Robert Silverberg - Stepsons of Terra

Again Ewing did not let the Earther finish his statement. “This I find very interesting,” he broke in. He moistened his suddenly dry lips. “Would you say it was theoretically possible to send—say, me—back in time to—oh, about Twoday evening of this week?”

“It could be done, yes,” Myreck admitted.

A pulse pounded thunderously in Ewing’s skull. His limbs felt cold and his fingers seemed to be quivering. But he fought down the feeling of fear. Obviously, the journey had been taken once, and successfully. He would take it again.

“Very well, then. I request a demonstration of the machine. Send me back to Twoday evening.”

“But-”

“I insist,” Ewing said determinedly. He knew now who his strange masked rescuer had been.

A look of blank horror appeared on Myreck’s pale face. His thin lips moved a moment without producing sound. Finally he managed to say, in a hoarse rasp, “You can’t be serious. There would be a continuum doubling if you did that. Two Baiid Ewings existing conterminously. you see. And—”

“Is there any danger in it?” Ewing asked.

Myreck looked baffled. “We don’t know. It’s never been done. We’ve never dared to try it. The consequences might be uncontrollable. A sudden explosion of galactic scope, for all we know.”

“I’ll risk it,” Ewing said. He knew there had been no danger that first time. He was certain now that his rescuer had been an earlier Ewing, one who had preceded him through the time-track, reached this point in time, and doubled back to become his rescuer, precisely as he was about to do. His head swam. He refused to let himself dwell on the confusing, paradoxical aspects of the situation.

“I don’t see how we could permit such a dangerous thing to take place,” Myreck said mildly. “You put us in a most unpleasant position. The risks are too great. We don’t dare.”

A spanner lay within Ewing’s reach. He snatched it up, hefting it ominously, and said, “I’m sorry to have to threaten you, but you’d never be able to follow me if I tried to explain why I have to do this. Either put me back to Two-night or I’ll begin smashing things.”

Myreck’s hands moved in a Little dance of fear and frustration. “I’m sure you wouldn’t consider such a violent act, Mr. Ewing. We know you’re a reasonable man. Surely you wouldn’t—”

“Surely I would!” His hands gripped the shaft tightly; sweat rolled down his forehead. He knew that his bluff would not be called, that ultimately they would yield, since they had yielded, once—when? When this scene had been played out for the first time. First? Ewing felt cold uneasiness within.

Limply Myreck shook his head up and down. “Very well,” the little man said. “We will do as you ask. We have no choice.” His face expressed an emotion as close to contempt as was possible for him—a sort of mild, apologetic disdain. “If you will mount this platform, please…

Ewing put the spanner down and suspiciously stepped forward onto the platform. He sensed the oppressive bulk of the machine around and above him. Myreck made painstaking adjustments on a control panel beyond his range of vision, while the other Earthers gathered in a frightened knot to watch the proceedings.

“How do I make the return trip to Fourday?” Ewing asked suddenly.

Myreck shrugged. “By progressing through forward time at a rate of one second per second. We have no way of returning you to this time or place at any accelerated rate.” He looked imploringly at Ewing. “I beg you not to force me to do this. We have not fully worked out the logic of time travel yet; we don’t understand—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back. Somehow. Sometime.”

He smiled with a confidence he did not feel. He was setting foot into the darkest of realms —yesterday. He was armed with one comforting thought: that by venturing all, he might possibly save Corwin. By risking nothing, he would lose all.

He waited. He realized he was expecting a crackle of energy, an upwelling flare of some supernal force that would sweep him backward across the matrix of time, but none of these phenomena materialized. There was merely the gentle murmur of Myreck’s voice as he called off equations and made compensations on his control panel; then came a final “Ready,” and the Earther’s hand reached for the ultimate switch.

“There’ll probably be a certain amount of spacial dislocation,” Myreck was saying. “I hope for all our sakes that you emerge in the open, and not—”

The sentence was never finished. Ewing felt no sensation whatever, but the laboratory and the tense group of Earthers vanished as if blotted out by the hand of the cosmos, and he found himself hovering a foot in the air in the midst of a broad greensward, on a warm, bright afternoon.

The hovering lasted only an instant; he tumbled heavily to the ground, sprawling forward on his hands and knees.

He rose hurriedly to his feet. His knee stung for an instant as he straightened up; he glanced down and saw that he had scraped it on a stone in the field, causing a slight abrasion.

From nearby came a childish giggle. A high voice said, “Look at the funny man doing handsprings!”

“Such a remark is impolite,” came a stuffy, mechanical-sounding response. “One does not loudly call attention to eccentric behavior of any kind.”

Ewing turned and saw a boy of about eight being admonished by a tall robot governess. “But where did the man come from?” the boy persisted. “He just dropped out of the sky, didn’t he? Didn’t you see?”

“My attention was elsewhere. But people do not drop out of the sky. Not in this day and age in the City of Valloin.” Chuckling to himself, Ewing walked away. It was good to know he was still in the City of Valloin, at any rate; he wondered if the boy was going to continue asking about the man who had dropped from the sky. That governess didn’t seem to have any humor circuits. He pitied the boy.

He was in a park; that much was obvious. In the distance he saw a children’s playground, and something that might have been a zoological garden. Concessions sold refreshments nearby. He walked toward the closest of these booths, where a bright-haired young man was purchasing a balloon for a boy at his side from a robot vender.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m a stranger in Valloin, and I’m afraid I’ve got myself lost.”

The Earther—his hair, a flaming red, had apparently been chemically treated to look even brighter—handed the robot a coin, took the balloon, gave it to the child, and smiled courteously at Ewing. “Can I help you?”

Ewing returned the smile. “I was out for a walk, and I’m afraid I lost my way. I’d like to get back to the Sirian Consulate. That’s where I’m staying.”

The Earther gaped at him a moment before recovering control. “You walked all the way from the Sirian Consulate to Valloin Municipal Park?”

Ewing realized he had made a major blunder. He reddened and tried to cover up for himself: “No—no, not exactly. I know I took a cab part of the way. But I don’t remember which way I came, and—well—”

“You could take a cab back, couldn’t you?” the young man suggested. “Of course, it’s pretty expensive from here. If you want, take the Number Sixty bus as far as Grand Circle, and transfer there for the downtown undertube line. The Oval Line tube will get you to the Consulate if you change at the Three Hundred Seventy-eighth Street station.”

Ewing waited patiently for the flow of directions to cease. Finally he said, “I guess I’ll take the bus, then. Would it be troubling you too much to show me where I could get it?”