Downtiming the Night Side

THE WORM OUROBOROS

“Do you ever feel rotten about being in this business?” Kahwalini asked Chung Lind as she studied the results of her diagnostic computer’s run on the newcomer.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Never really knowing, I mean. Never really being sure what’s wrong and what’s right, whether all this means a great deal or nothing, and whether it’s our right to do it to the ignorant and unknowing?”

Lind shrugged. “Not particularly. Conscience getting to you again, huh? This little operation’s a bit smelly, and we’re coming up to the rough part, so you want a way out.”

“That may be it. But I don’t want out. There’s no place to go, anyway, and certainly no place as interesting as here. No, I just dislike doing this to other people.”

“It’s not the first time,” he pointed out. “And when we mount a major operation it can affect millions, not just one.”

“But you don’t see those millions, or feel them. Still, I suppose you’re right. Setting fire to the orphanage is worse than setting fire to one orphan.”

“You’re just down in the dumps, as usual, when this sort of thing comes up. We’re soldiers, or cops, or whatever you want to call it. What’s right and wrong isn’t our choice. All I know is that we’ve saved more lives than we’ve taken, and that’s all that counts with me.”

She sighed and nodded. “I guess that has to be enough. O.K., I’m ready for her. Don’t worry—I’m a pro.”

“I know you are and I’m not worried. Anything?”

“Some minor bugs and internal stuff, the product of 1905 or whenever it was. There’s a progressive astigmatism that’s going to get worse.”

“She’ll survive.”

“I know, I know. O.K., to work.”

She left Lind in the lab and proceeded back to the medical examining area. The patient was about five foot four, twenty years old, with medium-length black straight hair and large brown eyes. She had a pudgy face that was somewhat cute, but she was not really pretty in any sense of the word, a fact made worse by the forty extra pounds she carried. Her low contralto had a throaty, rasping quality that sounded either cute or sexy.

Doc sat down in front of her and looked over the chart. Finally, she asked, “How do you feel?”

“All right, I guess,” the patient responded. “A little tired.”

“That’s mostly from relief of tension, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m going to run you through a decontamination chamber to kill off some of the bugs, but it’s no big thing. Actually, I was asking how you feel inside, in your mind.”

The young woman thought about it. “I—I don’t know. So much has gone on in there, but I guess I never really thought much about it. Never tried to.”

Doc nodded to herself. “I’d like to run a psych stat on you.”

“Huh? What’s that?”

“It’s a medical device, like decontamination and diagnostics. It was developed for this operation, for njghtsiders like us. It’ll help us to know what your problems are, and it might help you as well. It doesn’t hurt— it’s more like getting a good night’s sleep, in fact. Would it bother you?”

“Should it?”

“Good point. No, it shouldn’t, but some people don’t like anybody else to know them really closely. Herb, for example, won’t take one.”

“Doesn’t bother me, if it’ll help you out. I spent all my time and effort just getting here. Now that I’m here, I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.”

“Well, that’s pretty well assured. O.K., just stretch out here on the examining table.” Doc reached up, pressed a button overhead, and a small device that looked something like a giant neon office lamp dropped down. She took it, adjusted it to within a few inches of the patient’s form, then sat back down again. “Any questions before we begin?”

“No, I guess not for now. Well, maybe one thing. How come I tripped so much and still could go forward in time? I mean, I thought if you were assimilated that couldn’t happen. I never thought about it much at the time, but it just came to me.”

“Fair question. It’s because you weren’t assimilated. The trip point is the halfway marker in assimilation, remember. After that time you become slightly more the new person than the old one. But you’re still connected, still a time traveler, a voyeur, so to speak, until full assimilation takes place. Basically, if you can remember enough to ask a question like that one, you’re still you as far as the devices and time are concerned, no matter what’s going on in your head.”

The woman nodded. “O.K.”

“Any more?”

“Lots, but I guess they can wait. What’s this thing gonna do?”

“Analyze all the people who make you up. Tell us, maybe, who you are in the here and now.”

“Sounds fair. Will I remember it?”

“Not consciously, but if you like, you can monitor the recorded results later. Ready?”

“I guess so. You’re the doctor.”

Kahwalini flicked some switches on a small control panel, and the little machine glowed a dull purple and began to move, tracing the contours of the patient’s body.

“Feels good. Like a massage,” the woman commented.

Its back-and-forth scan seemed to penetrate into every bit of her body, and she found herself becoming relaxed and drifting off.

The doctor became busy now, attaching a spider’s nest of probes not only to the head of the sleeper but to various parts of the body as well. Satisfied, she stepped back and triggered the process.

“Who are you?”

The question confused her for a few moments, and memory channels opened to pinpoint references. At that point, each of the elements from the various human lives and personalities that made up the sum of her mind were distinct, although interactive, and revealed to the computer analyzer.

