Incarnations of Immortality

by Anthony, Piers

  Still, if he could affect reality one way, he could affect it another. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand black.

  The scene froze, except for himself. The Bem held the prior Norton aloft, both of them like statues.

  Funny—he didn't remember being frozen before. But, of course, the objects were not aware of that, and his prior self was now an object. When they resumed action, they thought it had proceeded uninterrupted. So he could have been frozen...

  Norton stepped forward, windmilling in air when his feet lacked traction, grabbed a tentacle, and wrenched it off his other self's arm. The tentacle was cold, slimy, and repulsive, but he was able to unwind it. Then he tackled the others. Soon he had his former self free. They were floating, the now-self animate, the then-self a statue.

  Very well. He had rescued himself from the Bem. But how could he recombine?

  One way to find out. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand white again. Normal time resumed.

  The Bem waved her tentacles. "Hey, where'd you go?" she exclaimed indignantly.

  "I'm not sure," the then-Norton said.

  "Don't worry about it," the now-Norton said. "We've got to get rid of this monster before she eats us both!"

  "My thought exactly," the other Norton agreed. "No sense giving her gas." He floated to the drifting rod, grabbed it, and tried to stalk the Bem. This wasn't very successful.

  Then the Bem helped. She shot out a tentacle and grabbed the other Norton around the waist. Thus anchored, then-Norton raised the rod with both hands and brought it down on what passed for the Bem's head. An eye shattered; now-Norton wasn't certain whether it was the one he had kicked in before, a new one, or whether this was happening before he had kicked that eye.

  "Ooooh, that smarts!" the Bem exclaimed, retreating toward the control panel.

  Then another strange thing happened. Norton's position jumped. He found himself in the other body, the tentacle around his waist, the rod in his hands.

  He had recombined! Time had progressed beyond the point at which he had commenced his time travel, so now there was only one of him. His experience had combined, too; he remembered being mysteriously freed from the clutch of the Bem, as well as remembering doing it while time was frozen. He had been in two halves, and now was whole again. One half was longer than the other, having never been frozen in time, but both were himself. That slight difference in the experience of the two selves gave him a special perspective, like binocular vision, providing a new perception of the depth of reality.

  The Bem, however, was righteously angry about her shattered eye. "You struck me!" she screamed. She shot out another tentacle to grab the rod and wrest it from Norton's grasp.

  "I bashed your head in," Norton said. "How come you aren't unconscious?"

  "I have no head," the Bem explained. "You hit my apex."

  Norton brought up his foot and kicked the monster in the crotch. But the Bem did not react. "Why aren't you doubled over in pain?" he asked. "Male or female, that should hurt!"

  "I have no crotch," the Bem said, gesturing with the rod. "That's merely a nether bifurcation."

  Norton grabbed the rod back. The tentacles did not let go, so he wrestled the rod about until it was endwise and shoved it violently through the jellylike central mass of the monster. Still there was no reaction.

  "But I just stabbed you through the heart!" he cried.

  "I have no heart," the Bem said.

  Three more tentacles whipped forward. One of them grabbed the Hourglass, which was now floating next to Norton. "Hey, that's mine!" he shouted. "Give it back!"

  "Make me!" the Bem sneered.

  But Norton couldn't make her, for she dangled the Hourglass just out of his reach. He couldn't change time, because he didn't have the Hourglass. He was in trouble again.

  The Bem slid her maw forward until it intersected the rod that was still stuck through her body. Then she used the maw to spit out the rod. Being gelatinous certainly had its advantages!

  "Now it's your turn," the monster said, focusing a bug eye on Norton and hauling him in toward the maw again.

  He kicked her in the teeth. Ouch! His whole foot felt numb from the shock. Furthermore, the maw caught his boot again and the teeth crunched into it.

  There was a blast of terrible heat. "Ooooh, you shouldn't have!" the Bem gasped, collapsing against the control panel.

  Norton pulled his boot free of the crumbling teeth and twisted out of the failing grasp of the tentacles. Now he saw Bat Dursten, blaster in hand. The spaceman had finally gotten his boots on, his weapon back, and had blasted the Bem!

