In the Distance, and Ahead in Time

by George Zebrowski

  “Fire’s out,” Thessan repeated.

  “Go to sleep,” Foler said.

  In time, Ishbok told himself, Anneka would belong completely to Foler and his brother. He saw himself moving on to another place, another group. If Anneka became heavy with Foler’s child, that would be enough. Foler would lose an edge-maker: Ishbok would lose Anneka. I have no courage, he said to himself.

  Ishbok opened his eyes and saw stars twinkling brightly in a darkening sky. His eyes were heavy. He felt uncaring in the tired satisfaction of his full stomach. Thessan had gone to lie down next to his brother. They were sleeping beasts and could not harm him. Faber faces mocked him when his eyes closed; yet their expressions also seemed pitying. A dark tide came in upon him, billowing clouds of darkness carrying him away from all awareness.

  II

  Anneka’s sobbing woke him near dawn. He lifted his head and saw her kneeling over her parents, a dark form against the pale light coming in through the windows.

  He raised himself and crawled toward her, until he could see the old couple lying together in death. He got up on his knees and was still. Anneka did not look at him as she hovered over the lumpy masses of the dead.

  Thessan began to snore loudly.

  Ishbok knew that the old ones could not have lived much longer. Both had been more than thirty years old, though he had read that in the old time people had lived to a hundred. Even so the feeling of uselessness had contributed to their death.

  In the corner beyond, Foler woke up to watch. Thessan began to snore even more loudly than before. Foler poked him in the ribs and the snoring stopped.

  Anneka lay down next to her parents as if to imitate their stillness. In his corner Foler lay back and went to sleep. Ishbok moved backward on his knees and crawled under his blankets.

  After a while sleep returned. Gratefully, he drifted away from the presence of death.

  He awoke after what seemed a very long time, but the pale light of dawn was not much brighter than before. He sat up and looked around the room. Anneka was not with her parents. He peered across the room and saw her bare shoulders next to Foler’s.

  Ishbok got up on all fours and started to crawl toward her, his heart a cold stone in his chest. In a moment he saw that her dark eyes were open wide, staring at the ceiling as she clutched her portion of the gray blanket.

  A whistle of air escaped from Thessan, who now slept a dozen paces away, like a dog who had been driven away for the night.

  Ishbok stopped crawling. Anneka turned her head and looked at him, staring at him as if from out of a dark cave.

  “Get away!” she whispered, baring her teeth grotesquely.

  “Anneka …”

  Foler awoke suddenly, saw him, and laughed. “Swine,” Ishbok said softly.

  Foler propped himself up on one elbow and regarded him with mock seriousness. “If you weren’t so useful I would kill you. Maybe I’d let Thessan do it.”

  “Go away,” Anneka said. “Don’t fight with him.”

  Ishbok stood up and said, “I’m leaving this morning.”

  Foler looked uncertain as he stood up wearing only his pants and boots.

  Ishbok felt all his muscles tense as the thought of having been wrong about Anneka took hold of him. What did she see in Foler, who would lend her to his brother as easily as he would spit. He looked into her eyes, but they still stared at him from beyond the shadows.

  Thessan awoke and giggled.

  “You’re not going to leave,” Foler said. “I’ll beat you into death first.”

  Anneka turned her face away from him.

  “Filthy swine,” Ishbok said, “you’re no better than an animal.”

  Foler lunged at him, but Ishbok stepped to one side, turned and ran out the door into the corridor. Behind him Thessan was shrieking with glee.

  Without stopping, Ishbok started to climb the stairway. He went up three stories without stopping.

  His heart was pounding wildly when he stopped to listen. An acid taste had come up from his stomach. He threw up a little onto the black finished floor of the landing. He staggered toward the door, which led into the city level and looked inside. Dark. He could not see inside.

  Suddenly he heard a noise from below. Foler and Thessan were coming up after him. He turned in time to see Foler reach the landing, knife in hand.

  Ishbok ran into the darkness of the room. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a door ahead of him, outlined in pale light. When he reached it a dark figure stepped into the frame. Ishbok heard Thessan’s idiot laugh echo in the empty room. Somehow Thessan had reached this level by another way. The brothers were playing with him, he realized. He stopped and heard Foler come through the door behind him.

  The thought of being beaten by Foler and Thessan was suddenly unbearable. Ishbok rushed toward Thessan’s dark form. He bent low and knocked the shadow on its back with his head. The impact sent both of them sliding on the black floor until they came to a stop in the center of the next room.

  Here the windows were gray with dawnlight. Ishbok saw another door at the far end as he scrambled to his feet. Thessan was clutching at him and shrieking. Ishbok kicked him in the ribs to free his right foot, and raced across the polished floor, out into the corridor and up the stairs. He heard Foler screaming at Thessan as he climbed, but when he paused on the next landing he heard only his own breathing.

  “When I catch you,” Foler shouted suddenly, “you’ll never lech after a woman again!” His laugh echoed in the stair space.

  Ishbok’s one hope was to outlast the brothers in the climb. If he could get enough of a lead, then he could hide on one of the levels. They would not be able to guess where he had left the stairs.

