Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Here! Let’s open the belt wide so it goes around both of us. It’ll be tight, but I think we can manage,” she said.

  “You mean use it now?”

  “While we still can. The base may fall or short out any minute!”

  He felt guilty about running, but it was clear that once the base fell, the occupying force would scour the island for any survivors. There was literally nothing they could do but take the chance.

  The belt was never intended for two people and was an extremely tight fit, but they seemed to make it as she’d predicted. More electricity danced, and she had trouble making the adjustments on the belt.

  Everything blacked out and they were falling, but ever so briefly. Then all exploded again into reality, but this time into darkness.

  The belt continued to sputter. They got it off as quickly as possible and it fell to the ground, then lit up the area with a display of dancing sparks.

  “Where’d we go?” he asked her.

  “Nowhere. There wasn’t time. I just tapped the advance for a decade. We’re still on the island, ten years in the future of the attack. That should be safe enough. I didn’t dare try any long jump. What if the power failed? And if we did make it, we’d be assimilated.”

  He nodded, crediting her with some swift thinking. The belt continued to crackle, then made a single electronic whine which slowly faded and died. They were again in darkness. There were no dancing sparks, no red readouts on the belt.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he breathed, half cursing and half praying. “The power’s gone out!”

  She stared down at the blackness. “Or the belt’s O.K., but no longer connected to a power source. I—I think they shorted out the base.”

  And then she cried, long and hard, and he did his best to comfort her, although, truth to tell, he felt like crying, too.

  In some ways, the island had not changed at all. In others, the change was dramatic.

  Where the base had been, there was now simply a large depression of impressive size and squared-off dimensions, but with growth already creeping into it in profusion. Around the area, much of the gardens had gone wild, yet there were still fruit trees and bushes and even vegetables growing.

  Surveying the place, Ron Moosic sighed and sat on a rock. “Well, in one way it’s not so bad. Almost the Garden of Eden, you might say. We won’t starve, that’s for sure, and the stream is a secure water supply. From the looks of the sun and the jungle I’d say this place has two climates, hot and hotter. Of course, there are no doctors, no dentists, no nails or hammers or saws. Nothing but the clothes on our backs, such as they are.”

  “These flimsy things aren’t going to last long out here,” she noted. She kicked off her boots and started to remove her clothes.

  “Going natural, huh?”

  “You should, too,” she told him. “We won’t have these forever, so we better get our skin and feet toughened up. We might eventually figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, but there’s nothing I’ve seen on this island that can be used to make clothes or shoes. I’ll use these, as long as they last, when we explore the island, but not otherwise. There’s no use.”

  “You’ve got a point,” he admitted, and stripped as well. They stood up and looked at each other. “You know,” he said, “we really are Adam and Eve.” He went over to her and hugged her.

  “You’re turning on,” she noted softly.

  “Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” He grew suddenly serious. “You know we may be here for the rest of our lives.”

  “However long they may be,” she replied. “I’m making a personal decision right here and now. I’m not going to think about time at all. Not now, not unless I have to. There’s nothing else except now. There’s nobody else but us. There’s no place else but here.”

  “That’s fair enough,” he agreed. “Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe this is the place for nightsiders. Let’s make the most of it.” And, with that, they kissed.

  It was in many ways a new beginning. After a while, they set out to explore the island and found it relatively large. In the end, Moosic estimated it at being more than forty miles across and perhaps fifty long, the product of two undersea volcanic peaks breaking the surface of the deep ocean. One peak, on whose slopes the base had been built, was extremely old and worn, a low mound now, with even its ancient crater partly caved in and difficult to distinguish. From there the land ran down to a flat, though not level plain that made up the bulk of the island. The product of old lava flows, it had long been overgrown into jungle. There were, however, unspoiled black sand beaches where plain met sea.

