The Second Fritz Leiber

by Fritz Leiber

  Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.

  “Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!” the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. “Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy.”

  “Oh, all right.” Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.

  Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired, baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.

  Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.

  * * * *

  It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.

  The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.

  “There’s the Theater,” Joggy announced.

  “I know,” the Butcher said irritably.

  But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.

  “My father remembers when there wasn’t a Time Theater,” Hal said softly as he scanned the facade’s glowing charts and maps. “Say, they’re viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting.”

  “Will it be about Napoleon?” the Butcher asked eagerly. “Or Hitler?” A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher’s forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.

  “Wrong millennium,” Hal said.

  “Tamerlane then?” the Butcher pressed. “He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies.”

  Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. “Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can’t see it. How about it, Joggy?”

  “They won’t let me in, either.”

  “Yes, they will. You’re five years old now.”

  “But I don’t feel any older,” Joggy replied doubtfully.

  “The feeling comes at six. Don’t worry, the usher will notice the difference.”

  Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult’s face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.

  Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.

  Hal looked back. “Honestly, the usher will stop you.”

  The Butcher shook his head. “I’m going to think my way in. I’m going to think old.”

  “You won’t be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren’t allowed in the Time Theater. There’s a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t exactly know, but something.”

  “Hah! I bet they’re scared we’d go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement.”

  “They are not. I guess they just know you’d get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don’t worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you.”

  “Shut up—I’m thinking I’m World Director,” the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.

  Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.

  But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.

  “Do you suppose something’s the matter with his circuits?” Joggy whispered. “Maybe he’s getting racial memories from the Scands.”

  “Of course not,” Hal said irritably.

  “Brute, get over there,” the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.

  The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.

  “I told you you couldn’t fool the usher,” Hal said.

  The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.

  “I bet it’ll be a bum time view anyway,” the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. “And I still don’t think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there’s an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn’t like your looks, he switches on the usher.”

  But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.

  “Take it easy, Brute,” the Butcher consoled him. “I don’t think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow.”

  Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren’t there.

  The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.

  They glared at him and one of them said: “A cub!” But he had his arms folded and wasn’t looking at them.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.

  The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.

  But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.

  Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble’s surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.

  Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved
the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.

  * * * *

  Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.

  “The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era,” a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: “Don’t do that, Joggy. It’s just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it’s no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though.”

  The interpreter continued: “The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future.”

  Joggy whispered: “How is it that we can’t see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right.”

  “The bubble only shines light out,” Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. “Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they’re seeing the other way—for instance, they can’t see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky.”

  Joggy nodded. “You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it’s a kind of hole through time?”

  “That’s right.” Hal cleared his throat and recited: “The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you’d be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it.”

  “I see, I guess,” Joggy whispered. “But if the hole works for light, why can’t the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?”

  “Why—er—you see, Joggy—”

  The interpreter took over. “The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering.”

  * * * *

  As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.

  He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.

  “More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia,” a new voice cut in.

  Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend’s back with the other.

  Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: “Butch!”

  But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.

  “Then how is it, Hal,” he asked, “that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don’t? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn’t the light coming our way disappear, too?”

  “Well—you see, Joggy, it isn’t real light. It’s—”

  Once more the interpreter helped him out.

  “The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It’s more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven’t realized how dimly lit the scene is. That’s because we’re getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them.”

  “Oh, explanations!” murmured one of the newly arrived girls. “The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!”

  “I like this show,” a familiar voice announced serenely. “They cut anybody yet with those choppers?”

  Hal looked down beside him. “Butch! How did you manage to get in?”

  “I don’t see any blood. Where’s the bodies?”

  “But how did you get in—Butcher?”

  The Butcher replied airily: “A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I’d been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher.”

  “Butcher, that wasn’t honest,” Hal said a little worriedly. “You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it’s dangerous for you under-fives to be in here.”

  “The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!” one of the girls commented. “Talk about sex favoritism!” She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.

  The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.

  “Those big dogs—” he began suddenly. “Brute must have smelled—.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Hal said. “Smells can’t come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven’t any isotopes and—”

  “I don’t care,” the Butcher asserted. “I bet somebody’ll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling.”

  “You can’t travel in a point of view,” Hal contradicted, “and that’s all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn’t real at all, but a—uh—”

  “I believe,” the interpreter cut in smoothly, “that you’re thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.

  “It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction.”

  “Sissies!” was the Butcher’s comment.

  * * * *

  “You’re rather young to be here, aren’t you?” the interpreter inquired.

  The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.

  The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. “Well, you wouldn’t have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself.”

  There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a grippi
ng interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.

  “This is getting good,” the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.

  “Stop being an impulsive mentality,” Hal warned him a little nervously.

  “Hah!”

  The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.

  “That’s right,” the Butcher approved loudly. “Sock it to ’em!”

  “Butcher!” Hal admonished.

  Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.

  “A viewing anomaly has occurred,” the interpreter announced. “It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period.”

  In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.

  “Attaboy!” the Butcher encouraged.

  Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.

  “Oh, boy!” the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.

  “Butcher, you’ve done it!” Hal said, aghast.

  “I sure did,” the Butcher agreed blandly, “but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it.”

  “Keep your seats!” the interpreter said loudly. “We are energizing the safeguards!”

  * * * *

  The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.

  Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.

  “The safeguards are now energized,” the interpreter said.

  A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.