Across a Billion Years

  * * *

  October 16

  I waited up half the night for Dr. Schein to come to the dorm, but he didn't show, and finally I fell asleep. In the morning, as we got breakfast, I went over to him and said tentatively, "Dr. Schein, if I could trouble you about a certain aspect of the notice that was posted yesterday—"

  "Later, Tom, later. I can't discuss little details now."

  Brushed off again. Everybody too busy for poor Tom. Glumly I went out to the site and joined the others who were backfilling. Mirrik tried to console me with Paradoxian proverbs. "He who suffers scorn and rejection," said Mirrik, "learns to grasp the roots of the sea." And also, "The higher powers reward us most tenderly by their absence from our lives." Furthermore, "He alone finds grace from whom grace is withdrawn."

  "Very comforting, Mirrik."

  "Meditation and concentration bring understanding, my friend. Perhaps this grief is beneficial."

  "I'm sure of that," I said.

  Then Jan came up to me, close to the fusion point and emitting a high-frequency zing. "Do you know what I just found out?" she demanded.

  "Sure," I said bitterly. "Inasmuch as I'm a TP, it's no effort at all for me to read your mind and—"

  "Shut up, Tom. I just learned who it was that drew up the list of who goes to 1145591 and who goes to Galaxy Central. It was Leroy Chang."

  "Leroy Chang," I said. "That's odd. Why'd he do it?"

  "Dr. Schein asked him to," said Jan. "The bosses were too busy. He typed up the memo and ran it off. But don't you see, Tom? Leroy Chang! Leroy Chang]"

  "Leroy Chang," I said again. "Yes, I heard you."

  "But you aren't thinking! The list says that you go to Galaxy Central, and I go to 1145591 . . . and that Professor Chang goes to 1145591 also! Leroy deliberately arranged it so—"

  "I'm tuned in now, Jan. I read it all!"

  "Isn't it absolutely the dirtiest?"

  "Where's Leroy now?"

  "Packing inscription nodes in the lab."

  I sprinted toward the lab. Mirrik called after me, "The universe is a reversible phenomenon, Tom! Paradoxian proverb!"

  "Thank you," I called back.

  For many weeks now—since Leroy had gone groping for Jan—I've been making a point of avoiding the company of Professor Chang. Leroy hasn't been cultivating me any, either, with good reason. Lately he's been a kind of shadowy, skulking figure, sniffing around the outskirts of things and occasionally casting a longing look at Jan or Kelly. I've regarded him as more pathetic than hateful—nothing but a creepy vidj of the kind you see in the grimier feelie theaters of big cities. Now, though, I was ready to demolish him.

  I looked into the lab and saw him in back, indeed packing inscription nodes. Dr. Schein was also in the lab, and Pilazinool, and I didn't want to make a scene in front of them. So I said quietly, "Professor Chang, can I have a word with you?"

  "Will it wait?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "All right, what is it?"

  "There's something out back by the site that I'd like you to examine. We don't quite know what to make of it, and before we backfill there, we thought we'd have you look at it."

  He fell for it.

  We walked in silence toward the site. But we didn't enter it. I halted in front of a mound of excavation tailings that we hadn't backfilled yet. A drizzle began. I said, "Let's stop here, Leroy. Let's talk a little."

  "I don't understand."

  "You will. They tell me you drew up the list of names of those who'd escort the globe to Galaxy Central."

  "Yes." Guardedly.

  "How come?"

  "At Dr. Schein's request. It was just a routine matter."

  "You routinely separated me from the expedition," I said, "while managing to send yourself on the asteroid trip. And to send Jan too."

  "The globe," Leroy said, "was your discovery, Tom. I simply felt that you'd want to accompany it and look after its safety personally."

  That kind of reasoning didn't impress me. "How'd you like me to throw you into the excavation?" I asked.

  Leroy backed away from me. "What kind of talk is that?"

  "Archaic belligerent primitivistic talk. You feeby sposher, am I supposed to sit back and smile while you neatly put me on an orbit heading into the sun?"

  "I don't understand."