  The other end of the island’s peak was by no means a grand mountain, although it surely was if one could have rolled back the ocean to see the whole of it, but it was certainly newer, with a clear cone shape caved in on one side and evidence through its growth of clearly less than ancient flows.

  Although they could roam some distance, and did, they realized that their permanent home had to be in the remains of the old base, for it was only there that a continuous and guaranteed supply of edible vegetation was found. One day, Moosic decided, he would try and transplant some of the more valuable edible plants to the beach areas and perhaps the far slopes, but for now the first item of business was setting up a permanent home.

  There was something about the passage of time that dimmed their memories and calmed their demons. Dawn had said that there was no assimilation possible in the Safe Zone, but, whether for psychological or physiological reasons, they did not, after a while, think back on or dwell upon the past. It was not that the information wasn’t still there, simply that it was filed away as irrelevant. Conversation turned to the practical thoughts that seemed directed at nature and solving the practical problems.

  As Dawn had predicted, the garments didn’t last long, particularly after they began to explore the jungle. Mildew and mold seemed to crumble the boots and the rest, until, within a year, there was nothing left from the past at all, save only the seemingly indestructible but inactive time belt.

  It took considerable trial and error to turn some of the jungle leaves and vines into crude and primitive shelters, but they finally did so, giving them some shelter against the occasional strong tropical rainstorms that blew across the island. With that problem solved, and with no worries at all about food supplies, other ambitions seemed to fade. They became as children once again, playing games, swimming, making love and just lying around. Moosic developed a substantial beard, which Dawn seemed to like, and their skins toughened and their bodies browned dark.

  They had some minor injuries and suffered some occasional aches, pains, and bruises, but nothing very serious. It began to seem as if they would never get sick, but Dawn finally developed what at first seemed to be a persistent case of nausea.

  Both had put on weight, both from the lazy life and from some of the less familiar fruits which seemed particularly sugar-laden, but now she began to eat far more heavily.

  “Ronnie?”

  “Yes, Dawn?”

  “I haven’t had a period in months. You know that?”

  “I guess so, now that you mention it.”

  “Ronnie—I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”

  Even though he should have expected it, the news stunned and somewhat unnerved him. He realized sheepishly that he’d been shutting the obvious out of his mind. Now all the worries began.

  “But how can you have a baby? Here, I mean. Hell, Dawn, I don’t know how to deliver a baby.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn. I sure can’t do it myself.”

  Within another month, there was no doubt of the fact, and since there was no way to date conception, they began to prepare early. There really wasn’t a whole lot, though, that could be done. Rocks were worked and sharpened to fine cutting edges, and, for the first time, he worked to find a way of making and maintaining a fire. Some coconutlike shells from jungle trees seemed able to resist being heated, and more stone was broken u
p and used to form a fire pit of sorts. Shells and shell fragments, some of them huge, had always washed up on the beaches after storms, and they proved to be decent water containers.

  Still, he was scared to death of actually having to deliver the baby. She was not much help at that. “I’ve never had one before,” she told him.

  She was in tremendous pain the night the baby came. The labor took all day and went into the night, and he feared that he was going to lose both the baby and her. But, finally, she managed to push it out to where he could get hold of it and pull it all the way. He was prepared to cut the cord and wash the baby off, but not so prepared for it to be all purple at the start and even less prepared for the subsequent delivery of the placenta. Having a baby was a painful and messy business under the best of circumstances, and this was hardly that. But now they had a child, and it quickly gained color and showed a fine set of lungs.

  They named the boy Joseph, after Moosic’s father.

  It was both the same and not the same after that, for now they had a purpose in their lives and it restored some of the lost ambition. He began to look for a more permanent sort of dwelling, and he found it in the mouth of an old lava tube. Dried straw and leaves formed the floor, while huge jungle leaves, held together with the bracing of small tree limbs tied with vines, created a wall that protected them from the elements while affording good ventilation. They made a primitive rope from some of the vines and, using sharpened stones and sticks, managed to create tools to do a utilitarian job. They had progressed from the Garden into the Stone Age.

