“And the fifth dimension?”
“That’s the length of the trough, the depth of existence from the beginning of time to the end. Actually, it’s not a trough but a mobius strip, it continues without any end and the waves of time go round and round forever.”
“So we travel through time.…” Mark began hesitantly.
“We can’t travel through time, at least not our time. Our time is our wave and we can’t make it move faster or slower and we certainly can’t make it go backward.”
“But, I thought—”
“You thought that we were going to send you through time?” Maria frowned then gave him a patronizing smile. “Pretend you’re in a rowboat balanced on the crest of a wave. Okay, you take a flat stone and you skip it across the waves toward the shore or out to sea. Each wave it touches is somebody else’s time. You’re going to be that stone. You’re going to skip yourself from wave to wave, back and forth through other people’s time until your wave, our wave, has moved a thousand years into our future. Then, wherever you are, you’re going to skip forward and rejoin your own time, our universe.”
“And I can’t kill my own grandfather and never be born because.…”
“Because whoever you kill won’t be your grandfather. He’ll will be someone else’s grandfather.”
“But that someone will be a person who looks like me and thinks like me. Who is me.”
Maria exhaled loudly as if unsuccessfully trying to explain the square root of 7 to a backward third grader.
“Your time is always fixed in your own little wave. Your time is your own wave going down the trough. For you there isn’t any past or future to go to. All you’ve got is your own wave as it moves forward through the universe. Your time is where you are on your wave in the trough, past to future, your past, your future. There’s no time travel in your own wave because it’s always only where it is. But we can send you back to someone else’s wave.”
“What’s the difference?” Mark asked. “If all the waves are the same…?”
“They’re not all the same. The passage of the each wave across each plate, their passage down through the fifth dimension changes things, maybe just a little change for someone in the wave right behind ours. But that one difference changes things a little more for the people in the wave behind it. And then the next and the next. If you jump to a wave very far behind yours and ride it back to the ‘present’, to its present, everything may be different from what it was in your present at the same stage. Ripples, eddies, harmonics, all of them affect each succeeding wave’s events so the farther down the line you go, the more things are changed by the time that the early wave reaches where you were in the trough before you jumped back.”
“And if I jump ahead of my wave?”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t. I could prove it if you had the math but you don’t.”
Mark frowned like a child who thinks an adult is lying in order to hide an unpleasant truth.
“Look, all you have to know is that the universe is built in a certain way and we can’t change it. We can jump you back to old waves but we can’t send you forward to where our wave will be a thousand years from now because it’s not there yet. You can only get to our future a thousand years from now by waiting until a thousand years pass and then jumping back to your own wave from wherever you were.”
“I thought this time travel thing was going to save humanity. If I can’t change our past and I can’t go to our future, what’s the point of all this?” Mark waved at the massive equipment in the lab below the conference room.
“The point isn’t where you’re going to, it’s where you’re not going to be.”
Mark stared her with frank confusion.
“We have to hide you someplace where the Ants can’t find you. We have to hide you until our wave is a thousand years in the future and the Ants will all be dead. Then you can come home.”
“If all you need to do is hide me, there must be—”
“There isn’t. Who knows how far the Ants’ empire will have reached five centuries from now? They have some kind of interstellar transportation. Is it only sub-light? We don’t know. Suppose we put you on some ship and send it out at one-percent of the speed of light, which is about the best we can do. How far will you get by the time the Ants overrun the earth? Where on the earth or the moon or even on Mars could we hide you for a thousand years where we could be sure they wouldn’t find you?”
“So, you’re going to hide me someplace in the past?”
“Somewhere in the cracks of time before the Ants ever found us. You’ll skip back twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred years, wait ten, then skip back another twenty, wait twenty, skipping, waiting, skipping, waiting, until the thousand years are up. Then you’ll skip all the way forward to our own time and, God willing, by then the Ants will be dead and gone.”
“And then?” Mark asked.
“And then, you’ll save us all,” Maria told him, more a prayer than a promise.
* * * *
Mark drifted through diaphanous buildings of pale brick and ethereal stone and watched pallid shadows pour down sidewalks as night alternated with day. Once fully energized by the first skip into the past he had left the Sphere behind, tethered in his own time in a laboratory that no longer existed, now just a hole in the ground, probably still swarming with Ants. The time waves themselves now energized his internal systems and he could speed up or slow down his skims across the crests with only a thought.
Day, night, day, night, day, night, faster and faster he flickered back down the years. Finally he hovered in a moderate-sized city in what he knew as Upstate New York. He waited a few subjective seconds until dawn then he pulled the pin and the spiders danced on his skin as the buildings grew substantial, thickening like sheets of water crystallizing into dirty ice.
The breeze was cool and beneath the residue of burned diesel he detected spring grasses and new leaves. A fragment of newsprint tumbled past. Mark grabbed it. May, 1953 according to the smudged date. One of his favorite eras although little changes were starting to creep in from the history he had known from his own time. He found the rest of the paper protruding from a trash can and sat on a bus bench to read it in the growing light.
