by Anthology
‘Perhaps we can repair your machine. But you will be plunging into the unknown . . . ’
File made a gesture with his hands. ‘What could you possibly do to repair my machine?’
The chief rose and led the way to the tent where the machine lay. A brief command into the night produced a boy with a box of tools. The chief studied File’s machine, lifting a panel to see behind the instruments. Finally, he made adjustments, adding a device which took him about twenty minutes to make with glowing bits of wire. The time-potential meter began to lift above zero.
File stared in surprise.
‘Our science is very ancient and very wise,’ the chief said, ‘though these days we know it only by rote. Still, I, as father of the tribe, know enough so that when a man like yourself tells me that he has stranded himself in time, I know what the reason is.’
File was astounded by the turn of events. ‘When I get home—’ he began.
‘You will never get home. Neither will your scientists ever analyse time. Our ancient science has a maxim: No man understands time. Your machine travels under its own power now. If you leave here, you simply escape this place and take your chance elsewhere.’
‘I must make the attempt,’ File said. ‘I cannot remain here while there is a hope of getting back.’
But still he lingered.
The chief seemed to guess his thoughts. ‘Do not fear that you desert us,’ he said. ‘Your position is clear, as is ours. There is no help for either of us.’
File nodded and stepped up to the chair of the machine. As he cleaned off the grime and dust with his shirt sleeves, it occurred to him to look at the date register—he had not bothered to read the figures on his arrival. He did not expect it to make sense, for it had too few digits to account for the present antiquity of the Earth.
But when he read the dial he received a shock. 000008-324.01.7954. Less than nine years after his departure from the Geneva Complex!
He seated himself on the time machine and pressed the switch.
Internal rotation clockwise . . . external rotation anticlockwise . . . then the forward rushing. He plunged into the Continuum of Time.
Minutes passed, and no sign came that he would emerge automatically from his journey. Taking a chance, he pressed the switch to Stop.
With a residual turning of the translucent rods, the machine deposited itself into normal space-time orientation. About him, the landscape was more mind-shaking than anything he had ever dreamed.
Was it crystal? The final victory of the crystalline Raxa? For a moment the fantastic landscape, with its flashing, brilliant, mathematical overgrowth, deluded him into thinking it was so. But then he saw that it could not be—or if it was, the Raxa had evolved beyond their mineral heritage.
It was a world of geometrical form, but it was also a world of constant movement—or rather, since the movement was all so sudden as to be instantaneous, of constant transformation. Flashing extensions and withdrawals, all on the vertical and horizontal planes, dazzled his eyes. When he looked closer, he saw that in fact three-dimensional form was nowhere present. Everything consisted of two-dimensional shapes, which came together transitorily to give the illusion of form.
The colours, too—they underwent transformations and graduations which bespoke the action of regular mathematical principles, like the prismatic separation into the ideal spectrum. But here the manifestations were infinitely more subtle and inventive, just as subtle, tenuous music, using fifty instruments, can be made out of the seven tones of the diatonic scale.
File looked at the date register. It told him he was now fifteen years away from Appeltoft, anxiously awaiting his return in the Geneva Complex.
He tried again.
A lush world of lustrous vegetation swayed and rustled in a hot breeze. A troup of armadillo-like animals, but the size of horses, paraded through the clearing where File’s machine had come to rest. Without pausing, the leader swung its head to give him a docile, supercilious inspection, then turned to grunt something to the followers. They also gave him a cursory glance and then they had passed through a screen of wavy grass-trees. He heard their motions through the forest for some distance.
Again.
Barren rock. The sky hung with traceries of what were obviously dust clouds. Here the ground was clean of even the slightest trace of dust, but a strong cold wind blew. Presumably it swept the dust into the atmosphere and prevented it from precipitating, scouring the rock to a sparkling, ragged surface. He could hardly believe that this scrubbed shining landscape was actually the surface of a planet. It was like an exhibit.
Again.
Now he was in space, protected by some field the time machine seemed to create around itself. Something huge as Jupiter hung where Earth should have been.
Again.
Space again. A scarlet sun pouring bloody light over him. On his left, a tiny, vivid star, like a burning magnesium flare, lanced at his eyes. An impossible three-planet triune rotated majestically above him, with no more distance between them than from the Earth to the Moon.
He looked at the date register again. Twenty-odd years from departure.
Where was the sequence? Where was the progression he had come to find? How was Appeltoft to make sense out of this?
How was he going to find Appeltoft?
Desperately, he set the machine in motion again. His desperation seemed to have some effect: he picked up speed, rushing with insensate energy, and now he was not just in limbo but could see something of the universe through which he was passing.
After a while he got the impression that he was still, that it was the machine that was static while time and space were not. The universe poured around him, a disordered tumult of forces and energies, lacking direction, lacking purpose . . .
On he sped, hour after hour, as if he were trying to flee from some fact he could not face. But at last he could hide from it no longer. As he observed the chaos around him he knew.
Time had no sequence! It was not a continuous flowing. It had no positive direction. It went neither forwards, backwards, nor in a circle; neither did it stay still. It was totally random.
