Keith Laumer - Zone Yellow

“There are a few other Net-traveling peoples,” I told Helm, “including some you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. The Haqqua, for example―C.H. date about one hundred thousand BP―and now, it seems, the Ylokk, from a lot farther away. In fact we’ve never successfully carried out a reconnaissance that far out.”

I pointed out to Helm the curious phenomenon of E-entrophy: the gradual changes as we sped across the lines of alternate reality, analogous to the changes we observe as we move unidirection-ally in time. The looming mass of the Net garage had changed as we watched the screen; the color went from the dull gray PVC of the paneled walls to a blotchy greenish-yellow; cracks appeared, patches curled and fell away, revealing a red-oxide steel-truss structure beneath. This slowly modified into rusting, sagging scrap-iron, and at last fell among the rank weed-trees that had been unobtrusively growing into a veritable jungle. After half an hour, only a slight mound, tree-covered, marked the spot.

That didn’t seem to make the lieutenant, or me either, feel a lot better. But we sped along at a thousand A-lines per minute across the Blight and into more normal-looking territory. As soon as we were clear, I adjusted course, and in a few minutes we were in Zone Yellow, with no unusual phenomena, so far.

As always, it was fascinating. Today, I looked out at glistening mud-flats that rose barely above the choppy surface of the sea that stretched to the horizon. The weather, of course, was the same as it had been: a bright, sunny morning with a few fleechy clouds. One of them, I thought, looked like a big fish eating a smaller one. It was a curious thing: in the areas of the Net distant from the Zero-zero line, one never saw human faces in the cloud-patterns, or even normal, familiar animals. These fish I was seeing in the mist were monstrous, all jaws and spines. So much for fanciful ideas; we had places that wanted us to go to them, and things itching to be done. After a while, the sea drained away and vegetation appeared; tall, celery-like trees, which were quickly covered by a tide of green, as others sprouted and grew tall.

As we rushed on, E-velocity being our only defense against falling into identity with the desolation around us, we watched the trees wither, as great vines suffocated them. The vines became a web of what looked like electric distribution cables. A mound where the garages had been burst and spilled forth strange, darting vehicles, and monstrous caricatures of men, rendered hideous by gross birth defects and mutations. They scurried among the dead trees along well-trodden paths that writhed, changing course like water spilling down an uneven slope. Abruptly there was a blinding flash of white light, a flash that burned on and on, dazzling our eyes until the overload protection tripped and the screen faded, but not quite to total darkness; we could see a dim landscape under a bloated red moon. Low mounds dotted the exposed rock to the edge of a dark sea. What had once been Stockholm, and on its own plane of alternate existence still was, had been inundated by the Baltic Sea. Just at the edge of the water, partially submerged, was a giant crater, a good half-mile wide. The brilliant light we had seen had been a house-sized meteorite, which had dealt the final blow to the degenerate remnants of animal life in this doomed area of the Blight.

“My God,” Helm blurted. “Is it all like this?”

“Happily, no,” I told him. “But some of it’s worse. We’re into Zone Yellow now―you’ve seen it on the Net map back at HQ. The Common History dates of the closest lines beyond the Blight are a few thousand years BP. This is perhaps a few million. The forces Cocini and Maxoni were meddling with when they developed the M-C drive that powers our Net travelers were potent entropic energies. They were lucky; they contained the forces and succeeded in giving us access to the entire Net of alternate possibilities. Other experimenters, the analogs of Maxoni and Cocini in their own lines, were not so lucky. Our own line was the survivor; all the very close A-lines were destroyed, with the exception of a couple where Cocini and Maxoni never started their work.”

“You told me about a couple of lines you’d visited where things are pretty normal,” Helm commented. “How―?”

“A few other lines within the blighted area survived,” I repeated. “Because there Maxoni and Cocini never met―or never started their work. Those are the Blight Insulars.”

Helm nodded like a man resigned to not understanding.

On the screen, the view now was again of an expanse of glistening sea-mud; the sea had once more receded, leaving sodden flats that stretched to the horizon. We saw no sign of life here, except the scattered skeletons of whales and of a few large fish, plus a fascinating assortment of sunken ships, which ranged from the ribs of Viking dragon-ships to eighth-of-a-mile-long submarine cargo vessels of the latest model. The drained area went on for a long time. I was getting sleepy.

I checked over the instruments and controls again and explained them to Helm―”Just in case,” I pointed out over his objections, “it becomes convenient for you to operate this thing.” As soon as he quit protesting, he turned out to be a quick study. He pointed to the sustain gauge and said, “If this starts down, I have to turn the boost knob to the right, eh?”

“Right,” I agreed. “Just a little.” I didn’t mention that too much gain would send us into entropic stasis, stuck.

At last, the scene outside began gradually to change. First the crater walls in the background collapsed and were covered by vegetation that foamed up like a green tide that rose in tall, conical evergreen breakers. Long, pinkish-purple worms appeared, twining through the lush greenery, leaving stripped limbs, boughs and twigs in their wake. When they met, they intertwined, whether in battle or copulation I couldn’t tell. At last the worms dwindled and were no bigger than garden snakes, and as agile. But not agile enough to escape a quick-pouncing feathered thing like a fluffy frog that dropped on worm after worm, consumed them in a gulp, and leapt again. They swarmed; the glimpses of worm became less frequent and at last there was only the stripped and rotting forest, clotted with shaggy nests of twigs, and frog-birds in various sizes, the larger eating the smaller, as eagerly as their ancestors had eaten worms. It was difficult to maintain the realization that I wasn’t traveling across time, but perpendicular to it, glimpsing successive alternate realities, as close-related worlds evolved at rates proportional to their displacement from the key line of their group.

A tiny, darting mammal appeared, sharp-nosed and small-eyed, peeping over the edge of a big, ragged nest full of glistening gray eggs the size of golf balls. There was yolk on its snout.

“A rat!” Helm blurted. “We must be on the right track, sir! Congratulations!”

“Don’t celebrate yet, Andy,” I suggested, though I felt as pleased as he sounded. We watched the tiny rodent-like animals; soon they became bigger, less agile, using their forelegs for grasping as they leaped from dry twig to dry twig. They seemed to eat nothing but eggs, of which there was an abundant supply. The frog-birds were now all of medium or chicken size, and were always busy pulling small, thread-like worms out of the rotting wood, most of which was gone now; the frog-birds were clearly on their way out, but the rats were more plentiful, and getting bigger.

Soon the birds were gone, and only the now-big rats remained. They’d switched over to eating small invertebrates they dug out of the muddy soil under the mounds of rotted wood.

They began to run upright, holding their fore-limbs to their chests, like squirrels, only bigger, and without the fluffy tails.