Apparently in this wave Truman had dropped an atomic bomb on the Chinese army when they began their invasion of Korea thereby ending the war. MacArthur and Eisenhower had clashed over the Republican nomination with Ike finally getting the nod on the third ballot. Had Stevenson embraced Truman’s bombing and promised more of the same he might have won but, true to his principals, Adalai had renounced “Nuclear Diplomacy” and had lost in one of the closest elections in the last fifty years.
Mark had been supplied with a thousand names and bank account numbers, identities of organizations and individuals throughout the Twentieth Century together with details of various winning lottery numbers, sporting events and stock market fluctuations plus a handful of gold coins. Luckily the field was strong enough to encompass his clothes and a few personal effects. Mark often fantasized about how much more difficult his life would have been had he been forced to arrive naked like the time travelers in the Terminator movies.
Mark had visited this city in several other times over the last three hundred and six years and had established bank accounts under various names. Sometimes, when subjective reality had not diverged too much from that of an earlier wave, the banks and the accounts were still there, waiting for him. Sometimes not. Twice the banks had failed and once the records had been lost in a spectacular fire. In another time the account numbers no longer matched, a divergence in management or accounting systems having rendered his savings from another time wave discongruent, a word Maria Salazar had coined, with that of his current reality.
Mark shoved the paper back into the trash and spun in a careful circle. If things had not changed too much, the Lincoln Savings Bank should be down the street that way, jus
t past the massive Sibley’s Department Store. With any luck, in a few hours he would have enough cash to rent a room and buy a set of clothes. And then? As it did every time he returned here, his mind filled with thoughts of Linda. How old would she be now? Nineteen? Too young? He pushed her memory from his brain and set off down the street in the early morning light.
* * * *
“Evening, Mr. Williams,” the cashier muttered, not looking up. He gave her a little nod and held out three one-dollar bills. He had established a routine as bland and boring and unremarkable as he could possibly make it. A modest apartment within walking distance of the downtown stores and restaurants. Plain dark clothes, modest tastes. Three nights a week he had dinner at Swenson’s Smorgasbord Restaurant on State Street where he could get a reasonable variety of food without raising any comments or forming any relationships except that now the cashier had learned his name and he wondered if he shouldn’t find some other place to eat dinner.
He only ate once a day and he didn’t want to be bothered with prying questions from overly-friendly employees. Still, the cashier didn’t seem as if she had any real interest in talking with him. He decided to wait and see if she tried to expand their interaction.
He had just finished cutting off a square of meatloaf with the side of his fork when he caught the man at the corner table looking at him. Instantly the man looked away. Caucasian, barrel-chested, with thick arms and a mop of black hair, the stranger quickly stared down at his plate but it seemed to Mark that he still watched from the corners of his eyes. Mechanically, Mark ate his meatloaf and mashed potatoes, increasingly hunching over his plate like a dog trying to protect a bone. Normally he was in and out of the place in half an hour but he wanted the stranger to leave first so he stalled, nudging a piece of canned peaches like a little snowplow back and forth through the melted remains of the Jell-O.
With a screech the stranger pushed his chair away from the small table, gave Mark a flickering glance, and bustled out the door. Mark dawdled for a few seconds longer then also stood up to leave.
It was now dusk, the thick amber light shading into purple at the top of the sky. A few pedestrians paced the sidewalks but Mark saw no trace of the barrel-chested man. Hesitantly, he turned left and ambled toward the river. Ahead of him the sidewalk was empty. A Mack bus spewing diesel smoke ground past in a whine of gears.
“Hey!” a voice whispered from the alley.
The pale face of the barrel-chested man glowed in the shadows five feet back from the street. Mark froze. Had he been targeted for a robbery? Had someone discovered that he had money? Should he run? Did the barrel-chested man know where he lived? Had he followed Mark to the restaurant?
“I won’t hurt you,” the man whispered, holding up two pale, empty hands. He made an excited “come here” gesture and took a step deeper into the shadows. Mark paused a moment longer then cautiously advanced a few feet.
“What do you want?” Mark asked in a tone which surprised him, cold and flat and vaguely dangerous.
“I recognized you right off,” the stranger said. He held his hands in front of him, palms up. “They call me Rev.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re two of a kind, we are. How much longer do you have?”
“What?”
“That woman called you Mark. Is that your name, Mark?”
After a long pause Mark nodded and took an uncertain step forward.
“I’ve got a hundred and nineteen years left on my clock. How about you?”
“What?” Mark hissed, his heart going cold and his fingers clenching into fists.
“The Ants,” Rev said, his lips splitting in a vicious smile. “They told you about the time waves, right?”
Mark didn’t trust himself to speak.
“You didn’t think yours was the only time-wave that built guys like us, did you? Mostly we only go back a few decades from our own wave so there’s not too much overlap. Plus we keep a pretty low profile. You’re only the second one of us I’ve seen. I didn’t talk to the first guy. I just gave him a pass. But it’s lonely sometimes. I know it’s against the rules but when I saw you I could tell you were having a hard time and I decided to say something.… So, how long do you still have to go?”