  "You said that once already. Let me give you an old Paradoxian proverb: The universe is a reversible phenomenon. You know what I want you to do?"

  "I don't like the way you're talking to me, Tom."

  "Zog, man. I want you to put yourself in that gang heading for Galaxy Central. In place of me."

  "But-"

  "I'm going to the asteroid. And you're going head first into the pit if you don't cooperate."

  I took a step toward him. He made some little blenking noises and looked sick. I hate bullies and bullying, but at the moment I didn't feel apologetic, thinking of the way he had bothered Jan.

  Chang said, "These threats of physical violence—"

  "—will be carried out—"

  "—are disgusting, Tom."

  "Into the pit!" I yelled, and feinted at him. He squeaked in fear. I grabbed him by the shoulders, but I didn't throw him in; instead I leaned close to his ear and said, "What would Dr. Schein think of you, Leroy, if Jan complained to him that you tried to rape her?"

  Leroy shivered. He sagged.

  I doubt very much that a rape-attempt complaint filed weeks after the event, under circumstances like these, would make much steam in court. But guilty consciences blackmail easily. Leroy glared at me, blustered a little, muttered that I was persecuting and maligning him, and then folded completely. "What do you want me to do, exactly?"

  I told him.

  He did it.

  This evening a revised list of assignments was posted. My name now is among those going to look for the asteroid. Professor Leroy Chang has replaced me in the group returning to Galaxy Central. I won't miss him. Neither will Jan.

  * * *

  October 17

  To continue this marathon letter. Today's news is about how I just outswiftied myself. I couldn't help it, though.

  You know how it is when you get so spun up over a marginal thing that you overlook something really important? Old Paradoxian proverb: He who loses track of main point will oversleep when millennium arrives. I was busy maneuvering myself out of the Galaxy Central deal and failing to see what I should have seen at once. What all of us should have seen.

  I hunted up Dr. Schein during my morning break.

  "Sir," I said, adopting my humble-apprentice tone of voice, "I've got a hypothetical question. What if we get to the asteroid and find the robot and it's still in working order, and all? How will we communicate with it? How will we tell it who we are and how much time has passed?"

  "It won't be possible, Tom."

  "But it could be possible! We have a credential. A letter of introduction. Only we've decided not to take it with us."

  "You've lost me, Tom."

  "I mean the globe, sir!"

  Dr. Schein frowned. Pursed his lips. Considered. Brightened.

  "Of course! Of course, the globe, the globe!"

  And rushed off to confer with Dr. Horkkk and Pilazinool.

  The conference lasted an hour. Then they summoned us all to the lab for a general meeting in the middle of the day. Dr. Horkkk presided. Dr. Schein, sitting to one side, gave me a warm, fond smile. I was teacher's pet again.

  Dr. Horkkk interlaced his arms, opened and closed his three bulging eyes in rapid sequence, stuck a few long, many-jointed fingers into his eating mouth, and otherwise went through the patterns that are the Thhhian equivalents of preliminary throat-clearing. Then he said, in his fussy, explosive little voice, "I wish to propose a change of plan. It will require unanimous consent, since the consequences may be serious. As you know, we have agreed to Galaxy Central's request that the globe be shipped there at once for study and preservation. However, a suggestion was made today tha
t we keep the globe with us as a means of communication should we find the High Ones' robot. It could serve, so to speak, as a letter of introduction, establishing our credentials as archaeologists of an era much later than its own."

  I admired the deft adoption of my own terms.

  "That is," Dr. Horkkk went on, "we could demonstrate to the robot that we had found the globe and followed it to the robot, and that a great length of time had passed since its arrival on the asteroid. I can visualize other ways in which communication will be possible using the globe as intermediary. However, if we take it with us, we will be in direct defiance of our understanding with Galaxy Central. Therefore—"

  He called for a vote.

  All in favor of telling Galaxy Central to go sposh itself? Eleven hands in the air.

  Opposed? Zero.

  Carried unanimously. Dr. Schein now said, "Of course, there's no reason now for any of us to go to Galaxy Central. The recent order is cancelled. We will travel as a unit to the asteroid."

  Damn. I thought for a while that I was rid of Leroy Chang.

