Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

I sat there, dulled and numbed by my failure. But after a few moments, a miracle happened; because the door opened, Ellen walked in, bent over the chair and kissed me. Then, without a word, she turned and went back toward the door.

“Why?” I managed to croak as she opened it.

She looked back and smiled.

“I just felt like it,” she said.

She went out, closing the door behind her; and I sat there with my heart rising like a rocket. Because now I knew. I had not succeeded in fully touching her; but I knew that I was going in the right direction now; because she had felt me trying. If I lived, I would reach her eventually.

Our half-day holiday ended with noon. I put on work clothes and left the summer palace to go down and help the people who were insulating and expanding our largest Quonset, so that it could become a combination dining hall, hospital, and living quarters for those of us who might turn out to be too young, too old, or too feeble to live out the winter cold in the other, flimsier, buildings of the town. I had just shut the door of the summer palace behind me when Obsidian appeared in front of me.

“Can we talk?” he said.

“Of course,” I said. He came first before any rough carpentry of which I was capable.

“We’ve come to an important decision, my colleagues and I,” he said. “You remember I told you our original plan was to gather enough information on you so that we’d know how to educate you into adjustment with civilization? At least, educate you enough so that you could stay with us, here?”

“I remember,” I said.

“I’m afraid I didn’t tell you everything,” he said. “There was an alternative I didn’t mention. If it turned out you people couldn’t be adjusted to a civilized pattern, we were intending to send you back to your own time, the time you left to come here.”

“No, you didn’t tell me that,” I said. “But you didn’t have to. We primitives can think of those sort of alternatives without being prompted, you know.”

“Yes. Well,” Obsidian looked uncomfortable, “as it happens, you’ve turned out to be in some ways more than we guessed; in fact, more than we bargained for. In particular, you’re different, yourself, from anything we imagined. So, now we’ve come up with a third alternative. But for this we’re going to need your agreement.”

“Oh?” I said. He did not answer immediately, so I prompted him. “Agreement to what?”

“To an alternative that ties in to this desire of yours to get into the work of controlling what you call the time storm. Logically, it’s unthinkable to expect someone from as far back in the past as you are to be capable of learning to do a kind of work that’s done only by unusual, highly qualified individuals in our time. But because of certain anomalies about you, we’d like to test your aptitude for such work.”

“Fine,” I said. And for the second time that day my heart went up like a rocket.

“You understand,” Obsidian said, “this testing in no way changes the fact that by no stretch of the imagination could we expect you to actually be able to work in the temporal area. It’s simply a means of supplying us with data by which we can decide best what to do with all your group, here.”

“All right,” I said.

“Are you sure you understand? Our interest in whether you have any ability for temporal work is only academic.”

“I hear you,” I said. But my heart was still high inside me. Explain it any way he might, Obsidian could not hide from me the fact that, in offering me such tests, they were letting me come one step closer to the goal I had been working toward.

“Well, then,” said Obsidian, “even if you’re willing, there’s a further question. Ordinarily, there’d be no need for you to leave your area, here. But in this particular case some special conditions are involved; so that to be tested you have to be willing to go some distance across the galaxy. Now, if you want time to consider this—”

“Thanks. It’s not necessary. I’ll be happy to go wherever being tested requires.”

He gazed across the jeep at me for a full second.

“Are you sure you understand?”

“I think so,” I said. “You want to know if I’m willing to be tested for abilities in time storm fighting. I am. You also want to know if I’m agreeable to going a large chunk of light years to wherever I have to go to be tested. I am.”

“You understand this means travel between the stars, through space?”

“Well, I’d gathered that,” I said. But he did not echo my grin.

“I’m a little surprised,” he said. “I understood from what you told me that you’d never been off this one world in your life.”

“That’s right.”

“But you’re willing to go, without thinking it over? Without talking it over with the rest of your people?”

“I’ll check with them, of course,” I said. “But they’ve been getting along without my immediate help while I’ve been talking to you. They ought to be able to get along without me for a bit longer. How long would I be gone?”

“In terms of time here, not more than a couple of your weeks. Probably considerably less. It may be a single simple test will give us an answer, once you’ve reached your destination. It’s possible we might have to test further, but probably not more than a day or two.”

“I see,” I said. “The more ability I show, the more you’ll go on testing?”

“Essentially. But Marc,” said Obsidian, “if you’ve got hopes of our tests finding you to have very great ability in that area, I wish you’d temper those hopes. Believe me—”

“I believe,” I said. “I’m also willing to go. We’re agreed?”

“Yes,” he said, slowly.

“Good. The thing you have to understand about me, friend Obsidian,” I said, “is that I’ll do whatever I decide is best. I’m not going to leave the other people here in a bind because I didn’t bother to check. I’ll check first. But I said I want to go, and I’m going.”

“Forgive me,” he said.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said. “It’s just that this isn’t a matter of group discussion. This is me, saying what I choose to do.”

“All right,” he said. “But it’s not quite what I’m used to. You understand that? We have—”

“I know,” I said. “You people’ve got a pattern of responsibility. So’ve I. And I won’t violate my pattern any more than you’d violate yours. But I tell you, Obsidian, I want to go where your people will test me. The fact it’s across space doesn’t matter; because I’d go cross-universe as quickly as I’d go around this jeep to get that done.”

I had gotten a little warm on the subject; and I was braced to have him react with equal emotion. Instead he only looked at me, a long, questioning look. Then he nodded.

“This means more to you than we’d thought,” he said.

I stared back at him. Something other than the golden light was moving me now; a surge of feeling that was more like a tide, a running tide carrying me irresistibly forward.

“You don’t understand me at all,” I said, “do you?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“All right,” I told him. “See if it has meaning for you this way. I don’t know who my remote ancestors were; but what moves me as far as the time storm goes, must go as far back as they do. There’s something in me that’s certain about one thing; that anything can kill me, but until I’m killed I’m what lives. And as long as I live, I’ll fight. Come and get me out to face my special enemy, whoever that is; and while I can still move, I’ll stay after it. When I’m finally done for, I’ll still be happy; because I wasn’t deprived of my chance to do something. All I want is that chance—nothing else matters; and here you come asking me if the fact I have to cross some space to be tested might make me decide against going!”