The universe was bereft of logic. It was nothing but chaos.
It had no purpose, no beginning, no end. It existed only as a random massof gases, solids, liquids, fragmentary accidental patterns. Like a kaleidoscope, it occasionally formed itself into patterns, so that it seemed ordered, seemed to contain laws, seemed to have form and direction.
But, in fact, there was nothing but chaos, nothing but a constant state of flux—the only thing that was constant. There were no laws governing time! Appeltoft’s ambition was impossible!
The world from which he had come, or any other world for that matter, could dissipate into its component elements at any instant, or could have come into being at any previous instant, complete with everybody’s memories! Who would be the wiser? The whole of the European Economic Community might have existed only for the half-second which it had taken him to press the starting switch of the time machine. No wonder he couldn’t find it!
Chaos, flux, eternal death. All problems were without solution. As File realised these facts he howled with the horror of it. He could not bring himself to stop. In proportion to his despair and fear, his speed increased, faster and faster, until he was pouring madly through turmoil.
Faster, farther . . .
The formless universe around him began to vanish as he went to an immense distance and beyond the limits of speed. Matter was breaking up, disappearing. Still he rushed on in terror, until the time machine fell away beneath him, and the matter of his body disintegrated and vanished.
He was a bodiless intelligence, hurtling through the void. Then his emotions began to vanish. His thoughts. His identity. The sensation of movement dropped away. Max File was gone. Nothing to see, hear, feel, or know.
He hung there, nothing but consciousness. He did not think—he no longer had any apparatus to think with. He had no nam
e. He had no memories. No qualities, attributes, or feelings. He was just there. Pure ego.
The same as nothing.
There was no time. A split second was the same as a billion ages.
So it would not have been possible for File, later, to assign any period to his interlude in unqualified void. He only became aware of anything when he began to emerge.
At first, there was only a vague feeling, like something misty. Then more qualities began to attach themselves to him. Motion began. Chaotic matter became distantly perceptible—disorganised particles, flowing energies and wavy lines.
A name impinged on his consciousness: Max File. Then the thought: That’s me.
Matter gradually congregated round him, and soon he had a body again and a complete set of memories. He could accept the existence of an unorganised universe now. He sighed. At the same moment the time machine formed underneath him.
All he could do now was to try to return to Geneva, however remote the possibility. How strange, to think that the whole of Europe, with all its seriously taken problems, was nothing more than a chance coming-together of random particles! But at least it was home—even if it only existed for a few seconds.
And if he could only rejoin those few seconds, he thought in agonised joyousness, he would be dissolved along with the rest of it and be released from this hideous extension of life he had escaped into.
And yet, he thought, how could he get back? Only by searching, only by searching . . .
He reckoned (though of course his calculations were liable to considerable error) that he spent several centuries searching through mindless turmoil. He grew no older; he felt no hunger or thirst; he did not breathe—how his heart kept beating without breath was a mystery to him, but it was on this, the centre of his sense of time, that he based his belief about the duration of the search. Occasionally he came upon other brief manifestations, other transient conglomerations of chaos. But now he was not interested in them, and he did not find Earth at the time of the EEC.
It was hopeless. He could search for ever.
In despair, he began to withdraw again, to become a bodiless entity and find oblivion, escape from his torments in the living death. It was while he was about to dispense with the last vestige of identity that he discovered his unsuspected power.
He happened to direct his mind to a grouping of jostling particles some distance away. Under the impact of his will, it moved!
Interested, he halted his withdrawal, but did not try to emerge back into his proper self—he had the feeling that as Max File he was impotent. As an almost unqualified ego, perhaps . . .
He allowed an image to form in his mind—it happened to be that of a woman—and directed it at the formless chaos. Instantly, against dark flux, lit by random flashes of light, a woman was formed out of chaotic matter. She moved, looked at him, and gave a languorous smile.
There was no doubt about it. She was not just an image. She was alive, perfect, and aware.
Amazed, he automatically let go of the mental image and transmitted a cancellation. The woman vanished, replaced by random particles and energies as before. The cloud lingered for a moment, then dispersed.
It was a new-found delight. He could make anything! For ages he experimented, creating everything he could think of. Once a whole world formed beneath him, complete with civilisations, a tiny sun, and rocket-ships probing out.
He cancelled it at once. It was enough to know that his every intention, even his vaguest and grandest thought, was translated into detail.
Now he had a means to return home—and now he could solve the government’s problem for good and all.
For if he could not find Europe, could he not create it over again? Would that not be just as good? In fact, it was a point of philosophy whether it would not be in fact the same Europe. This was Nietzsche’s belief, he remembered—his hope of personal immortality. Since, in the boundless universe, he was bound to recur—File’s discoveries had reinforced this view, anyhow—he would not die. Two identical objects shared the same existence.
And in this second Europe, why should he not solve the government’s dilemma for them? Was there any reason why he should not create a community which did not contain the seeds of destruction? An economic community with stability, which the prototype had lacked?
