Downtiming the Night Side

by Jack L. Chalker

  For a moment it flashed into her mind, all of it, and she froze, not certain just what to do. He was shouting, and suddenly she made her decision. She wanted him, wanted it, no matter what the final cost. 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 tears welled up inside her, but refused to come out.

  “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!”

  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. 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.”

  It was done! Now, suddenly, she felt completely drained, and things seemed to snap inside her mind. She found herself crying uncontrollably, and he tried to comfort her as best he could, misunderstanding the cause.

  Finally, she had cried herself out, and drifted into a strange and very deep sleep. When she awoke, she felt amazingly good, with no sense of trouble and only a sense of adventure. She watched him poking at the remains of the base foundation and checking the growths, and all she could think was, I am his and he is mine.

  He saw her lying there, staring at him, then came over. “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.”

  He’s right, she decided. He is Adam and I am Eve.

  “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 figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, eventually, 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.” And she meant it.

  “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, and the kiss turned into what she had wanted from the start.

  He was very, very good. And so was she.

  At first, during their explorations of the island, he referred to the past and tried to get her to tell a little about her own, but that soon stopped. She had literally blocked the past from her mind and allowed her emotions full rule. He certainly was falling in love with her, and she worshipped him. Her whole life, the center of her universe, was him.

  Eventually, of course, the playtime ended, and she grew pregnant. She was delighted, not fearful, of the prospect, since deep down, she knew it would come out all right.

  About the only thing she hadn’t figured on was just how much outright terrible pain was involved in having the kid.

  They named him Joseph, after Moosic’s father.

  They didn’t roam so much after he was born, but set up housekeeping near the groves. With the birth of Ginny she became, in fact, a prehistoric homebody. She loved him and she loved the children and she loved having his children, no matter what the discomfort. It was, she felt, what she was meant to do. It was a busy time, and it was enough.

  As she had Sarah, then Cathy, then Mark, she changed still more, but it was not something she noticed. Ron was getting old and his hair was turning white, but it was a gradual thing and not something either really paid any attention to. For her part, the plentiful fruits, vegetables, and the fish Ron brought from ocean traps caused her to gain more weight, and made her less and less ambitious about going very far from her tiny Eden-like world.

  The fat and the fact that over the years her hair had grown in scraggly fashion down past her ass didn’t bother her, but her declining vision did. By the time Joseph’s voice had lowered and Ginny had experienced her First period, she was effectively blind.

  Of course, the children were doing much of the work now, such as it was, under their father’s supervision, and the home itself was so fixed that she could navigate it and even do some cooking and cleaning without really having to see at all. She knew, though, that Joseph and Ginny were experimenting with each other, and it bothered her, although there seemed little to do or say about it. It was, after all, inevitable.

  And then, finally, came the day of the storm when Joseph had not returned, and she’d nagged Ron until he’d gone out to look for the young man. And in a little more time Joseph ran back, screaming and crying, shouting that he’d killed his father.

  It took much comforting as the storm blew in and washed by the island. She felt sad in one way that it was over now, for from the depths of her mind came almost instant understanding of the moment, an understanding she could not convey to the children—particularly the guilt-ridden Joseph.

  “You didn’t kill him,” she soothed. “You just sent him away to a different place.”

  “Then when will he be back?”

  “He—he won’t be back.”

  “ ’Cause he’s dead!”

  “No, because they won’t let him come back—again.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess you’ll have to ask them. They’ll come for us soon.”

  “I don’t want them here! Not if they took Dad!” The other children nodded in agreement.

  “That’s all right. It’s for the best. You’ll have to grow up now, kids. I’m afraid it’s time.”

  They came for them only two days after the storm let up. Three of them came, anyway—Doc and Chung Lind and Herb, the three who’d been closest to them. The children were hostile, and Doc, in particular, was taken aback by their accusations that the Outworlders had taken their father from them. It was particularly tough because it was
true.

  They used the belts to get back to the new base location. The basic medical problems could be taken care of, including her two cancerous growths. One of them, benign but still growing, was the reason why she believed herself pregnant once more. In truth, it would have prevented any such happening.

