Time Travel Omnibus, page 243
“Diktor” had been an older man. He himself was only thirty-two, ten here, twenty-two there.
Diktor he had judged to be about forty-five. Perhaps an unprejudiced witness would believe himself to be that age. His hair and beard were shot with gray—had been, ever since the year he had succeeded too well in spying on the High Ones. His face was lined. Uneasy lies the head and so forth. Running a country, even a peaceful Arcadia, will worry a man, keep him awake nights.
Not that he was complaining—it had been a. good life, a grand life, and it beat anything the ancient past had to offer.
In any case, he had been looking for a man in his middle forties, whose face he remembered dimly after ten years and whose picture he did not have. It had never occurred to him to connect that blurred face with his present one. Naturally not.
But there were other little things. Arma, for example. He had selected a likely-looking lass some three years back and made her one of his household staff, renaming her Arma in sentimental memory of the girl he had once fancied. It was logically necessary that they were the same girl, not two Armas, but one.
But, as he recalled her, the “first” Arma had been much prettier.
Hm-m-m—it must be his own point of view that had changed. He admitted that he had had much more opportunity to become bored with exquisite female beauty than his young friend over there on the floor. He recalled with a chuckle how he had found it necessary to surround himself with an elaborate system of tabus to keep the nubile daughters of his subjects out of his hair—most of the time. He had caused a particular pool in the river adjacent to the Palace to be dedicated to his use in order that he might swum without getting tangled up in mermaids.
The man on the floor groaned, but did not open his eyes.
Wilson, the Diktor, bent over him but made no effort to revive him. That the man was not seriously injured he had reason to be certain. He did not wish him to wake up until he had had time to get his own thoughts entirely in order.
For he had work to do, work which must be done meticulously, without mistake. Everyone, he thought with a wry smile, makes plans to provide for their future.
He was about to provide for his past.
THERE WAS the matter of the setting of the Time Gate when he got around to sending his early self back. When he had tuned in on the scene in his room a few minutes ago, he had picked up the action just before his early self had been knocked through. In sending him back he must make a slight readjustment in the time setting to an instant around two o’clock of that particular afternoon. That would be simple enough; he need only search a short sector until he found his early self alone and working at his desk.
But the Time Gate had appeared in that room at a later hour; he had just caused it to do so. He felt confused.
Wait a minute, now—if he changed the setting of the time control, the Gate would appear in his room at the earlier time, remain there, and simply blend into its “reappearance” an hour or so later. Yes, that was right. To a person in the room it would simply be as if the Time Gate had been there all along, from about two o’clock.
Which it had been. He would see to that.
Experienced as he was with the phenomena exhibited by the Time Gate, it nevertheless required a strong and subtle intellectual effort to think other than in durational terms, to take an eternal viewpoint.
And there was the hat. He picked it up and tried it on. It did not fit very well, no doubt because he was wearing his hair longer now. The hat must be placed where it would be found—Oh, yes, in the control booth. And the notebook, too.
The notebook, the notebook—Mm-m-m—Something funny, there. When the notebook he had stolen had become dog-eared and tattered almost to illegibility some four years back, he had carefully recopied its contents in a new notebook—to refresh his memory of English rather than from any need for it as a guide. The worn-out notebook he had destroyed; it was the new one he intended to obtain, and leave to be found.
In that case, there never had been two notebooks. The one he had now would become, after being taken through the Gate to a point ten years in the past, the notebook from which he had copied it. They were simply different segments of the same physical process, manipulated by means of the Gate to run concurrently, side by side, for a certain length of time.
As he had himself—one afternoon.
He wished that he had not thrown away the worn-out notebook. If he had it at hand, he could compare them and convince himself that they were identical save for the wear and tear of increasing entropy.
But when had he learned the language, in order that he might prepare such a vocabulary? To be sure, when he copied it he then knew the language—copying had not actually been necessary.
But he had copied it.
The physical process he had all straightened out in his mind, but the intellectual process it represented was completely circular. His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.
But where had it started?
Which comes first, the hen or the egg?
You feed the rats to the cats, skin the cats, and feed the carcasses of the cats to the rats who are in turn fed to the cats. The perpetual motion fur farm.
If God created the world, who created God?
Who wrote the notebook? Who started the chain?
He felt the intellectual desperation of any honest philosopher. He knew that he had about as much chance of understanding such problems as a collie has of understanding how dog food gets into cans. Applied psychology was more his size—which reminded him that there were certain books which his early self would find very useful in learning how to deal with the political affairs of the country he was to run. He made a mental note to make a list.
The man on the floor stirred again, sat up. Wilson knew that the time had come when he must insure his past. He was not worried; he felt the sure confidence of the gambler who is “hot”, who knows what the next roll of the dice will show.
HE BENT OVER his alter ego. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I guess so,” the younger man mumbled. He put his hand to his bloody face. “My head hurts.”
