Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

At any rate, he broke off speaking suddenly and got to his feet in one limber movement from the cushion on which he had been seated cross-legged.

“We’re here,” he said.

I looked over at the picture window and still saw only a starscape in the picture window. Just one more, if once again different, starscape—with only a single unusual element about it, which was a large, dark area just to the right and below the center of it. Porniarsk was also watching the window from his post near one of the control consoles, and he saw the direction of my attention.

He trundled across the room and tapped with a tentacle at the screen surface over the dark area.

“S Doradus,” he said.

Obsidian turned his head a little sharply to look at the avatar.

“Aren’t we down on some planetary surface?” I asked Obsidian.

“Oh yes,” he said. The starscape winked out, to be replaced with a picture of a steep hillside littered with huge boulders. The sky was a dark blue overhead and what looked like beehives, colored a violent green and up to twenty or thirty feet in height, were growing amongst the rocks. “The scene you were just looking at is of space seen from the vantage point of this landing spot. Haven’t I mentioned that we nowadays have a tendency to surround ourselves with the type of scene that suits us at the moment, no matter where we are in a real sense?”

“You like the Earth forest scene yourself, then, Obsidian?”

“Not primarily,” he answered me, “but I supposed you did.”

“Thanks,” I said. I felt gratitude and a touch of humbleness. “I appreciate it.”

“Not at all. May I introduce—” he turned abruptly to face the several individuals who were now joining us from somewhere outside the illusion of the Earth forest.

There were only four of them; although my first impression when I saw them entering was that there were more. None of them wore anything resembling clothes or ornaments. In the lead was what I took to be a completely ordinary, male human, until I saw there was a sort of bony ridge, or crest, about three inches deep at the nape of his neck, running from his spine at midback up to the back of his head and blending into his skull there. He was somewhat taller than Obsidian. Next was a motley-colored individual with patches of skin almost as light as my own intermixed with other patches of rust-red and milk chocolate darkness. This one was less obviously humanoid, but seemed plainly female, and of about Obsidian’s size. The third was something like a squid-crab hybrid, with the squid growing out of the back shell of the crab— and he, or she—or for that matter, it—entered the room floating on a sort of three-foot high pedestal. I would have guessed this third individual’s weight at about a hundred pounds or so, Earthside.

The fourth was a jet-black, pipestem-limbed humanoid about three feet tall, with a sour face and no more hair than Obsidian. I was secretly relieved to find that everybody with a generally human shape, nowadays, was not someone I had to get a stiff neck looking up to. As they all came into the room, its area expanded imperceptibly until we stood in the middle of a space perhaps thirty by forty feet. The illusion of Earth forest now only occupied a portion of the perimeter about us. In the remaining space were four other scenes, ranging from a sort of swamp to a maroon-sand desertscape with tall, whitish buttes sticking up dramatically out of the level plain below.

I was so interested in watching all this that I almost missed the fact that Obsidian was trying to introduce me.

“Sunrise—” this was the individual with the neck crest. “Dragger—” (the particolored female); “one of the Children of Life—” (the squid-crab) and “Angel—” (the sour-faced, little black individual).

“It’s a remarkable thing to be able to meet you,” I told them. “I’d like you to know I appreciate the chance.”

“Compliments are unnecessary,” said Dragger, in a somewhat rusty voice. “I suppose we can call you Marc without offending you?”

“Certainly,” I said. “You speak my language very well.”

“It wouldn’t have been practical to have you learn ours,” Dragger said. She seemed to be the speaker for the group. “If you don’t mind, we’ll get on with the test. Would you give your attention to that panel just behind you?”

I turned. The panel she was pointing at was about three feet high by five feet long, sitting on top of a boxlike piece of equipment that had appeared with their entrance. As I looked, an elliptical pool of blackness seemed to flood out and cover the corner areas of the slab. I stepped close to it and found myself looking into, rather than at, the darkness, as if it had depth and I was looking down into a three-dimensional space.

As I focused in, deeper into the darkness, I saw that it was alive with shifting, moving fans of lights, something like the aurora borealis with its successions of milky colors spreading out over the northern sky at night. These lights I watched now moved much faster than the northern lights I was used to, and their pattern was much more complex. But, otherwise, they were remarkably similar.

They were similar to something else, too. I stared at them, unable to quite zero in on what they reminded me of. Then it burst on me.

“Of course!” I said, turning to Dragger and the others. “Those are time storm force line patterns, extremely slowed, but still force line patterns in action.”

The four of them looked at me. Then Dragger turned to Obsidian.

“Thank you, Obsidian,” she said. She looked back at me. “Thank you, Marc.”

She turned around and began to lead the rest out.

I stared after her, and at the rest of them.

“Wait a second!” I said.

“Marc,” said Obsidian behind me. “Marc, I said you might be working yourself up for a disappointment—”

“Disappointment!” I said. “The hell with that! I said they’re force line patterns, and they are. Come on back here—Dragger, the rest of you. You can’t just walk out. You owe me an explanation, if I want one. I’ve picked up enough about your time to know that!”

They slowed and stopped. For a moment they stood in a group, and I had the strong impression that a discussion was going on, although I could not hear a word or see a lip movement. Then they turned back into the room, Dragger still leading, and came to face me again.

“There is no explanation to give,” Dragger said. “We wished to test you for a sensitivity we feel is necessary, if you and your group are to be allowed to stay in the present. Unfortunately, you don’t seem to show that sensitivity.”

“And how do you figure that?” I said. “You showed me a pattern of time storm forces in action, I told you what they were— where’s the indication of a lack of sensitivity on my part?”

“Marc,” said Dragger, “I’m sorry to say that what you looked at was not what you said it was.”

“Not a pattern of force lines from the time storm?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Once more she turned to go and the others shifted with her.

“Damn it, come back here!”

“Marc—” It was Porniarsk, now, trying to interpose.

“Porniarsk, stay out of this! You too, Obsidian! Dragger, you others, turn around. Come back! I don’t know what the idea is, your trying to lie to me like this. But it’s not working. You think I don’t know time storm forces when I see them? Obsidian’s been told what I’ve done and been through with Porniarsk here. You must know what I told him—or didn’t you do your homework? If you do know what I told him, you know you can’t get away with showing me a pattern of the storm lines and claiming it’s something else.”

The four stood facing each other in silence. After a second, Obsidian took three quick steps across the floor and joined them. They stood motionless and voiceless, facing each other for a long minute. Then they all turned to face me.