Time Travel Omnibus, page 493
Skipping the investigations and the milling about, what had happened was this: Nobody had shot us as we emerged on the twenty-fourth and that, of course, couldn’t be changed. For that matter, the instant James started to do anything that would make a visible change in the world of eighty-five million B.C., the space-time forces would snap him forward to the present to prevent a paradox.
Now that this is better understood, the professor won’t send anybody to a period less than five hundred years prior to the time that some time traveler has already explored, because it would be too easy to do some act, like chopping down a tree or losing some durable artifact, that would affect the later world. Over long periods, he tells me, such changes average out and are lost in the stream of time.
We had a bloody rough time after that, with the bad publicity and all, though we did collect a fee from James’s estate. The disaster hadn’t been entirely James’s fault. I shouldn’t have taken him when I knew what a spoiled, unstable sort he was. And if Holtzinger could have used a heavy gun, he’d probably have knocked the tyrannosaur down, even if he didn’t kill it, and so given the rest of us a chance to finish it.
So that’s why I won’t take you to that period to hunt. There are plenty of other eras, and if you think them over, I’m sure you’ll find—
Good Lord, look at the time! Must run, old boy; my wife’ll skin me. Good night!
BARRIER TO YESTERDAY
Bob Shaw
The catastrophe had destroyed the past forever. Could it also create a new future?
The Philosophy Sled, running with ponderous speed before the freshening wind, crunched shudderingly into a patch of rough ice. Chandrill jerked into wakefulness as he felt the sled slew to one side.
“Spill it!” he shouted, pointing up at the gluttonous bellies of the sails which were drawing creaks from the masts as the incident direction of the wind changed. In seconds the sails were flapping noisily from their top booms and Chandrill felt the drag as the rudder bit ice, getting the sled under control.
When they had slowed down, Chandrill leapt over the side and saw what he had expected but feared to see. The lugs at the rear of the starboard runner had twisted off along the lines of old cracks in the metal.
Two others climbed down onto the ice beside him and Chandrill recognised the heavy breathing lido Fearthell, the Philosopher, before he looked up at him. Fearthell’s lips were drawn tautly over his broken teeth and there was a gleam in saliva on his chin—it was obvious that he had had a scare. The other person was Sinoon.
“I thought it would be those,” lido Fearthell said. “I thought it would be the lugs.”
“It was a chance we took,” Chandrill said defensively, rising to his feet. “If we hadn’t hit the rough patch or if we had had our new set of runners . . .”
“I don’t like that,” interrupted Fearthell. “I don’t like that a bit. You are implying that I wasn’t firm enough with Minnatose when the last casting was done on the Metallurgy Sled. Remember it was you who said the runner would see us through the Pass. I definitely don’t like that, Chandrill.”
“What made the ice so rough, anyway?” asked Sinoon. Chandrill glanced across the ice, feeling the old discomfort that was only the natural reaction to cessation of motion.
“At least six of the earlier sleds stopped here for some reason,” he replied. “You can see the brake and rudder tracks criss-crossing back there.”
Looking at her as she strained her myopic blue eyes to pick out the tracks in the twilight he wondered hopefully if she was beginning to reconcile herself to the Philosophy Sled.
“Then if we had been at the head of the lines, if the tribe hadn’t been held back this wouldn’t have happened?”
There was the faintest note of triumph in Sinoon’s voice as she spoke. She drew her cap closer around her, narrowing her wide pale lips against the wind.
“That’s right,” Chandrill replied, making his voice as dead as was possible. The six other Lesser Philosophers, all of them nearly as old as Fearthell himself, and the two Novices who looked after the running of the sled were down on the ice by this time. Chandrill could feel the throbbing silence that comes not because there is nothing to say but because there is too much.
“The thing is,” lido Fearthell said, “the thing is—can the iron be fixed or can we not move until a new one is cast?”