  The Outworlders, it seemed, had a cure for cancer and much else.

  The children, surprisingly, were in good shape, although Ginny, Sarah, and Mark were decidedly overweight. They all had, to Doc’s satisfaction, a natural extra skin layer with mild pigmentation that absorbed and diluted the most harmful radiation. The mutation did not seem natural, and was not. Doc had been unable to treat the adults for such protection, but she had been able to add the genetic instructions on both sides should children develop. The computer, of course, had provided the information and done the actual work.

  From a civilization whose builders could fly through sand, stand crushing pressures and horrible heat, and take oxygen from the rocks, such a minor thing was child’s play.

  The children never completely lost their feelings of hostility for the team, but concern for their mother and the wonders of the base soon diverted their minds. Rather quickly they were picking up a modern education, although, so far, it had been next to impossible to get them to wear any clothes at all. Ginny, however, more than appreciated the tiny absorbent material, vaginally inserted, that took away much of the problem of the monthly period. Doc had some pills that did away with the cramps and headaches.

  Doc could fix almost everything that was wrong with Dawn, but the eyes defeated her. “I’m afraid you’ll need a full eye transplant, which is not only tricky but requires a perfect match,” she told her. “Either that, or you’ll have to trip.”

  “I don’t want to trip—not yet,” Dawn responded. “The children are having a tough enough time getting over the loss of their father. And that transplant you talk about sounds like a pretty chancy thing.”

  “It is, unless you went to the edge and had them grow a perfect pair and implant them with their equipment and facilities. The trouble is, not much is left up there that would be tolerable to normal humans. They will have to go, though. There are growths behind them that threaten the brain itself, and it’s too risky to use my ray surgery on it.”

  Even though she had only a sense of light and dark and vague shapes, the prospect of that frightened her. “I—1 don’t want to lose them.”

  “Don’t worry. First, we can replace them with inert copies fabricated here. You’ll look more normal than the current pair makes you look now. Then we’ll use a little device that I looked up in the computer banks. It’s being worked on now. It’ll allow you some vision, particularly in dim light.”

  That excited her. “You mean I might be able to see the kids? Actually see them as they are now?”

  “That’s about it.”

  Dawn started to cry softly. “They’re what I have—now.”

  The operation was, from Doc’s point of view, a simple one, and with her futuristic medical equipment and computer-guided and computer-operated surgical kit, it was not even all that painful. In fact, Dawn had not realized how much pain she’d been living with until it was all done and the relief swept through her.

  She was already used to being blind, and now, during the healing period, she memorized every inch of the place. She spent most of the time Doc would allow with the children, of course, who were learning at a rapid pace, thanks to the teaching machines and computer-guided instruction. They had the best of both worlds, the most advanced technology together with a whole new wilderness to play in and explore outside.

  Members of the team came and went on various mysterious missions, but Doc remained behind, as she did on all but the most extraordinary of occasions. They did not want to risk her outstanding medical skills unless they were needed uptime.

  She lost weight, too, and felt better, although she still tipped Doc’s scales at better than ninety-seven kilograms— well over two hundred pounds for her five-foot four-inch frame.

  It was months before the bandages could come off, but still more time before they could try Doc’s gadget. The kids approved her new look; even the eyes, they assured her, were big, warm, and natural. Her hair had been cut very short for the operation, and she kept it that way, knowing it was easy to care for.

  She had been gone almost fourteen years, not the ten or twelve Ron had estimated, and was physically thirty-four. Now, after a lot of skilled work with the best medical technology, she was beginning to look more her own age, and feel it, too.

  Finally came the day when they tried out the seeing eye device. It resembled nothing so much as a pair of tight-fitting goggles, but there was a lot of microcircuitry and even a small computer and power pack in it. It took in the scene and transmitters broadcast it in code to the optic nerves, fooling them into believing that they were getting correct information from real eyes. It had its limitations. Because the thing was basically an infrared device, the images transmitted were mostly in black and white, or soft gray-browns and yellows, as Dawn saw it. Images were sharp and clear at night or in a room with muted lighting, but they faded as the light source was raised. In a brightly lit room it was barely adequate; in full daylight, or in the face of a searchlight beam or fire, it was useless and even a little painful. It also had an effective range of about a hundred yards, with little or no peripheral vision.

