26

A yellow light was shining through the murk. I didn’t know how long it had been shining. It grew brighter, and a man appeared silhouetted against it, walking slowly forward, as if against resistance.

When he was six feet away, I saw my mistake.

Not a man. A Karg. The same one I’d killed twice and let get away a third time.

I couldn’t move a muscle, not even my eyes. I watched the Karg cross my field of vision. I wasn’t breathing; if my heart was beating, I couldn’t feel it. But I was conscious. That was something.

The Karg was moving with effort, but unconcernedly. He was dressed in a plain black skin suit with harness and attachments. He looked at an array of miniature meters strapped to his wrist—the underside—and made an adjustment. So far he had paid no more attention to me than as if I were a piece of bric-a-brac.

Now he came over to me and looked me over. His baby-blue eyes never quite met mine—not from embarrassment, just indifference. Two other men—not Kargs—came into view. They ploughed their way up to him, conferred. The newcomers were carrying something that looked like bundled shingles. They came on across to me, moved around behind me, all this in total silence. Some time passed—or maybe it didn’t. From the corner of my eye I saw movement. A panel slid into position to my left. It was dark green, glassy. Another appeared on my right. One of the men entered my field of vision, carrying a three-by-six sheet of thin material. He stood it on end; it stood by itself in mid-air without support. He pushed it in front of me and closed off my view. Light showed at its edges; then it snapped into place and left me in a darkness like the inside of a paint can.

With the visual reference gone, I lost my sense of orientation. I was upside down, spinning slowly—or not so slowly; I was a mile high, I was an inch high, I filled the universe, I didn’t exist— With a crash, sound returned to the world, along with gravity, pains all over like a form-fitting suit studded with needles, and suffocation. I dragged hard and got a breath in, feeling my heart start to thump and wheeze in its accustomed way. The roar faded without fading; it was just the impact of air molecules whanging against my eardrums, I realized: a background sound that was ordinarily filtered out automatically.

My knee bumped the wall in front of me. I was bracing myself to give it a kick when it fell away and I stepped out into a big room with high purple-black walls, where three people waited for me with expressions that were more intent than welcoming.

One was a short, thick-fingered man in a gray smock, with thin hair, ruddy features, rubbery lips stretched back over large off-white teeth. Number two was a woman, fortyish, a little on the lean side, very starched and official in dark green. The third was the Karg, dressed now in a plain gray coverall.

Shorty stepped forward and thrust out a hand; he held it in a curiously awkward position, with the fingers spread and pointed down. I shook it once and he took it back and examined it carefully, as if he thought I might have left a mark.

“Welcome to Dinosaur Beach Station,” the Karg said in a reasonable facsimile of a friendly voice. I looked around the room; we were the only occupants.

“Where are the two women?” I asked. The thick man looked blank and pulled at his rubbery lip. The female looked back at me as if it was all academic to her.

“Perhaps Dr. Javeh will wish to explain matters.” She sounded as if she doubted it.

“I’m not interested in having a conversation with a machine,” I said. “Who programs it? You?” I aimed this last at Rubber-lips.

“Whaaat?” he said, and looked at the woman; she looked at the Karg; it looked at me. I looked at all of them.

“Dr. Javeh is our Chief of Recoveries,” the woman said quickly, as if glossing over a small social blunder on my part. “I’m Dr. Fresca; and this is Administrator Koska.”

“There were two women with me, Dr. Fresca,” I said. “Where are they?”

“I’m sure I have no idea; this is hardly my area of competence.”

“Where are they, Koska?”

His lips worked, snapping from a smile to dismay and back. “As to that, I can only refer you to Dr. Javeh—”

“You take orders from this Karg?”

“I’m not familiar with that term.” Stiffly; the smile gone.

I faced the Karg. He looked blandly at me with his pale blue eyes.

“You’re a bit disoriented,” he said quietly. “Not surprising, of course, they often are—”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The recoverees. That’s my work—our work, you understand: detecting, pinpointing, and retrieving personnel in, ah, certain circumstances.”

“Who’s your boss, Karg?”

He cocked his head. “I’m sorry; I don’t understand your repeated use of the term ‘Karg.’ Just what does it signify?”

“It signifies that whatever these people believe, I’m on to you.”

He smiled and lifted his hands, let them fall back. “As you will. As for my supervisor—I happen to be Officer-in-Charge here.”

“Cosy,” I said. “Where are the two women?”

The Karg’s little rosebud mouth tightened. “I have no idea to whom you refer.”

