THE TIDES OF TIME

by John Brunner

  “Explain! Explain!”

  “It must consist in recognition of his plight. It must consist in his admission that the world he came to was already doomed by his existence. Because of him, its planned perfection was deranged. No matter how he struggled to adapt, the machines would thereafter recall as actual knowledge an imperfection that had previously been theory. They were forbidden to deceive themselves.”

  “So sad! So sad!” she whispered, her tone verging on a sob. “The perfection sought by Suleyman, then, was—”

  “It was something we cannot create, we who are creatures. It was something he had sought in vain in our creations, which are necessarily less perfect than their makers. No more was it to be found on the world he traveled to. Nor anywhere.”

  “Perhaps because he was searching in the wrong way?”

  “Conceivably.” Gene fought a yawn and lost. “But as to what the right one is, or if there is one—!”

  “Is there a maker, do you think?”

  “We are makers,” he said stonily. “We have to be.”

  “Yes… Yes. I guess so. There’s no one else. At least he found his place, as we’ve found ours… There’s something wrong with this bed. Gene, let me lie with you. I’m cold. I’m very cold.”

  It was the first time. In the morning the weather was fine again. But there had been something magical about the storm.

  PART TWO

  THE EXHIBIT

  is a sheet of tattered paper bearing colored pictures.

  It reflects a world that has vanished forever

  THE MONTH

  is May

  THE NAME

  is Ingrid

  When Gene awoke, he was alarmed to discover that their rented cabin cruiser was no longer safely beached; one of her mooring cables had parted. But he must have made a good job of securing the other, for there she lay bobbing in early sunlight, sleek and white among gentle ripples. He hastened to fetch his binoculars and inspect her right away, to see if the storm had damaged her, but she bore no apparent trace of the ordeal she had undergone bar the fact that some paint had been scraped from her cutwater and the neatly lettered name bestowed by her mocking owner—Fairweather Friend—was almost illegible.

  Well, so long as no harm had been sustained to her planking… But he’d better make certain. Doubtless she was insured; she remained, however, their only means of getting away from this isolated spot without attracting attention.

  Stacy was still asleep. He reached a decision. After glancing around to confirm there was no one in sight, he scrambled down the three or four rocky meters to the beach, discarded the shorts and sandals he had pulled on, and waded out to the boat. He reached her with the water only chest-high.

  Leaving dripmarks all over the deck and the cabin carpet, he confirmed that they had been amazingly lucky; her hull was intact. He was humming when he reemerged from below, and looking forward to breakfast.

  It was a complete shock when he heard someone hail him from close by.

  Spinning around, hands reflexively flying to cover his nudity, he saw a man about his own age, with ginger hair and freckles, leaning on the after gunwale and grinning at him. He wore a red shirt and there was a diver’s watch on his left arm. He stood casually balanced in a rocking rowboat, on whose after thwart sat another, much older man, face lined and swarthy above a black denim smock. Incongruously, the latter sported gold-rimmed sunglasses.

  “Don’t worry about your lack of pants,” the freckled man said. “We’ve had to get used to people in the raw since tourists started to invade us. Even my father-in-law—old Stavros here—is resigned to it now, like the other locals, though I’m not so sure about our papa… I’m Milo Hamilton, by the way, and the reason I’m Greek with a Scots name goes back to a British soldier who fell in love with my grandmother and settled here because it reminded him of the Hebridean island he was born on but with better weather and better cooking.” His grin grew wider than ever.

  “Well—ah—come aboard!” Gene suggested, wondering how he could reach at least a towel if they accepted.

  “Thanks, but no thanks; we’re on an errand. We just caught sight of you and thought we’d better check that you rode out the storm okay. Since we find you in good shape, we’ll be on our way. Oh, I should have said: you can buy bread and wine and stuff at Oragalia Port”—pointing in the direction of the hamlet on the eastern beach—“and there’s a track across the headland if you care to make it on foot. I keep the taverna, by the way. Just ask for me if you need help.”

