Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

The suburb had a fine, four-lane concrete road leading out of it, but that ended about two hundred yards from the last of the smashed houses. I drove the Volvo, bumping and bucking across a lumpy open field, to get it back on our familiar asphalt and turned left into the direction in which we had been originally headed. We kept going; and about an hour later, I spotted a mistwall to our right. It was angled toward the road we were on, looking as if it crossed the asphalt somewhere up ahead of us.

My heart jumped when I saw it; but after watching it closely for a little while, I calmed down. Clearly, the wall was standing still. We continued on up along the road, with its vertical, white face getting closer and closer, until finally we were far enough along to see where it ended. It did indeed cut across the road at last, about a quarter mile ahead of where we were; but it only continued beyond that point of intersection for about a hundred yards. By going off the asphalt to the left just a short distance, we could get around the end of the cloud-high curtain. Not only could we bypass it safely; but after going a little further, we would be able to get where we could see what was behind it, without ever having to set foot in what might be dangerous territory. I kept us moving.

We stopped finally and left the road, a good fifty or a hundred feet short of the point where it was intersected by the mistwall. Up this close to the wall, we could see it seeming to reach clear out of sight above us; and we could feel the peculiar breeze and the dust that always eddied from it, like the peppering of a fine spray on our face and hands. We struck off into the trees and brush to the left of the road, with the car in low gear and moving along level with the face of the wall.

It did not take long to reach the end of it. I kept on a little further, however, not wanting to turn the corner until I could see behind it. But though we kept going further and further, we still did not seem to quite clear the end. Finally, I saw why. We were not going to be able to see behind that mistwall after all. Here at what I had thought was its point of termination, it had either bent to the right and continued, or run into another mistwall going off at an angle in that direction.

At first, all I felt was disappointment that I was not going to get a look behind it. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the reason neither mistwall nor mistwall section had been moving had been because each had butted up against the other; and the two time change lines coming together had somehow created an unusual state or condition that had halted them both.

The moment that I thought it, I was hungry to see what was behind the intersection of those two mistwalls. Ever since, lying on the lizard raft, I had come up with the idea that perhaps those of us who were still here on the earth might be individually immune to the time changes, I had been playing with the idea of not avoiding the next mistwall we met, but deliberately walking into it, to see if I could get through and survive. Now I had a double reason to try going through the one before me. It was not merely to find out if I could get through with nothing worse than the unconsciousness I had experienced the first time, but to discover if there was something special or strange about the situation where one time change line ran into another. I stopped the Volvo.

I got out and looked at the wall. I also looked forward along the other angle of the second, or continued, mistwall to see where the road emerged once more from it, only about a couple of hundred yards away. It occurred to me that all I had to do was get back on the road and keep going, and the three of us would continue to stay safe, united, and happy. Or, I could turn and go through the mistwall; and I might, just might, learn something—that is, if I made it through all right.

I stood there. And the longer I stood, the stronger grew the desire in me to try going through the wall. It was exactly the way it had always been, from my earliest childhood, when my mind fastened on to a question and would not let it go without finding the answer. The phenomenon was like every time since I’d first let that relentless mental machinery in my head get its teeth into a problem. I remembered perfectly the terrible feeling I had felt during the initial seconds of that first time change, when I had thought I was having another heart attack. I remembered the miserable, helpless, empty sensation all through me after I had come to. I remembered every bit and part that had been bad about it; and still... still... as I stood there the wanting to go through that wall and find out what I did not know was like a sharp, sweet taste on my lips and a hunger that used me up inside like fire.

I turned back at last to look at the girl and Sunday. If I went through the wall and never returned, what would happen to them? I told myself that I owed them nothing, and something inside me called me a liar. At the same time, the thought of any responsibility I might have toward either of them had about as much deterrent effect on the hunger that was eating me up as a cup of water tossed on a burning building. I had no real choice. I had to go through that wall if I-and they-died for it. I turned back to the leopard and the girl, both of whom were still sitting in the car.

“Stay here!” I said. “You understand me? Stay right here. Don’t take as much as one step after me. Stay where you are!”

They both stared at me silently. One of the girl’s hands twitched —that was all. I turned and walked away from them, toward the mistwall, until I had to squint my eyes against the flying dust of it. Just before I reached the actual mist of the wall, I turned and looked back. The girl still sat with Sunday beside her, both watching me. Neither had moved a muscle.

I turned back again, closed my eyes to the sting of the dust, and walked blindly forward.

But the hard part was not the dust. The hard part was that it was like walking into an emotional tornado. It was bad. It was very bad. But, somehow, it was not as bad as I remembered it from the first time, outside cabin. Maybe this was because my first time through had left me with a sort of immunity; as if I had been inoculated against the effects I felt. Maybe it was easier because I now had some idea what to expect and was braced for it. Basically, I felt as if my soul had been ripped out of my being. I felt naked, sick and frightened. But, you know, it was not the kind of fear I feared—if that statement makes any sense to you. I stayed on my feet and came out the other side, walking.

I was suddenly assaulted by the clamor of dogs barking not far in front of me. I opened my eyes and saw them—more than a dozen of them, all tied to short leashes, but all barking, snarling and leaping against their tethers to get at me. They were tied to leashes anchored to thick stakes driven into the earth, in front of a slice of a house about fifty yards away, a house sitting on a chunk of a lawn in the interior angle of the two mistwalls. Behind the house was forest, and the house itself was a two-story frame building that looked as if it would be at home surrounded by a mid-western farmyard. As I looked, the door opened, and a woman came out with a rifle already at her shoulder, pointed at me.

“Drop your gun.” Her voice was a low, carrying soprano, soft but positive.

“Wait a minute,” I told her. “How about talking about this?”

I had no intention of dropping my gun. She was standing behind the dogs, in the open, with no rest or other support for her rifle, but with the weapon up and aimed. If I had to shoot her to live myself, I would. At that distance, unless she was a natural marks-woman, holding her gun steady enough to hit me would not be easy. Even from where I stood, I could see the end of the barrel waver slightly in the sunlight.