Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  She wiggled to get her small arm into the massive arm and glove of the suit, but she brought it up to the controls and watched the liquid crystal display change as she did so. She needed more knowledge now; she reached back for it.

  She cleared the readings to zero and tried activation, but the suit would not comply. With tremendous difficulty she made out the strange characters and understood that they were telling her that there was not enough power.

  Not enough to reach—where? The heavenly base, of course. But she had known that.

  The dateline readouts were zero, but the location indicator was not. Again her mysterious knowledge allowed her to guess that the location shown was indeed the suit’s home—where, in fact, she wanted to go.

  But what should the numbers be? And would the suit, in fact, return her to the time chamber if she did get it right, the time chamber now held by a very different power? But, no—the suit was no longer linked to that early chamber or it would have ceased to exist It was linked to the forces of heaven, so wonderfully named the Outworld.

  Perhaps, she thought, even if she determined the correct setting, it might not be best to proceed there directly. The demons could tell when the Outworld moved in time, and because this suit was now Outworld-powered, they had been able to track its original occupant here. But they could not see or touch the suit, so perhaps it might be best to throw them off, to do it in small jumps here and there. The “Home” control would always give her the right setting when she needed it.

  They had caught her once, in his maimed body, in that time. They would know it, and be waiting.

  She reset, and saw the numbers for her present return. So that was how easy it was. He had tried, as she had, to press the “Home” key, and that could not work. But if the controls were simply set by hand to zero, they would take her back, since the suit’s logic worked on the basis of that key time as zero and all else plus or minus that time.

  So, no—not directly there. Lead them a merry chase fust. God was on her side. Did not the forces of Hell admit they would lose Armageddon in that future? Did not the Holy Word state that Satan would rule before the Final Judgment?

  Curiously, it was not Moosic’s memories but those of Neumann that held some of the key, for he’d had a keen interest in geography. Cautiously, she reduced the numbers to 385.5, a good, experimental time. She knew little of history, and there was not the information she needed in anyone’s memory, but she thought the Holy Land a good bet. Neumann, at least, could get her in the neighborhood. The other memories indicated that the Crusades had liberated the area, and, indeed, in her own time it was taught that this liberation was a great thing. There was nothing in anyone’s memory to contradict this. It seemed safe, and a very appropriate place, should the forces of Hell follow.

  Neumann, in one of his attempts to reconcile himself with his faith, had in the process memorized, without really realizing it, the basic latitude and longitude of Jerusalem.

  Eagerly she punched it in, then pressed “Activate.” There was the sensation of falling and the passage of much time, but she did not notice. As soon as all had winked out, she’d passed out from sheer exhaustion.

  * * *

  There were stronger persorialities lurking inside the fragile mind of Sister Nobody, as Moosic had termed her, and in her exhaustion and freed from time’s constraints, they all rushed in to fill the vacuums created. It was not a conscious thing; all of them had essentially ceased to exist in that sense. It was, rather, a mind trying to create order out of chaos and was, in fact, a natural process when the newly forward personality, after the trip point had been passed, was neither strong nor dominant.

  The frail young woman who came to in answer to the buzzing alarm in the suit was not the same as the one who had activated it. In a sense, she was a new personality, a composite of all those she held. She was, in a sense, reborn. It was merely an extension of the process by which those humans created by the time-travel effect merged into the master mind, although, in this case, that mind was too weak and too shallow to contain them.

  Still, she was in the weak and nearly starved body of the Sister, and hadn’t much strength to do more than undo the seals and get out of the terribly large suit. It was night, as expected, and well within the ancient walled city. Few prowled this hour, except for the authorities, and none were in sight. She managed, somehow, to drag the suit back into a narrow alleyway between two huge multiple dwellings of eastern adobe, but that was about it. She spent time studying the street itself, taking particular note of the square not too far down the street. It was, to her eyes, a large and confusing city, but not one that could have this many distinguishing features.

  Summoning every ounce of will and strength left in her, and feeling near death, she managed to find a half-burnt stick of charcoal from the alley and make several marks on the building’s wall. This was not to say that rain or the owners would not erase them, but it was something, anyway. At least, from the way the place looked, none of the owners ever erased or otherwise cleaned anything.

  She used the small breathing tube in the suit helmet to help her; she was simply beyond walking to keep a steady air intake. She knew, though, that she might well have to undergo another trip point here, if only to keep her from expiring should she use the suit again. Let’s see… Would it be six days, or… what? No, that was for Moosic, and he was no more. Just how old was she, anyway? Impossible to tell.

  How do you know you’ve reached the trip point? You’ll know, they’d assured Moosic, although it might take some will to get to and put on the suit after that.

  It seemed forever that she sat there, sparingly using the helmet to breathe, but finally the moment came when time was ready for her. She felt the nausea almost as a welcome friend, and soon passed out.

  Nowhere in her collective mind was the specific fact that the Crusades had indeed more or less liberated Jerusalem, and for quite some time, but had lost it, again and forever, in 1291. After the repeated failures of the Crusades of the fourteenth century, and in the schism in the papacy and Church that had followed, this fact tended to be glossed over to the low and the ignorant.

