Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Because it was a weak democracy dominated by liberal nobles, it did little to really better or modernize the Russian nation,” Herb continued. “Stalin did not rise to power and ruthlessly modernize, mobilize, and arm the nation, building it into a twentieth-century country. There was also an independent Ukraine, so Russia did not have control of its breadbasket or a firm buffer. But Germany still lost World War I, and Hitler still rose to power, only this time there was no strong Soviet state under a firm leader to hold on.” Moosic was reminded that on his own time line Russia nearly lost the war to Germany again: Now it had lost, allowing Germany to put its full might into North Africa and against England. “With the collapse of England,” Herb informed him, “America turned its full attention to the Japanese.”

  He blanched. “You mean—because Joseph Stalin didn’t come to power, the U.S. lost World War II?”

  “Oh, no. It finally won, the same way it had won the original one—at least, I think it was the original one. I’ll have to ask the computer sometime. But an untouched German Empire, stretching from all of Europe into all of the Saharan regions and across to the Urals, was able to do what America did. They had the bomb, too. Fortunately, Hitler died, they tell me, in 1947, before delivery systems were perfected. The hierarchy that followed him wanted to consolidate its empire, and so an informal peace was struck, dividing the world in much the same way as the pope had back in Columbus’ time. They have Europe, the Middle East, much of Africa, and Russia. The U.S. has a Chinese ally—no Mao, remember—that is weak but which it supports, as well as southern Asia and the Pacific, and most of Latin America is under its thumb.”

  He left Herb, his mind reeling from the magnitude of the deed. And yet, somehow, the world had come out pretty much the same, only more messed up than ever. He rejoined the mystery woman. “I see what you mean about complicated. And your original present isn’t there, either?”

  She shrugged. “No, not really. It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, anyway. I can’t even remember it too well, and I don’t think I want to. What’s the difference? I mean, you feel bad about that guy Marx, right?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, forget it. Eric and his things were out to kill Marx all the time. They don’t know why, since the end came out pretty much the same in any case. Time jokes abound even with the big things.”

  He was thunderstruck. “What do you mean, ‘they were out to kill Marx all the time’?”

  “Not at the start. At least, they don’t think so. The first trip was more of a test. I doubt if that fellow—” she halted, as if trying to remember something.

  “Sandoval?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, Sandoval. They don’t think he knew this. But, you see, if they just went back and did it, we could go back and undo it. We would be able to spot just where and when they showed up, like they did with you, then go back to a point just before that. But that time is pretty crowded for the Outworlders. Almost all of the team has been somewhere in that time period, and not anywhere in Germany.”

  “I see. So, if Lind, say, went back, he’d be in America someplace, taking up the life he’d lived when he was there before.”

  She nodded. “That’s where they have it all over us. They can take their creatures and come into a time for just an hour or so, staying who they are. That’s about the limit before you become somebody else regardless. Since they can use their creatures for this, they don’t have to worry about becoming somebody else the way we do. They make the damned things, any of which can be sent back for an hour or so. They breed them in tanks somewhere back here in the Safe Zone, or so it’s said.”

  “Blondie was real.”

  “Eric, they call him. He has a lot of names, but that’s the one they use the most. Somebody has to direct those things. But we don’t know if he has ever stayed more than an hour in any time frame. We know nothing about him, except that he is the leader of the enemy’s time project.”

  “So they put Sandoval and Marx together in the square, materialize just before the fateful meeting, and if I hadn’t acted, they would have shot him, having him in the right time and place so they could go to the very spot.”

  She nodded. “It was the only way to be sure, since so much of Marx’s early life isn’t really known.”

  A funny thought struck him. “They said Soviet generals rediscovered the time project. The idea of Soviet officers ordering the death of Marx and a German victory over Russia just doesn’t ring true.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Herb put in, coming over and joining the conversation. “They would never allow such a thing. That’s what makes Eric so fascinating. He’s the wild card in the game. They trusted him, and he double-crossed them as well, although there are no consequences, of course, because there now never were any Soviet generals. We don’t know what kind of game he’s playing, but it’s one to win, that’s for sure. Win for Earth and win for him, too. I suspect, at the expense of his bosses.” He paused a moment. “Um, I see you two have met.”

  He looked over at the woman. “I still don’t know your name,” he pointed out.

  “When you’ve nightsided past your trip point, you may as well pick any name,” she told him. “I call myself Dawn, because it’s a new start and I kind of like the sound of it. I have lots of other names, but they don’t mean nothing to me anymore.”

  He liked her, felt a strange attraction for her, although he couldn’t really say why. She reminded him of a lot of people, but he couldn’t really put his finger on even one. Certainly she was no looker, but there was a lot inside there, including much that was probably never revealed to anyone, yet that spark showed through. And she had raised an interesting question. “What’s this trip point business?”

  “You can reach a trip point in several ways,” Herb told him. “One way is to become so damn many people you’re more them than you. It’s an occupational hazard. Another way is to stay in a time period too long, so that your self-identity is changed. Despite the folks you’ve been, you’re still Ron Moosic, because at the core of your mind that’s who you are. But if another personality became dominant, got into that core, then you wouldn’t be Moosic anymore; rather, you’d be somebody else.”