  From that point, Dawn seemed to enter into a state of perpetual pregnancy. After Joseph came Ginny, Sarah, Cathy, and Mark. He wound up having to build a vine and stick fence for a play area, and they found parenting, particularly on this level, a full-time occupation. Then, to their relief, there was a long period with no childen at all. It gave the others time to grow up.

  There was no real way to tell time now, since they’d not started a calendar until Joseph had been born, but they knew he was ten and that they had been there a very long time now. Dawn remained fat and didn’t much care about losing it. Her focus was strictly on the home and on the children now, to the exclusion of all else. Ginny broke her leg once, and while they painfully set it, it never did heal quite right, causing her a bad limp. All of the children had visible scars, and Sarah had almost died from a deep puncture, but, all in all, they had been very lucky.

  Moosic found his black beard and hair turning gray, then white, which bothered him a great deal. Despite the fact that he’d always kept himself in reasonable shape and was relatively thin now from all the work, in one sense the Outworlder squad had done him no favors restoring his body. Dawn was perhaps in her early to mid-thirties now— she herself wasn’t sure—but he knew he was in his middle fifties, and feeling it. His eyesight was getting poor, although, ironically, it was far better than Dawn’s, which had deteriorated into such nearsightedness that anything more than a couple of feet away was a blur.

  They taught the children as best they could, explaining their origins as much as the parents were able—how do you explain machines to someone who has never worn clothes or even seen anyone wearing them?—and taught them the skills they knew or had learned, and told them stories both real and fanciful.

  It was on a day perhaps twelve years after they had arrived that it happened. A storm was brewing; Joseph was still out somewhere in the countryside, and Dawn, after all this time pregnant again, was worried about him. Although Moosic calmed her and tried reassuring her that he was a man now and well able to take care of himself, he finally got a little concerned when the wind picked up and the other kids battened down for a blow. He went out to see if Joseph could be found.

  Near the edge of the jungle, up by the fruit trees, he heard an answering hail to his call. He ran to the boy, intending to give him a scolding, but stopped when he saw what the boy had.

  It was dirty, and mud-caked, and long forgotten, but it was unmistakable. The time belt, lost for some years.

  “What is it, Dad? I found it over there, in the pit. I guess the last storm unburied it.”

  He nodded and took it, then looked at it and shook his head. “It was the way your Mom and I got here, son.”

  Joseph stared at it in wonder. “How’d it work?”

  He laughed, and found to his surprise that the clasp still functioned. There wasn’t a real sign of wear or even rust on the thing after all these years.

  “Ha! Maybe I should shock your mother.” He put it on around his waist. “You just put it on like this, press one of the buttons, and away you went.”

  “Wow!” The boy looked closely at the belt. “Hey! That’s neat! The funny red things, I mean.”

  “The what?” He looked down and froze in shock.

  Although he was certain they had not been so a moment before, suddenly the small red indicators were glowing.

  He started to take it off, to run with it up to Dawn, when Joseph reached out. “You mean you just punched something like this?”

  He pressed the home key, then let out a sudden, terrified scream that was cut off midway.

  The wind stopped. The noise stopped. Everything blanked out, and Ron Moosic felt himself falling helplessly.

  The sensation, however, did not last long. He expected to arrive somewhere at night, but he suddenly stood in the middle of a brightly lit room that his memory knew well. It was the lounge of the very same Outworlder base he had seen—or thought he’d seen—destroyed.

  Chung Lind was thumbing through some book or other on one of the couches. He looked up, nodded, and said, “You know something? You look like hell.”

  TRIP POINT

  “Moosic, you’re a mess,” Doc told him. “How long were you downtime, anyway?”

  “Hard to say,” he replied. “Eleven, maybe twelve years.”

