It chuckled hollowly. “You can see me, can’t you? It means you’re going to die. When people can see me, it’s because they’re going to die.”
“No,” Svetz whispered. His legs were trying to push him back through the wall of the extension cage.
“Stop staring! It’s not my fault I’m this way. It was the radiation.” The apparition shifted uncomfortably. “What’s your name?”
“S-Svetz.”
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Nathaniel Reynolds, the world’s first time traveler, and I’ve decided to hijack your time machine.”
Svetz licked his lips. “I don’t think so. The first time traveler—”
“I beat him to it. On another line of history, of course. A dead line. My own fault. Have you ever heard of the Cuban missile crisis? The date was nineteen fifty-eight AD, seventeen Post Atomic, your dating.”
“No.”
“You’re sure? We called it the Short War.”
Svetz shook his head.
“Doctor Reynolds” settled himself against the curved wall. He held Svetz’s gun steadily on Svetz.
He was not as much a skeleton as Svetz had thought. There was skin over the bones, though the skin itself was the white of bleached bone. In Reynolds’s neck there were trachea and gullet as well as the lumpy row of vertebrae.
The rib cage was something else again. Reynolds’s ribs were naked bone. Behind the ribs was a narrow torso of flabby white flesh that pulsed like lungs. Torso and abdomen depended from the spine; but daylight showed between the exoskeletal ribs.
The nose and ears were mere holes.
The pelvic bones were sharp as ax blades.
Doctor Reynolds was both hairless and sexless.
He said, “I don’t talk well. The only people who can see me and hear me are always about to die. Sometimes they’re too sick to concentrate. Sometimes too busy. Sometimes too scared.”
“Am I dying?”
Reynolds chuckled. “We’ll decide that between us.”
“What are you?”
“I’m a ghost. My own fault. But don’t laugh. It could happen to you.”
Svetz was not thinking of laughing.
“Let me tell you. I was born about a century after the Short War,” said Doctor Reynolds. “By then it was obvious the human race was dying. Too many countries had dropped too many bombs in the Short War. Some were cobalt bombs. There was still too much radiation around. Too many mutations, mostly sick and mostly sterile, not to mention disgusting. I was one of the lucky ones.”
Svetz said nothing.
“I’d have knocked your teeth out,” said the hollow voice. “I really was one of the lucky ones. No brain damage. No gonads, but so what? With all the radiation around I wouldn’t have bred true anyway. No organic damage that couldn’t be fixed by available medicines. I had to take the pills every day, of course. Would you believe that I once had a pot belly?”
Svetz shook his head.
“A very small pot belly. I had to get rid of it. It hurt. My abdominal muscles couldn’t carry the weight. Funny: I’ve never picked up fat anywhere else. Just the belly, and bones showing through the rest of me.”
“How did you get to be a ghost?”
Reynolds laughed, a weak, hollow sound. “Deliberately, and by dint of great effort. There were thousands of us working on it. There wasn’t any question that we were doomed. Our best brains, such as we were, were working on time travel. We called it Project Retake. You know what a retake is?”
“Doing a scene over for a sensory.”
“That’s what we were after. We weren’t sure the past could be changed even if we did have time travel. But we had to try it. We did it, too. The time machine was just big enough for me and the scrambler system. They picked me because I only weigh about fifty pounds.”
“What did you do?”
“Scrambled the guidance mechanisms of every guided missile in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a week before the Cuban missile crisis. They had to back down and move the missiles out of Cuba. By the time they got their missiles fixed the crisis was over, and they still didn’t know what had happened. It must have made them cautious for a while afterward.
“I monitored it all by radio. I made sure nobody saw me, of course. My appearance is a bit—”
“Right.”
“So. Afterward I tried to go home. Not to my own present, but to the new one, the one I’d created. My time machine didn’t work. We saved a lot of weight by leaving the power source fixed in the future. Now it was gone.