  He was about to resume his thwart and oars with the ease of one accustomed to the sea, when Gene said hastily, “Just a moment! You mentioned tourists. Uh… Are we likely to be bothered by them?”

  Milo favored him with a sweeping glance that said, as plain as words, “Aren’t you pretty much a tourist yourself?” But he kept his poise, and said aloud: “Don’t know what you mean by bothered! I know what I mean by it—gangs of ‘em from all the cold northern countries, not a one polite enough to learn a word of the local language, demanding the same kind of food they’re used to at home, getting falling-down drunk because they find the wine so cheap here, throwing up all over my floor… It’s too early in the season for the worst of them, though. You may find a few kids wandering this way, but all they want to do is peel off, swim and laze around. They’re pretty harmless, though if I were you I’d keep an eye on my more valuable belongings. They have been known to claim the world owes them a living… Endaxi, Stavro—piyainoumé!”

  Gene watched the boat depart with mixed feelings. Eventually, however, he gave a shrug and waded back to shore.

  When he regained their shelter, this relic of war well above sea level which they had so providentially spotted last night with both their radio and their sonar out, Stacy was sitting up with her half of the sleeping bag clutched around her knees, her dark and long-lashed eyes ajar with worry.

  “I heard you talking to someone!” she exclaimed.

  Soothing, he explained. “I went to make sure the Friend was okay after the storm, and she is. Someone in a passing rowboat spotted her and came to find out if we were in any trouble. Nice guy—owns the local taverna. Said to call on him for anything we need.”

  But Stacy was still haunted by suspicion. “Are you sure?” she countered.

  “Sure he owns the taverna? Well, until I see him behind the bar—”

  “Stuff it, will you? You know damned well what I mean!” She scrambled out of the bag and seized her jeans and panties, drawing them on in a succession of panicky jerks, then donned a tee shirt and combed loose her sleek black hair with her fingers.

  He made to embrace her, but she pushed him away. “I’m full to bursting! Is there any place I can go?”

  “Try the sea,” he said, turning aside with a shrug. “You needn’t have worried about getting dressed, incidentally. The guy said the locals are used to people in the altogether.”

  “What? You mean we’ve found our way to—?”

  “Yes, damn it! There are tourists here! Like us!”

  For a moment he expected her to snap back at him; instead, she thrust her feet into her sandals and made for the entrance.

  “What the hell,” she said despondently. “We’ve screwed up this planet past hope of recovery. Any extra mess of mine won’t make much difference.”

  “At least it’s biodegradable!” he chaffed. But she had hurried out of earshot.

  During her absence, he occupied himself in preparing breakfast. Their bread was stale, but still edible, and there remained a hunk of cheese and plenty of olives. Also there was enough water for coffee, so he lit their little butane stove and hunted out the rest of their stock of sugar and powdered milk.

  Meantime, he was silently cursing himself. What in the world had persuaded him to accept Stacy’s view that it was easier to elude pursuit among islands, where the arrival of anybody was an event, let alone a couple like themselves, than on a good solid continent with all its means of emergency es
cape, by air or car or train or even on foot?

  Well, he was—they were—here today. And he was damned if he was going to let himself imagine, as she appeared to, a threat of discovery around every corner!

  By the time Stacy returned, without having yielded to the temptation of a swim, he had sliced the bread and cheese and laid it on plastic plates, together with a twisted brown-paper cone containing the olives. She sat down facing him and ate without speaking until only a single olive remained.

  “Want it?” she said then.

  “You have it.”

  “That means you want it.”

  Traveling with this woman seemed to be an endless succession of such petty disputations. Right now he was relaxed enough to counter her.

  “It means I’d like it. But so would you, and I don’t want it enough to deprive you.”

  “Oh, all this over one measly olive!” she exclaimed, and picked up the oily paper as though to throw it away, and the olive with it. He caught her arm.

  “Let go of me!”

  “No, wait. I just had a great idea. Pass me a knife.”