  "In the nick o' time, as usual," Dursten said, blowing the smoke from his muzzle and bolstering his weapon with practiced flair.

  "I should have finished you when I had the chance mphnn," the Bem said, trailing off into gibberish as her mouth melted. In fact, the entire monster was dissolving, her substance bubbling across the control panel and dripping to the floor.

  "Nonsense," Dursten said briskly. "The good guys always win. It's in the script." He glanced carelessly at Norton. "You okay, Nort?"

  "I think so." Norton decided not to comment on the spaceman's inordinate delay in appearing.

  "Well, let's get back into action," Dursten said briskly. Then he looked at the control panel. "Yaup! The cussed critter's melted into it! That gook'll ruin the wiring!"

  The Bem marshaled enough animation to form a small mouth in the dribble near the floor. "That's what happens, you klutz, when you blubb-drip-popple-ugh." The rest of her plopped to the floor inertly.

  "What did you call me?" the spaceman demanded ferociously.

  One more bubble popped from the subsiding mass. "Gludz!" it breathed, and was no more.

  "Why, you sidewinding bugger!" Dursten shouted, stomping the gook with his boot. "You take that back, hear?" But the muck only squished under his boot with the sound of a chuckle.

  "How is it that the Bem falls to the floor, while we drift in free-fall?" Norton asked.

  "Forget that!" Dursten snapped, drifting. "The fool stuff's shorted the wiring! We're out of control! We'll crash on the dang alien planet!"

  "But we're in deep space!" Norton protested. Then, as he peered out the front viewport, he saw that there was indeed a planet rushing up below.

  "Hang on, pardner!" Dursten cried, grabbing onto the pilot's seat and hauling himself into it.

  Norton followed suit, though a dribble of Bem had splatted across his chair. In a moment they were both securely buckled in, watching the ground rush up. Norton caught a glimpse of seas, continents, mountains, jungles, and shining prismatic cities. It looked very much like the kind of planet he'd like to visit—but not at this velocity.

  There was a jolt that flung them forward against the restraints. "The retros," Dursten explained. "They're on automatic, to brake us so we don't crash so hard."

  "That's nice," Norton gasped. Indeed, they were no longer falling as fast—but the descent remained harrowing.

  Then the ship crashed, and everything went up in smoke.

  Norton shook his head, clearing it. He was hung up on the branch of a giant, serpentine, purple tree, miraculously unhurt. Bat Dursten was strewn over another branch. The wreckage of their needleship was below, sinking slowly into a bubbling gray-green bog. This was obviously a Bem landscape!

  Dursten hauled himself upright. "Looks like the Bem planet we came to raid," he remarked. "It's the scum of the Glob! Well, let's get going."

  "Get going where?" Norton asked.

  "To hijack a Bemship and go home, of course."

  It seemed to Norton that would be easier said than done. On the other hand, he had no better suggestion.

  They climbed down the tree to the ground. A giant antlike thing rushed up, its mandibles clacking menacingly. Dursten's hand was a blur as he drew his blaster and blasted the thing. It exploded, and pieces of it splatted into the trunk of the tree. "Guess I fixed that creep," the spaceman remarked, holstering his
weapon.

  "But how do you know it wasn't friendly?" Norton asked, appalled at the wanton killing.

  "You kidding? Ain't nothing friendly on a bugger planet," the spaceman assured him. He led the way away from the tree, scouting for a suitable enemy to hijack.

  Norton followed. There still wasn't much else to do. He wished he could linger long enough to study the exotic alien wilderness, but Dursten wasn't waiting. Spacemen, it seemed, had no interest in wilderness.

  They skirted an arm of the bog. The gray-green gook hissed, menacing them. Eyeballs sprouted all over it. Instantly Dursten's blaster was in his hand.

  "Don't—" Norton warned.

  He was too late. The spaceman had hair-trigger reflexes. He fired. The gook puffed into noxious fog that spread out, threatening to envelop them. The eyeballs were hazier now, but still managed to focus on the prey.

  Dursten backed off. "That thing ain't dying!" he exclaimed. "It's worse'n it was! Why didn't you say something, Nort?"

  "I tried to warn—"

  "Well, let's mosey on. We got a long way to go afore night."

