Marooned in Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  Wili nodded without looking up. He still didn’t understand Della Lu. She was tougher and meaner, in some ways, than anyone he had known in LA. But in others—well, he knew why Mike cared for her, even after everything she had done. He hoped Mike could save her.

  “And that’s about the time I’m coming back, Wili. A lot of people don’t realize it, but the war isn’t over. The enemy has lost a major battle, but has escaped forward through time. We’ve identified most of their bobbled refuges, but Mike thinks there are some secret ones underground. Maybe they’ll come out the same time as the Livermore generator, maybe a lot later. This is a danger that goes into the foreseeable future. Someone has to be around to fight those battles, just in case the locals don’t believe in the threat.”

  “And that will be you?”

  “I’ll be there. At least through Round Two.”

  So that was that. Paul was right, Wili knew. But it still felt like the losses of the past: Uncle Sly, the trek to La Jolla without Paul. “Wili, you can do it. You don’t need me. When I am forgotten, you will still be remembered—for what you will do as much as for what you already did.” Naismith looked intently at the boy.

  Wili forced a smile and stood. “You will be proud to hear of me when you return.” He turned. He must leave with those words.

  Paul stopped him, smiled. “It’s not just yet, Wili. I’ll be here for another two or three weeks, at least.”

  And Wili turned again, ran around the desk, and hugged Paul Naismith as hard as he dared.

  Screeching tires and, “Hey! You wanna get killed?”

  Wili looked up in startled shock as the half-tonne truck swerved around him and accelerated down the street. It wasn’t the first time in the last ten days he’d nearly daydreamed himself into a collision. These automobiles were so fast, they were on top of you before you knew it. Wili trotted back to the curb and looked around. He had wandered a thousand meters from Paul’s office. He recognized the area. This part of the Enclave contained the Authority’s archives and automatic logging devices. The Tinkers were taking the place apart. Somehow, it had been missed in the last frantic bobbling, and Allison was determined to learn every Peacer secret that existed outside of Stasis. Wili sheepishly realized where his feet had been leading him: to visit all his friends, to find out if anyone thought the present was worth staying in.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Wáchendon?” Two workers came running up, attracted by the sounds of near calamity. Wili had gotten over being recognized everywhere (after all, he did have an unusual appearance for hereabouts), but the obvious respect he received was harder to accept. “Damn Peacer drivers,” one of them said. “I wonder if some of ’em don’t know they lost the war.”

  “Sí. Fine,” answered Wili, wishing he hadn’t made such a fool of himself. “Is Allison Parker here?”

  They led him into a nearby building. The air-conditioning was running full blast. It was downright chilly by Wili’s standards. But Allison was there, dressed in vaguely military-looking shirt and pants, directing some sort of packing operation. Her men were filling large cartons with plastic disks—old-world memory devices, Wili suspected. Allison was concentrating on the job, smiling and intent. For an instant Wili had that old double vision, was seeing his other friend with this body…the one who never really existed. The mortal had outlived the ghost.

  Then the worker beside him said diffidently, “Captain Parker?” and the spell was broken.

  Allison looked up and grinned broadly. “Hey, Wili!” She walked over and draped an arm across his shoulders. “I’ve been so busy this last week, I haven’t seen any of my old friends. What’s happening?” She led him toward an interior doorway, paused there and said over her shoulder, “Finish Series E. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Wili smiled to himself. From the day of victory, Allison had made it clear she wouldn’t tolerate second-class citizenship. Considering the fact that she was their only expert on twentieth-century military intelligence, the Tinkers had little choice but to accept her attitude.

  As they walked down a narrow hall, neither spoke. Allison’s office was a bit warmer than the outer room, and free of fan noises. Her desk was covered with printouts. A Peacer display device sat at its center. She waved him to a seat and patted the display. “I know, everything they have here is childish by Tinker standards. But it works and at least I understand it.”

  “Allison, a-are you going to drop out, too?” Wili blurted out.