Chandrill glanced around the group and then up ahead, towards Day, to where the other sleds of the tribe had either halted or were in the process of stripping their masts. “There are still parts of the broken lugs projecting,” he said. “We could make a housing for it on the timber former. A box shape that would keep it from moving about too much. We might be able to limp along until the new runner is supplied.”
“All right then,” Fearthell said, “We’ll do that.” He told young Mondaquee to bring tools and wood. Chandrill put Sinoon out of his thinking and went to work on the lugs.
He had the outside box completed and was about to get in below the sled when he heard the crackling whisper of blades on ice. He looked Daywards and saw that Minnatose had come back alone from the Royal Trio to see what was wrong. Chandrill climbed inside the framework of the sled and began shaping wood with the small axe.
He heard Minnatose stop at the front of the sled and then a period of near silence broken only by Fearthell’s whistling sibilants. After some minutes had gone by he realised that Fearthell had stopped talking and he felt vaguely ill at ease. He looked around to see if he could find where Minnatose had gone to, then he jumped violently and dropped the axe.
Minnatose had slipped quietly up to where Chandrill was working, knelt down and had been peering in at him from close up for some time. He was grinning at Chandrill’s reaction.
Chandrill cursed himself furiously and picked up the axe to go on working, relapsing into his protective sullenness. Minnatose crouched outside the sled for another few minutes before he spoke. “Hard at work, cousin,” he said, still smiling.
“Yes.”
“You need a new runner for that job.”
“That’s right.”
“Know how to get one?”
“Yes.”
“Well how about it then?” Minnatose slapped his hand against the heavy framework of the sled. “I want this sled for a useful job. I could have it filled with coal at the next deposit and we could run the furnace practically all the time. You could come back to the front of the tribe and no harm will come to the Philosophers. I’ll disperse them over the rest of the sleds.”
“I told you before that I wasn’t going to agree to abolish this sled,” Chandrill said doggedly. “If you need the consent of every member of the royal family before you can tear up its charter you just have to wait until I’m out of the way.”
Minnatose renewed his grin, stood up and walked away, his skates clinking on the ice. Chandrill worked on until he had finished then he climbed out from under, staggering a little as his legs gave way, cramped from the long crouch.
When he walked round to the front of the sled Minnatose was ready to go and there was something wrong. Something in the air. Chandrill glanced round curiously at the two or three Lesser Philosophers who were fixedly watching something in the hills to the north. He walked past Minnatose, who was looking amused, and found Sinoon climbing down from the sled with all her spare clothing in a bundle on her back.
Chandrill sucked in air. “Where to?” he asked her as she reached his level.
She was trembling slightly but her voice sounded casual. “We don’t get on well here, Chan. There’s no other women on this sled and since we fell back in the lines I can’t get across to the other sleds in the same way. There isn’t enough room here either and . . . well, I’m going back to the Royal Trio.”
“You’re leaving—just like that?” Chandrill asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“You’re not. Go back up onto the sled. I’m going to talk to Minna lose about this.”
Sinoon laughed. “You can’t stop me, Chan. And don’t annoy Minnatose—he might lose his temper.” She stepped quickly past him and moved out of sight around the front of the sled.
Go ahead, Chandrill thought, it has happened at last. They’ve gone too far, so let them see the real Chandrill, the smart dangerous invincible Chandrill who has always remained hidden for want of a situation or opponent big enough to test his mettle. That’s what you have always told yourself. Now act!
Somehow he just felt sick and heavy with grief that the split with Sinoon had finally come. He set the tool pouch down and walked forward after Sinoon. He found that he had been standing for longer than he had realised for Minnatose and Sinoon were nearly a quarter of a mile from the sled and moving away fast.
He stared at them until they were only specks. To the north were the ever present foothills of the polar mountains and in the south an uninterrupted waste of ice out to the horizon. Behind the sled the sky tinged down into the darkness of the eternal Night and in the opposite direction grew brighter with the light of the elusive sun just below the horizon.
