Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

I did not at all mind being fussed over by these attendants; and I could all but see Doc’s ears wiggling. I say, I could all tout see his ears wiggling. What I saw, of course, was that they did not wiggle at all, and he was so poker-faced and determinedly indifferent to the attentions he was getting that it was almost painful to watch. Being a little more case-hardened by years than Doc, I had a corner of my mind free to note that it was a shrewd move of Paula’s to provide herself with such courtiers. Not only did they act as a setting to show her off and emphasize her authority, they added an extra level between her and ordinary female humanity. Perhaps her troops did worship her, after all, seeing her set off this way, in the same way that they might worship a god or a demigod.

After lunch, Paula called in the commander of her soldiers, a small, lean, grey-haired man named Aruba with three stars on each shoulder strap of his impeccable uniform. General Aruba and Paula together took us out to look over the camp and observe her troops. Those in uniform were all young. I saw some boys and girls I could swear were no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. They were all cheerful, bright-looking and had the air of individuals aware of themselves as members of an elite group. There was a curious uniformity among them, too, which puzzled me for a while before I realized that I saw no tall bodies among them, either female or male. Like the general, they were short, and most tended to a squareness of body.

Aside from their size, though, they were impressive. They were apparently spending their time in active training while awaiting the results of Paula’s negotiations with us. They had set up an obstacle course outside their camp, and we watched as some thirty or forty of them ran through it, looking like trained athletes. They were, as Gramps Ryan had hinted, a far cry from my part-time militia.

After the inspection tour, we stepped into Paula’s largest tent once more for drinks and then were flown back to the summer palace. I was itching to know what Doc’s reaction was to everything we had seen; but I was back in host position again and could not abandon Paula to plunge immediately into conference with one of my staff. So it was nine that night before I had a chance to get together with him and the others. We held a staff meeting down in the City Hall, safely away from the summer palace and the view or hearing of any of Paula’s attendants.

“Well,” I said to Doc, when we were at last gathered over the coffee cups in Ellen’s office—he and I, Ellen, Marie, and Bill— “how about it? What did you think of those soldiers of hers?”

“Well,” Doc scratched his right ear, “they’re in good shape physically. They’re well-trained. They’re young and bouncy and they’ve learned to obey orders. I’d guess they know their jobs—”

“Tough as we’ve heard they are, then,” said Ellen.

“Maybe,” said Doc.

“Why maybe?” I demanded.

“Well,” said Doc, “they’re not veterans. My dad and the other officers used to talk a lot about that; and it was a fact. I mean, I could see it too. The ones who’d actually been shot at somewhere along the line knew what it was like; but there was no way the ones who hadn’t been shot at could know what it was like. My dad and the others used to say there was no telling what a man who hadn’t been shot at was going to do the first time he was.”

“What makes you so sure the ones we saw haven’t been shot at?” Bill asked.

Doc shrugged.

“They just look like they haven’t. I mean, it shows.”

“How?” I said. “For example?”

“Well...” he frowned into his coffee cup for a second, then looked back at me. “They’re too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Too gung ho. You understand? If they were veterans, they wouldn’t be wasting energy except when they had to. For example, when they were off duty, you’d see them off their feet, sitting or lying down somewhere. That sort of thing.”

We thought about it for a moment.

“You try to remember,” Doc said, “when it was you last heard of the Empress actually fighting anyone. Maybe on the Islands, where she started, there was some fighting. But ever since she landed on the west coast, it seems she just shows up with all those guns and whoever she’s dealing with surrenders.”

“Then you think we might have a chance, fighting her?” Bill asked. “Is that it?”

“We might have a chance,” Doc said. “One thing for sure, the people we’ve got carrying guns are going to use them and keep on using them when the fighting starts.”

There was another short silence, full of thought.

“I don’t like it,” said Marie finally. “There’s still too many of them compared to us.”

“I think so too,” I said. “Even if we were sure of winning, I don’t want our town wrecked and even one of our people killed. Now, Paula’s been after me to join her for the next year or two while she brings the rest of the world under control—”

They all started to talk at once.

“All right, now just hang on there for a moment!” I told them. “If I do decide to go with her, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to stay for two years, or even one year. But if that’s the best way, or the only way, to get her to leave everybody else alone here, then my spending some time with her is a cheap way to buy her off.”

“But what sort of a place will this be without you?” said Marie fiercely.

“Come on, now,” I said. “The rest of you run everything here. All I’ve been doing is sitting around and reading books. You can spare me, all right.”

“Marc,” said Bill, “you aren’t needed here because you’ve got duties. You’re needed here because you’re the pivot point of the whole settlement.”

“Let him go,” said Ellen. “It’s what he wants to do.”

Bill looked at her quickly.

“You don’t mean that.”

“All right, I don’t,” said Ellen. “But it gripes me.”

She folded her arms and looked hard-eyed at me.

“And what about the time storm?” Bill said to me. “How can you keep on working toward a way to do something permanent about that, if you go off with Paula? What if the balance of temporal forces we set up breaks down sometime in the time you’re gone? What if it breaks down tomorrow?”

“If it breaks down tomorrow, I can’t do a thing more about it but try to reestablish the balance again, the way I did the first time.”

“You can’t do that if you’re not here,” Marie said.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Marie,” I said to her. “Paula needs a stable Earth as much as we do. She’d send me back in a hurry to reestablish a balance of forces if that balance broke down and mist-walls started moving again.”

“It might not be so easy to reestablish next time, Porniarsk says,” Bill put in. “What about that?”

“If it’s not as easy, it’s not as easy,” I told them all. “I tell you I’m not yet ready to take on the time storm again to produce any more permanent state of balance than I did before.”

For a second, nobody said anything. The silence was as prickly as a fistful of needles.

“Anyway,” said Ellen, “have you checked with Porniarsk? You owe him that much before you do anything like going off.”

As a matter of fact, I had completely forgotten about Porniarsk. The avatar was never concerned or consulted in any of our purely human councils about community matters; and as a result, I had fallen out of the habit of thinking about him when decisions like this were to be made. Ellen was quite right. I could not do anything with the time storm if I lost the help of Porniarsk. If I simply went off with Paula and he should think I’d given up on the storm....