A World Out of Time

by Larry Niven

  The twelfth to descend was not a prisoner. A Girl of eleven dropped to just above their heads. Small machines floated around her. One, a silver wand mounted in a larger base, twitched this way and that like a nervous hound eager to be loosed. The Girl was naked, and strangely decorated: Transparent butterfly wings sprang from her shoulders. She called in a sweet, peremptory, oddly accented voice, “Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar, are you there?”

  So Mirelly-Lyra returned to the world after perhaps a quarter of an hour of subjective time.

  Her hosts were half a dozen children, all Girls. The Girl who had come for her, Choss, was in some ways the leader. Their social organization was complex.

  Their minds were not the minds of children. They walked like the Lords of the World. Mirelly-Lyra’s translator gave Corbell her emotional inflections as well as her words. The emotions were awe and fear and hatred. These were not little girls. They were Girls, neuter and immortal. They were arrogant and indulgent by turns, and Mirelly-Lyra learned to obey them.

  They trained her with the floating silver wand…a variant of the silver cane she carried much later. The box she carried constantly at her belt was the same translator she carried now. They made her wear it long after she knew the language. They thought her accent ugly.

  It grated on her to think that they regarded her as a social inferior. Later she changed her mind. They regarded her as a house pet, a prized property that could do tricks.

  With the children she watched shows put on by other groups of children. Some they attended live. Others were broadcast as three-dimensional illusions, like holovision sets arbitrarily large. Once they floated in interplanetary space for hours, and Mirelly-Lyra wondered at the grim intensity with which Choss’s Girls watched a dull and repetitious planetarium show. She understood their rapt concentration later, during the voting.

  But most of the shows were bids for prestige. Some of the bulky floating widgets that followed her around were cameras and emotional sensors. Mirelly-Lyra was another show. Because of her, the prestige of Choss’s group was high.

  Her medicines had retarded, but not prevented, menopause. The change in her body was a near-killing blow to Mirelly-Lyra’s faith in herself. She was a trained seal, and aging. One thing kept her going. Somewhere out there was dictator immortality.

  At first she welcomed the chance to talk to the Girls. But that was the trouble: Mirelly-Lyra did all the talking. Her own questions were not answered. Questions the Girls put to her she was expected to answer in full. If she didn’t lecture at length they became annoyed.

  Then, once, she found Choss in an indulgent mood.

  “Choss told me that the dictators took care of their own medical problems,” said Mirelly-Lyra. “The dictators were ruled by the Boys, who made shows with them and saw to it that chemicals in their food kept them from having children. I think Choss was jealous that the Boys would not let Girls play with the dictators. I’m telling this badly,” she said suddenly. “These Girls were all older than I. They were decadent aristocrats, not children.”

  “Yeah. I get the impression the Girls and the Boys stayed apart.”

  “Yeah, and that made it difficult for me. The Boys and Girls, they didn’t have sex to hold them together. They were two separate States on Earth, each with its territory and its rights. They must have been separate for a long time. Choss said that the Girls ruled the sky and the Boys ruled the dictators. I would have to go to the Boys to find out about dictator immortality.”

  “The Girls ruled the sky?” That sounded like nonsense, but…

  “Choss said so. I think it was true, Corbel. I saw them vote not to move the Earth! We watched an astronomical light show, and then there were hours of discussion, and they voted!

  “But I was more concerned with dictator immortality. Choss promised to learn what I wanted from the Boys. I was valuable to them, Corbel. They gained prestige from the stories I told and the shows they made about me.” Anger crackled in the translator’s voice as Mirelly-Lyra relived evil memories. “They were forever amused by what I did not know. Other groups of Girls began reviving other prisoners. After many years I decided that Choss had done nothing to get me what I wanted. I would have to reach the Boys.”

  “It figures.”

  “What?”

  “Choss couldn’t go to the Boys. They’d claim you as a dictator. Their property.”

  “I…never thought of that. I was a fool.”

  “Go on.”