  Which taking ceremoniously, he used to halve the wrinkled black ovoid.

  Seeing it laid out, neatly dissected, on his pale palm, she bit her lip, then grinned, then laughed outright and ate her half. Afterward, growing serious again, she said, “If we’re going to hide out here for a while, we’ll need more provisions.”

  “We can buy them in Milo’s village—Just a moment! Are we going to stick around? Who said we were?”

  She shrugged, leaning back against the rough concrete wall of their temporary home.

  “I thought you wanted me to take your word concerning this character in a rowboat who ‘just happened’ to spot us. Also the Friend is low on fuel, right?”

  Gene drew a deep breath. Adjusting to these total reversals of her attitude was something he should by now have grown accustomed to, yet he still found it hard.

  “Tell me,” he invited cautiously, “why you think we ought to stay here, even for a day or two, when normally you’re convinced there are spies everywhere.”

  “Oh, yes, I know!” she flared. “You want a continent behind you! But you were raised on one which doesn’t have national frontiers like mine, with passport officers and customs searches at every step you take! You don’t regard islands as being real, do you? And I quote! To hell with you and your ‘ancestors of continental stock!’ My subconscious feeling of security consists in having lots of nice deep water around me, like a moat!”

  Gene struggled to stay calm. He said in his mildest tone, “Fine, fine! You think it’s advisable to stay here. I only asked you to spell out why.”

  His reasonableness confounded her for a moment. Then she said, “Anyway, I don’t suppose an island like this has many phones, so rumors about our presence could take a long while to spread.”

  “There must be a radiophone at least—” he began.

  “I said many! Who’d lay phone cables for a place like this? Think it’s infested with highly paid reporters?”

  “Well, if there’s a tourist trade—” He had it in mind to beat her to the possibility of mainland newspapers circulating here, or pictures of her, if not him, being shown on TV. Mistaking his intention, she cut him short.

  “Too bad if one of the visitors falls ill, or his company goes broke or what the hell! Actually”—chuckling into yet another of her swift and unpredictable changes of mood—“I can just picture what would happen. Who would he be? A Dutchman or a Dane, most likely, a not quite successful sort of self-employed businessman, proud of the fact he speaks one foreign language and unprepared to learn a second, here with his wife and teenage children because they persuaded him that islands like this are the fashion now for holidays, but hating every moment, and suddenly overcome in the middle of the night by the conviction that he’s about to lose a million gulden. Or whatever.”

  The detail of her vision was infectious; it reminded Gene of the story she’d insisted on him telling her about—Whom had it been about? An old friend, or someone who had not exactly been a friend… He strove to recapture it. But it proved elusive as a dream.

  Maybe that was what it had been. Certainly its essence seemed unreal in the sober light of morning. He applied himself to elaborating her brief fantasy, saying, “Why, yes, of course! He’d go to the post office—if they have such a thing here—and he’d make himself misunderstood in his two wrong languages and he’d get more and more panicky, and eventually his son, or better his daughter, who’d have struck up an acquaintance with one of the locals, would come to him and say soothingly, ‘Dad, they only have telephone service on Mondays and Fridays, so why don’t you sit on the beach with us till then?’ And—”

  But she had lost interest, rousing herself to collect their plates and the few crusts of bread they had left.

  “Are there any seagulls I can throw the scraps to?”

  “No gulls,” he said. He remembered that distinctly.

  “Or other birds?”

  “I didn’t see any,” he admitted, and for some reason felt uncomfortable.

  “I’ll bury them, then. The ground looks as though it could do with a bit of humus. Let’s go and buy more food and wine, and fill the water bottle. Then we can spend a lazy day by ourselves, swimming and lying in the sun.”

  “We may not be alone,” Gene muttered, and repeated what Milo had said.

  “Well—so? The world belongs to all of us.”

  Half an hour ago she had seemed terrified by his chance encounter with Milo. Now she appeared to have forgotten all about the risk of their being recognized. Her mind must be spinning like a weathervane. Resignedly, Gene hauled himself to his feet.