“I left the machine and went to give myself up. And found out I was gone too …
“Well, that’s all over now,” said Reynolds. He hefted the stunner. The bones of his hands were crossed by narrow strands of muscle. His fingernails were long and ragged. “We’re going to put it back the way it was.”
“Uh?”
“Using your time machine. Mine wouldn’t do it, but yours will. We’re going back to seventeen Post Atomic.”
“We can’t.”
“I’ll kill you if we don’t.”
Sventz believed him. When Nathaniel Reynolds gave himself a name, Svetz had stopped seeing him as a supernatural horror. But he was convinced that the bony physicist was mad.
He said, “You don’t understand. This isn’t a time machine, it’s only the extension cage, the part that does the moving. The technicians have to haul me back to the present before they can send me back again.”
“You’re lying.”
“No! Reynolds, there aren’t any controls here—just on-off pulses to tell the technicians which way to move me. They can only move forward now.”
“I almost believe you,” Reynolds mused. “But I’ll still kill you unless one of us thinks of something.”
“You’re crazy! You’d have to be crazy to want your bombed-out world back!”
The skeleton clacked his teeth. Svetz saw the red of his mouth, horribly incongruous in the white skull. “Svetz, you haven’t asked me how long I’ve been a ghost.”
“How long, then?”
“There’s no way to measure. Svetz, I’m anchored to seventeen Post Atomic. I wait, I get eight months or so beyond the Cuban missile crisis, and then everything slows down and stops. I think it’s been thousands of years. More.
“Can you imagine anything more horrible? It’s a frozen world. People like statues. Pigeons nailed to the air. I’m frozen too. I don’t get old, I don’t get hungry. Sunlight goes right through me. See how white my skin is? And I can’t die. I’m not real enough to die. I’d have gone crazy long ago if it weren’t for the time machines.”
Reynolds’s eyes burned black within the pits of his skull. “The time machines. I see them going and coming, Svetz. Some from your line of history, some from others. Yours is the real future, the future I made. But I can ride the others too.
“Mostly I ride them into the past as far as they’ll go. That way time passes normally for me, until seventeen Post Atomic rolls around again. I’ve been through the Middle Ages a dozen times.
“Funny thing, Svetz. I’m invisible to most people. But anyone can see me if he’s about to die. Maybe because he’s about to leave time entirely; it doesn’t matter what line of history he’s on, or I’m on.” Reynolds laughed. “I think some of them die because they see me. Heart failure.”
Svetz shuddered. Reynolds was probably right.
Reynolds said, “Not funny, eh? I’ve been in the future too. Dozens of futures. Svetz, did you know that your time machines go sidewise in time?”
“We had one that did. It was damaged.”
“They all do. They wobble. The self-powered ones get lost. The ones that are anchored to their own lines of history, like yours, they always get pulled back, no matter how far they slip across alternate probabilities.
“I’ve seen some strange futures. Svetz. Paradises. Alien invasions. One where elephants were civilized. I’ve been in your future,” Reynolds said bitterly. “Long enoug
h to learn Speech. Long enough to see what you’ve done to the world I made you.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Everything’s dirty, everything’s dead! You killed off everything but yourselves and that gray sludge you eat—”
“Dole yeast.”
“Dole yeast. I know a short word that would fit it better. I’ve watched you ejecting that sludge from your mouths—”
“What?”
“I was going backward in time, of course, waiting to slide back to seventeen Post Atomic. The fun goes out of that awfully fast. I don’t like hopping time machines into the future, not unless I can get a ride back.
“But I do it anyway. There’s always the chance a time machine will wobble across my own line of history. Then I could get off, or even stop the machine. And it paid off, didn’t it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You haven’t looked outside at all, have you, Svetz?”
For the first time, Svetz looked past Reynolds …
The extension cage rested on a plain of cracked black glass. Nothing grew. Far in the distance was a line of … Svetz abruptly realized that it was a rim wall. They were in something like a lunar crater.
“This is your world?”
“That’s right. I’m home.”