  TEN

  November 16? 17? 18? 2375

  Somewhere in Ultraspace

  A month has passed, I know, since I last fingered a message cube. Something about voyages in ultraspace discourages my impulse to communicate. I'm not even sure what day it is. There's an Earthstyle calendar somewhere aboard, but I can't bother to look for it.

  We closed up shop on Higby V right on schedule, leaving the site sealed so that the next archaeologists to work it—hopefully, a less flighty bunch than we turned out to be—will find it intact. The cruiser arrived and picked us up on the twenty-first. We did not inform Galaxy Central that we've taken the globe with us. That makes us renegades of sort, but it'll be months before the bureaucrats back home find that out, and by then, maybe, we'll have some gaudy new find to calm them. As Mirrik learned after his boozy prance through the lab, any sinner can find redemption if the yield of his sin is spectacular enough.

  Our ship is a standard interstellar cruiser, making an upper quadrant run between Rigel and Aldebaran. The stop at GGC 1145591 is slightly out of the way, but not too much, and wasn't hard to arrange. All it took was stash. Old Earthside proverb: Stash buys. We will have a rented planetship at our disposal so that we can search the GGC 1145591 system for our asteroid. It's already on its way there from Aldebaran to await us. That took stash too. Dr. Schein overdrew our thumb account long ago, but he has a glib way with computers and is running on credit now; we'll manage so long as Galaxy Central doesn't find out. May the Almighty Proton protect us if we draw a blank on this expedition—if we have, to use the fine medieval expression, gone off to chase the wild duck.

  Our quarters are comfortable, as before. Spacious cabins, good library, recreation facilities, decent food. The crewmen keep to themselves, we to ourselves. Time blurs strangely aboard an ultradrive trip, and I find myself doing without sleep for what may possibly be two or three days in a row, and then sleeping for days. Or so it seems.

  Everybody is much keyed up, especially Drs. Schein and Horkkk. They walk around perpetually surprised that they ever found the slice to abandon Higby V for the present quest. Dr. Horkkk, you know, is hardly a charming romantic liberated adventurous type, and as near as I can read his expression, he seems to be saying, "How can this be me?" Dr. Schein looks equally baffled. Pilazinool, on the other hand, is quietly confident, rarely unlaces his limbs any more, seems to feel that we have been blessed by destiny. We'll see.

  My chief social accomplishment on the trip so far has been to push Jan back to her obsession with Saul Shahmoon.

  I'm not sure how I managed that. I thought Jan and I were working on the same wavelength.

  I don't mean that anything very passionate had happened between us, or that we were about to apply even for temporary marriage status, or anything remotely like that. Our contacts have been surprisingly chaste. We've done a little quiet biologizing, yes, but nothing has occurred between us that would have been amiss even in a fairly puritanical era. Maybe I'm a spinless feeb for having been so restrained. We are adults. It says right here.

  However, despite all this chastity, Jan and I did seem to be blending into a sort of team, and I don't think anyone really minded it, Leroy Chang excepted. As the youngest and (let's face it) most attractive Earthfolk in the group, Jan and I were drawing a kind of paternal approval from the others. They beamed at us a lot. I always feel put down when I'm beamed at, don't you?

  They don't beam at us lately, because Jan's been spending her time with Saul again. When I see her I get the freeze, right down to absolute zero.

  I don't know what I did or said or didn't do or didn't say that made her chill off on me. Maybe I started to bore her. I can be so terribly clean-cut and bright-eyed, sometimes—my worst fault, you'd agree.

  Maybe she's suddenly developed a terrific interest in philately.

  Maybe she never was in tune with me at all, but just was using me to heat up some jealousy in Saul.

  Who knows? Not I. Not a clue.

  It's been going on for ten, twelve days now. Not to sponge syllables about it, I'm upset. I don't have any right to feel possessive toward Jan, considering that all that went on with us was a kind of glorified hand-holding, more or less. But I don't enjoy seeing her disappear into Saul's cabin for two and three hours at a stretch. With the door locked, too.

  Having an imagination can be an awful burden sometimes.