  “That’s as may be! But there are lots of things aboard the Friend which we have no right to redistribute to strangers! I’ll make her secure. Back in a minute!”

  When he returned she was naked again, except for panties, and kneeling in front of the bag of clothes she had brought ashore, pondering what to change into. This, he knew, was a process not to be interrupted. Waiting patiently, he noticed things on the ground which had not been there earlier: five or six tarnished brass shell cases, probably spent by an automatic rifle.

  “Where did these come from?” he inquired curiously.

  “Oh, I found them while I was burying the rubbish. The beach is littered with them, just below the surface… Will this do, do you think?” She rose, holding up before her a beige linen minidress.

  “Perfectly,” he said. “But then you know my view: you look gorgeous in anything, or nothing. Especially nothing.”

  She pulled a face at him and drew the exiguous garment over her head; it reached barely halfway down her thighs. Thrusting her feet into sandals, and picking up a woven reed bag to hold their purchases, she invited him with a gesture to lead her to the path across the headland which Milo had pointed out. In burning heat, although the sun was less than halfway to the zenith, they picked their way among pebbles washed bare by last night’s rain, slipping occasionally on mud not yet dried out. The low sharp branches of surrounding shrubs attacked their calves, and insects buzzed in search of the rare blue flowers, and still one thing was missing. Stacy said at last, when they paused for breath at the crest of the track, “You’re right. There are no birds.”

  “No. Just us.”

  “Not just us,” she contradicted, pointing. The path at this point followed a cliff edge, and had brought them into sight of a handsome yacht, no doubt heading toward the little port for which they too were bound, with ten or a dozen passengers gathered along her rail, and several crew. At such a distance it was impossible to discern what flag she flew; fortunately, Stacy was too preoccupied to worry about her provenance.

  “An island having people, that lacks birds…” She gazed down, shielding her eyes against the sun.

  “They made the wrong choice.”

  “What do you mean?” She drew back and stared at him.

  “Birds. That wa
s the way the reptiles chose—the dinosaurs. They could have been intelligent, like us. I saw it on TV. Instead they decided on another course. They took to the air. And we overtook them.” Gene gave a forced laugh to show he wasn’t altogether serious.

  But she accepted his words at their face value. Sounding troubled, she said, “You mean the world’s resources could have been exhausted long ago, if something hadn’t happened to prevent the dinosaurs from digging coal.”

  Taken by her fancy, as in the case of the imaginary pompous Dutchman, Gene nodded.

  “Or drilling for oil, mining uranium, and come to that launching into space. We aren’t so special; it might have happened long ago.”

  “Then what would this island have been like? Would it have been here at all?” Turning, she surveyed it; from here they could not see it whole by any means, but this eastern side was webbed with rocky ridges and notched to form little sandy inlets. All but one of those in view were specked with tents like multicolored fungi: spaced far apart as yet, but presaging a later richer crop.

  “Ask a geologist; I’m not one. Shall we move on?”

  “Yes, I guess so…” She handed him the bag, which, even empty, was a burden in this heat, and scrambled onward down the narrow path.

  Shortly they reached the village, and found the yacht had cast anchor in its bay and discharged its passengers. There were too few of them to constitute a crowd, yet they gave the impression of an invading horde. They were not in competition with Gene and Stacy as they went about their business of buying bread, fish and fruit, tomatoes and wine and oil, enough to last the day, but complained loudly about the lack of souvenir shops and the difficulty of finding good vantage points to take a photo from. Their cameras reawakened Stacy’s fears and made her reluctant to consider Gene’s suggestion of a drink at the taverna before returning, though both were thirsty.

  “Suppose—!” she whispered.

  “Suppose what? One of this lot is a paparazzo with a line to the Italian scandal sheets? Out of the question! Besides, in a place like this it’s worth being on good terms with the guy who runs the bar. And you did say you fancied the idea of staying here for a while.”