Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

“I remember-” The wraith of Sunday jumped up to hug my bodiless spirit with nonexistent forepaws and tried to lick my face that was not there. “It’s all right, Sunday. Down, cat! I’m not feeling bad now; I was just remembering something...

“But the time storm’s still there. You mean you can give up on it, now?” Ellen asked.

“I think I could—now.”

“But you don’t really want to.”

“No,” I said. “The truth is, no. If I give up, nothing’ll be done; and that means the end, for all of us.”

“You’re sure it does?”

“Yes. There’s been a situation building up for a few thousand years now, ever since the temporal engineers started working with the storm. They’ve been trying to cure an imbalance between energies in this universe by importing more energy from another universe, to shore up the weaker of the two energies here. It’s worked for a while, but it’s also been creating the potential of a bigger imbalance if the scale should suddenly tip the other way, and the weak side become the strong one, with all that extra, imported energy added to its natural advantage. And I think it’s about to tip-in this universe at least—in about nine months.”

“The engineers don’t know this?” Ellen asked. “You’re sure about that?”

“They know it, but they don’t realize how great the reaction can be.”

“In any case, what can you do by yourself?”

“I don’t know. I need to think. Quiet, cat. Leave me alone for a few minutes.”

Sunday stilled. His ghost body lay down with crossed paws, on nothingness, and resigned itself to patience. I still held my vision of unity with the universe, that had come on me after I had finally faced the fact that there was no hope from Dragger or her colleagues. I had found what I had stumbled toward and struggled for all this time; and now I wanted to live, as even more I wanted Ellen, Sunday, and my universe with everyone in it to live. It went against reason that I could have come this long journey through life and time without picking up the skill and knowledge to do something about the situation. Somewhere, there had to be a chance; and if there was a chance, my blessing/curse of being unable to turn away from an unsolved problem should keep my mind hunting until I found it.

“If I’m right about the parallel....” I began at last, slowly.

“What parallel?” said Ellen.

“The parallel about the time storm being an analogy of the inner storm. If I’m right about that, and I had to get outside myself to find the key to my inner storm, then....”

Ellen said nothing.

“Then,” I went on, after a moment, “the answer to the time storm has to be outside too. Outside the universe—outside this universe. If I go outside this universe, I ought to be able to see it.”

“But how can you do that?” asked Ellen.

I did not say anything.

“There’s no way you can do that, is there?”

“Yes,” I said, slowly, “there is. There’s the lens.”

“What lens?”

I told her.

“Marc!” said Ellen. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s the only way to get outside.”

“But it’s the center of a star—and worse than that. You’d be burned up before you got into the lens.”

“I’m not material at the moment, remember. It’s my mind only that’d be going.”

“But even if you could go through this lens without being destroyed, there’s the problem of getting back. How could you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you check the idea out, first, with the temporal engineers?”

“They might want to stop me; and maybe they could,” I said. “They can’t help me, Ellen. The time storm’s too much inside all of them, just like my inner storm was too much inside me. I’m the only one who can do anything; and the only thing I can think of to do is go through the lens.”

She said nothing for a moment. The wraith of Sunday lay waiting, trusting, leaving it all up to me.

“If you don’t, we all die?”

“I believe so.”

She sighed.

“Then you do have to go. There actually is no choice,” she said. “All right. I’m going along.”

“I don’t think you can,” I said. “Where are you? Back down in the summer palace asleep?”

“I’m in my own bedroom at the summer palace,” said Ellen, “lying on the bed. But I don’t think I’m asleep.”

“You’re there, though. I’m here. Tell me, can you feel the downdraft?”

“The what?”

I explained what it was. She was quiet for a little while after I finished. Finally, she spoke.

“No,” she said.

“I thought so,” I said. “I’m probably reaching down to you, as much as you’re reaching up to me. You see, I really am out here in a sense. I’m an energy pattern projected by the engineering devices of the temporal engineers. I can go from place to place at faster than light speeds only because I can turn off my projection in one spot and turn it on at another.”

“If you’re a pattern of energy, then the energy coming through the lens can destroy you! Or at least, change you. Energy is material.”

“Maybe. I’ve got to try it, anyway.”

“There has to be some way I can go with you!”

“I don’t think so; and that’s good. Because then I couldn’t stop you from coming; and there’s no sense in both of us... going.”

“Let’s try and find a way. Wait a bit. You said we had nine months.”

“Nine months before the axe falls; but it may be already too late to stop its swing. I can’t wait. I’ve got to go, now.”

“Wait just a little bit. Come back home for a couple of days, or even one, so we can talk it over first.”

“If I did that, I might not go after all. Particularly not now, with the two of you around. Ellen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go now!”

We flowed together, we ghosts. She held me. Sunday held me. I held them.

“All right, go then,” she said at last. “Go now.”

“Goodby,” I said. “I love you. I love you both. I’ll be back.”

“You’ll be back,” said Ellen.

I pulled away from them and shut them out of my mind. I was alone among the stars; and, by reaching out for it, I could feel the funnel of energy and also the downdraft—weak, as Dragger had said, way out here, but unceasing, relentless.

I let the pull of the downdraft fill my mind. I let myself go with it. At first there was nothing; it was like floating on a lake. Then I noticed a slight movement, a drifting, and I became aware of the fact that I was dropping down below the galactic plane. I revolved and saw the direction of my movement, toward the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and a darkness there enclosing a young, blue-white giant star, a darkness I was still too far off to distinguish.

I let myself drift....

The plane of the galaxy receded above me. I was in intergalactic space. There was nothing to measure the speed of my movement now, but I sensed that it was increasing. I was falling faster and faster, down the funnel of extra-universal energy, reaching from the lens at S Doradus to our galaxy.

I fell a hundred and forty thousand light-years; and time became completely arbitrary. It may have been minutes, and it may have been months, that I fell with steadily increasing velocity until I must have been travelling faster than any pulsar measured in my early, original time. I think it was probably minutes rather than months, or at least hours rather than months, because I could feel that my acceleration was not merely steady, but steadily increasing all that time. I had no ordinary way to measure this—I only knew it, with some measuring back part of my mind.

It became plain to me, finally, that I would not see the lens before passing through it. By the time I would be close enough to make out the dark circle of the engine among the lights of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, I would be only a fractionless fraction of a second from entering the tachyonic universe, too small a moment of time for perception. I relaxed, letting myself go....