“They were with me—five minutes ago. You must have seen them.”

“I’m afraid you don’t quite understand the situation,” the Karg said. “When I found you, you were quite alone. The indications suggest you had been adrift in the achronic void for an extended period.”

“How long?”

“Ah, a most interesting problem in temporal relativistics. We have biological time, unique to the individual, metered in heartbeats; and psychological time, a purely subjective phenomenon in which seconds can seem like years, and the reverse. But as to your question: The Final Authority has established a calibration system for gauging absolute duration; and in terms of that system, your sojourn outside the entropic stream endured for a period in excess of a century, with an observational error of plus or minus 10 percent, I should say.”

The Karg spread his uncalloused hands, smiled a philosophical smile.

“As for your, ah, female—I know nothing.”

I swung on him; the swing didn’t connect, but I got the crater gun into my hand unseen. The Karg ducked back and Dr. Fresca let out a yelp and Koska grabbed my arm. The Karg flicked something at me that smacked my side wetly and spread and grabbed my arms and suddenly I was wrapped to the knees in what looked like spider webs, white as spun candy, smelling of a volatile polyester.

I tried to take a step and almost fell, and Koska stepped forward to assist me to a chair, all very solicitously, as if I’d had one of my fainting spells, but I’d be all right in a minute.

“You’re a liar, Karg,” I said, “and a bad one. It takes a live man to perjure himself with that true ring of sincerity. You didn’t grapple me out of a few billion square millennia of eternity at random. They did a nice job on your scars, but you know me. And if you know me, you know her.”

The Karg looked thoughtful; he motioned, and Koska and the woman left the room without a backward glance. He faced me with a different expression on his plastalloy features.

“Very well, Mr. Ravel, I know you. Not personally; your reference to scars presumably applies to some confrontation which has been relegated to the status of the unrealized possibility. But I know you by reputation, by profession. As for the woman—possibly I can look into the matter of a search for her later—after we’ve reached an understanding.” He was just a Karg now, all business and no regrets.

“I already understand you, Karg,” I said.

“Let me tell you of our work, Mr. Ravel,” he said mildly. “I think when you understand fully you’ll want to contribute wholeheartedly to our great effort.”

“Don’t bet on it, Karg,” I said.

“Your hostility is misplaced,” the Karg said. “We here at Dinosaur Beach have need of your abilities and experience, Mr. Ravel—”

“I’ll bet you do. Who are your friends? Third Era dropouts? Or are you recruiting all the way back to Second Era now?”

The Karg ignored that. “Through my efforts,” he said, “you’ve been given an opportunity to carry on the work to which your life was devoted. Surely you see that it’s in your interest to co-operate?”

“I doubt that your interests and mine could ever coincide, Karg.”

“Conditions have changed, Mr. Ravel. It’s necessary for all of us to realign our thinking in terms of the existent realities.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Your great Nexx Timesweep effort failed, of course, as I’m sure you’ve deduced by now. It was a noble undertaking, but misguided, as others before it. The true key to temporal stability lies not in a simple effort to restore the past to its virgin state, but in making intelligent use of the facilities and resources existent in that portion of the entropic spectrum available to us to create and maintain a viable enclave of adequate dimensions to support the full flowering of the racial destiny. To this end the final Authority was established, with the mission of salvaging from every era all that could be saved from the debacle of aborted temporal progression. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that our work has proved a great success.”

“So you’re looting up and down the temporal core, and setting up housekeeping—where?”

“The Final Authority has set aside a reservation of ten centuries in what was formerly known as Old Era time. As for your use of the the term ‘looting’—you yourself, Mr. Ravel, are an example of the chief object of our Recovery Service.”

“Men—and women. All trained agents, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

“And all of them are so happy to be here that they turn their talents to building this tight little island in time you seem so happy with.”

“Not all, Mr. Ravel. But a significant number.”

“I’ll bet it’s significant. Mostly ex-Third Era and prior Timesweep types, eh? Sophisticated enough to realize that matters are in a bad way, but not quite sophisticated enough to realize that what you’re building around yourself is just a sterile dead end.”

“I fail to understand your attitude, Mr. Ravel. Sterile? You are free to breed; plants grow, the sun shines, chemical reactions occur.”

I laughed. “Spoken like a machine, Karg. You just don’t get the point do you?”

“The point is to preserve rational life in the universe,” he said patiently.