  It was 1605 now, and Jerusalem was, as it had been for over three centuries, firmly in the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

  Waking up as Ismet had shattered forever any hold Sister Nobody might have had on the new personality. For the rest, it was simply another shock to get used to in the cruel tricks time played on those who would play with it.

  She had been born and raised in Egypt, had come from a good family and been married to an important Ottoman official when she was fourteen. She was his second wife, and thus had no voice in anything.

  Two years after her marriage they moved to Jerusalem, where her husband became chief of tax administration. He was an important man, and already had two daughters by his first wife, but, of course, he wanted a son most of all. He had hoped that Ismet would provide that son, or many sons, for that was her purpose in life, but in the two years in Egypt and one more in Jerusalem she had borne him nothing. Finally, just after her seventeenth birthday, she had become pregnant, but joy turned to horror when the child, which was indeed a boy, was stillborn.

  He blamed her for that, and beat her, but finally his rage cooled. Still, he could not bear to have her around anymore, and so divorced her. She was, in effect, thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem with nothing, including any skills or experience outside her sheltered existence.

  Such women were easy prey for those who had need of them, such as Mufasta the Procurer, whose street people told him of this and who found her, weeping and alone, and had kindly taken her in. Helpless, alone, feeling abandoned and dishonored, she was perfect for what he had in mind. She proved to be easy to domesticate, and he soon moved her to his port operation in Tyre, where sailors had money and great lust.

  After the first hundred men, she no longer thought of being anything but a woman of pleasure.

  Now, however, she was back with h
im in Jerusalem, having had some difficulties with an official of the empire in Tyre over the amount of certain bribes to be paid for doing business. Business was, in fact, not nearly as good there, but he had opium to keep his “harem” girls happy, and as his political contacts there were far more friendly and far less greedy, it balanced out.

  She had broken easily, and it did not trouble her. She called him “Master” and was grateful to be the property of one who provided for her needs. She was quite good-looking, and her barrenness had proven to her that this was indeed the mission in life Allah had selected for her. Mufasta was not a harsh master, for he was skilled and did not have to be.

  She danced near naked for unruly, drunken crowds in the back rooms of places where wine flowed freely and religious laws were not highly regarded, and she laid more than twenty of them in nine days, and it was acceptable to those who inhabited that body with her because it felt good and was new.

  The decision, however, had to be made, for they had to decide whether to risk all on Sister Nobody’s frail and broken body or to take Ismet’s far preferable one—but with Ismet as the primary.

  Ultimately, they decided that there was a great possibility that Ismet could not be convinced to go, so they took charge. In the very early morning she had snuck out of her dingy little room, donned a chador and veil as was necessary to travel unescorted, and made her way several blocks to the square. She had made certain that she knew the spot, having had to fetch water and other things at her master’s bidding. The mind was very close to control, terribly frightened and confused, but she’d done it.

  Compared to the last time, the suit was amazingly easy to find and only slightly worse a fit than it had been. It was, however, only Ismet’s compliancy and drug-weakened will that allowed her to come this far. The trip point was reached while she was actually in the suit, but before it could be activated. For quite some time she sat there, confused and frightened, but then something inside her fought, reached out and adjusted the numbers she could not quite understand, then pushed a button.

  The date and location were basically random, but with reality blanking out around her the process of assimilating all of the personalities into her went on. Again the will was not a strong one, and a synthesis occurred, although the new personality was, in fact, less decisive and more prone to fright than the first one had been.

  She came out in the water. It was an eerie sensation, literally standing atop an unmoving ocean, but soon she began to sink into it. She realized immediately what “random” meant, and struggled with the controls as she sank, hoping to reactivate before the pressure crushed the suit.

  The next time, thanks to a bit of luck, she struck land, and knew that this new body, while young and attractive, also would not do, for it was addicted to opium.

  In 1741, in India, she was a prostitute serving the British soldiers.

  In 1854 she was a prostitute, this time serving seamen of all nations in Honolulu, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. But one was a navigator who knew quite a bit about latitude and longitude.

  In 1905 she was a prostitute on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco.

  She had by now realized that time had found a convenient outlet for her and was not going to let her go. She realized, too, that her power in the suit was waning, and her reserve air supply was so thin there was a question of whether it would reach. By this point she was three trip points beyond the first, and someone else entirely. Someone, in fact, who did not regard the life time was imposing on her, that of a barren whore, as something to be ashamed of.

  Still, she decided to go for the abandoned time belt. There was more chance at a future there than in a past time in the oldest profession, and there seemed no reason not to take a chance on it.

  She didn’t want to risk assimilation in Moosic’s present, if only because it would signal to the inevitable watchers that someone was there. The locator on the suit was not, however, designed to go down more than seconds, so where she arrived was not precisely where she wanted to be. It was, however, only two miles north of the plant.