“I can’t say I like it much.”
Reynolds laughed his hollow, grating laugh. “It’s cleaner than your world, Svetz. If I’d known you’d kill off everything on Earth, poison the land and the water and the air … well, never mind. We’ll fix that.”
“What do you mean? All you’ve got to do is step outside! You’re home!”
“But it isn’t real. I need you to make it real. This is the only time I’ve ever been able to affect a time machine. You’re my only chance, Svetz.”
“But I told you—”
“Svetz. This is a stun gun. It can’t hurt anyone, but it can hold you still while I immobilize you. After that, well, I’ve spent considerable time in medieval torture chambers.”
“Wait. Wait. What year did you leave from? What was the date when you left to stop the Short War?”
“Ah, twenty ninety-two. You wouldn’t think to look at me that I was only twenty-two years old, would you? I haven’t aged since—”
“What date Post Atomic?”
“Let’s see. One forty-seven.”
The inertial calendar read + 134.
“All right. You can hitch a ride on your own time machine! It leaves thirteen years from now. We can’t move back in time, but we can jump forward.” Svetz reached for the go-home. In the same instant his arm became dead meat dropping limply back to his side.
Reynolds said, “But if we tried to go into the future, we’d likely slip sidewise, wouldn’t we? And then the pattern of events would have been different, and I wouldn’t exist anymore, would I?”
So it was certainly worth a try, thought Svetz. He said, “What are you going to do, wait thirteen years?”
“If I have to.” Reynolds clacked his teeth. Apparently it was his only expression; it must make do for a smile, a scowl, a thoughtful look … “Hah! I can do better than that. Svetz, can you get me to Australia? Will this thing travel in space coordinates?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to change guns.” Reynolds stood, examined the equipment lining the curved wall, selected a weapon. “A heavy needle gun. It wouldn’t kill an elephant, maybe, but there’s anaesthetic enough in here to kill a man.”
“Yah,” said Svetz. He felt very afraid.
“And now we’ll go.”
* * *
Australia. The eastern coast was a cityscape of streets and oblong buildings. “It’s the only place on Earth that’s even marginally habitable,” said Reynolds. “It’s mostly empty now.” And he directed Svetz south along the coast.
He had not stopped talking during the entire flight. He sprawled motionless as a laboratory exhibit, the gun propped casually on one kneecap, while he poured out a steady monologue of reminiscence.
“Of course I have a poor opinion of mankind,” he was saying in answer to one of his own questions. “Why not? If you’d seen people under stress as often as I have, in overcrowded hospitals, in torture chambers, on scaffolds and headsman’s blocks, on battlefields—you’d know. People take stress badly. Especially on battlefields.
“Now, I may have a biased viewpoint. I suppose I should spend more time at square dances and New Year’s Eve parties and palace balls, places where people laugh a lot, but, Svetz, who would I talk to? Nobody can see me or hear me unless he’s about to die.
“And then they won’t listen. Men bear suffering so badly! And they’re so afraid to die. I’ve tried to tell them how lucky they are, to be able to buy eternal peace at the price of a few hours of agony. I’ve talked to millions of men and women and children, over tens of thousands of years. The only ones who listen are the children, sometimes. Svetz, are you afraid of death?”
“Yes.”
“Idiot.”
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?”
“Oh, we’ll find it, Svetz, don’t worry. We’re looking for the school.”
“A school? What for?”
“You’ll see. There’s only one school, Svetz. It’s far too big for the number of children … You know, sometimes the people I talk to seem to recognize me. But then they always behave like idiots. ‘Don’t take me!’ As if I had something to do with it. I’ve had men offer me gold—how would I carry it? And what the women offer me makes even less sense, if they’d only use their own senses.” Reynolds pointed. “There, that wide parkland.”
Wide? It was vast, all green grass and the green heads of trees. Svetz was reminded of the jungle where he’d found the armadillo. But this greenery was neater, and there were white buildings showing here and there.