  "But there's no night, here in the Glob," Norton pointed out. "Too many close stars—"

  The spaceman scratched his head with the muzzle of his blaster. "There is that," he opined. "We'd better eat something so we don't get hungry." He grabbed a rich red fruit from a nearby tree.

  The fruit hissed and squirted brown juice at him. Dursten jumped back, but got some on his space suit. There was a sizzle, and smoke curled up as the acid etched channels in the material. "Then again, I reckon I ain't that hungry yet."

  They came to a large, clear, glassy crystal standing on a block in the jungle. "Wonder what this bauble is?" Dursten said, reaching out to tap it with the butt of his blaster.

  "Don't—" Norton cried.

  Too late, of course. His protective reactions were just not as fast as the spaceman's whims. Dursten's butt touched the side of the crystal. The crystal vibrated. Light emanated from it. A humming sound developed, waxing and waning rhythmically as the light pulsed.

  "Better get on out of here!" Dursten cried.

  Norton's sentiments exactly! The two men fled as a Bem spaceball came into sight on the horizon.

  "It was a signal station!" Norton gasped. "Now they know we're here!"

  Ahead loomed a huge saurian shape. It looked somewhat like a green carnivorous dinosaur with a toothache and somewhat like a twenty-ton grasshopper with teeth on its knees. It opened its ponderous and marbled jaws.

  This time Norton did not cry warning. He grabbed Dursten by the collar and hauled him around behind the bright yellow trunk of a tree.

  The saurhopper bounded forward—just as the pursuing Bem sailed up on its antigrav saucer. The two crashed together.

  "This way!" Dursten cried, taking charge of the situation, undismayed by the sheer coincidence of their escape. He ran for the alien ship that now rested in a small glade to the rear.

  "But suppose there are other Bems inside?" Norton asked.

  "I'll plug 'em," the spaceman said confidently. He was, of course, a man of action and quick decision.

  Sure enough, a second Bem loomed in the irising door aperture. Dursten drew and fired in a single motion—but his blaster made a little, stupid pfft! and sagged in his hand. Its charge was gone.

  The Bem had no hands, so it didn't carry a blaster. But it started to change shape.

  "We'd better hide," Norton said cautiously.

  But stalwart Dursten was already charging the ship. Norton had to follow or let him go alone. He followed.

  The Bem had sprouted half a dozen tentacles by the time they reached the ship. Dursten made a flying tackle that knocked the monster off its nether tentacles. Norton came up and shoved the mass out of the door-iris to the ground. He caught hold of one of the spaceman's legs and hauled him inside the ship.

  "Thanks, pardner," Dursten drawled as he got up and thumbed the button to close the iris. "Next time I'll get me a six-shooter blaster so it don't poop out so fast." He forged to the control section of the ship. "Good thing I studied how to operate Bemships too," he remarked.

  To Norton, the controls looked similar to those of the needleship. He could probably operate them himself. Perhaps the Bems weren't, after all, so different from humans.

  The acceleration couches were like saucers. Dursten and Norton seated themselves within them, and automatic safety harnesses came out to secure the men. Dursten punched buttons, and the ship lifted from the ground and hovered over the purple tree.

  Another Bemball loomed close. Dursten's hand struck the firing button. A wart spat a shot of something—and the other ship exploded.

  "Did you have to do that?" Norton demanded. "We're in a Bemship now; maybe the other one was just being neighborly."

  "The only good Bem is a blasted Bem," the spaceman said, hawking and looking for a spittoon. As usual, there was none; this was, after all, the space age.

  "Maybe if you just got to know a Bem, you'd find it pretty similar to our own kind. They speak our language and chase our women and breathe the same kind of air we do."

  Dursten scratched his head as he piloted the ship offplanet. "Never thought of it that way. Got to admit that one on the needle was interesting when she took Femme form."

  That wasn't precisely what Norton had meant, but he let it pass. At least he had made progress.

  Dursten glanced down at the dwindling disk of the planet. "Well, I reckon it's time." He slapped a red button.

  "Time for what?"

  "Time to blow up the planet, of course."

  "Blow up the planet!" Norton exclaimed, horrified.