  The air gauge said it was empty, and had said so for some time. Not that she could move in that suit, anyway, but that left her with an hour or two, no more, before assimilation would take over. She abandoned the suit with no thought of hiding it. It was useless at this stage. Two miles was two miles, and her current body was quite young—seventeen, in fact—but also not in the best condition for walking or running. The men had liked large breasts, and the penalty for them in her case was to be large in other places as well. She would probably not make the distance in time, and it was too close now to take the chance.

  There was a small communal housing development nearby, however, and she checked the outside and found a number of possibilities. Cars were out, since, even if she could find one, in this regulated society it wouldn’t mean anything. The machines would not run while she was out of phase.

  She looked around the rear of the complex, which seemed some kind of cheap family housing, and eventually spotted a child’s bicycle sitting in one of the yards. It was a bit small for her, but it would certainly do. She feared it might be locked, but found to her relief that it was not. There was, apparently, one advantage to living in a rigidly policed state.

  It was kind of fun, riding a bike stark naked down a major road, but it still took her some time to reach her destination, and the ups and downs of the road in this seemingly flat country were not easy to overcome.

  The Calvert Cliffs, known as one of the east’s richest fossil beds, were just below the nuclear plant and its secret time project. She turned into the small parking lot for the cliffs and nearly jumped off the bike, running down the small trail a bit to where she, as Moosic, had left the belt, all the while praying it was still there.

  It was, and it appeared to be functioning normally. She began to feel a bit dizzy, and worried that phasing might catch up with her before she could activate the belt. She had tripped as Ismet while actually in the suit, and only Ismet’s fear of returning and being discovered as having left without permission caused her to activate at all.

  It had been, in a sense, lifetimes since she’d used one of the belts, and for a moment she was struck with confusion as to how it worked. Finally, though, she remembered the “Home” button, found it, and pressed it as nausea started to overtake her.

  The feeling was replaced almost instantly by one of falling slowly, and she relaxed. The journey, which might have taken many hours in the old suit had it had the power, would not take long with this device.

  Feeling a bit shaky, she appeared in the lounge area of the Outworlder base. Sitting there were Herb, looking much as he had so many lifetimes before, “Doc” Kahwalini, beautiful as ever, and a small, weasel-like man she barely recalled as Nikita.

  Doc looked over at her and smiled. “Right on schedule,” she said approvingly.

  THE WORM OUROBOROS

  “Do you ever feel rotten about being in this business?” Kahwalini asked Chung Lind as she studied the results of her diagnostic computer’s run on the newcomer.

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Never really knowing, I mean. Never really being sure what’s wrong and what’s right, whether all this means a great deal or nothing, and whether it’s our right to do it to the ignorant and unknowing?”

  Lind shrugged. “Not particularly. Conscience getting to you again, huh? This little operation’s a bit smelly, and we’re coming up to the rough part, so you want a way out.”

  “That may be it. But I don’t want out. There’s no place to go, anyway, and certainly no place as interesting as here. No, I just dislike doing this to other people.”

  “It’s not the first time,” he pointed out. “And when we mount a major operation it can affect millions, not just one.”

  “But you don’t see those millions, or feel them. Still, I suppose you’re right. Setting fire to the orphanage is worse than setting fire to one orphan.”

  “You’re ju
st down in the dumps, as usual, when this sort of thing comes up. We’re soldiers, or cops, or whatever you want to call it. What’s right and wrong isn’t our choice. All I know is that we’ve saved more lives than we’ve taken, and that’s all that counts with me.”

  She sighed and nodded. “I guess that has to be enough. O.K., I’m ready for her. Don’t worry—I’m a pro.”

  “I know you are and I’m not worried. Anything?”

  “Some minor bugs and internal stuff, the product of 1905 or whenever it was. There’s a progressive astigmatism that’s going to get worse.”

  “She’ll survive.”

  “I know, I know. O.K., to work.”

  She left Lind in the lab and proceeded back to the medical examining area. The patient was about five foot four, twenty years old, with medium-length black straight hair and large brown eyes. She had a pudgy face that was somewhat cute, but she was not really pretty in any sense of the word, a fact made worse by the forty extra pounds she carried. Her low contralto had a throaty, rasping quality that sounded either cute or sexy.

  Doc sat down in front of her and looked over the chart. Finally, she asked, “How do you feel?”

  “All right, I guess,” the patient responded. “A little tired.”

  “That’s mostly from relief of tension, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m going to run you through a decontamination chamber to kill off some of the bugs, but it’s no big thing. Actually, I was asking how you feel inside, in your mind.”

  The young woman thought about it. “I—I don’t know. So much has gone on in there, but I guess I never really thought much about it. Never tried to.”

  Doc nodded to herself. “I’d like to run a psych stat on you.”

  “Huh? What’s that?”

  “It’s a medical device, like decontamination and diagnostics. It was developed for this operation, for njghtsiders like us. It’ll help us to know what your problems are, and it might help you as well. It doesn’t hurt— it’s more like getting a good night’s sleep, in fact. Would it bother you?”