  “The Boys held the land masses of the southern hemisphere. They had built heated domes in the south polar continent. They held two other continents and many islands. But the Girls ruled more useful land, and more power too, if they really ruled the sky. I knew that the Earth had been moved. There were times when Jupiter shone so brilliantly that one could see the banding and pick out the moons. I was afraid of these Girls. I was trying to find a safe way to steal an aircraft, but I waited too long.

  “One day Choss told me that they were tired of me, that I must go back in zero-time. I was no longer a new thing. I took a plane that night. They let me fly a long way before they brought me back with the autopilot. I learned that they had made a show of my escape.”

  “Fun people, your Girls. They put you back in the box?”

  “Yes. They let me keep my translator. It was the only thing they did for me. Later they lowered two Boys they had caught during a fight. The Girls had given them soul whips,” she said with grim amusement, “and I was the only one who could talk to them.”

  “Soul whip?”

  “I used one to make you docile. It didn’t work. A few more applications may help.”

  “Finish your story.”

  “We waited a long time. Nobody came to free us. Finally the machinery stopped. Everything was killing-hot. The Boys ruled us with the soul whip, and I was their translator, but there was little cooperation. Some of us lived to reach the southernmost continent. There they were captured by Boys, all but me. I fled back across the water alone.

  “It was a long time before I learned enough to feel myself safe. I had to learn what could be eaten, what foods would not spoil, how to hide from storms: all things you will have to learn, too. I was old when I could begin searching again. For ten years I searched for dictator immortality through the ruins the Boys and Girls left me. Then I emptied out my small zero-time storage place and went into it to wait for…you.”

  “Nice try.”

  “When you are young again, then mock me!”

  “I don’t expect that will happen.”

  “We can’t give up.”

  Corbell laughed. “I can give up. I guess I don’t believe in your dictator immortality. Have you ever seen anyone get young?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you even know what makes people get old? Fires don’t burn backward, lady.”

  “I am not a doctor. I only know what anyone knows. Inert molecules gather in the cells to clog them, like…like silt and garbage and the poisons of industry gather in a great inland sea, until the sea becomes a great inland swamp. The cells become less…active. Some die. One day there are too few active cells living too slowly. Other inert matter accumulates to block the veins and arteries…but I have medicines to dissolve them.”

  “Cholesterol, sure. But getting the dead stuff out of a living cell without killing it would be something else again. I think you were hoaxed,” said Corbell. “Choss and her friends acted like nasty children. Why not your Boy lawyer too? Remember, you asked the Girls. They didn’t raise the subject.”

  “But why?”

  “Oh, just to see what you’d—”

  “No!”

  “Everyone dies. Your lawyer’s dead. Choss is dead. Even civilizations die. There was a civilization here that could move the Earth. Now there’s nothing.”

  After a longish silence came the calm voice of the translating box. “There are Boys where you’re going. I tried to talk to them once. They know nothing of dictator immortality.”


  “Do they know what happened to civilization?”

  “You said it yourself. There were two States on Earth. They must have fought.”

  “It could have happened.” War between the sexes had always seemed silly to Corbell. Too much fraternizing with the enemy, ha-ha. But if sex didn’t hold them together?

  “The Boys know nothing,” she repeated. “Perhaps there was never dictator immortality in the south polar continent.”

  “You’ve got a one-track mind. If it ever existed, you found it in every city in the world. Used up. Rotted.”

  “One year, Corbell.”

  Might as well try it…“How does this sound? Let me use your medicines. I can travel faster and look further if I’m young and healthy.”

  Another long pause. Then, “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “I thought you’d say no.” Here was his chance! But…“Nuts. No, I just can’t risk it. You scare me too much. This way at least I get a year.”

  She screamed something that was not translated. The receiver went dead.

  A year, he thought. In a year I’ll be dug in so deep she’ll never find me at all.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  The Changelings

  I

  Corbell came to the Antarctic shore in near darkness. The vanished sun had left dark red splashed across the northern horizon, and a red-on-red circle that was Jupiter’s night side. To east and west he picked out tiny Jovian moons. Ahead, dark woods came down to a dark shore.