Chandrill turned back to the sled and noted that, although the sled was not a very big structure, there was nobody in sight. They all knew what had been happening. He raised cupped hands to shout to one of the Novices to come down for the tools, moving and thinking mechanically, when the unbelievable happened.
Behind the sled, towards Night, a point of brilliant light appeared. It was a little above the horizon and, as Chandrill watched, it dipped down into the darker background of the far ice then lifted back into the sky again. Suddenly he realised that the thing was moving at tremendous speed for it had swollen into a ball as it began to ascend. It was much closer.
Paralysed with fear, Chandrill tilted his head back as the hurtling light sped by several miles up. It went straight down the sky and several seconds before it reached the horizon the light seemed to split into two, shedding a much smaller part. Immediately the larger object passed below the horizon there was a bright flare of light that lit up the whole region of sky around the point of disappearance.
Slowly, and of their own accord, Chandrill’s knees buckled and he found himself kneeling on the ice, unable to move due to the pounding elation racing in his chest. He knelt there for a time taking his air in noisy gasps, grinning fiercely and blinking tears out of his eyes. Complete and pure happiness was throwing his nervous system into chaos, then the spasms passed and he stood up.
He turned and ran back to the sled, moving with the delicate high-stepping run of somebody that has lived all his life on hard ice.
The Philosophy Sled, like all the others, was the framework for a box mounted on runners. The interior of the box was divided into smaller compartments by the struts and ties that braced the masts, and pieces of thick fabric nailed to these members made the compartments into semi-private cubicles. At the front and rear of the sled were small bridges from which it was possible to see down into the cubicles but the people of the tribes were incurious by nature and found sled life tolerable.
Underneath the bridges were the supplies of bread cane which grew thickly on the lowermost slopes of the polar mountains. Chandrill let his thoughts return to the group on the bridge and realised that Fearthell was still talking.
“I don’t understand you, Chandrill,” he was saying in his usual tautological style, “I really don’t. At a time when this sled is in need of every man you tell me you want to leave the sled! Not only that, but you want others to go with you. And for what?
“Nothing but a meteor! Just a piece of rock from the sky. Nothing at all, you might say.”
“That wasn’t a meteor,” Chandrill stated flatly.
“What was it then?”
“I wouldn’t like to guess,” replied Chandrill, “but I know it wasn’t a meteor.” He kept on speaking, ignoring the amused smile that Fearthell slid around the other men. “And don’t worry about your runner. Minnatose won’t let this sled be left behind. He said he could use it for something useful and it’s not hard to see his point of view.
“When I was a boy on the Royal Sleds I heard old Ardinetter, who was the Philosopher at that time, talk about the past and the future. The world was a challenge to him. He seemed to think it was a privilege to live on a world whose spin had almost stopped, stretching the days and nights into years so that it was useless even to go underground. Ardinetter believed that we wouldn’t always have to follow the sun around the world.
“But that’s all we have done. It is our miserable little history.”
“I think I am safe in saying that all of us here are familiar with our own history, Chandrill,” remarked Fearthell, nodding to the others.
“I’m trying to show you Minnatose’s point of view about the sled,” Chandrill said curtly. “In the times when the trek was just beginning they realised that if they could only reach the poles there would be no need to keep moving. The south pole was out because the winds were wrong below this latitude, and the north pole is a thousand miles over the mountains. Night would have us before we reached the first peaks.
“We travel along the southernmost skirt of those mountains, round the world and round the world, never getting anywhere. And the only way we’ll ever break the cycle is by being smart. By using our brains to get out. That is why this sled was built. It was to be a place where the best brains could work on the problem of escape.
“If you continue to sit there arguing over the possibility of the Absolute or the reality of the perceived universe Minnatose will have the sled out from under you—and he’ll deserve it.”
“I had no idea there was so much empathy between Minnatose and you,” remarked one-eyed Tronpat. He smiled slightly.
“There’s a logical refutation,” Chandrill said sarcastically.