  The question brought her up short. “Drop out? You mean bobble up? Not on your life, kiddo. I just came back, remember? I have a lot to do.” Then she saw how seriously he meant the question. “Oh, Wili. I’m sorry. You know about Mike and Paul, don’t you?” She stopped, frowned at some sadness of her own. “I think it makes sense for them to go, Wili. Really.

  “But not for me.” The enthusiasm was back in her voice. “Paul talks about this battle being just Round One of some ‘war through time.’ Well, he’s wrong about one thing. The first round was fifty years ago. I don’t know if those Peacer bastards are responsible for the plagues, but I do know they destroyed the world we had. They did destroy the United States of America.” Her lips settled into a thin line.

  “I’m going back over their records. I’m going to identify every single bobble they cast during the takeover. I’ll bet there are more than a hundred thousand of my people out there in stasis. They’re all coming back into normal time during the next few years. Paul has a program that uses the Peacer logs to compute exactly when. Apparently, all the projections were for fifty/sixty years, with the smallest bursting first. There’s still Vandenberg and Langley and dozens more. That’s a pitiful fraction of the millions we once were, but I’m going to be there and I’m going to save all I can.”

  “Save?”

  She shrugged. “The environment around the bobbles can be dangerous the first few seconds. I was nearly killed coming out. They’ll be disoriented as hell. They have nukes in there; I don’t want those fired off in a panic. And I don’t know if your plagues are really dead. Was I just lucky? I’m going to have to dig up some bioscience people.”

  “Yes,” said Wili, and told her about the wreckage Jeremy had shown him back on the Kaladze farm. Somewhere, high in the air within the Vandenberg stasis, was part of a jet aircraft. The pilot might still be alive, but how could he survive the first instants of normal time?

  Allison nodded as he spoke, and made some notes. “Yes. That’s the sort of thing I mean. We’ll have a hard time saving that fellow, but we’ll try.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “That’s only half of what I must do. Wili, the Tinkers are so bright in many ways, but in others…well, ‘naive’ is the only word that springs to mind. It’s not their fault, I know. For generations they’ve had no say in what happens outside their own villages. The Authority didn’t tolerate governments—at least as they were known in the twentieth century. A few places were permitted small republics; most were lucky to get feudalism, like in Aztlán.

  “With the Authority gone, most of America—outside of the Southwest—has no government at all. It’s fallen back into anarchy. Power is in the hands of private police forces like Mike worked for. It’s peaceful just now, because the people in these protection rackets don’t realize the vacuum the Authority’s departure has created. But when they do, there’ll be bloody chaos.”

  She smiled. “I see I’m not getting through. I can’t blame you; you don’t have anything to refer to. The Tinker society has been a very peaceful one. But that’s the problem. They’re like sheep—and they’re going to get massacred if they don’t change. Just look at what’s happened here:

  “For a few weeks we had something like an army. But now the sheep have broken down into their little interest groups, their families, their businesses. They’ve divided up the territory, and God help me if some of them aren’t selling it, selling the weapons, selling the vehicles—and to whoever has the gold! It’s suicide!”

  And Wili saw that she migh
t be right. Earlier that week he had run into Roberto Richardson, the Jonque bastard who’d beaten him at La Jolla. Richardson had been one of the hostages, but he had escaped before the LA rescue. The fat slob was the type who could always land on his feet, and running. He was up here at Livermore, dripping gAu. And he was buying everything that moved: autos, tanks, crawlers, aircraft.

  The man was a strange one. He’d made a big show of being friendly, and Wili was cool enough now to take advantage. Wili asked the Jonque what he was going to do with his loot. Richardson had been vague, but said he wasn’t returning to Aztlán. “I like the freedom here, Wáchendon. No rules. Think I may move north. It could be very profitable.” And he’d had some advice for Wili, advice that just now seemed without ulterior motive: “Don’t go back to LA, Wáchendon. The Alcalde loves you—at least for the moment. But the Ndelante has figured out who you are, and old Ebenezer doesn’t care how big a hero you are up here at Livermore.”

