Old Earth Stories Part 20

"I know what it is. Your mother guessed what you must be doing. So did Dela. Oh, you fool! What use is saving me if I had to lose you in the process?"

He pressed the vial into her hand. "Take it to Dela," he whispered. "She will know what to do. Hurry now. It's what all this has been about, after all."

She bit her lip, and ran out of the door.

And HuroEldon walked in, his robe sweeping. "Well, well. Somebody told me they saw you come staggering back down out of the blue."

Celi straightened. "Philosopher."

Huro leaned closer. "You smell like a spindling's breath. And what is this you're wearing, mouse fur? I take it you found your cure."

"Oh, yes." And the Blight, once cut off from its human host and eliminated, could never be resurrected, even by stratified time.

"I knew you would do it," Huro said grudgingly. "But I never thought you would reduce yourself to this in the process. And you ran out on your patients, despite the vows you doctors take."

"I came back "

"But what use are you now, like this?" He inspected Celi, as if he were a curious specimen. "Your wife can't love you again, you know. We humans don't seem to have evolved to handle such differential s.h.i.+fts in time. That's another point that convinces me this is a made world, by the way, that we are designed for a different environment... "He idly picked up Celi's notebook, and paused at the very first note Celi had made so long ago, about the effects of differential weathering rates. "An acute bit of geology. I told you, you would have made a good Philosopher. But you've thrown your life away."

Celi had no reply. Huro was articulating doubts that had plagued him during his vigil on the mountain in all those years alone, how could he not have had doubts? As he had worked through his monumental combinatorial challenge with his vials of infected blood and trial remedies, slaughtering generation after generation of white mice, his intellectual curiosity, even his basic impulse to save his wife, had worn away, leaving nothing but a grim determination to keep on to the end. He had even stopped counting the years as they had piled up. Of course he had been lonely, up there on his plateau, looking out over uncounted layers of time! But what choice had there been?

Well, he had succeeded, and he must not let Huro stir ancient doubts in his soul. "You Philosophers exploit the time strata selfishly "

"While you have burned up your own life to save others. Yes, yes. You aren't the first, you know; your heroism isn't even original." Huro peered into Celi's eyes, his mouth. "You might have found your Blight treatment up there, Celi, but you sacrificed your own health in the process. I'd give you a year. Two at the most."

"It doesn't matter."

"No, I don't suppose it does to you, does it?" Huro's expression softened, just a little. "My offer still stands."

"What offer?"

"To come with me, downbelow. You may only have a year, but spin it out! Some of us are planning to go on, you know."

"Go where?"

"Down into the red. n.o.body knows how deep we can go, how much we can stretch time before it snaps like an overextended sinew. Some of us dream of pus.h.i.+ng on into the future, all the way to the next Formidable Caress. And if we can do that, who knows what's possible? Come with me, Celi. You've given up almost all of your life. Surely you owe yourself that much."

But Celi heard a sound from a neighboring room. It was a soft gurgle, the cry of a waking baby. "I have all I need here," he said.

HuroEldon snorted. "Well, we won't meet again. The time streams will see to that." The Philosopher walked out of the house.

And Celi, broken and old, went to comfort his infant son.

[image]

The Mechanist balloons, fast and gray, drifted over the ruins of Old Foro. Belo couldn't even see the crude bombs they dropped until they came streaking down out of the blues.h.i.+fted air to splash fire.

But the Mechanists' advance was driving Belo and the last of his troopers towards the Shelf's edge, where the river Foo, running with blood, plunged into the abyss. And all across the battlefield, Creationist soldiers were dying. Belo could see their Effigies rising up like smoke, spectral distortions of the human form that twisted and spun away.

All this for the sake of an idea, Belo thought. No, not an idea the truth. He must cling to that, even as the blues.h.i.+fted fire from the sky blossomed around him.

"Captain?"

Tira, his most trusted lieutenant, was shaking his shoulder. In his exhaustion he had drifted into abstraction, as he so often did. He was, after all, trained as a Natural Philosopher, and his senior officers had never let him forget that intellectuals with their long perspective didn't necessarily make for good soldiers. But if not for intellectuals, this war wouldn't be fought anyhow.

"I'm sorry, Tira. It's just that you have to admire them."

"Sir?" Her small face, smeared with blood and dirt, was creased with concern.

"The Mechs. We think of them as stupid, you know, backward. After all, the reason we fight is because they will cling to their absurd, primitive idea that the world is a product of natural forces, acting blindly in the absence of mind. But now they have come up with this this."

This was Old Earth, where time came in layers: the higher you climbed, the more rapidly time pa.s.sed. This basic truth about the world shaped everything about the lives of the people who inhabited it including the way they made war. For a soldier of Old Earth, gaining the high ground was everything. everything. If you were higher than your enemy you had the benefit of accelerated time; you could think faster, prepare your strategy and aim your weapons, while he stumbled, slow-moving, trapped in glutinous, red-s.h.i.+fted slow time. If you were higher than your enemy you had the benefit of accelerated time; you could think faster, prepare your strategy and aim your weapons, while he stumbled, slow-moving, trapped in glutinous, red-s.h.i.+fted slow time.

