by Anthology
It ruined the yard, but so what? Delia was a little upset when they got into her garden, but I spent a day putting up a good strong fence around it, and she replanted. She made manure tea by mixing their dung with water, and its effect on the plants was bracing. The roses blossomed like never before, and in August the tomatoes came up spectacular.
I mentioned this to Dave Jenkins down at the home-and-garden and he looked thoughtful. “I believe there’s a market for that,” he said. “I’ll buy as much of their manure as you can haul over here.”
“Sorry,” I told him, “I’m on vacation.”
Still, I couldn’t get Delia to commit to a destination. Not that I quit trying. I was telling her about the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island one evening when suddenly she said, “Well, look at this.”
I stopped reading about swimming with dolphins and the fake undersea ruined city, and joined her at the door. There was Everett’s car—the new one that Gretta’s insurance had paid for—parked out front of her house. There was only one light on, in the kitchen. Then that one went out too.
We figured those two had worked through their differences.
An hour later, though, we heard doors slamming, and the screech of Everett’s car pulling out too fast. Then somebody was banging on our screen door. It was Gretta. When Delia let her in, she burst out into tears. Which surprised me. I wouldn’t have pegged Everett as that kind of guy.
I made some coffee while Delia guided her into a kitchen chair, and got her some tissues, and soothed her down enough that she could tell us why she’d thrown Everett out of her house. It wasn’t anything he’d done apparently, but something he’d said.
“Do you know what he told me?” she sobbed.
“I think I do,” Delia said.
“About timelike—”
“—loops. Yes, dear.”
Gretta looked stricken. “You too? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell everybody?”
“I considered it,” I said. “Only then I thought, what would folks do if they knew their actions no longer mattered? Most would behave decently enough. But a few would do some pretty bad things, I’d think. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”
She was silent for a while.
“Explain to me again about timelike loops,” she said at last. “Ev tried, but by then I was too upset to listen.”
“Well, I’m not so sure myself. But the way he explained it to me, they’re going to fix the problem by going back to the moment before the rupture occurred and preventing it from ever happening in the first place. When that happens, everything from the moment of rupture to the moment when they go back to apply the patch separates from the trunk timeline. It just sort of drifts away, and dissolves into nothingness—never was, never will be.”
“And what becomes of us?”
“We just go back to whatever we were doing when the accident happened. None the worse for wear.”
“But without memories.”
“How can you remember something that never happened?”
“So Ev and I—”
“No, dear,” Delia said gently.
“How much time do we have?”
“With a little luck, we have the rest of the summer,” Delia said. “The question is, how do you want to spend it?”
“What does it matter,” Gretta said bitterly, “if it’s all going to end?”
“Everything ends eventually. But after all is said and done, it’s what we do in the meantime that matters, isn’t it?”
The conversation went on for a while more. But that was the gist of it.
Eventually, Gretta got out her cell and called Everett. She had him on speed dial, I noticed. In her most corporate voice, she said, “Get your ass over here,” and snapped the phone shut without waiting for a response.
She didn’t say another word until Everett’s car pulled up in front of her place. Then she went out and confronted him. He put his hands on his hips. She grabbed him and kissed him. Then she took him by the hand and led him back into the house.
They didn’t bother to turn on the lights.
I stared at the silent house for a little bit. Then I realized that Delia wasn’t with me anymore, so I went looking for her.
She was out on the back porch. “Look,” she whispered.
There was a full moon and by its light we could see the Triceratops settling down to sleep in our backyard. Delia had managed to lure them all the way in at last. Their skin was all silvery in the moonlight; you couldn’t make out the patterns on their frills. The big trikes formed a kind of circle around the little ones. One by one, they closed their eyes and fell asleep.
Believe it or not, the big bull male snored.
It came to me then that we didn’t have much time left. One morning soon we’d wake up and it would be the end of spring and everything would be exactly as it was before the dinosaurs came. “We never did get to Paris or London or Rome or Marrakech,” I said sadly. “Or even Disneyworld.”
Without taking her eyes off the sleeping trikes, Delia put an arm around my waist. “Why are you so fixated on going places?” she asked. “We had a nice time here, didn’t we?”
“I just wanted to make you happy.”
“Oh, you idiot. You did that decades ago.”
So there we stood, in the late summer of our lives. Out of nowhere, we’d been given a vacation from our ordinary lives, and now it was almost over. A pessimist would have said that we were just waiting for oblivion. But Delia and I didn’t see it that way. Life is strange. Sometimes it’s hard, and other times it’s painful enough to break your heart. But sometimes it’s grotesque and beautiful. Sometimes it fills you with wonder, like a Triceratops sleeping in the moonlight.