  Wili looked back at Allison. “What can you do to stop it?”

  “The things I’ve already said for a start. A hundred thousand new people, most with my attitudes, should help the education process. And when the dust has settled, I’m hoping we’ll have something like a decent government. It won’t be in Aztlán. Those guys are straight out of the sixteenth century; wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the biggest of the new land grabbers. And it won’t be the ungoverned lands that most of the US has become. In all of North America, there seems to be only one representative democracy left—the Republic of New Mexico. It’s pretty pitiful geographically, doesn’t control much more than old New Mexico. But they seem to have the ideals we need. I think a lot of my old friends will think the same.

  “And that’s just the beginning, Wili. That’s just housekeeping. The last fifty years have been a dark age in some ways. But technology has progressed. Your electronics is as far advanced as I imagined it would be.

  “Wili, the human race was on the edge of something great. Given another few years, we would have colonized the inner solar system. That dream is still close to people’s consciousness—I’ve seen how popular Celest is. We can have that dream for real now, and easier than we twentieth-century types could have done it. I’ll bet that, hiding away in the theory of bobbles, there are ideas that will make it trivial.”

  They talked for a long while, probably longer than the busy Allison had imagined they would. When he left, Wili was as much in a daze as when he arrived—only now his mind was in the clouds. He was going to learn some physics. Math was the heart of everything, but you had to have something to apply it to. With his own mind and the tools he had learned to use, he would make those things Allison dreamed of. And if Allison’s fears about the next few years turned out to be true, he would be around to help out on that, too.

  I am grateful to:

  Mike Gannis for many super ideas related to this story; Sara Baase, John L. Carroll, Howard Davidson, Jim Frenkel, Dipak Gupta, Jay Hill, Sharon Jarvis, and Joan D. Vinge for all their help and suggestions.

  Other people have created zoologies and/or geographies of the future. Though they are different from what is described in this story, they are wonderfully interesting:

  Dougal Dixon, After Man, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1981.

  Christopher Scotese and Alfred Ziegler, as described in “The Shape of Tomorrow,” by Dennis Overbye, Discover, November, 1982, pp. 20-25.

  To all those Marooned without hope of rescue

  1

  On the day of the big rescue, Wil Brierson took a walk on the beach. Surely this was one afternoon when it would be totally empty.

  The sky was clear, but the usual sea mist kept visibility to a few kilometers. The beach, the low dunes, the sea—all were closed in by faint haze that seemed centered on his viewpoint. Wil moped along just beyond the waves, where the water soaked the sand flat and cool. His ninety-kilo tread left perfect barefoot images trailing behind. Wil ignored the sea birds that skirled about. He walked head down, watching the water ooze up around his toes at every step. A humid breeze carried the smell of seaweed, sharp and pleasant. Every half minute the waves peaked and clear sea water flooded around his ankles. Except during storms, this was all the “surf” one ever saw on the Inland Sea. Walking like this, he could almost imagine that he was back by Lake Michigan, so long ago. Every summer, he and Virginia had camped on the lakeshore. Almost, he could imagine that he was returning from a noontime stroll on some very muggy Michigan day, and that if he walked far enough he would find Virginia and Anne and Billy waiting impatiently around the campfire, teasing him for going off alone.

  Almost…

  Wil looked up. Thirty meters further on was the cause of all the seabird clamor. A tribe of fishermonkeys was playing at water’s edge. The monkeys must have noticed him by now. In past weeks, they would have disappeared into the sea at the first sight of human or machine. Now they stayed ashore. As he approached, the younger ones waddled toward him. Wil went to one knee and they crowded round, their webbed fingers searching curiously at his pockets. One removed a data card. Wil grinned, tugged the card from the monkey’s grasp. “Aha! A pickpocket. You’re under arrest!”