  The trees came at him, spreading out.

  Then the smooth ride was bouncing Brownian motion, and the car was dodging tree trunks at maniac speed. He gripped the padded bar to keep himself from bouncing around inside. He dared not close his eyes. The chase scenes through Four City should have burned away his capacity for terror, but they hadn’t, they hadn’t.

  The old trees forced their way through a tangle of burgeoning life, vines, underbrush, big mushrooms, everything living on each other. A pair of huge birds ran screaming from the car. The car rode high, but branches slashed at its underside.

  The forest thinned…and showed masonry half hidden in vines. The car was already racing through Sarash-Zillish. Soil and grass and small bushes had invaded the streets. If this was Three City—if this was the Antarctic source of industrial activity Peerssa had sensed from orbit—then it was far gone.

  The car was slowing. Thank God. It scraped slowly over crackling brush, stopped in the open, and sank. Corbell got out onto moist grass. He stretched. He looked about him.

  In the darkness it was barely possible to pick out two distant curved wails of hexagonal filigree where a dome must have stood. Corbell found no sign of the great black cube, the subway station, that had been the center of every city he’d seen so far.

  He was parked beside what must be World Police Headquarters: a great wall of balconies and dark windows, with a row of large circular holes at the top, holes big enough to be access ports for flying police cars.

  There must be weapons in there…

  But there was certainly food in the park, and Corbell was faint with hunger. With some reluctance he climbed back into the car and tapped out the number Mirelly-Lyra had given him: inverted L, inverted L, nameless squiggle, delta.

  Like the woods beyond the city, the park was spreading into the streets. The car stopped over a patch of tangled vines. He stepped out, having precious little choice, and found himself thigh-deep in the tough vines. They pulled him back like a nest of snakes. He waded out.

  Hunger had never done anything for Corbell’s disposition. It made him irritable, unfit to live with.

  A wall of greenery twice his height ended just ahead of him. On the theory that there was a real wall under that tangle of vines, Corbell walked to the end, turned, and entered the park proper.

  There was no obvious difference. It was as dark as the inside of a mouth. Jupiter’s horizontal light couldn’t reach through trees and buildings. Corbell wished for a flashlight, or a torch; but he didn’t even have a match. CORBELL Mark II, bare-ass naked against the wilderness, would not be hunting prey tonight.

  But fruit, now…these could be fruit trees. The Norn had said they were. Corbell stood beneath a tree and ran his hands through the branches. Something round bounced against his wrist.

  It was pear-shaped, bigger than a pear, with thick, rough skin. With his teeth he stripped some of the covering away. He bit into…creamy avocado flesh, milder in taste than avocado.

  He ate it all. He threw away the skin and pit and felt through the branches for another.

  A furry tentacle dropped familiarly around his neck.

  Corbell grabbed. Sharp teeth closed between his neck and shoulder. The pain sickened him. His closing right hand slipped along fur, was stopped by a thickening…a head. He wrenched at it. The teeth came loose; the tentacle came loose and immediately wrapped new loops around his forearm. By starlight he saw a small snarling face. He was strangling a cat-tail.

  The little beast could as easily have torn his eyes or his jugular. It was trying to bite him now. Even so, he didn’t especially want to kill it…

  He banged its head against a branch. Its grip loosened. A pitcher’s fastball gesture flung it away. It coiled on the ground, lifted a head to study him. He was too big. It went away.

  He had suffered a muscle-tissue wound, but it wasn’t bleeding badly. Still, it hurt. Corbell sent a curse to follow the cat-tail. He found and ate two more avocados. Good enough. He went back to the car, locked himself in, and went to sleep.

  the first day

  Corbell made his breakfast on tiny apples and apple-sized grapefruit. The cat-tails had disappeared. He sat quietly while he ate, and was rewarded. Squirrels (maybe; they moved fast) popped into view and vanished. A bird ran out of the woods, stopped short in front of him—it was as tall as his shoulder, dressed in the autumn colors of a turkey—squawked in terror and fled.