  He went up two more levels and stopped. Heavy footsteps chattered like curses from below. He took another deep breath and fled up the stairs, trying to step as lightly as possible.

  One stretch of stairs, then another, a landing, the next stretch, a new landing, and the next. His bare feet were being burned by the friction of leather in his boots. After half a dozen turns he began to feel pain in his lungs. His heart was going to burst and his eyes would pop out of their sockets; he forced himself to the next landing and stopped.

  He filled his lungs with air and held his breath for a few seconds, but the pulse of blood in his ears drowned all sound from below.

  Gradually he heard the wheezing and labored breathing of the two men. Foler’s curses grew louder, threatening to erupt as visible monstrosities; Thessan’s high-pitched shrieks were snakes constricting the physical deformities conjured up in Ishbok’s mind by Foler’s wrath.

  Foler’s head appeared as he turned to climb the final stretch of stairs. Ishbok turned to climb higher and slipped on the polished surface before the first step. His forehead hit the fourth stair. He lay stunned, clawing at the railing.

  In a moment the brothers were on him, collapsing on top of him in a heap. Foler was cackling. “Hold him down, Thes, then I’ll cut it off and throw it down—”

  Ishbok punched him in the face, and with a lucky thrust put a finger in Thessan’s eye. Then he stood up, picking up the knife Foler had dropped.

  As he went up the stairs, Ishbok dropped the knife down the stairwell. He reached the next landing and ran into the empty room. The one beyond it was bright with the orange light of the sun rising through the morning storm clouds. Ishbok passed into a third room. Here the windows were being dotted with the first raindrops of the storm. At the other end of the room he went through a door and found more stairs.

  He went down two levels and hid in a windowless chamber. He tried to relax in the dark corner. If they caught up with him again, he would need all his strength. His best hope was that they were now as tired as he was, and would not want to waste the day. There was no food in the upper levels of the city; either Ishbok would come back or starve. If he tried
to leave the city, they would be waiting. An upward climb would help him only briefly. Even if he could sneak past them into the countryside, they would track him like an animal. And today they would have food; tomorrow they would have food, while he would be weaker.

  After a long while he got up, deciding that he would rather starve and die than be captured for the amusement of Foler and Thessan. They would humiliate him in front of Anneka, maiming and disfiguring him permanently. Then he would never be able to leave the group. He would not be able to hunt. He would grow old exchanging his skills for food and protection. They would force him to teach Anneka’s sons. And when he was old and useless and empty of dreams, they would turn him out to die.

  Anneka had never loved him; he had proof enough of that. But before he died, he would reach the top of the city. That much he could still accomplish; he would keep faith with his wish of long ago.

  He fled upward for most of the morning, stopping to rest in dozens of rooms. The rain stopped and the sun rose with him, looking into the windows, lighting up his way, warming the chill of morning. He would stop occasionally to hear the sound of air coming up the stairwell, the sound of a breathing beast about to be loosed after him. The sight of Anneka with Foler would not fade from behind his eyes. His muscles were tight as he climbed; his mind held a naked hope, almost as if there would be some kind of answer at the top of the city, something so much greater than his life that it would destroy the hurt of the morning. He willed himself upward.

  Finally, he came through the opening, which led him out onto the flat area behind the great spire. He felt like a wanderer in a dream state. His lungs were heavy, his feet hurt, and he felt dizzy. The sun was hot on his face. It had won the race toward noon. The air was still and hot. He stopped to wipe the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his hide jerkin.

  Ahead lay an open plain of metal. On it sat more than thirty aircraft from the old time, huge metallic birds, motionless. He walked toward them slowly, forgetting for a moment the reality of loss behind him.

  He stopped beside one of the flying things and pulled himself up inside through an opening. He was inside a bubble-like window. He imagined that the craft was moving through the clouds, carrying him away from the city, freeing him of his prison.

  His whole life had been a confinement. He would not have Anneka. There would be no children to weep over his death. He might have told them his dreams. Now there would be nothing.

  He looked up at the blue sky. It was a desert of false promises, beckoning him on with unreal suggestions of worlds beyond; there was nothing there that could help him.

  As his strength drained away, he sat back in the bubble. The climb had taken all his energy. There was no way to gain it back. Sleep was the only escape.

  He woke up choking on the hot air trapped inside the bubble. The afternoon sun was a blinding fire in the sky, rousing him back to the struggle of his life. Death and his brother, sleep, fled before the eye of the sun called Caesar as he scrambled out of the aircraft.

  A strong breeze cooled him. Huge clouds sat on the northern horizon, promising a storm by evening.

  He walked to the edge of the city and looked out over the countryside of green hills and rocky outcroppings and the blue stream, which twisted away to the hazy blue at the end of the world.

  He looked down and saw three people moving away from the city. The figures were so small, so insignificant; he felt no interest in them. And he felt no hunger or thirst. His warm body drank the cool wind. He shivered and turned to walk back toward the flying machine. Perhaps he could rest under a wing.

