Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

When I finally did get a semblance of quiet, I climbed up in one of the jeeps parked there, stood on the back seat and told them, as briefly as I could, that I had escaped from Paula, that she would be after me eventually, but should not be showing up for some weeks at least, and I would have more details for them tomorrow.

But right now, I had to sort myself out and talk things over with the other leaders.

They were a little disappointed not to hear the whole story at once; but they dispersed to their various activities eventually, after I had promised a community-wide celebration for that evening. Finally, I got to go inside the palace with Ellen, Marie, Bill and the rest.

Over food in the same dining room in which I had told them I was going with Paula, I broke the news to them, bluntly.

“She’s not completely sane,” I said. “I don’t mean she’s out of her head all the time; she’d be less dangerous if she was. I mean that when it comes to certain things she’ll do exactly what she wants, regardless of the consequences. Because when she gets to that point, nothing matters except doing what she wants. That’s why I left; because sooner or later, she would want something and find me in the way; and that would be the end of me.”

I told them about the letter she had me sign.

“The point was to hit back at the soldiers who had killed the experts,” I said, “and to saddle me with the blame for doing it. Sooner or later, she would have used that blame to get rid of me. That’s why I had to get out of there without wasting time. Because it could have been sooner. It could have been the minute the men she wanted executed were executed.”

“But what’ll she do now?” Marie asked.

“She’ll send a force to bring me back,” I said. “But maybe not right away, because she’s understrength now. That’s one reason leaving her now was good timing. Here, I can work with Porniarsk and maybe we can find a way to make the move forward before her people can show up here. I’ve been working on pattern recognition. I’m stronger in that area than I was. It’s a fighting chance, anyway.”

I looked over at Porniarsk, who had not been outside with the others when we landed, but who had come into the dining room since we had been sitting there.

“I should have sent word to you sooner,” he said. “The fact is, I ran into this sticking point over a month ago, but I thought that it was something I could get through. Now, I don’t know. Maybe the two of us can get through it.”

“I’ll come to the lab with you as soon as we’re finished here,” I said, between bites of the home-cured ham I was digging into. “But in any case—”

I looked back at the rest of them.

“In any case, everyone in the community who won’t be needed for the monad gestalt, when and if we’re ready to use it, better start making preparations to scatter, now. If Paula can’t get me back, she’ll raise bloody hell—and I mean bloody hell literally— with anyone connected to me she can get her hands on. Bill, Marie-”

They both looked at me, from farther on down the table.

“You’d better start making plans as to how supplies are to be portioned out, and where to, and how people are to take off. Also, Doc-”

“Yo.”

“We’re going to need a fast, a really fast warning system to give us as much notice as possible when we learn Paula or some of her people are headed this way. Maybe you can figure out something using that aircraft we came in.”

“I think so, Marc.” He looked at Ellen. “Right, Ellen?”

Ellen nodded.

“All right.” I finished the ham and pushed my plate back. “Anyone have any suggestions or comments, before I head out to the lab with Porniarsk?”

“You need some sleep,” said Marie. “You look dead. So does Doc.”

I looked at her. The words were Marie-type words, but there was a difference about her which found an echo in the way she said them. However, I had no time to investigate such things now.

“I slept on the flight coming in,” I said. “Doc probably could use some sleep.”

“I slept last night,” said Doc.

“Whatever,” I said, getting to my feet. “Anyway, I’ll catch up on my sleep later. Porniarsk? Ready to go?”

“Yes,” he said. We went out of the dining room together, leaving the others behind us.

“It’s an unusual situation,” said Porniarsk, once we got to the tank in the lab. “It’s the kind of stoppage as if the extrapolative element of this device—what you’ve been calling the computer-had encountered a logical contradiction, so that further extrapolations from this point would result in increasing error. But attempts on my part to find out what such a contradiction might be have produced no results.”

“Let me look at where it stopped,” I said.

He activated the tank. Once more I stared into the blue-grayness, with the little firefly points of light flickering through the space of it. For a moment, a small crawling fear woke inside me, a fear that in my step aside with Paula I had lost whatever had given me the ability to see patterns in the tank before. But then, slowly, the little points of light began to relate and group themselves into associations.

The pattern took shape. It was a strange and unfamiliar pattern, which was to be expected. But when I tried to go one step further and change my perception from that of small lights in a tank to the actual universe envisioned, as I had done once before, I could not do it. The small crawling fear came back, stronger.

“I can see what you’ve got there,” I said to Porniarsk, finally. “But I can’t seem to make it mean anything to me. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“You may just be tired,” said Porniarsk. “Or perhaps you’ve been away from the device long enough to feel unfamiliar with it.”

“Maybe.”

I gave up and withdrew my attention from the pattern in the tank. Suddenly, I was dead tired. Tired right down to the marrow of my bones.

“You’re right about one thing,” I told Porniarsk. “I need sleep. I’ll go lie down.”

I went back to my own room, part of the suite I shared with Marie and Ellen. But neither of them were there now. It was only early afternoon, and they, with the rest of the community, would be hard at work. I felt a child’s loneliness for someone to sit with me while I fell asleep; but I pushed the emotion away from me. I undressed, lay down on the bed, pulled a blanket over me and stared at the white ceiling, lightly shadowed now and then by the clouds outside reflecting from the window.

I was still dead tired; but I began to wonder if I would sleep. I lay there.

I woke to someone shaking me. For a second, I thought I was back on the future plane again and being woken by Doc and the Old Man. Then I saw it was dark outside the window and dark in the room, and the shape bending over me was female.

“Marc-” It was Ellen’s voice. “I hate to wake you, but the whole community’s waiting for you. If you can just come out and show yourself for a little while, you can come back after that and sleep as long as you want.”

“Sure,” I said. “All right.”

I levered my wooden body up to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and she began to massage my neck, standing in front of me and reaching around behind my head. I leaned my forehead gratefully against the human softness of her belly, feeling myself come alive again to the warm pressure of her fingers kneading the stiff cords and muscles running up from my shoulders into the area behind my ears. She felt and smelled delightful; and I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life, getting my neck rubbed.

But she stopped after a while.

“You’re awake now,” she said. “Get dressed.”