“Uh-huh—but not in a museum, under a glass case and a layer of fine dust. Perpetual motion is an exploded theory, Karg. Going round and round in a temporal loop—even a loop a thousand years long—isn’t quite my idea of human destiny.”

“Nevertheless, you will lend your support to the Final Authority.”

“Will I?”

“You would, I believe, find the alternative most unpleasant.”

“Pleasant, unpleasant. Just words, Karg.” I looked around the big, gloomy room. It was cold, with a feeling of dampness, as if the walls ought to be beaded with condensation. “This is where you explain to me how you’re going to go to work with the splinters under the fingernails, and the thumbpress, and the rack. And then go on to explain how you’re going to make sure I behave, after you send me out on an assignment.”

“No physical persuasions will be needed, Mr. Ravel. You will perform as required in order to earn the reward I offer. Agent Gayl was recovered some time ago. It was through her inquiries that I became interested in you. I assured her that in return for her efforts on behalf of the Final Authority, I would undertake to locate and recover you.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve gotten around to telling her you found me?”

“That would not be to the advantage of the Final Authority at this time.”

“So you keep her on the string while you work both sides of the street.”

“That’s correct.”

“One nice thing about working with a piece of machinery: you don’t waste time trying to justify your actions.”

“The personnel with whom I work are not aware of the artificial nature of my origin, Mr. Ravel. As you surmise, they are largely Second Era. It is not in the best interest of the Authority that they be so apprised.”

“What if I tell them anyway?”

“I will then bring Agent Gayl into your presence and there execute her.”

“What—and waste all the effort you’ve put into this program?”

“Less than total control is no control at all. You will obey my instructions, Mr. Ravel. In every detail. Or I will scrap the project.”

“Neat, logical, and to the point,” I said. “You just missed one thing.”

“What might that be?”

“This,” I said, and lifted the crater gun and fired from the hip, the only place I could fire from with my arms bound to my sides. It wasn’t a clean shot; but it blew his knee into rags and sent him across the room on his back.

By a combination of flopping and rolling, I got to him while his electroneuronic system was still in fibrillation, got his chest panel open and thumbed the switch that put him on manual.

“Lie quietly,” I said, and he relaxed, looking at nothing.

“Where’s the unlock for this tanglenet?”

He told me. I worked the ballpoint pen projector out of his breast pocket and squirted a fine pink mist at the nearest portion of the goo I was wrapped in. It turned to putty, then to caked dust that I brushed away.

I cut the seals and lifted out his tape. He’d been modified to take an oversized cartridge, an endless loop designed to repeat automatically, estimated duration a hundred years plus.

Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to put a self-servicing, non-terminating robot on the job.

A scanner was included in the installed equipment. I inserted the cartridge and set it at high speed and listened to a routine parameter-conditioning program, slightly amended here and there to override what had always been the basics of human-Karg relationships. It was logical enough: this Karg had been designed to operate in the total absence of human supervision.

I edited out the command and initiative portions of the tape and reinserted it.

“Where’s the woman?” I asked. “Agent Mellia Gayl.”

“I do not know,” he said.

“Tsk,” I said. “And she was supposed to be the bait to keep me in line. Lying again, Karg. It’s a nasty habit but I know the cure for it.” I asked him a few more questions, got the expected answers. He and his staff of Kargs and salvaged early-era humans had marooned themselves on a tight little island in a rising sea of entropic dissolution. They’d be safe here for a while—until the rot now nibbling at the edges reached the last year, the last day, the last hour. Then they’d be gone and all their works with them into the featureless homogeneity of the Ylem.

“It’s a sad little operation you’re running here, Karg,” I told it. “But don’t worry: nothing lasts forever.”

He didn’t answer. I snooped around the room for a few minutes longer, recording what interested me; I could have made good use of that breakfast I hadn’t eaten, a hundred years ago; and there were all sorts of special equipment that could be useful where I was going; and maybe there were a few more questions that should have been asked. But I had the feeling that the sooner I departed from the jurisdiction of the Final Authority the better it would be for me and whatever was left of my aspirations.

“Any last words for posterity?” I asked the Karg. “Before I effect that cure I mentioned?”

“You will fail,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said. “By the way, push your self-destruct button.”

He obeyed; smoke started rising from his interior. I referred to the homing signaler I had tuned to Mellia Gayl, read out the correct co-ordinates. I unlocked the transfer booth and punched in my destination, stepped inside the booth and activated the sender field. Reality shattered into a million splinters and reassembled itself in another shape, another time, another place.

I was just in time.

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