So, in this campaign, the Creationists of Puul had taken the Attic, the long-abandoned community on the cliff face above the town of Foro itself, where rich Forons had once kept time-accelerated slaves. The campaign had gone well, and Belo had started to believe that the Forons and their hated Mechanist notions might soon be purged from the world.

But then the Forons had produced their balloons, which wafted on wings of heat even higher than the Attic, and the Creationists' advantage was lost.

"A stunning idea," Belo said. "So simple! Nothing but bags of hot air. But look at that formation. You've got to give them credit." Belo had a flask of gin in his coat pocket, meant to comfort battlefield wounded. Perhaps he should crack it now, and spend his last moments watching the wondrous spectacle of fighting soldiers and flying machines working in tandem to snuff out his life.

But Tira was almost screaming in his face. "Sir! We have to get out of here. Dane has found a way."

"Dane?"

Stumbling towards them through the rubble came a trooper, blood-soaked, a small, squat man. Dane's bayonet had been snapped in two, and he was dragging one leg: both weapon and man damaged, Belo thought bleakly. Grimacing with pain, Dane showed Belo what he had found: a shaft in the ground, no wider than Belo's own shoulders, covered by a heavy stone slab. "I think it's a well," he said.

"Or a larder," Tira said. A place where you could store meat, preserved in the slower time of depth.

"No, Belo said grimly. "See the lock on this hatch, broken now. This is a time pit. A place you would throw down thieves and murderers and forget about them"

"So where does it come out?"

"Who knows? But where where scarcely matters. It just needs to be deep enough, deep into slow time. A neat way to dispose of your criminals to hurl them one-way into the future!" scarcely matters. It just needs to be deep enough, deep into slow time. A neat way to dispose of your criminals to hurl them one-way into the future!"

Tira peered into the time pit, her face twisted with fear. "It's this or nothing," she said.

Belo said, "Do you love your Effigy so much, Tira? Shall we not stand and fight?"

Dane said, "Dying like this won't do any good." His accent was coa.r.s.e; he had been a farm worker before the war. He was wheezing, exhausted. "I say we live to fight another day."

"Even if that day is far in the future?"

"Even so," Dane said.

Firebombs bloomed ever closer. Looking around, Belo saw that the three of them were alone, beyond help.

Belo grinned. "Another day."

"Another day," they mumbled.

Belo lifted his legs into the shaft, raised himself over a tunnel of darkness, and fell into the future.

"I'll have your boots"

Belo was reluctant to wake. Even half-asleep he remembered the endless fall down the tight, filthy shaft, as if he was being swallowed into some terrible stomach. And now here was this ugly voice, dragging him back into the world.

"I said, I'll have your boots. I know you can hear me, soldier boy."

Reluctantly he opened his eyes. He was dazzled by a glaring blue sky, by stars that wheeled above his head. And a face loomed over him, a man's face, broad, dead-eyed, roughly shaven, surrounded by a ma.s.s of dirty black hair.

Belo tried to speak. His throat was bone dry. "What's your name?"

"I am Teeg. And you're in my world now"

"Really?" Belo had no idea where he was, and he wondered where Dane and Tira were if they were still alive. All that would have to wait. First he had to deal with this grubby buffoon. "You want my boots?"

The face cracked in a grin, showing blackened teeth. "That's right, soldier boy."

"Try taking them."

The grin disappeared. Then Teeg's face twisted, and he roared, and he raised two huge scarred hands. Belo aimed a kick at where he guessed the man's crotch would be, but his legs felt feeble, heavy, as if the muscles had been drained of energy. Besides, this Teeg was so ma.s.sively built, a hulk of muscle and bone dressed in filthy rags, that the kick only enraged him Teeg got his hands around Belo's throat, and pressed him back into the dirt. Belo flailed and struggled, but he was like a child battling an adult.

He had been conscious here only a few heartbeats, yet already he had given his life away. Quite a miscalculation, he thought, weakening.

"Get off him! "A squat ma.s.s came hurtling from Belo's left side and slammed into Teeg.

Belo, the pressure on his throat gone, coughed for breath. He sat up, clinging to consciousness.

He was sitting in the dirt, on a plain of sand. Beside him a cliff face rose up into the blue. He was close to a ragged cave, perhaps the chute down which he had tumbled. People huddled, a few paces away. Four women, five kids no men. Scrawny, filthy, dressed in rags, they stared at him fearfully.

He couldn't see an end to this scrubby plain. Perhaps it was another Shelf or perhaps he had fallen all the way into the Lowland itself, he thought with a stab of despair.

And beyond the people he glimpsed something moving over the ground not on it, over it at over it at about waist height, almost like a balloon. It was a rough sphere of some silvery metal that gleamed in the blues.h.i.+fted light of the sky. Was it a machine? But it was like no machine he had ever seen, no pump or elevator or cannon. And what could possibly support such a ma.s.s of metal in the air? He longed to see more, but details were blurred by heat haze about waist height, almost like a balloon. It was a rough sphere of some silvery metal that gleamed in the blues.h.i.+fted light of the sky. Was it a machine? But it was like no machine he had ever seen, no pump or elevator or cannon. And what could possibly support such a ma.s.s of metal in the air? He longed to see more, but details were blurred by heat haze "Soldier boy."