  * * *

  One marginal benefit of this leg of the trip is that I've had a chance to get to know Kelly Watchman better. As you know, androids don't turn me on a lot, and until a couple of weeks ago I hadn't said anything to Kelly, aside from shoptalk as we dug, but "Lousy weather, isn't it?" and "Please pass the tingle tablets" and "Do you have the time?" and like that.

  In fact, I don't think I've ever really talked with an android before. I knew a few at college, but they stuck together and didn't go out of their way to solicit the company of flesh-and-blooders, and I never tried to impose myself on them. And of course Dad has some androids working for him in fairly high-level jobs, but it didn't occur to me to make friends with them, either. I've always been a bit edgy and withdrawn around minority people; it's the well-known guilt feelings of the overprivileged classes that hold me back.

  The night I first talked with Kelly was before Jan and I had started to drift apart. The reason I wasn't with Jan that evening was that she'd been feeling headachy and cranky, and had gone off to use the ship's nothing chamber in the hopes that a few hours cut off from all sensory stimuli would help her relax. Nobody else much was around, either; Dr. Schein and Dr. Horkkk were writing reports, Pilazinool and Mirrik were battling to the death over the chessboard, 408b had locked itself up for meditation, and so on. I was wandering around the ship, feeling left out and adrift, when Kelly came up to me in the library cabin and said, "May I sit with you a while, Tom?"

  "I'd love it, Kelly," I said grandly, hopping up to draw her a chair, making a big chivalrous gesture out of it—the overcompensation of guilt again.

  We settled down facing each other across a glittering single-crystal table. I asked her if she'd like a drink and she said no—of course—but wouldn't mind if I had one. I said I'd pass also. These genteel maneuvers occupied a couple of minutes.

  Then in a low voice she said, "That man has been following me around all evening. How can I make him go away?"

  I looked toward the cabin door and glimpsed Leroy Chang skulking in the corridor. Leroy is the only true skulker I've ever known. He glared at me really furiously, as though telling me how loathsome I was to keep getting between him and the women he was chasing. Then he stalked away, no doubt hissing a little and wishing he had a mustache to twirl.

  "The poor quonker," I said. "He's got a sex problem, I guess."

  Kelly flashed a dazzling smile. "When will he learn that I have no interest in helping him solve it?"

  I felt a pang of sympathy for skulking Leroy. The and
roid sitting opposite me looked fantastically desirable. Kelly's sparkling auburn hair tumbled almost to her shoulders; it gleamed and glowed with the sheen that comes only out of android creation vats. Her deep green eyes seemed like precious jewels; her flawless skin was not the skin of mere mortals; and in her careless way she had donned a clinging sprayon wrap that amounted to not much more than a bit of fluff up here and a bit more down there. She was a vision of seductiveness—a cruel joke played by the lab technicians who had put her together out of amino acids and electricity, because they hadn't conditioned any sex into Kelly at all. I imagine she could have made Leroy Chang happy in a way, if she had wanted to, but she didn't want to, and didn't even want to want to, and couldn't begin to understand what Leroy was looking for. The sweaty urges of humanity are as alien to her as the hunger of a Shilamakka to convert himself into machinery is to us.

  Still, she was beautiful. The radiant image of voluptuous nineteen-year-old womanhood, a kind of dream creature. All androids are attractive, in a kind of standardized stereotyped way, but whoever had written the program for Kelly must have been a poet of the vats. Sitting there making sophisticated-type chatter with her, I felt vaguely like the hero of one of those tridim movies, forever enmeshed in romantic talk with mysterious beauties aboard spaceliners bound for remote ports.

  However, nobody had been kind enough to hand me a script. I had to make up the dialogue as I went along. Kelly, now that I had rescued her from pestiferous Leroy, seemed willing to sit in the library and talk all night with me, but after the first ten minutes I found that I had exhausted my stock of light conversation. It isn't easy to find much to say when you're aboard an ultradrive cruiser, locked up in a sealed container where contact with the rest of the universe is impossible. You can't even discuss the weather. Once you've talked about your reactions to the twisty-twisty of entering ultraspace, you've run dry.