  She nodded. “And you aged twenty-five. The only way I can explain the results of these tests is that everything came along gradually and you became inured to it all. You’ve got kidney problems, four kinds of internal parasites, several ill-healed breaks too far gone for much correction, and that’s only for starters. You had eye problems?”

  “Some,” he admitted. “Not as much as Dawn has.”

  “Well, you probably had slightly better eyes to begin with. The radiation levels are different back here than in the period when humans evolved. It’s so minor for a day or so that we don’t bother about it, and your body can self-correct to a degree, but you had a dozen years of straight exposure.”

  “The kids—they were born in that environment!”

  “I wouldn’t worry so much about them. They’re probably better protected than you, and they’re young. Whatever their problems are, we can certainly correct them. I can’t say about Dawn, but she’s a lot younger than you. I can say, with some certainty, that your vision will continue to deteriorate and you would have been stone-cold blind in another year back there. Here you maybe have three or four years, but I wouldn’t worry about it. The cancer will get you first.”

  He swallowed hard. “You mean—that’s it? I’m going to die?” She seemed mighty unconcerned about the news.

  “Not necessarily. Or, rather, yes and no. It’s usually accidental, but, if it’s carefully planned and timed, I think we can work it out. It’ll take some guts, though, on your part.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Going past a trip point, of course. Be someone else. Someone younger and healthier.”

  That idea disturbed him almost as much as the medical news. “Be… someone else. That’s like committing suicide, isn’t it?”

  She stared at him. “Do I look dead?”

  “No, no, of course not, but—O.K., you’ve all gone through it, but you said yourself it was mostly accidental. It’s something else to talk about it cold-bloodedly instead of just letting it happen.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s what you’ll have to do. It’s not so bad. Everyone I ever was i
s still in here,” she told him, pointing to her head. “You don’t really lose anything, unless you make the mistake of getting assimilated. That’s a close thing with trip points. We’re constantly monitored by our computers to make sure we don’t make an unintentional jump into someplace that could get us.” She sighed. “Look, it would have happened to you anyway, you know, if you’d joined us. It was inevitable.”

  “But Dawn and the children…”

  “Are no problem at all. This is time, remember? Safe Zone time. No assimilation, no trip points. We’ll go get them, and before they have had time enough to realize you’re gone. There’s no rush. None of us have been to the time frame you were in before, so there’s no relative time problem. Don’t think of them stranded there while you’re here. We could do it tomorrow, or next week, or next year, and we’d still get there ten seconds after you left.”

  He sighed. “You’re right, of course. That’s not what I’m really worried about, although I admit it’s tough not to think of time passing there as it is here. It’s really—well, me. No matter what, I might see them again, but they’ll never see me.”

  She had no answer for that.

  “Look,” he said, “why not go get them now—before? I mean, one last time?”

  She shook her head sadly. “I understand, but it’s not possible. First of all, it’d be sort of cruel, like facing them one last time so they know you’re dying. Swift and clean is best. It hurts, but it’s not as prolonged. But even if you did want it anyway…”

  “I do. Very much.”

  “…It wouldn’t matter,” she continued. “Ron, this is hard to say and even harder to explain, but you’re caught up in and committed to a loop.”

  “A what?”

  “A loop. It’s not your fault—you had no say in it—and it’s unfair, but it’s the due bill the Outworlders are rendering.”

  “What do you mean? Due bill for what?”

  “Saving your life. Time always takes the shortest method to resolve people like us. If we’d left you as Alfie Jenkins, you would have died, either in prison or at the hands of a fanatic or a mob. I’m afraid you would have been left there if Sandoval hadn’t been able to jump back. But he was, and our computer monitored it and monitored the consequences of the actions, particularly the early death of Marx. It ordered us to save you. In so doing, it initiated a loop—a string of effects stemming from that cause. A loop is initiated backwards. The last action comes first. This causes a backwash, as it were. Everything leading to that action is assumed by time to have already occurred. Saving you was the last action of the loop. You are now living the events leading up to that, under our management.”