The human mind, in fact, remained the most complex and amazing organic mechanism known. The human race had existed, and survived, not so much by physical as by mental adaptability: the ability to filter out or suppress; to add, file, and retrieve what was needed; to learn to cope with radical changes. Still, there were individual physiological limits on a specific brain, and the brain of the subject was not the brain of the others.

The information from all of those people she had been was there, but each trip point had caused the information to be reconfigured and refiled. All relevant data was integrated; all irrelevant data was relegated to those dark and seldom-used areas. Intelligence really was the ability to access those areas; the speed of access and the amount of data that could be combined and retrieved and assembled by that intelligence was the measure of how high it was.

The dominant, or shell, personality, which the body matched, was that of Megan Clark, b. San Francisco, 1885, but since it was the dominant shell and not an assimilated, or totally integrated, personality it was only partly Megan’s. Alfie, Neumann, and Sister Nobody were there, although only as data, not even anymore as memories. The original personality and life, that of Ron Moosic, was also there, as data of course—but, strangely, as an abstract as well. Intellectually, she understood her origins; as a practical matter, Megan could not actually remember being Moosic, or any man. He had the quality of a fantasy personality, someone she might occasionally imagine herself being, but the imagining was entirely from that perspective and rather unrealistic. In effect, he had become detached from her, an imaginary or ideal lover rather than as the person she once had been.

This process had allowed the later personalities to alter her psyche as his strong will would not have done. The three people she had become were from three different times and cultures, but they were all very traditional ones, and the attitudes instilled had been traditional as well. Add to this the fact that all had been prostitutes from poor backgrounds dominated by powerful males, and the new personality was easier to understand.

In all cases she had been treated like an object in societies that at least winked at prostitution and generally condoned it, thereby leaving no real outlet, no hope of varying the life. To adjust, to survive, all three had ultimately accepted it after fighting the idea for a little while.

Both Moosic’s and Neumann’s IQs had been exceptional. Megan’s, however, was perhaps average if used to the full. She had, generally, a low sense of self-worth. She needed someone to be over her, to make most of her decisions, to constantly reinforce her weak ego and tell her she was worthwhile. The fact that men would pay money for what pleasures she could give gave her a concrete sense of security, the only security she had. The fact that someone else got the money was actually better for her; she only felt secure when someone else was providing things.

The key to it was Moosic’s surrender, his depression when faced with Eric once more. He had lost hope and, therefore, the will to live. In the absence of any replacement values from Sister Nobody, the Ismet personality had dominated, and time had complied by providing similar situations. Time had finally killed Ron Moosic.

But, still, there was a spark there. This woman would cope with whatever was thrown at her, with no reservations as to how or why. She was insecure and submissive, but she was a survivor, and her dream was to be swept off her feet by a strong, dominant man.

Doc Kahwalini frowned. The subject, she reflected, had come out exactly as planned.

The next few days were used to get her settled in and to answer some of her questions. She also spent a little time with some learning machines they had, trying to improve her vocabulary and pronunciation. She knew and understood the word “assimilation,” for example, but it never seemed to come forward when she needed it, and when it was forced, she constantly mispronounced it. It irritated her, particularly because the word was there.

More unsettling was her almost incidental discovery that she couldn’t read or write. Doc was sympathetic. “It happens. It’s a skill, and skills are sometimes lost in this process. You can re-learn it—it’s back in there, someplace in your mind—but it’ll take time. I wouldn’t worry about it now, though. Come on with me now. You’ve forgotten a lot, and might forget more. It depends on what happens from here on out. The longer you are the way you are, the more of the past you’ll lose and the more of the new ‘you’ will dominate.”

“Where are we going?”

“Outside. I want some fresh fruit.”

She stopped. “I thought—I remember, I think, that it’s dangerous out there.”

“Not unless you spend years out in it. You once did, and you’re still here.”

She shook her head. “That’s kind of a dream.” When the doorway slid back and they stepped out, it was clear that the dream was less so than she’d thought.

The groves of trees, the jungle’s edge, the distant pounding of the surf…

Doc turned to her and nodded. “I didn’t know any other way to break it to you.”

“But—this is the old place, isn’t it?”

“The old place—yes, I guess it would be.” Her mouth dropped, and she shivered slightly in the tropical sun. “Then—this isn’t later, it’s earlier. Then that belt was set to bring me back before. Oh, Jesus! That means. …”

“Yes,” said Kahwalini softly. “You are Dawn.”

She stared at herself in the full-length mirror. She should have known, known right from the first time she’d looked at herself, she thought sourly. But, then, Ron had never looked at Dawn in the same way as she looked at herself.

The idea scared her; it also made her mad. For her to be Dawn, then, the computer—the all-seeing, all-knowing damnable computer—had to know it right from the start, when it sent Ron uptime with a belt that homed to this point in time instead of a later one.

The damned thing had planned it, planned it all out. It knew in advance all that was going to happen, even the capture by Eric. It knew and did nothing, except to arrange for things to come out right.