  “Forever the policeman, eh, Inspector?” The voice was feminine, the tone light. It came from somewhere over his head. Wil leaned back. A remote-controlled flier hung just a few meters above him.

  He grinned. “Just keeping in practice. Is that you, Marta? I thought you were preparing for this evening’s ‘festivities.’”

  “I am. And part of the preparation is to get foolish people off the beach. The fireworks won’t wait till night.”

  “What?”

  “That Steve Fraley—he’s making a big scene, trying to argue Yelén into postponing the rescue. She’s decided to do it a little early, just to let Steve know who’s boss.” Marta laughed. Wil couldn’t tell if her amusement was directed at Yelén Korolev’s irritation or at Fraley. “So please to move your tail, sir. I have some other people to harass yet. I expect you back in town before this flier.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Wil gave a mock salute and turned to jog back the way he had come. He had gone about thirty meters when a banshee shriek erupted behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the flier diving in the other direction, lights flashing, sirens blaring. Against that assault, the new-found sophistication of the fishermonkeys dissolved. They panicked, and with the screaming flier between them and the sea their only choice was to grab the kids and scramble up into the dunes. Marta’s flier followed, dropping noise bombs on either side of them. Flier and monkeys disappeared over the top of the sand into the jungle, and the noise faded. Wil wondered briefly how far Marta would have to chase them to get them into a safe area. He knew she was equal parts softheartedness and practicality. She’d never scare the animals away from the beach unless there was some chance they could make it to safe haven. Wil smiled to himself. He wouldn’t be surprised if Marta had chosen the season and the day of the blow-off to minimize deaths to wildlife.

  Three minutes later, Brierson was near the top of the rickety stairs that led to the monorail. He looked down and saw that he hadn’t been the only person on the beach. Someone was strolling toward the base of the stairway. Over half a million centuries, the Korolevs had rescued or recruited quite a collection of weirds, but at least they all looked fairly normal. This…person…was different. The stranger carried a variable parasol, and was naked except for a loincloth and shoulder purse. His skin was pale, pasty. As he started up the stairs, the parasol tilted back to reveal a hairless, egglike head. And Wil saw that the stranger might just as well be a she (or an it). The creature was short and slender, its movements delicate. There were faint swellings around its nipples.

  Brierson waved hesitantly; it was good policy to meet all the new neighbors, especially the advanced travelers. But then it looked up at Brierson, and even across twenty meters those dark eyes penetrated with cold indifference. The small mouth twitched, but no words came. Wil swallowed
and turned to continue up the plastic stairs. There might be some neighbors it was better to learn of secondhand.

  Korolev. That was the official name of the town (as officially named by Yelén Korolev). There were almost as many rival names as there were inhabitants. Wil’s Indian friends wanted to call it Newest Delhi. The government (in irrevocable exile) of New Mexico wanted to call it New Albuquerque. Optimists liked Second Chance, pessimists Last Chance. For megalomaniacs it was the Great Urb.

  Whatever its name, the town nestled in the foothills of the Indonesian Alps, high enough so that equatorial heat and humidity was moderated to an almost uniform pleasantness. Here the Korolevs and their friends had finally assembled the rescued from all the ages. Almost everyone’s architectural taste had been catered to. The New Mexican statists had a main street lined with large (mostly empty) buildings that Wil thought epitomized their bureaucracy. Most others from the twenty-first century—Wil included—lived in small groups of homes very like those they’d known before. The advanced travelers lived higher in the mountains.

  Town Korolev was built on a scale to accommodate thousands. At the moment the population was less than two hundred, every living human being. They needed more; Yelén Korolev knew where to get one hundred more. She was determined to rescue them.

  Steven Fraley, President of the Republic of New Mexico, was determined that those hundred remain unrescued. He was still arguing the case when Brierson arrived. “…and you don’t appreciate the history of our era, madam. The Peacers came near to exterminating the human race. Sure, saving this group will get you a few more warm bodies, but you risk the survival of our whole colony, of the entire human race, in doing so.”