Jack Chalker - Downtiming the Night Side

“Nothing is permanent. Surely you understand that now if nothing else. What’s forgotten can be relearned.”

“C’mon, Doc! Don’t kid me! Every single time I get a little dumber. I ain’t got much left, Doc. I’m near retarded now. I’m too damn scared to do it again.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.” He finished his coffee and looked out the window. “It’s getting light out now. Looks like a nice day.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s go.”

They drove several places in the area, with Doc stopping now and then to talk to various people and make some phone calls. She fell asleep for a while and paid no attention to the activities, nor did she feel any curiosity about what was going on.

Doc shook her awake. She stirred uneasily, then opened her eyes and looked out the windshield. They were in some kind of public parking area, with another area slightly below them and fenced off. She looked to one side and saw the huge cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. She yawned, stretched as well as she could, and asked, “What’re we doin’ here?”

“Waiting. Not much longer now, I hope. Ah! There!”

A small blue car pulled into the lower lot and drove to a marked section. A woman dressed in whites got out, locked the door, and began to walk toward a lower entrance to the building. It was one of literally dozens of cars pulling in while others pulled out, but Doc drew Holly’s attention to that one in particular.

“Recognize her?”

“Nope. Not from this distance, anyways. I guess I should get glasses, but it don’t seem worth the bother.”

“Dr. Karen Cline.”

She sat up. “Huh? That her? You mean she’s still comin’ in to work and all?”

Doc nodded. “It means success. Cline, or whoever she really is, is going in with full knowledge that there is going to be a terrorist raid today and that the facility is going to be taken over. We achieved complete surprise.”

“You mean she don’t know her friends got knocked off last night?”

“No. Eric couldn’t risk contacting her, and nobody else dared, not this close to the operation, anyway.”

“So what’ll happen to her?”

“Nothing. It’ll be a normal, uneventful day. She’ll know something went wrong but won’t dare try to contact her friends, for all the good it’d do her. She’ll finish her shift and go home and make a time jump—she thinks. Only it won’t be there.”

“Her belt?”

“Her apartment. In about ten minutes a blaze will start in the apartment under hers and it will be impossible to control. Every fire department within twenty miles will be needed to contain it. The place will burn to the ground, although hopefully with no loss of life. Cove’s a pretty isolated little village. The right help just won’t be able to get there in time.”

“And you figure she has the belt in the apartment?”

“We figure. It still might not get the belt, but she won’t dare go near it because she’ll know we’ll be watching and she’ll hear about the shootout with the radicals. She’ll have no choice but to keep doing what she’s doing and hope she’s picked up. She won’t be, because we’ll be on her every second. She’ll be assimilated. Why?”

“Eric said she was Ginny.”

“Indeed? Well, is that so bad a future? A career woman? A Ph.D.? An aide to valuable research? Isn’t that better than almost anything we might have expected for her otherwise?”

“I—I guess so.” She paused. “Why’re we still here? Ain’t we gonna go to her place to make sure?”

“In good time. Here—I’ll stick this lousy radio on and get some music.”

They waited in silence for some time, and Holly began to drift off once more, but Doc suddenly switched off the music and she came awake as he started the car. They went down to the second parking area, which had a gate with a magnetic card pass required to raise it. Doc reached into a pocket, pulled out a card, and stuck it in. The gate went up, and they rolled into the lower lot and parked as close as possible to the door.

Almost immediately, a second car pulled in and after driving up and down the rows it parked very near them. A man got out and looked around at the setting, then locked his door.

Holly stared at him, and her jaw dropped.

“I see you still really do remember what he looks like,” Doc said gently.

“But—that’s Ron !”

“Indeed, it is. Ronald Moosic, on his way to discover the secret of this installation and be given the tour. He’s to be the new director of security. And because he will have a quiet and peaceful day, week, and month, he’ll take over smoothly and do a fine job, and he’ll never go downtime himself.”

She sank back into the seat, feeling totally lost and confused. She watched the tall, handsome, confident man enjoy the new day before going into the hidden installation.

Finally, she said, in a voice so small it could hardly be heard and a tone almost tragically plaintive, “But—I started out as him. I know I did. Then I got turned into Dawn and all the others and finally I come to be me. But if he don’t go back, he don’t become all them people. They never lived. It all never happened. But I’m still here!”

“Yes.”

She turned and looked squarely at Doc. “Then how am I here? Can you tell me that, Doc? How’s Eric and Ginny and all the rest here when he never went back to father ’em or bear ’em?”

“It all happened. Every bit of it happened, and is recorded back in time in our master computer and in our own memories. The unmaking of it also happened, Holly. That’s why you’re here. As to who and what you are, though—you’re a nightsider, just like me and the others. We’re the leftovers from this mess. All those people that you were lived, and lived their lives out. Time has rippled them into existence, even as it has rippled all records, all signs, all memories of what happened out of the main time line. Ron was gone, swallowed in time, but now he lives again and will live out his life. That’s a plus, isn’t it?”

“I—I guess so. But if he’s still here, and he’s him, then I’m just what I am. Holly, nothin’ more.”

Doc started the car, put it in gear, and drove out of the parking lot and back up onto the road and accelerated north toward Cove.

“You’re nothing less than Holly,” Doc said at last. “Right now you are the accumulated record of this whole thing. They’re all still there, inside you, somewhere. And you’re not as dumb as you think you are, either. You’ve followed my entire conversation this distance after the trip point.”

They made the drive to Cove in a few minutes, but saw the location long before they hit the town limits sign. A huge column of thick, black smoke rose from the horizon, and more than once they pulled over so one or another volunteer fire department could pass.

State police prevented them from driving into the town itself, but it was small enough that they could tell that the incendiary had done its work with the team’s usual precision.

Doc backtracked to the junction and went over to the main highway, then headed north.

“Where to now, Doc?”

“Not far. There’s a turnoff up here with a van parked in it which has the time belts. This part of it is now finished.”

There were several men and women already at the turnoff, and a number of cars were parked around. Holly knew that most of these were members of the team she might recognize in other circumstances.

Doc got two of the small time belts from the back of the van and put one on, handing the other to Holly. She shook her head and didn’t take it.

“No, Doc. You said it yourself. It’s done. Finished. Ron’s here and alive, and I ain’t nobody but Holly, the best damn fuck in the east. I ain’t got no place and no time else to go, Doc. I belong here.”