TRAVELLER’S REST
David I. Masson
It was an apocalyptic sector. Out of the red-black curtain of the forward sight-barrier, which at this distance from the Frontier shut down a mere twenty metres north, came every sort of meteoric horror: fission and fusion explosions, chemical detonations, a super-hail of projectiles of all sizes and basic velocities, sprays of nerve-paralysants and thalamic dopes. The impact devices burst on the barren rock of the slopes or the concrete of the forward stations, some of which were disintegrated or eviscerated every other minute. The surviving installations kept up an equally intense and nearly vertical fire of rockets and shells. Here and there a protectivized figure could be seen sprinting up, down or along the slopes on its mechanical walker like a frantic ant from an anthill attacked by flamethrowers. Some of the visible oncoming trajectories could be seen snaking overhead into the indigo gloom of the rear sight-curtain, perhaps fifty metres south, which met the steep-falling rock surface forty-odd metres below the observer’s eye. The whole scene was as if bathed in a gigantic straight rainbow. East and west, as far as the eye could see, perhaps some forty miles in this clear mountain air despite the debris of explosion (but cut off to west by a spur from the range) the visibility-corridor witnessed a continual onslaught and counter-onslaught of devices. The visible pandemonium was shut in by the sight-barriers’ titanic canyon walls of black, reaching the slim pale strip of horizon-spanning light at some immense height. The audibility-corridor was vastly wider than that of sight; the many-pitched din, even through left ear in helm, was considerable.
“Computer-sent, must be,” said H’s transceiver into his right ear. No sigil preceded this statement, but H knew the tones of B, his next-up, who in any case could be seen a metre away saying it, in the large concrete bubble whence they watched, using a plaspex window and an infrared northviewer with a range of some hundreds of metres forward. His next-up had been in the bunker for three minutes, apparently overchecking, probably for an appreciation to two-up who might be in station VV now.
“Else how can they get minutely impacts here, you mean?” said H.
“Well, of course it could be long range low-frequency—we don’t really know how Time works over There.”
“But if the co
nceleration runs asymptotically to the Frontier, as it should if Their Time works in mirror-image, would anything ever have got over?”
“Doesn’t have to, far’s I can see—maybe it steepens a lot, then just falls back at the same angle the other Side,” said B’s voice; “anyway, I didn’t come to talk science: I’ve news for you, if we hold out the next few seconds here, you’re Relieved.”
H felt a black inner sight-barrier beginning to engulf him, and a roaring in his ears swallowed up the noise of the bombardment. He bent double as his knees began to buckle, and regained full consciousness. He could see his replacement now, an uncertain-looking figure in prot-suit (like everybody else up here) at the far side of the bunker.
“XN 3, what orders then?” he said crisply, his pulse accelerating.
“XN 2: pick em-kit now, repeat now, rocket 3333 to VV, present tag”—holding out a luminous orange label printed with a few coarse black characters—“and proceed as ordered thence.”
H stuck up his right thumb from his fist held at elbow length, in salute. It was no situation for facial gestures or unnecessary speech. “XN 3, yes, em-kit, 3333 rocket, tag” (he had taken it in his left glove) “and W orders; parting!”
He missed B’s nod as he skimmed on soles to the exit, grabbed a small bundle hanging (one of fifteen) from the fourth hook along, slid down the greasy slide underground ten metres to a fuel-cell-lit cavern, pressed a luminous button in the wall, watched a lit symbol passing a series of marks, jumped into the low car as it ground round the corner, and curled up foetuswise. His weight having set off the door mechanism, the car shut, slipped down and (its clamps setting on H’s body) roared off down the chute.
Twenty-five seconds after his parting word H uncurled at the forward receiver cell of station VV nearly half a mile downslope. He crawled out as the rocket ground off again, walked ten steps onward in this larger version of his northward habitat, saluted thumb-up and presented his tag to two-up (recognized from helm-tint and helm-sign), saying simultaneously, “XN 3 rep, Relieved.”
“XN 1 to XN 3: take this” (holding out a similar orange tag plucked from his pocket) “and take mag-lev train down, in—seventy seconds. By the way, ever seen a prehis?”
“No, sir.”
“Spot through here, then; look like pteros but more primitive.”
The infrared telescopic viewer looking north-west passed through the forward sight-barrier which due north was about forty metres away here. Well upslope yet still well clear of the dark infrared-radiation barrier could be seen, soundlessly screaming and yammering, two scaly animals about the size of large dogs, but with two legs and heavy wings, flopping around a hump or boulder on the rock. They might have been hit on their way along, and could hardly have had any business on that barren spot, H thought.
“Thanks; odd,” he said. Eleven seconds of the seventy had gone. He pulled out a squirter-cup from the wall and took a drink from the machine through his helm. Seventeen seconds gone, fifty-three to go.
“XN 1 to XN 3: how are things up there?”
Naturally a report was called for: XN 2 might never return, and communication up-time and down-time was nearly impossible at these latitudes over more than a few metres.
“XN 3. Things have been hotting up all day; I’m afraid a burst through may be attempted in the next hour or so—only my guess, of course. But I’ve never seen anything like it all this time up here. I suppose you’ll have noticed it in VV too?”
“XN 1, thanks for report,” was all the answer he got. But he could hear for himself that the blitz was much more intense than any he had known at this level either.