Teeg's ugly voice snapped him back to the here and now.

Teeg had hold of Dane, by an arm locked around his throat. It was obviously Dane who had knocked Teeg away and saved Belo's life. Dane wasn't struggling. His injured leg was twisted back at an impossible angle. But his eyes were locked on his commanding officer, and he made no sound.

"Let him go"

Teeg looked mock-puzzled. "How did you put it? Try taking him."

Belo took a step forward, but the world grayed.

"No" It was Tira. She was sitting on the ground, the remnants of her bloodstained uniform in disarray. "Don't fight him," she said. "Not now. He's too strong. Not yet Not yet."

Belo looked at Teeg, and he knew she was right. But still Teeg was squeezing the life out of Dane. "Let him go," he said again. "We didn't come here to do you harm."

"I don't care why you came here," Teeg said. "I told you. You're in my world now. And you will do what I say. You know why? Because of the Weapon." He held Dane at arm's length, with one mighty fist locked on Dane's collar, as if he was holding up a doll. Dane bit his lip, and his leg trailed beneath him, but still he made no sound.

And then Teeg turned and hurled Dane at the floating machine. A window opened in the side of the machine. Fire, purple and bright, snaked into Dane's belly and simply blew him apart. Then the window closed, like an eyelid shutting, and the machine continued its serene patrol around the huddling people.

Teeg grinned, c.o.c.ksure in his ragged robes. He stood over Tira, who was still sprawled the ground. "Now, where were we before soldier boy woke up?"

Despite everything he had seen, Belo stepped forward again. "Touch her and I will kill you, I swear"

Tira said grimly, "I already made the same promise."

Even in this moment of power, Teeg looked from one to the other, and something in their determined stare seemed to put him off. "You'll keep. But you," he said, stabbing a finger at Belo. "Your boots."

Belo sat down and began to work at his laces.

Teeg walked over to the group of huddled women. "You." The woman he had selected cowered from him, but he grabbed her by the shoulder, threw her to the ground, and began to fumble at her rags. She lay pa.s.sively; the children watched empty-eyed.

"You're right to give him a victory," Tira whispered. "There's nothing to be done as long as he controls that machine. We must play for time. Wait for an opportunity..." She was staring at a charred fragment of Dane's corpse, and her composure cracked. "Oh, Belo, what horror have we fallen into?"

He said grimly, "We are soldiers. We have been trained to survive. We will survive this, together."

"But how long has this monster kept these women as his slaves? Can you see the faces of the children? They look like him They look like him."

"It won't happen to you."

"Oh, you can be sure of that," said Tira, her voice full of hate.

Life in Teeg's nasty little kingdom turned out to be simple They lived outdoors, on the and plain. For the first couple of days they stayed close to the cliff where the time chute had decanted, huddling at night in caves or under rocky overhangs. But then they were led away by Teeg and the enigmatic hovering machine, the "Weapon". After that, they just slept out in the open. They ate berries they gathered from the spa.r.s.e bushes, or they chewed on strips of dried meat Belo wasn't sure yet where the meat came from. Their clothes were rags, replaced if they came across a handy corpse, like poor Dane's. But it appeared Teeg always got the best pick, like Belo's own boots.

So, by default, Belo was exploring the Lowland, the greatest mystery of all to Shelf philosophers of all persuasions. If it hadn't been so brutally hard, it would almost have been interesting.

While they walked, they carried the bits of Dane's stripped corpse with them. The women of Teeg's grim harem seemed used to this. Even the blank-eyed children stumbled along with grisly butchered remnants. Belo had no clear idea why they did this.

Indeed, his own continued existence puzzled Belo. It was obvious what Teeg wanted of Tira but why keep Belo alive? Another man could only be compet.i.tion, a threat; why tolerate him taking another breath?

And towering over all these personal issues was the deeper mystery of the Weapon: where it had come from, how and why it had been made and what its true purpose was, for he was beginning to suspect that it had nothing to do with Teeg and his petty lording. Belo couldn't even see how Teeg communicated with it; he never spoke to it directly, never touched it. Sometimes, Belo thought, it was almost as if Teeg was following the Weapon, rather than the other way around. Belo longed to examine the Weapon, but he dared not approach it, not until he understood more.

Belo tried to talk to Teeg as they walked. In his military service, he had learned that any knowledge could be a lever. But he had to bury his resentment as Teeg marched along in his own spindling-leather boots, while Belo's feet bled on the rough ground.

"You are a victim of the time pit," he essayed.

"As are you," Teeg snapped, as if Belo had tried to insult him.

"We are soldiers. We fled a lost battlefield."

Teeg listened, his ma.s.sive face closed up. For all his brutish behavior, Belo sensed that this man was no fool. But Belo's talk of his times clearly meant nothing to Teeg.

Belo tried again. "You were cast in the pit by your enemies. Perhaps it was unjust "

"Unjust? More than that. I was born in the Attic, over Foro."