast, hoping he wouldn’t understand.
“Oh, look, I’m sorry, I’ve not got my library card on me. It must be on my desk somewhere. But you see I have this paper due tomorrow…”
“Ano… Wakariiiimaseeeen,” he said, looking round for the other attendant.
“I know, I know,” I continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I left it to the last minute, and that’s not your fault, but I’ve really got to get it done, and I need to research some stuff, and–”
He gave up and waved me through the gate. I repacked my stuff, smiled gratefully and walked forward. The barrier disappeared in a shimmer of light and reformed after I’d walked through it. I think I did a pretty good job of not looking impressed at this. I walked quickly away from the desk before the English-speaking attendant came back.
The library would have been cavernous, but it was split up into small corridors lined with bookshelves, making it into a dim and quiet maze. I strolled upstairs, betting that the less used stuff, i.e. the English language nonfiction, would be up there. I was right; I know libraries.
Walking round the tunnel-like shelves, I realised that it wasn’t books being displayed, but computerised information repositories. You plugged a PDA device in, which you could buy from vending machines in the corridors, and then downloaded whatever books you wanted.
‘I am turning into a vampire, and hiding from the sun in the local library. Shouldn’t I be in a cave or castle dungeon or something a little more gothy?’
* * *
Now my headache was a bit better, I took a break from my reading and tried to send my senses out. I was a little worried. I’d had the enhanced senses thing happen at least a few times a day to me when I was on Earth, but here it hadn’t happened once.
‘Why? Maybe it’s a side effect of travelling through space? Maybe my vampire… part needs to catch up? Maybe it’s like jet lag and I’ve left my soul back on Earth and it’s rushing to cover the distance and find me? Or isn’t there some myth about vampires being tied to the land they were buried in? Except, since I haven’t died, and I haven’t been buried…’
‘And the sleeping, what is that about? I was dead tired this morning, now that I think about it, disturbingly close to d…’