Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

All this was to her credit, of course. She was as sparing with words as ever, but the change in her made her seem a good deal older; and possibly that was what had attracted Tek’s interest in her. As I say, I found that I didn’t approve—although there seemed no specific reason I could nail down for going to him and telling him to leave her alone.

In the first place, even if he agreed, I knew her better than to think she would leave him alone, particularly if I was the one who ordered it. In the second place, I had been ready to abandon her behind me on the bank of that river, so who was I to assume any responsibility for her? Finally, what did I have against Tek, anyway? Since he had been with us, he had been a model of propriety and obedience to orders; and she was only somebody born yesterday. So why make it any of my business?

I still didn’t like it. I was stuck with the irrational feeling that he was nowhere near good enough for her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get her alone to tell her so. I had been wrong about thinking she would get over what had put her off when I had hesitated in reacting to her, back on the rock where Sunday had returned me to my complete self. As far as she seemed to be concerned, I was invisible and inaudible.

To hell with her, I thought, and put my mind to deciding what our tribe should aim for next. We had evidently been travelling with no goal at all, being kept moving by my half-minded, but compulsive, determination. The evening of the day I made up my mind to put the whole question of the girl and Tek out of my mind for good, I waited until after dinner and then got Porniarsk and Bill together. •

“Come along with me in one of the jeeps,” I said. “It’s time we had some discussion about this whole business of the time storms. I want to talk to the two of you, alone.”

“No,” said Porniarsk. “You want to talk to me, alone.”

Bill looked startled and then bleak. He was not much at giving away his feelings through his expressions, but I had learned to read him fairly well by this time; and what I now read was that Porniarsk’s words were like a slap in the face to him.

“Sorry, Porniarsk,” I said. “I’m the one who decides how many of us are going to talk, and when.”

“No,” said Bill. “You talk to him alone. It may be important.”

He turned around and walked off.

I opened my mouth to call him back and then closed it again. Inside that boy-sized body and behind that innocent face was the identity of a mature and intelligent man; and he had just shown himself capable of thinking in larger terms than I, in my reaction against Porniarsk’s words.

I turned to look at the alien. It was still early evening and the whole landscape around us was softened and gentled by the pinkening light. Amidst all that softness, the bony-plated, uncouth form of Porniarsk looked like a miniature dinosaur out of a brutal and prehistoric age. Porniarsk said nothing now, merely stood looking at me and waiting. There was no way I could guess whether he had understood my reaction and Bill’s and was simply unconcerned with our human feelings, or whether he had understood neither of us at all.

I had been pretty well ignoring Porniarsk during the last few weeks of my involvement with The Dream; and in fact, there seemed little to be learned from him unless he chose to inform us. His speech by this time was as human as that of the rest of us; but the thoughts behind his words, when he did speak, remained indecipherable. He moved from one statement to another by a logic mostly invisible to our human thinking.

And yet—he was not without some kind of emotion, even some kind of warmth. There was no more sentiment to be read in the tones of his voice, or in his actions, than in those of a robot; but he seemed... likeable. I don’t know what other word to use. He seemed to radiate a sort of warmth that we all, including the men we had acquired along with Tek, felt and responded to. Even the animals seemed to feel it. I had seen how Sunday had taken to him at first sight. The dogs also, in their rare free moments when they were not under command or tied up, would seek him out, wagging their tails and sniffing him all over each time as if this was a first meeting, before ending by licking at his armor-plated hide. Porniarsk paid them no more attention than he did Sunday or one of us humans when he was not exchanging specific information on some point or other. He seemed not to need to eat. Whenever he had no place in particular to move to, he would fold up and drop into a lying position with a clatter like that of a dumped load of bricks. But whether he ever slept in this position, I had never been able to find out. Certainly, I had never caught him with his eyes closed.

So—Porniarsk was a conundrum. He usually left us no choice but to accept him pretty much as he was. And now, with Bill having walked off, I found myself about to do just that, one more time.

“All right, Porniarsk,” I said. “It’s you and me then. Come on.”

I climbed into the jeep beside which we had been standing as we talked. Porniarsk made one of the astounding leaps he seemed to be capable of with only a slight flexing of his post-like legs, and crashed down into the seat beside me, on his haunches. The jeep rocked sideways on its springs—I had estimated before this that if Porniarsk weighed an ounce, he must weigh well over three hundred pounds—but recovered. I started the vehicle up and we drove off.

I did not go more than a few hundred yards, just enough to put us out of earshot of the rest of the camp. Then I killed the motor and turned to Porniarsk. It was an odd feeling to find myself almost nose to nose with that massive, bulldog-like head. For the first time I noticed his eyes were not just brown in color, but so deep a brown as to be almost black. This close, I could see their pupils contract and expand in cat-fashion, while we talked.

“All right, Porniarsk,” I said. “I need your help. You evidently know a lot more about the time storm effects than we do. I want to stop this random moving around just in hopes we’ll run into a piece of country that’s future enough for us to be able to do something about the mistwalls and the rest of it. I need you to help me figure out where to head.”

“No,” said Porniarsk.

“No?” I said.

“You do not need me to help you find a trigger area,” said Porniarsk.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. This, coming on top of his rejection of Bill, was enough to stir my temper again.

“It’s supposed to mean that my assistance is not required to set you on the road to the destination you wish. You’ve already set yourself on that road.”

I took rein on my emotions. I reminded myself that I had to stop anthropomorphizing him. He was probably only trying to tell me something, and the fact that he was not built to think like a human was getting in the way.

“Since when?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

“Since your temporary abstraction, and during your partial involvement with the overall problem, ever since the moment in which my words caused you to visualize the magnitude of it. Am I making myself—” Porniarsk broke off uncharacteristically in mid-sentence. “Am I talking sense?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How’d you know why I collapsed, or about how I’ve been since?”

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, “and drawing conclusions from what you do. The conclusions are those I just stated.”

“What’ve I been doing, then?”

“Going,” he repeated, with no hint of impatience in his voice, “toward a trigger area.”

I felt a sort of delicate feeling—an instinct to caution. There was no way he could have known what had been working in the back of my mind with The Dream, these last few weeks; but he was talking one hell of a lot as if he had read my mind.