  He thought of Sister Nobody, who was still very much a part of him, and grew nervous. “I had one that I couldn’t really fight,” he told them. “If I hadn’t been attacked by those creatures, I might never have gotten control. So, you mean that if I stayed as her too long, then she’d be the dominant personality?”

  Herb nodded. “Yes, indeed. And Ron Moosic would become one of the subordinate elements—but he could never rise again. The only reason we were able to get you here with your old body intact was that you still are Ron Moosic. You see, that’s what makes you different than any of us. We—none of us—are the folks we started out as being. And the more you’re somebody else, the less real that original fellow becomes.”

  He began to understand Dawn’s problem now. She was still new at this herself, she’d said, so she wasn’t long, perhaps, past her trip point. Somewhere, deep down, there was an identity crisis that she was only just starting to be able to handle. He sympathized, and realized with a nervous start that it was probably his fate, too. He frowned, a sudden thought striking him as he realized the extent of Dawn’s comment on the insanity of time. “Uh—is there, or was there, a Ron Moosic in my own time—now?”

  Herb shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. If there is, you could go home—but to a nastier America than you left, and a dirtier world. You’d just merge with him and fade out the old you. Certainly, the time project still exists, but it sure wasn’t invaded by any Marxist fanatics. There aren’t any anymore. I heard her explain that to you.”

  “Wait a minute! If Sandoval and I never went back, nobody was there to kill Marx! This is crazy!”

  “Oh, there’s a logic to it; it’s just not the kind you’re used to. No, time rippled from the event and flattened out at the edge. The main line now has Marx killed by
whoever the hell Sandoval was in that time. He died there, too; so it’s complete. You didn’t kill him—that fellow born in that time did, for whatever purpose. It doesn’t matter a bit. Marx and his murder ain’t even a footnote in the history books anymore. Only the computer and us nightsiders and Eric and his computer know the real truth. That leaves you hanging in a paradox time can easily resolve. It just removes the paradox, meaning you. Either you go back and merge with yourself and that’s the end of it, or you assimilate elsewhere, or you stay nightsided. Any way, you’re no problem to the fabric of time now. See?”

  The trouble was, he did see—sort of. Time took the best shortcut to keep its integrity. He was not a problem. “Uh—but what if I had shot Marx in Trier, instead of Sandoval? What would time have done then?”

  “You would have been instantly assimilated. The same way you’d go if you shot your father before he met your mother. Another Ron Moosic might exist up front, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

  So that was it. The basic law seemed to be that time resolved paradox in the most direct manner it could. And Holger Neumann, distraught at the death of Marx, would most certainly have killed himself. End of problem. Time is changed, but the equations balanced out.

  And that left him, here, with an unpalatable problem. Remain, and therefore be the newest recruit in the squad, eventually reaching a trip point and becoming someone else entirely, someone not of his own choosing. Or pick a time and assimilate there. No, that was out. Time had shown him no favors at all, and there’d be nobody to rescue him the next time. Or have them return him to his own time, but a time far changed from the one he’d left, to become a Ron Moosic who might have come out very differently than he. If he existed at all. If not, there was assimilation again.

  He was beginning to feel as worried and confused as Dawn.

  AFTER THE FALL WAS OVER

  Over the next few weeks, Ron Moosic was able to explore much of the complex and the surrounding area. Dawn still seemed somewhat uncomfortable around him, but also drawn to him, and she became his guide. He kept having the feeling that she wanted to get something off her chest, but he didn’t push it. She would tell it, if she had to, when she was ready for it.

  The area was perfect as a hidden base. The complex itself, viewed from outside, looked like nothing so much as two huge, shiny metallic cubes, one on top of the other, the whole complex rising several hundred feet into the air. Around it were the gardens abundant with fruit-bearing bushes and trees, vegetables, and more. Some of the plants were unfamiliar and native to the time; most, however, had been brought back after being altered to fit the existing conditions. The Outworlders were master biologists, that was for sure. The place could feed a population of hundreds if it had to, and it required very little maintenance.

  One day Dawn said, “Come on. I’d like to show you my favorite spot around here,” and led him outside the base perimeter.

  Beyond the base itself was a dense, jungle-like forest which showed what it all must have looked like before the area was cleared and the complex built. Here there were insects and even small mammals, although nothing large or particularly threatening. A small, clear stream flowed through the dark jungle, until, a bit over a mile from the complex, it suddenly plunged a hundred feet or more in a spectacular, if small-volume waterfall. Here was the sea, looking much as it did during anyone’s time, clear and blue and untouched.

  They sat there, letting the wind carry some of the spray from the falls to them, and just enjoyed it. It was, Moosic had to agree, a truly pretty place, a place to come and sit and think.