  Presently he picked up a thick branch, knobbed at the end. A machete was what he really had in mind, but the club had a nice heft. He went exploring.

  The park was a jungle of delights. He found fruit trees and nut trees and trees that grew fist-sized warty things whose taste he would have to try, later. Pineapples and coconut palms fought for room. String beans grew on vines that were strangling some of the trees. On a hunch Corbell pulled up some smaller plants and found fat roots: potatoes or carrots or yams, maybe. He was seeing them by reddened light; for a million years they had been adapting to that reddened light and the twelve-year Antarctic day; of course they were unrecognizable. But they might be edible, if he could cook them, if he could start a fire. Or find one.

  The ground floor of World Police Headquarters was clean and empty. Corbell found no dead bodies, no guns left lying about, no uniforms. Even the desks were gone. He was disappointed. He had hoped at least to clothe himself.

  He tried an elevator. It worked.

  Over several hours of exploring he found that the twenty-story building was bare to the walls, from the empty hangars under the rooftop landing pad, to the wonderfully filigreed cells in the fifth through seventh floors, to the offices on the second. Nothing remained that wasn’t part of the structure itself.

  But the elevators worked. He kept looking.

  Where desks had been he found slots for trash. He tracked them to their outlet: metal trash cans, empty. He carried a can out to the car. It was the closest thing he’d found to a cooking pot. Now if he could find water…and fire.

  He’d already been through the big room on the tenth floor. There was an acre of flat surface in here: tabletop along all four sides, a big square table in the middle with bins under it, doors with shelves behind them. Now, searching more carefully, he opened long panels and found knobs under them. He turned all the knobs as far as they could go, hoping to turn on a burner. This could be a kitchen.

  He went down to the car. He came back with a generous armful of dried grass, and the club.

  Most of the kitchen mechanisms
must have stopped working. A snug and solid door proclaimed a cupboard to be a refrigerator. Some of the flat surfaces had to be griddles; but they weren’t hot. A small glass door with a shelved recess behind it was hot. An oven. Corbell stuffed the grass into it, and waited…and waited…while the grass smoldered…smoldered more…and, suddenly, burned. He opened the door and set the club in the burning grass. When the grass burned out the knob on the end was barely smoldering. By then Corbell had found an exhaust fan. He let that blow on the coals until he had a small flame.

  The rain started as he reached the car.

  The car refused to move unless the doors were closed…with the club inside with Corbell, smoldering. The small flame had gone out. The rain fell tremendously, as if it wouldn’t stop until the world was all water. Smoke inside and rain outside: Corbell couldn’t see at all.

  Fortunately the ride was short. The car settled over the exact same patch of tangled vines. Corbell pushed the trash can out into the rain, but he stayed in the car with the doors open, blowing on the coals.

  The afternoon rain went on and on. When the club stopped smoldering Corbell didn’t care. All the wood in the park would be soaked by now. He waded out into the wet and got his dinner of assorted fruits before the light was quite gone.

  Again he slept in the car. A cramped, damp, wakeful night followed a miserable day. In this jungle of delights, this wilderness in which everything that grew seemed intended to serve man, Corbell had failed to make fire even with the help of a kitchen oven. Robinson Crusoe would have sneered.

  But the cat-tail bite was healing. No fever: He had escaped rabies and tetanus.

  Tomorrow. Try again tomorrow.

  the second day

  …was bigger, better, faster. He took the car to World Police Headquarters. He carried two armfuls of damp scavenged wood into an elevator and up to the kitchen. He put them in the oven. He’d forgotten to turn it off yesterday; it saved him time now. He turned on the exhaust and left.

  A little searching found him a second trash can. He took it up. The logs were smoldering, burning in places, but still wet. He left them to it. The kitchen was full of smoke, despite the exhaust fan.