Mark peered at the man then hurriedly checked the alley and the fire escapes clinging to the brick walls above. His mouth was dry and he struggled to swallow.
“Six ninety-four,” he rasped.
“Wow, no wonder you’re wonky. When I was at six ninety-four I was a basket case, all the way down to about five hundred. Something about crossing the halfway point seems to make it easier. Once I get past one-hundred I’ll be in the home stretch. It’s all downhill from there.”
For an instant Mark thought of the five hundred and four years remaining before he would be on the downside of one-hundred.
“When your time is up, do you think you’ll be able to do it, really start up the human race again?”
“Why not? It’s all in here, isn’t it?” Rev tapped his chest. “You want to go someplace and talk?”
The thought of the two of them being together in public chilled Mark to the bone and he hurriedly shook his head.
“Yeah, that’s what I would have said at six ninety-four. I guess getting close to one-hundred’s made me reckless.… How many times have you been married?”
“I—twice,” Mark croaked.
“I know, it’s tough, watching them get old and die, or having to leave them, just runnig off in the middle of the night when you still, well, you know, have feelings for them. Sudden death, take my advice, that’s how to handle it.”
“What?”
“Car crashes are the best. Automobiles are death traps in this period anyway and they burn up all the evidence. They won’t have DNA for forty, fifty years so you’re safe on the ID. Just make sure that you knock out the corpse’s teeth before you wreck the car so they can’t get a dental match.”
“Are you saying that you’ve killed someone and—”
“Jeez!” Rev hissed, holding up his hands. “I’m not a monster. Christ, no! Just find some homeless guy dead in an alley or bribe the guy who makes the morgue pickups for the John Does. In this era they’re making, what, a hundred-fifty a month. For five hundred bucks they’ll give you all the bodies you want. Just get one about the right age, knock out the teeth, shove him behind the wheel of your car and run it into a big tree then throw in a match. Instant widow. No muss, no fuss. She’s left with fond memories and a fat life insurance policy.”
Mark looked like he was going to be sick.
“It’s the best thing, really. She’ll have a nest egg to get her through life and she’ll find a nice, normal guy to settle down with, have a couple of kids. Every now and then she’ll take out some old picture of you and her on your honeymoon or something and tell people, ‘This was my first husband, Mark. He was a wonderful man. He died in a car crash only a few years after we were married. I’ll never forget him.’ See, happy ending all the way around, a lot happier than if you’d just ran off in the middle of the night or hung around while she got old and bent and senile.”
“You’ve done this?” Mark asked, though he already knew the answer.
“I know it sounds bad, but after the first few times.…” Rev shrugged.
“Did you ever have any kids?”
“What?”
“Your wives, did any of them get pregnant?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Guys like us, we can’t, you know.… there’s no way.”
“We’re sterile?”
“Sterile? Jesus, you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Know that we’re not human. Christ, they built us! Or grew us. Or designed us.”
Was he insane? Mark wondered. Had all those years skipping across time addled his brain? Involuntarily, he took a step back.
Rev’s expression
softened. “Jeez, I guess they never told you. They can’t send a human, a regular human, across Time. They designed us special, filled our guts with wires and machines and took out half our organs to make enough room. They used a protein compiler to specially design our DNA. Didn’t they tell you never to let some witch-doctor X-ray you?”
“They said…they said the X-rays would show the Time Skip implants that—”
Rev laughed. “It would show a hell of a lot more than that. Why do you think you only need to eat once a day? Why do you think you have to find a chemical supply house and inject yourself with a cocktail that would kill any normal human? Where do you think our names came from?”
“Our names?”
Again, Rev laughed though it had a bitter edge.
“Mine’s Rev, for my model number, Rev. Sixteen. The first fifteen crapped-out and died. Your name’s Mark so I guessing…Mark Eleven? Mark Nineteen? I guess you wouldn’t know.” Rev stepped forward and gently patted Mark’s shoulder. “I guess they figured it would be easier if you didn’t know.… Anyway,” he continued, forcing a smile, “don’t worry about kids. We’re shooting blanks. We were designed that way.”
A couple walked past the alley and glanced inside. Hurriedly, Rev pulled Mark into the shadows.
“We’d better get out of here before some cop sees us and thinks, you know. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”
Rev patted Mark’s shoulder again and turned toward the street.
“Ah, wait. We need to talk. I have questions. I—”
“I don’t thinks so. My stopping you this way probably wasn’t a good idea, but, well, I just made my wife down in Philly a widow and I was feeling a little lonely. I guess I need to punch-out for a while. Maybe I’ll come back in the nineties. Except they’ve got DNA there. Yeah, the eighties it is.” Rev gave Mark a long look and extended his hand. “Okay, then,” he said, turning away then suddenly pausing. “You do know about the hunters, right?”
The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories Page 50