  His indecision, and unwillingness to really commit himself, made him more of a hanger-on than a member of the squad. Dawn, for example, always carried a time belt when outside the base—just in case something happened, for, back here, there was no way to wait for rescue. He had not been issued one, and wouldn’t be until and unless he told them he was freely joining and undertook some training.

  Dawn, however, was willing to show him the basics of the belt. “It personalizes itself to the wearer,” she told him. “No one can touch it or see it except the person it brought to a particular time and place. Still, it’s a good idea to hide it, since you never know when the enemy will show up. If they traced anyone to a time frame and got them to retrieve and deactivate the belt, they’d have a homing device leading straight here.”

  There were four master controls, noted by squiggly little symbols that meant nothing to him. He soon learned, however, that they were “Activate,” “Standby,” “Home,” and “Off.” The last two were the most interesting. “Home” would immediately bring the wearer to the frame and location of the power supply—in this case, to where they were. “Off” was used only at the base or in Safe Zones, since it made the belt phase into a frame and thus would not only allow anyone to see or find it but also subject it to the assimilation process. The Safe Zone was safe not only because no one could affect the course of time to any great degree there, but also because it was impossible for a human being to be tracked in it. Time simply disregarded human beings this far back; it had so much room to correct whatever they might do that they simply were no threat to the orderly time stream. Even a nuclear explosion could be adjusted for in the space of a million years.

  “They say they picked this spot because it’s a volcanic island,” she told him. “Inactive now and for the foreseeable future—they checked—but still an island, and a transitory one. It will disappear in the ages, and so will any trace we make on it. That’s why it’s so safe.”

  To set the belt, you merely picked a reference point and set it with the dials. All of them being from near his time, the basic Julian calendar was used. Place basically used a grid of latitude and longitude in degrees, minutes, and seconds, but in a pinch the microprocessor could come up with the coordinates if you used the little microphone attached to tell it—and if it had the place you wanted in its files.

  It was almost three weeks before he made his decision. He and Dawn walked out to the falls on the coast and he told her there. “I’m staying,” he said simply. “After all is said and done, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have anything to go back to, even if it were back to my own time. I kept fighting against it, I don’t know why, but then I remembered why they asked me to go back in the first place. I really did have the least to lose of the available qualified personnel.”

  “I know why you hesitated,” she told him. “It’s this whole time business. It makes everything unreal. There’s nothing left solid to stand on. Nothing is fixed—it’s all variables. I think that’s why I like it here so much. This place is fixed, unchanging, permanent. And so are we— here.”

  He was about to reply when, off in the distance, there came the sound of tremendous explosions. Both jumped up in a minute and, without looking at each other, rushed off back into the jungle for the base.

  The explosions continued, together with the sounds of shouting people. The acrid stench of explosives was in the air. They reached the edge of the jungle clearing, and Moosic was shocked to see a small horde of the gargoyles attacking the great structure. The base itself offered little resistance, but while they were making a mess of the gardens, the metallic building itself seemed untouched.

  That was clearly changing, however. A small knot of gargoyles under the direction of a human leader were busily assembling some sort of imposing weapon aimed right for the heart of the complex. The attacks were clearly designed to keep the Outworlders inside and unable to prevent the completion of the assembly.

  He looked at Dawn. “We have to do something!”

  She looked back at him resignedly. “What do you suggest? We can’t get through that mob—they’ll kill us. We can’t get to that weapon, whatever it is. It’d be suicide. And neither of us is armed.”

  The sheer irrefutability of her logic both maddened and quieted him. All he could do was crouch there at the edge of the jungle and watch and wait. “Why don’t they defend themselves?” he m
uttered. “Surely they must have been prepared for this.” He had a sudden thought. “Your time belt! We could use it to go back just a little and warn them!”

  She shook her head. “Won’t work. Just like any other time, you can’t be in two places at once. Besides—they were warned. The computer refused to let them take any action.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “It’s part of a nightside time loop. In time, causes can precede events, but the events must be allowed to come about or much worse will happen. God knows, I don’t pretend to understand it. I—I just accept what must be now.”

  He looked at her strangely, then back at the scene, which was getting worse. The device was completed now and powered up, and what was clearly a barrel or projector was aimed directly at the base. The sound of an air horn caused the attack from the gargoyles to be broken off, and they retreated a respectful distance. Then the weapon was brought into play, shooting a continuous beam of what seemed almost liquid blue energy at the complex. The energy struck and seemed to flow over the entirety of the building.

  There was a crackling sound near them, and Moosic looked over to see tiny fields of electricity dancing around Dawn’s time belt. The small red displays blinked on and off erratically. “The time belt!” he almost shouted, in no danger with the din of the attack masking them. “It’s shorting out!”

  Dawn seemed to be in almost a hypnotized state, but she suddenly snapped out of it. She picked up the microphone and dialed the base frequency. “Dawn to Base—we are caught outside and unarmed. Advise!”

  There was a crackling sound, and then a tinny voice responded, “Use the belt and get out now! It’s your only chance…” And then it went dead. She turned and looked at him and seemed almost ready to cry, but she did not.