Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

“I know,” I said, “—doesn’t exactly describe what happened. Never mind. I’m not really interested in the mechanics of it, right now. All right then, if we really are going to be here for five days, I believe I’d appreciate a room of my own, after all; and I’d imagine Porniarsk would too.”

“It makes no difference to me,” said Porniarsk. “But I am interested in the mechanics of your space flight. Can I examine those control panels?”

“By all means,” said Obsidian. “If you like, I’ll explain them to you. They’re for work back on the planet we just left, actually. Our trip will be handled automatically.”

“I’m interested in all things,” said Porniarsk. “This is the effective result of being the avatar of an individual, Porniarsk, who has always been interested in all things—”

He checked himself.

“—I should probably say, was interested in all things.”

“Do you miss him?” Obsidian asked. “This individual of whom you were an avatar?”

“Yes,” said Porniarsk, “in a sense I do. It’s a little like realizing that part of myself is gone, or that I had a twin I now know I’ll never see again.”

The tone of his voice was perfectly calm and ordinary; but suddenly I found myself looking at him closely. I had never stopped to think of Porniarsk as having emotions, or stopped to consider what he might have lost in a personal sense by going forward in time with us.

“I should have asked you if you wanted to come with us,” I said.

“If you had, I’d have answered yes,” said Porniarsk. “The process of discovery and learning is what I was constructed for.”

“Yes,” I said.

I was suddenly very tired, with an almost stupefying feeling of fatigue. Part of it, undoubtedly, was the work schedule we had been keeping in the community these last few weeks. But the greater part was something more psychological and psychic than physical. In spite of Obsidian’s insistence that the testing I was about to take was that and no more, I was at last certain that I had reached the last arena, the moment of final confrontation.

I was like someone who had trained physically for months and years for one battle. I felt loose, light and ready, but drained and empty inside, hollow of all but the inevitability of the conflict toward which I was now marching inexorably. Not even enthusiasm was left—only a massive and silent acceptance of what would be.

“I think,” I said to Obsidian, “I’d like that private room now, if you don’t mind. I think I’d like to get some sleep.”

“To be sure,” he said.

Suddenly, the white walls were around me. I had not moved, but now I was enclosed, alone with the picture window, or screen, showing the innumerable stars and the shrinking Earth. I turned to the largest of the cushions and fell on it. For a second the lighting was still daylight strong, but just before I closed my eyes, it dimmed to nonexistence; and the space in which I now rested was lit only by the star-glow from the window.

I slept.

When I woke, the stars in the picture window were different. Not merely a little different; they bore no relationship to anything I had ever seen in the skies of Earth. Puzzled, I lay there looking at them while gradually I came to full alertness; and either automatically, or in response to some way of sensing my urge for better visibility, the lighting in the room slowly increased, back to the level of sunlight. I got up, explored, and found a doorway that let me into a bathroom, which was too good a replica of what I was familiar with to be anything but a construct created expressly for me by Obsidian.

Still, I was grateful for the fact that it looked so familiar. Part of my waking up had always been a morning routine involving a sharp razor blade, soap and a good deal of hot water. This out of the way, I left my private quarters and found Obsidian sleeping quietly on one of the larger cushions of the main area, Porniarsk busy doing incomprehensible things with one of the control consoles.

“Good morning, Marc,” he said, turning to look at me as I came up.

“Morning, if that’s what it is—” I lowered my voice, glancing at Obsidian. “Sorry, I forgot about him sleeping there.”

“I don’t think you need worry,” said Porniarsk at ordinary conversational volume. “I don’t believe he hears any noise he doesn’t want to hear until he wakes at the time he wants to wake.”

I looked at Obsidian curiously.

“Good trick,” I said. “What’s the breakfast situation?”

“There’s food of various kinds in a room there,” said Porniarsk, pointing a tentacle at a doorway in one of the walls that had been there when we arrived.

I went to look and found he was right. It was a pleasant, small room, apparently surrounded completely by the illusion of the forest in forenoon sunlight. There were chairs, my style, and a table, my style; and a piece of furniture that looked like a heavy, old fashioned wooden wardrobe.

When I opened the door of this last piece of furniture, however, I found it filled with shelves full of all kinds of fresh earthly fruits and vegetables. There were fruit juices in transparent vessels, milk, and a pitcher of black liquid that turned out to be hot coffee; although what was keeping its temperature up was a mystery. There were no meat or eggs; and although I looked around carefully, I could not find a stove or any means of cooking any of the other foodstuffs. Well, at least the coffee was hot. I found a small empty vessel to pour it into and settled down to eat.

It was an interesting meal. There were no shocks, but some surprises. For one thing, the already-sliced loaf of bread I discovered turned out to be hot. Not toasted. Hot, like the coffee. The glass of what I had assumed was orange juice turned out to be slightly fizzy, as if it had been carbonated. There was no sugar and the honey tasted as if it had been spiked with vodka.

I finished up and went back into the other room. Obsidian was still asleep and Porniarsk was still at work.

“Have you eaten?” I asked Porniarsk. I knew he did eat; although Porniarsk and nutrition were something of a puzzle; because apparently he could go for weeks at a time without food. He had told me once that his bodily fueling system was almost as much a mystery to him as it was to the rest of us; since that was an area of information in which Porniarsk, the original Porniarsk, had no interest whatsoever. Apparently our Porniarsk, at least, had some way of getting a great deal more energy out of the sustenance he took in than we humans did. I had played with the picture of a small stainless steel fission engine under the thick armor plating of his body—although he had assured us he was pure animal protein in all respects.

“No,” he said now. “There’s no need. I’m greatly interested in this equipment.”

“It looks like we built up quite a velocity while I was asleep,” I said. “Where are we now?”

“That’s the fascination of this,” he said, nodding heavily at the control console. “Apparently, as Obsidian said, our trip’s completely under automatic control. But this console, since he showed me how to operate it, has been furnishing me with information on our movements as we make them. Right now we’re something like three million years in the past, and consequently, far displaced from your solar system—”

“Displaced?” I said. But even as I said it, even as he began to explain, my mind was jumping ahead to that explanation.

“Why, yes. Obsidian and his community,” said Porniarsk, “have evidently done a superb job of, first, balancing the large areas of time forces; and second, an equally excellent job of charting specific force lines in between the balanced areas. In fact, I’m inclined to think that the process of balancing was designed to leave just the network of working force lines that remain. The result has been that, although they can’t actually cross space at more than light speeds, by using the force lines they can jump distances equivalent to some hundreds or even thousands of light years, and arrive at their destination in a matter of hours, or even days. Watch the present stellar arrangement.”