Only twenty-seven seconds remained. He saluted and strode off across the bunker with his em-kit and the new tag. He showed the tag to the guard, who stamped it and pointed wordlessly down a corridor. H ran down this, arriving many metres down the far end at a little gallery. An underslung rail-guided vehicle with slide-doors opening into cubicles glided quietly alongside. A gallery-guard waved as H and two others waiting opened doors whose indicators were unlit, the doors slid to, and H found himself gently clamped in on a back-tilted seat as the mag-lev train accelerated downhill. After ten seconds it stopped at the next checkhalt; a panel in the cubicle ceiling lit up to state DIVERSION, LEFT, presumably because the direct route had been destroyed. The train now appeared to accelerate but more gently, swung away to left (as H could feel) and stopped at two more checkhalts before swinging back right and finally decelerating, coming to rest and opening some 480 seconds after its start, by Had’s personal chronograph, instead of the 200 he had expected.
At this point daylight could again be seen. From the top bunker where XN 2 had discharged him, Had had now gone some ten miles south and nearly 3000 metres down, not counting detours. The forward sight-barrier here was hidden by a shoulder of mountain covered in giant lichen, but the southern barrier was evident as a violet-black fog-wall a quarter of a mile off. Lichens and some sort of grass-like vegetation covered much of the neighbouring landscape, a series of hollows and ravines. Noise of war was still audible, mingled with that of a storm, but nearby crashes were not frequent and comparatively little damage could be seen. The sky overhead was turbulent. Some very odd-looking animals, perhaps between a lizard and a stoat in general appearance, were swarming up and down a tree-fern near by. Six men in all got out of the mag-lev train, besides Had. Two and three marched off in two groups down track eastward. One (not one of those who had got in at VV) stayed with Had.
“I’m going down to the Great Valley; haven’t seen it for twenty days; everything’ll be changed. Are you sent far?” said the other man’s voice in Had’s right ear through the transceiver.
“I— I— I’m Relieved,” tried Had uncertainly.
“Well, I’m . . . disintegrated!” was all the other man could manage. Then after a minute, “Where will you go?”
“Set up a business way south, I think. Heat is what suits me, heat and vegetation. I have a few techniques I could put to good use in management of one sort or another. I’m sorry—I never meant to plume it over you with this—but you did ask me.”
“That’s all right. You certainly must have Luck, though. I never met a man who was Relieved. Make good use of it, won’t you. It helps to make the Game worthwhile up here—I mean, to have met a man who is joining all those others we’re supposed to be protecting—it makes them real to us in a way.”
“Very fine of you to take it that way,” said Had.
“No, I mean it. Otherwise we’d wonder if there was any people to hold the Front for.”
“Well, if there weren’t, how’d the techniques have developed for holding on up here?” put Had.
“Some of the Teccols I remember in the Great Valley might have developed enough techniques for that.”
“Yes, but think of all the pure science you need to work up the techniques from; I doubt if that could have been studied inside the Valley Teccols.”
“Possibly not—that’s a bit beyond me,” said the other’s voice a trifle huffily, and they stood on in silence till the next cable-car came up and round at the foot of the station. Had let the man get in it—he felt he owed him that—and a minute later (five seconds only, up in his first bunker, he suddenly thought ironically and parenthetically) the next car appeared. He swung himself in just as a very queer-looking purple bird with a long bare neck alighted on the stoat-lizards’ tree-fern. The cable-car sped down above the ravines and hollows, the violet southern curtain backing still more swiftly away from it. As the time-gradient became less steep his brain began to function better and a sense of well-being and meaningfulness grew in him. The car’s speed slackened.
Had was glad he still wore his prot-suit when a couple of chemical explosions burst close to the cable line, presumably by chance, only fifty metres below him. He was even more glad of it when flying material from a third broke the cable itself well downslope and the emergency cable stopped him at the next pylon. He slid down the pylon’s lift and
spoke with his transceiver close to the telephone at the foot. He was told to make west two miles to the next cable-car line. His interlocutor, he supposed, must be speaking from an exchange more or less on the same latitude as that of his pylon, since communication even here was still almost impossible north—south except at ranges of some metres. Even so, there was a squeaky sound about the other voice and its speech came out clipped and rapid. He supposed his own voice would sound gruff and drawled to the other.
Using his walker, he picked his way across ravines and gullies, steering by compass and watching the sight-barriers and the Doppler tint-equator ahead for yawing. All very well for that man to talk about Teccols, he thought, but he must realize that no civilization could have evolved from anywhere as far north as the Great Valley: it’s far too young to have even evolved Men by itself—at least at this end; I’m not sure how far south the eastern end goes.
The journey was not without its hazards: there were several nearby explosions, and what looked like a suspicious artificial miasma, easily overlooked, lay in two hollows which he decided to go round. Moreover, an enraged giant bear-sloth came at him in a mauve shrub-thicket and had to be eliminated with his quickgun. But to one who had just come down from that mountain hell all this seemed like a pleasant stroll.
Finally he came upon the line of pylons and pressed the telephone button at the foot of the nearest, after checking that its latitude-number was nearly right. The same voice, a little less outlandish and rapid, told him a car would arrive in three quarters of a minute and would be arranged to stop at his pylon; if it did not, he was to press the emergency button nearby. Despite his walker, nearly an hour had gone by since he set out for it. Perhaps ninety minutes had passed since he first left the top bunker—well over a minute and a half of their time there.