“That’s the zoo, that low building. All the real animals are dead, but we have mechanical mockups. There, the athletic field; see the white lines on the grass? Veer right. We want the lower grade schoolyard.”
There were children in the schoolyard, but not many, and they weren’t playing much. Many were distorted, their deformities obvious even at this altitude. One nine-year-old was terribly thin; he looked like a small ambulatory skeleton.
“Hold her steady,” said Reynolds. “Open the door.”
“No!” Suddenly Svetz understood.
“Open the door.” The bore of Reynolds’s gun looked straight into Svetz’s eyes. Svetz opened the door.
When Reynolds turned to the door, Svetz jumped him.
His dead arm threw him off balance. Reynold’s gun butt caught him under the jaw. Svetz fell back with lights exploding in his head.
When his head cleared, Reynolds was braced in the doorway. Svetz struggled to his knees.
Reynolds fired into the playground.
Svetz staggered toward him with his good hand outstretched.
Reynolds fired again. Then he noticed Svetz and brought the gun around.
Svetz lurched forward to catch the muzzle.
Reynolds fought madly to turn the gun. He couldn’t. Svetz, weak as a kitten and ready to die, was still too strong for him. When Reynolds suddenly kicked Svetz under the jaw, it was like being hit with foam plastic.
Six feet tall and a fifty-pound weakling. Svetz jerked the gun toward him, out of Reynolds’s grip, and threw it behind him. Reynolds staggered helplessly after it. Svetz reached out and took him by the neck.
If he closed his fist, Reynolds would be dead. There was no muscle to protect his windpipe.
Svetz looked down.
The skeleton boy was sprawled beside a green bench, surrounded by boys and girls and small indeterminate beings. He looked dead. Svetz wasted some time trying to think of something to do. Then he moved two levers with his foot.
Gravity changed. Reynolds struggled furiously for a moment; and then Svetz’s hand was empty. Something foggy seemed to be tugging at the Emergency Stop. Svetz watched it f
ade.
* * *
“But then he got away with it,” said Ra Chen.
Svetz shrugged. “I did my best to stop him.”
“You don’t get it. He killed himself. He stopped himself from ever going back in time to stop the Short War.”
Svetz nodded.
“Then—we aren’t real! The Short War happened, and Reynolds’s line of history happened, and ours didn’t! So how can you be here at all?”
“The time machine pulled me home. An extension cage can’t get lost, not if it’s anchored to its own present.”
Ra Chen’s eyes were haunted. “But if Reynolds aborted our past, if we don’t have a history anymore, then—”
“Metaphysics! What if we aren’t real! What if we never were real! Sir, you feel real, don’t you? So do I. We can always tell ourselves that Project Retake went ahead without Reynolds.”
“But—”
“Or maybe the boy lived. He had no hair and practically no scalp. If Reynolds shot him in the head, the anaesthetic crystal would just ricochet off his skull, right? And knock him out.”
“Um. I like that. If the kid was dead at age nine, Reynolds would have disappeared, right? Wrong, futz it!” Ra Chen snarled. “If he made himself unreal, he made you unreal too. Why shouldn’t you go on seeing him?”
“Come here a minute.” Svetz pulled at Ra Chen’s arm, without effect; but after a moment Ra Chen followed him voluntarily.
Beyond the glass wall that fronted the ITR building, half a dozen broken buildings surrounded the broken corpse of a bird. The bird was several blocks long and several weeks dead.
“Now, don’t you have enough to worry about besides whether you’re real or not?”
“Futz, yes. We’ve got to do something about that roc,” said Ra Chen. “There it lies, in full view of the United Nations Palace…”
AFTERWORD: SVETZ AND THE BEANSTALK
This book derives from events of more than thirty years ago. When I was still a novice, I had an insight that delighted me:
Time travel is fantasy.
But the only way to get fun out of it is to treat it as Analog–style science fiction. Keep it internally consistent. Lay out a set of rules and invite the reader to beat you to the consequences.