“I should think it would,” Wilson agreed. “You came through head over heels. I think you hit your head when you landed.”
His younger self did not appear fully to comprehend the words at first. He looked around dazedly, as if to get his bearings. Presently he said, “Came through? Came through what?”
“The Gate, of course,” Wilson told him. He nodded his head toward the Gate, feeling that the sight of it would orient the still groggy younger Bob.
Young Wilson looked over his shoulder in the direction indicated, sat up with a jerk, shuddered and closed his eyes. He opened them again after what seemed to be a short period of prayer, looked again, and said, “Did I come through that?”
“Wes,” Wilson assured him.
“Where am I?”
“In the Hall of the Gate in the High Palace of Norkaal. But what is more important,” Wilson added, “is when you are. You have gone forward a little more than thirty thousand years.”
The knowledge did not seem to reassure him. He got up and stumbled toward the Gate. Wilson put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Where are you going?”
“Back!”
“Not so fast.” He did not dare let him go back yet, not until the Gate had been reset. Besides he was still drunk—his breath was staggering. “You will go back all right—I give you my word on that. But let me dress your wounds first. And you should rest. I have some explanations to make to you, and there is an errand you can do for me when you get back—to our mutual advantage. There is a great future in store for you and me, my boy—a great future!”
A great future!
THE END.
FLAME FOR THE FUTURE
William P. McGivern
The Leader had a purpose: he was waging war to found a super-race. Why not ask that race to help . . .?
THE tense whispering in the great hall faded suddenly. The huge double doors of the Council Room swung back and, as one man, the entire assemblage of high ranking soldiers come to their feet, hands outstretched in the traditional salute carried over from the days of the First Leader.
The Leader strode through their ranks. He was a tall man with heavy broad shoulders and thin, expressionless face. He turned and faced the room. Blue eyes, cold and unmoving, stared impassively over the expectant audience. Light hair, close cropped and straight, pressed tight about his skull like a bronze helmet.
“Soldiers,” he began without preliminaries. “I have called you here from all ends of the land and sea to announce that victory, complete and final, will soon be ours. For fifty years the enemy has fought stubbornly and desperately against our strength and might. But now, in the year 1990, they are doomed to the inevitable destruction which is the end of all enemies of our State. For thirty years we have been forced to fight delaying actions in some sectors of the World because we did not have sufficient man power to wage a decisive attack. Now that difficulty has been solved.
“In a very short time we will hurl onto the field of combat thousands, millions of troops vastly superior to any which the world has known. Troops so skilled and ruthless and perfect that even our own excellent divisions could not expect to stand against them.”
There was an incredulous gasp from the large room and the Leader smiled without humor.
“However these new and powerful additions to our forces will be fighting the stubborn enemy and not us, which is fortunate.”
A gray-haired Field Marshal rose to his feet and raised his arm in salute.
“My Leader,” he said, “how can this be? There are not such troops as you describe in the entire World. With the decrease of the population we will soon be without troops of any sort to wage our just and noble struggle. The enemy is in the same predicament. We are killing each other off faster than we can breed new soldiers.”
The Leader leaned forward slightly.
“I have called this meeting to explain exactly how we will solve that very problem. We have dedicated ourselves to the task of creating a super race. There can be no doubt that we will succeed. Think! Centuries from now the glorious civilization which we intend to create will dominate the earth. Our descendants will rule the earth, rule its wealth, rule its people. That is why we are fighting today. For the creation of the super race which will one day be all-powerful, all-conquering, all-mighty.
“Today I am going to explain to you the greatest scientific triumph of my regime. It is something which I have dreamed and planned for years. But first I want to say this to you. You know that in our State we do not allow slackers and shirkers to live. We put them to death the instant we discover them, for we know that all must fight and give their utmost in the crusade we are waging. Now if we are doing that, giving our last drop of blood and sweat to crush our enemies, why should those who will enjoy the benefits of our heroic labors be permitted to shirk their duty?”
For an instant there was dead silence in the room. A silence broken only by the sharp intake of breath as the assembled Chieftains caught the import of the Leader’s words.
“They have as much at stake,” the Leader continued, “more, in fact, than we ourselves have. Those who will follow us, the super race which will result from the completion of our struggle, they must be made to do their share in the winnings of that struggle. Therefore I have called you here to tell you of my plan.”
HE made a slight gesture to an orderly standing next to a square object beside him. The orderly stepped forward and with one gesture whipped the enveloping cover from the object, revealing it as a glistening metal cage, shimmering and strangely unreal.
The gathering of Chieftains moved forward for a better view of this strange creation. It was made roughly like a small cage with two metal seats in the interior and a mass of gadgets and equipment on a dial board before them.
The leader drew himself to his full height and stared truimphantly over the bewildered throng.