  He opened his eyes at night and the infinity of sky and stars had become a cage. The ring was a barrier, saying to him that he had climbed so far and would be permitted to go no higher. This plane of metal would be his grave, guarded by mechanical birds. The wind would blow away his flesh, the sun would bleach his bones; starlight would enter the open eyes of his stony skull to stir whatever ghosts of thought remained. He would lie here forever, as dead as his world, scarcely more dead than the life into which he had been born. Caesar would burn away, the veil of air would be torn from Cleopatra, all the time of passing would dwindle, but he would never come again.

  Ishbok closed his eyes, looking for a semblance of peace within himself; now he found only weariness and hunger and hurt. He imagined the black wing of the aircraft moving down to cover him from the cold. Tears forced themselves out through his closed eyelids and he tasted their salt on his lips. The fever shivered his body.

  Sleep came gently and he gave himself up to its calm.

  III

  Once, long ago, when he lay dying, a black dot appeared in the morning sky, growing larger as it came down until he screamed at its closeness. Then it crushed him and he had died.

  Something strong held his head; his body was almost unfeeling. He opened his eyes. White, as if the very air were white. Black floaters in his eyes, flowing in and out of his direct vision. Eye clouds, his mother had called them, telling him to worry only if he saw one, which did not move when he tried to look at it. Good food would always clear them up, and the same ones would not last more than a year.

  He remembered light spilling out from an entranceway of some kind, like daylight but stronger, more like the white around him now. A strange thing sitting on the plane of metal …

  Something was creating images in his brain, pushing him to think, changing him, prodding …

  A man’s garment reminded him of a mirror-wing moth, glittering. He sat in a small vessel, guiding it into a giant ship floating in the dark …

  Time running backward … war fabers marching through snowy passes … across green fields …

  An explosive burst of white light …

  Plagues … piled bodies …

  A world emptying out, subsiding into a terrible silence …

  His world.

  Reclaimed.

  A word referring to him.

  Others were being gathered from all over the world.

  Slowly, thoughts became words, strange yet clear. Their meaning filled a need in him, one he had felt but never fully understood. Unfolding comprehension was wondrous, and frightening, as if the fiery sun itself were speaking to him.

  “… we have come to rebuild.”

  Suddenly he was rushing through space toward a yellow sun, and closer to linger over a blue world …

  “Earth, the original home of your people and mine. The area of space within five hundred light years of Sol is dotted with failed colonies established more than a thousand years ago. Most are lingering near death. Our newest ships will link these worlds into a loose confederation. We have brought tools, generating plants, which have the power of small suns. We have synthesis techniques to help you make all that is needed for life.”

  Ishbok opened his eyes and saw the woman’s face. “Why should you want to do all this”

  “We wish to help,” she said. Her hair was white, clinging to her head in short curls; her eyes were green. “A confederation benefits all who belong. It is better to live under law, in social and physical health; a confederation is better than being alone.”

  Ishbok thought of the food-gathering groups he had known, and how they depended on each other, suffering from need and at each other’s hands.

  “But why talk with me”

  She smiled. “Because I think you understand, and that will help you lead your people.”

  “Lead?”

  “Rest now. There will be more to learn later.” Her face receded into the white and a healing lethargy crept into his eyes, closing them.

  He awoke feeling stronger than he had ever remembered; yet there was still a sense of struggle in his mind.

  He knew so many new things, puzzling facts, which he accepted without hesitation. The white room was in a giant starship circling Cleopatra. The starcrossing vessel was 10 kilome
ters long and capable of enormous velocities in excess of light speed. The offworlders had rebuilt his health. But he struggled with the thought of a device inside his head. “It will answer questions,” the white-haired woman had told him. Answers to any question he might think, as long as there was an answer in the starship’s memory elements. He did not always understand the answers. There was a strange new country inside him, as vast as all the libraries he had known, as complete as all the knowledge of humankind, the central homefire of a species.

  He tried to sit up and the bed shaped itself to support him.

  This new world will always be a part of you now, the woman had said.

  Who were these offworlders who could see inside each other? Was it right for anyone to have such power?

  “We are your brothers and sisters.” The words were inside him, whispering across the presence of knowledge, which suddenly seemed a precious gift.

  “But that is how you want me to see it!” Ishbok shouted and sat up in his bed.

  A door opened in the wall to his left, startling him. The woman with white curls walked in and sat down in the chair next to his bed.

  “You’ve been debating with your tutor-link quite a lot, sometimes even in your sleep.” She smiled again. “Let’s be friends, Ishbok. My name is Hela Fenn. You can call me Fenn. My profession is psycho-soc. Do you have another name?”

  Ishbok noted that she had known his name, but he did not remember giving it to her. “It’s the only one,” he said, wondering how much of himself was no longer his own.

  “How’s your understanding of incoming material? Do you get a full picture of why we are here?”

  Ishbok nodded. “How old are you, Fenn?”

  “I’m forty.”

  Almost twice Anneka’s age, older in Earth years. Older than anyone he had ever known.

  “Everything we’ve learned about you, Ishbok, indicates strong mental abilities in a number of directions. You understand alternatives quickly, you know how much you can do and not do with the resources at hand; you will lead if given the chance, but you are willing to follow if you agree with one who leads—”