  Worse, it could be worn only for a hour or so a day. The power supply was quite limited and, when run down, it caused all sorts of random impulses to be sent to the brain instead.

  Still, it was sight—real sight. Wearing the goggles, she could see again, could see the kids as they were now for the first time. To Dawn, it was a miracle.

  Doc seemed almost apologetic about its limitations. “It was developed late in the nineteen-eighties,” she told Dawn. “This model was actually in production in a limited way, but very expensive, early in the nineties. Then they came up with the ability to organically grow matched eyes for specific patients, and all work on perfecting this was dropped. A pity. The people who would appreciate it the most were the elderly who couldn’t have transplants and those who, for one reason or another, couldn’t stand the surgery to begin with. It’s even more frustrating because the technology to produce eyes for you better than new is available—up at the edge. But it takes time to grow them, and a lot of equipment and skill. The Earthsiders aren’t likely to do it for you, and the Outworlders are more likely to redo the whole you in ways you never even thought of.”

  She nodded. “It’s enough—for now.”

  “You realize,” Doc added, “that the reason they never gave us the capability was because we don’t need it. We can regulate a trip point and take a different cure.”

  Dawn sighed. “Yes, I know. And that’s what you expect me to do.” She paused a moment. “But—if I do, then I won’t be their mother anymore. Oh, I’ll know, but how do you explain it to them!”

  “I think,” Doc said, “that it’s time to call a meeting.”

  Chung Lind, as squad leader, was chairman of the base general committee. Herb, as his exec, was also on it, and Doc, the most permanent of the residents, was included, too. This trio was absolute in their decisions, although, of course, those for whom they worked severely limited their options.

  The huge Oriental leader was serious, as usual, but so was the usually light and airy Herb. Doc was grim. Dawn didn’t have to see them to know that.

  “Doc has called this committee into session, but it had to be done anyway, as we are running out of option time from the computer and its controllers on the edge,” Lind began. “Doc has put this off many times, and we have gone along, but things must come to a head—and soon. Do you understand what this is all about. Dawn?”

  She nodded. “I think so. You’re going to decide the fate of me and my children.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, although the ultimate choice will be yours. I’m afraid it’s the same sort of
thing we face here all the time. Not a lack of choices, but a lack of good ones. Doc?”

  “I finally called this meeting, after fighting it for months, because something happened to make me realize that I was being, in my own way, as cruel as the other choices, although I thought of it as kindness. I wanted to give the kids some adjustment time, and a leg up on joining a very strange world, and, I admit, we wanted to give you some time as well. I think we all agreed we owed it to you. Now, however, I realize we may have gone too far.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” Dawn responded, “but what is the crisis? You and I both know that we can fix things uptime now or later.”

  “In a sense, that’s true,” Doc agreed, “but relative time moves on when we are in phase, as we are here. The war goes on, and it is increasingly brutal and ugly. Have you ever wondered what most of us are doing here?”

  “Many times,” she admitted.

  “You may have been told, or maybe not, that the Earthside leaders have a fall-back position here in the Safe Zone. When the ultimate defeat comes, they will escape to that base, sealing themselves off by detonating the other fifteen thousand nuclear weapons stockpiled from the old days. They will destroy the Earth and every living thing on it.”

  “Eric told me that. He gave it as his reason for fighting on their side.”

  “Dawn,” Herb put in, “they’re in pretty sad shape. The truth is, the Outworlders could win very quickly. They’ve had the ability to do it for years. The only reason they don’t is that cache of nuclear weapons. They are not out to commit genocide on the people of Earth, believe me. But they have to continue the war, at a reduced level, to keep the pressure on. If they stopped, perhaps for as little as a year or two, it’s possible that Earth could regroup. They have spaceships with terrible weapons hidden in nearly impregnable bunkers far underground, but they have no way to launch them without access to surface installations. They are mother ships for hordes of fighters that can be launched only from space. We can keep them down there by incessant attack, but that’s it. If we let up, they can launch. They still can’t win, but they might just wind up destroying both sides.”