  "That's what we came for, you know, Nort."

  "But it would be so much better to—to conquer it and exploit its resources! Or to make a peace treaty with the Bems so they won't bother human planets any more. Maybe they could teach us how to shape-change."

  "There is that," the spaceman agreed. "Maybe I shouldn't have let that bomb drop."

  "Bomb?"

  "Sure, the planetbuster bomb. It'll blow any moment now."

  "Any—?" Norton said, freshly appalled.

  Then the bomb detonated. There was a burst of light. The planet split into two halves that flew apart.

  Norton stared, sheeriy horrified. "The planet's broken!"

  "Sure," Dursten drawled carelessly. "Bems make good bombs, I'll say that for 'em."

  "But why would one of their own ships carry such a devastating weapon?"

  Dursten shrugged. "Guess they planned to use it on one o' ours. Now let's get on home, mission accomplished."

  Norton turned away, grief-stricken for the death of an entire world and all the wilderness on it. He spied something behind them, in the ship, and blinked.

  It was another Bem. But this one was small, with rather cute little tentacles and prettily shining eye facets. The spaceman was preoccupied by his task of setting course for home, so Norton unbuckled himself quietly and got out of his dish. He went to meet the little Bem. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm Baby Bem," the creature piped from a mouth that formed in the top part of its globe. As if to illustrate the point, it started sucking on a tentacle.

  "You mean those were your folks who—" Norton stopped.

  "We're going on a family picnic," Baby Bem said, blinking two or three wide eyes.

  Not any more, Norton thought grimly. There was no longer a planet to picnic on, and no other Bems to picnic with. This baby was an orphan. "Just a moment. Baby," he said.

  He turned to Dursten. "How do you feel about orphans?"

  "Poor things need a foster parent or something," the spaceman said promptly. '"Specially orphans o' the void."

  "Would you take care of an orphan child?"

  "Me? I ain't no family man!"

  "But you are a spaceman, embodying the best and brightest and noblest qualities of the human species."

  "There is that," Dursten agreed.

  "So if an orphan of any
type needed protection—"

  "Aw, shore, I reckon so."

  "Well, turn around and meet the orphan."

  Bat Dursten, the pride of the space fleet, started to turn.

  Norton abruptly sailed through the wall of the ship and out into space. Helplessly he accelerated, feeling no physical discomfort. He zoomed between the stars of the globular cluster and on out into deep space, heading for the Galaxy-proper.

  He was, he realized, on his way back to Earth; his sample excursion was over.

  Chapter 8 - CLOTHO

  Satan was awaiting him back in his mansion. "Did you enjoy your visit, Chronos?"

  It took Norton a moment to collect himself. "I confess it was quite an experience! I did not realize your power extended so far!"

  "My power is damn near universal," the Prince of Evil said smugly.

  "But one thing perplexes me. You know I live backward, so outside my mansion here I have to make a special effort to align myself with normal people, if I want to interact with them. But in the Glob that was not the case."

  "Astute of you to notice," Satan said.

  "But how, then—?"

  The Father of Lies smiled winningly. "Elementary, My dear associate. That is a CT globular cluster."

  "Cee Tee?" Norton asked blankly.

  "Contraterrene. Antimatter. Where the atoms are made up of negatrons in the nucleus and orbiting positrons, the precise opposite of the local persuasion."

  "Oh. I've heard of it. But isn't such matter instantly annihilated by contact with normal matter?"

  "Not when it's isolated. In a CT galaxy, our type of matter is abnormal. This happens to be a CT globular cluster orbiting our terrene-matter galaxy. No actual contact."

  "Very interesting. But since I belong to this galaxy—"

  "You are a special case, Chronos. A very special case. You are an Incarnation, and not just a garden-variety one at that. You are the Incarnation of Time."

  "Yes, and I live backward. Which is why—"

  "But you see, My dear sir, contraterrene matter, being opposite in charge, is also opposite in time. Therefore its frame is yours. That is why you, alone of all of us, are able to relate normally there."

  "Oh." Norton would have to think about that. "You mean that human beings have evolved there, just like us, though there has never been any connection between us? With the same language and everything?"