“The object before you is a Time Machine,” he said with repressed pride. “The result of our Ingenuity and skill. With it we will draw new support to our Cause. Two of my most trusted Lieutenants are to travel into the future to enlist the aid of the races which will be created by us. When they are told of our need of them, they will swoop back through the boundless reaches of Time to throw their great skill and power into the fray. With our glorious descendants fighting by the millions alongside us we will not, cannot, fail.”
There was a buzzing murmur of excited voices sweeping through the room and then shouts of praise and joy pouring from their throats. The Leader stood before them, smiling quietly at the fanatical demonstration. At last he raised his hand for silence.
“The Time Machine leaves now!” he announced. At a gesture from him two stalwart, uniformed young men stepped to the machine. “Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf,” he cried fervently, “are doing their Race and their Country and their Cause great and glorious service. They have invented this machine and are prepared to take it into the glorious future which we are creating now. The mighty race which will spring from us will welcome them and honor them and return with them by the thousands to fight with their ancestors.”
The two young men saluted, stepped into the machine. A thunderous roar of commendation broke from the audience, crashing between the walls with reverberating echoes.
Once more the Leader raised his hand.
“We salute you Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf,” he said impressively. “Our hearts and our hopes travel with you, wishing for you and for us and for the glorious races we will bring to Earth, success; mighty, magnificent success!”
He dropped his hand and one of the young men in the Time Machine moved a lever slowly to the right. The other, moved an indicator along a row of buttons stamped with units of time. Then he pressed a button. To the accompaniment of roar upon roar of triumph and hysterical encouragement the Time Machine shimmered and twisted slowly. As it turned it gradually disappeared. Bedlam broke loose; even the normally august figure of the Leader pranced in an uncontrolled ecstasy of glee.
“WE have arrived, Lieutenant Schmidt,” Lieutenant Wolf, the smaller of the two men, sat quietly. “We are five hundred years into the future. It is our third stop. We tried two centuries, three centuries, four centuries and now five.”
“And every time is the same,” Lieutenant Schmidt answered dully. “Let us climb out. It can’t be any worse.”
The two men climbed out of the machine and stared despairingly about at the black and blasted surface of the earth.
“The only people we have seen,” Schmidt said bitterly, “were those starving barbarians we saw two hundred years ago. Is it the end of the world? Is this what we are fighting for? To produce this?”
“Watch your tongue,” Wolf snapped. “That is treason.”
“Treason,” Schmidt muttered disgustedly.
Their Time Machine had landed in a slight depression, surrounded on three sides by rough, craggy boulders and blasted rocks. Wolf, staring at one of the slight hills, suddenly grabbed his companion by the arm.
“I saw something move up there,” he whispered tensely. He loosened his gun in its holster. “Let us investigate.”
Schmidt shrugged and followed him, climbing over the rough brambles and crags that littered the side of the slope.
KOGAR and Merena crouched behind the big black boulder and silently watched the two strange creatures moving across the scarred terrain.
Sharply Kogar drew in his breath and turned his shaggy head to his mate. He licked his lips.
“These creatures live, my Merena.”
His small eyes beneath his thick brows went back to their burning contemplation of the figures approaching.
Merena was not quite so coarse featured as Kogar. She had long, tangled black hair that fell almost to her waist. Her nose was not so flat as Kogar’s, her lips not so thick. But her black eyes gleamed with the same furious intensity, the same fierce gnawing hunger, as her mate’s.
For three star-skies it had been this way. No food. No raw flesh to fill the belly. There had been a small winged sky creature, that last time. Kogar had brought it down with a stone well aimed. But it had been small, too small to satisfy completely the burning hunger that gripped them both. And there had been scant blood to drink.
Merena found it hard to remember that there had once been a few four-footed animals to feast on. They were gone now, along with the last, of the winged sky creatures. She swallowed hungrily.
Kogar picked up the sharpened stone by his side. In his great paw he held it ready, his eyes estimating the distance from their boulder to the creatures moving toward them. Too far yet.
It didn’t occur to Kogar that these creatures might be even as himself and Merena. Their bodies were covered by strange trappings, their legs encased in odd sheaths. Truly these were not of their kind. Kogar’s thick left paw gently stroked the bulging muscle beneath the thick mat of hair on his right arm. No, they were not as Merena and Kogar.
Kogar knew that there were no others such as himself and Merena. Once there had been. But they were gone now—along with the four-footed animals and the sky creatures. They had been few enough to begin with, and their numbers decreased until there were finally but himself and his mate. The others had not been cunning enough to keep their bellies filled, their thirsts quenched.
Still watching the approach of the strange creatures, Kogar thought back to that day in the compounds when the feeble old Chief lay dying. All around them, that day, women and children had lain white and sick and bloated. They were dying too. Kogar had gone to Merena. He had slipped from the compounds with her that night.