He began to grow excited. It would defeat Flux, stand against the chaos of the rest of the universe, containing a structure which would last. Otherwise, it would be the same in every detail . . .
He set to work, summoning up thoughts, memories and images, impinging them on the surrounding chaos. Matter began to form. He set the time machine in motion, travelling on to the world he was creating . . .
Suddenly he was in mistiness again. Rotating . . . rotation without change of position . . . rushing forward . . .
The numbers clicked off his dial: 000008 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .
Then everything steadied around him as the machine came to a stop. He was in Appeltoft’s laboratory in Geneva. Technicians prowled the outskirts of the room, beyond the barriers of trestles. The time machine, its translucent rods pointing dramatically in three directions, rested on a rough wooden pedestal.
File moved, stiff, aching and dusty, in the grimy seat. Appeltoft rushed forward, helping him down anxiously and delightedly.
‘You’re back on the dot, old man! As a test flight it was perfect—from our end.’ He flicked his finger over his shoulder. Bring brandy for the man! You look done in, Max. Come and clean up; then you can tell us how it went..
File nodded, smiling wordlessly. It was almost perfect . . . but he had not realised just how efficiently he had been taught a new language.
Appeltoft had spoken to him in the voice-torturing tongue of the Yulk.
FORTY, COUNTING DOWN
Harry Turtledove
“Hey, Justin!” Sean Peters’ voice floated over the top of the Superstrings, Ltd., cubicle wall. “It’s twenty after six—quitting time and then some. Want a drink or two with me and Garth?”
“Hang on,” Justin Kloster answered. “Let me save what I’m working on first.” He told his computer to save his work as it stood, generate a backup, and shut itself off. Having grown up in the days when voice-recognition software was imperfectly reliable, he waited to make sure the machine followed orders. It did, of course. Making that software idiotproof had put Superstrings on the map a few years after the turn of the century.
Justin got up, stretched, and looked around. Not much to see: the grayish-tan fuzzy walls of the cubicle and an astringently neat desktop that held the computer, a wedding photo of Megan and him, and a phone/fax. His lips narrowed. The marriage had lasted four years—four and a half, actually. He hadn’t come close to finding anybody else since.
Footsteps announced Peters’ arrival. He looked like a high-school linebacker who’d let most of his muscle go to flab since. Garth O’Connell was right behind him. He was from the same mold, except getting thin on top instead of going gray. “How’s the Iron Curtain sound?” Peters asked.
“Sure,” Justin said. “It’s close, and you can hear yourself think—most of the time, anyhow.”
They went out into the parking lot together, bitching when they stepped from air conditioning to San Fernando Valley August heat. Justin’s eyes started watering, too; L.A. smog wasn’t so bad as it had been when he was young, but it hadn’t disappeared.
An Oasis song was playing when the three software engineers walked into the Iron Curtain, and into air conditioning chillier than the office’s. The music took Justin back to the days when he’d been getting together with Megan, though he’d liked Blur better. “Look out,” Sean Peters said. “They’ve got a new fellow behind the bar.” He and Garth chuckled. They knew what was going to happen. Justin sighed. So did he.
Peters ordered a gin and tonic, O’Connell a scotch on the rocks. Justin asked for a Bud. Sure as hell, the bartender said, “I’ll be right with you two gents”—he nodded to Ju
stin’s co-workers—“but for you, sir, I’ll need some ID.”
With another sigh, Justin produced his driver’s license. “Here.”
The bartender looked at him, looked at his picture on the license, and looked at his birthdate. He scowled. “You were born in 1978? No way.”
“His real name’s Dorian Gray,” Garth said helpfully.
“Oh, shut up,” Justin muttered, and then, louder, to the bartender, “Yeah, I really turned forty this past spring.” He was slightly pudgy, but he’d been slightly pudgy since he was a toddler. And he’d been very blond since the day he was born. If he had any silver mixed with the gold, it didn’t show. He also stayed out of the sun as much as he could, because he burned to a crisp when he didn’t. That left him with a lot fewer lines and wrinkles than his buddies, who were both a couple of years younger than he.
Shaking his head, the bartender slid Justin a beer. “You coulda fooled me,” he said. “You go around picking up high-school girls?” His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.
“No.” Justin stared down at the reflections of the ceiling lights on the polished bar.
“Middle school,” Garth suggested. He’d already made his scotch disappear. Justin gave him a dirty look. It was such a dirty look, it got through to Sean Peters. He tapped Garth on the arm. For a wonder, Garth eased off.
Justin finished the Bud, threw a twenty on the bar, and got up to leave. “Not going to have another one?” Peters asked, surprised.
“Nope.” Justin shook his head. “Got some things to do. See you in the morning.” Out he went, walking fast so his friends couldn’t stop him.
As soon as the microchip inside Justin’s deadbolt lock shook hands with the one in his key, his apartment came to life. Lamps came on. The stereo started playing the Pulp CD he’d left in there this morning. The broiler heated up to do the steak the computer knew was in the refrigerator. From the bedroom, the computer called, “Now or later?”
“Later,” Justin said, so the screen stayed dark.