“All right then,” Fearthell put in, “keeping everything on a strictly logical basis. Would you explain just how the meteor will carry the tribes to the poles? Can you make it fly again after it has buried itself in the ice?”
“No, I can’t, but it is something new,” Chandrill said. “It’s new data. New material to work with, so I say we can’t afford to neglect it. I’m going to take my own yacht and go out after it. Anybody else?” He looked around the group in their loose dark trousers and broad belted jerkins. None of them spoke.
“Party coming back from the rest of the tribe,” shouted Novice Mondaquee from the rear bridge. Chandrill went down and dragged out the body of his little yacht from its makeshift brackets between the timbers at the rear. He had it ready to sail when the party reached the sled.
It was Minnatose again and behind him were four men in the dark blue of Ironworkers who were trailing two heavy runners. Minnatose glanced up at the bridge as he came up, moving fast, and scraped to a halt beside Chandrill. “Throw that thing back in there,” he snapped, pointing at the yacht, “and get one of these runners onto the sled.” His face was white and stiff with barely controlled rage and Chandrill felt the old nervousness stir in his stomach.
You took my wife, he thought in an effort to whip up a reckless temper. Aloud he said, “One of the boys can do it. It’s important to me to go.”
Minnatose caught Chandrill’s jerkin and twisted it tight across his chest. “You know the Pass, don’t you? You know the Pass?”
“Yes,” Chandrill said, shocked at his cousin’s sudden descent to violence. In the long trip round the world there were several places from which the mountains could be seen on the southern horizon. The Pass was the only point at which they approached the great polar ranges of the north; it was actually a narrow strait of ice between two continents. All the sleds of all the tribes converged there to get through to the other side.
“You know the Pass. It’s gone! The meteor hit the northern edge of it and . . . damn you, Chan! We can’t get through!”
The main sense of Minnatose’s words were too much for Chandrill. “Damn me!” he said stupidly, trying to get back from the other man. “Why damn me?”
“You were the one that stopped us from getting this sled long ago. But for that this tribe would have been in the lead—the advance tribes were through the Pass when the meteor struck.”
“You mean,” Chandrill demanded, “that because you crippled this sled and slowed the tribe by trying to blackmail us with refusing our sail cloth and runners, it is my fault?”
“Shut up, Chan,” Minnatose snarled. “It was you blocked me.”
“What is it? What about the Pass?” It was Fearthell from the bridge. Minnatose released Chandrill and strode forward, a tautmouthed giant in the royal white, to beneath Fearthell. He turned back to Chandrill and pointed at him.
“Get that runner on now and get this sled moving,” he ordered. “I’ll need every man at the Pass to get some of the stuff through if it can be done. And do it now.”
Chandrill dropped one hand to the haft of the whipstick slung on his belt. He stood like that for a few seconds, only then beginning to realise that for the first time there was no way ahead for the tribes to take. He straightened his jerkin and ran to help the men manoeuvre the runners.
When Chandrill came up out of his cubicle the Philosophy Sled, the last one of all, had neared the Pass. It was darker than usual due to the smoke and dust that was riding high above the Pass, and to the north were the lines of the sleds belonging to the other tribes. Most of them seemed to be deserted. The lines converged a mile ahead and disappeared behind an outshoot of the northern cliff of the Pass.
When they swung round the curve of the cliff, Chandrill found that there was nothing to see ahead but wrecked sleds that had piled headlong into each other. There was a ragged wall of them blocking the way. Chandrill saw the smoky red smudges of flames to the north, then the wind backed suddenly bringing with it the smoke and dust and the sickening sense of disaster. He felt the brakes go on and the sled slowed rapidly but not soon enough. The wind smashed back harder and the sails twisted their booms round to the rear of the masts. Blinded with the flying ash Chandrill heard the masts and rigging crunch down into the rear of the sled and then a lurch threw him to the deck. He rolled into one of the handrail standards, caught it and managed to get his feet onto the diagonal bracing in the side and slide down to the level of the runners.