It was, Doc explained, in the nature of time loops.

“The problem is, only the leading edge is new,” she explained. “All else was new once, when it was the leading edge, but it’s already happened. Back here, near the dawn of time, the computer, anchored both here and on the edge, can monitor what happens and evaluate any changes.”

“But why is it happening now!” Dawn asked her. “I mean, it’s already happened, right?”

“No, not exactly. Just remember that any loop, once initiated, is assumed by time to have been completed. The record is there. The computer can then read it, evaluate it, and then accept it, change it, or reverse it, depending on the outcome.”

“And what say do I have in this? What if I decide not to go along with this whole thing?”

“Then you will still exist, cut off absolutely from the time stream, a total nightside. Ron Moosic will die in the attack, and all links to you will be severed. Dawn will exist only as her least common denominator, devoid of the knowledge, strength, and understanding she—you—still draw from him. As such, you will be no further use to us. We will shift you uptime, where assimilation will be instantaneous.”

She gulped and sat down. Her fury at being so manipulated was tempered somewhat by the idea of fulfilling, living, what had been a fantasy. Still, there was something bizarre in it all, sort of the ultimate in masturbation.

“And if I… go through with it?”

“Then we will come for you at the proper time. We know where and when you’ll be.”

“But—it’s not fair! All that time, all that… Hey! This can’t be real! I can’t have children!”

“Megan can’t, but Megan’s a product of 1905. Dawn is a synthesis, a nightsided person.”

“But it’s not fair! I’ll lose him forever! And come out old and sick!”

“We can fix what goes wrong, either by medicine or through tripping. You know that. As for losing him—well, that’s all in the way you look at it, isn’t it? You’ll have a longer time together than many people have.”

“But—I’ll know.”

“Time and mind have a way of dealing with that. Complete your loop, and give yourself a purpose and a future. We are in the long process of undoing what has been done. It’ll save a lot of lives. Isn’t that worth it?”

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But, tell me, how can you people be so cold? What gives you the right to do this?”

Doc couldn’t address what she herself doubted, but she could answer the second question. “We have the machine, the knowledge, and the skill to do it. So does the enemy. That last makes the rest irrelevant.’’

Ron Moosic arrived the next day, but she did not see him immediately. She wasn’t certain how she was going to handle this, or if she could. As long as he remained out of sight, it was a problem postponed, and she spent time out by the sea and the waterfall, just thinking and trying to sort it out.

She almost ran into him the next day in the lounge, but kept out of sight, watching him while remaining unobserved. The man she saw was a shock, the embodiment of the man she saw in her dreams and fantasies, but he neither looked nor acted quite like she expected. Her mind tried to grasp it, tried to remember this moment, but she found it impossible to bring it forward. All of her that was Ron Moosic seemed to recede into a distant haze.

That day they issued her a communicator and a time belt. “Remember,” Lind warned, “we’re going to be attacked.”

She nodded and took it, almost without thinking.

On the third day she checked out the lounge and went down there for a few moments, hoping to catch Kahwalini in an off moment. She feared going back to Doc’s lair; he was there.

Herb was over in a corner playing computerized backgammon. He looked up and waved to her, then went back to his game.

Almost as soon as she’d sat down, he came in, talking to Doc. She felt petrified, but there was nowhere to hide, so she just sat there and hoped he wouldn’t notice. Of course, he did, and came over.

“Hi! I finally get the chance to say thanks for saving my life,” he said cheerfully, sitting down in a chair opposite hers. “How’s that for a good opening line?”

She smiled, but was inwardly terrified. This is it! she realized, and in that moment had absolutely no ability to recall anything at all of this time. Her nervousness, and her mind, had blocked it out. What did he mean about saving his life, though? It puzzled her, but then cheered her a bit. She had, hadn’t she? And she hadn’t done that, yet. There was still time, and perhaps a future, yet to come.

She sighed. “I’m sorry for not being a little more hospitable. I’m afraid I’ve got a load on my mind and a lot of hard decisions to make. I’ve just had a nasty personal shock.”

“Try being crucified,” he suggested.

The line seemed almost hilarious. “I have. It’s not very nice. Not much has been nice lately.”

He shrugged. “I don’t want to intrude on what’s none of my business.”

She gave up. He was so nice and attractive he was turning her on. The longer the discussion, the less she could relate to him other than the same way she would with an attractive stranger. “No, no. Stay, please. I’m still a little new at this myself, and it’s pretty hard to get used to. As soon as you’ve found out everything, you find you don’t understand anything at all. This whole business of time is the craziest thing you can think of…”

The conversation went on for some time, and she began to enjoy it and let it flow, concentrating on her lessons in vocabulary and diction to make him take her for a more educated woman than she was, and deferring the complicated stuff to Herb, who eventually joined the conversation. She liked Ron, but could not imagine ever being him. It wasn’t the way she thought it would be at all.

“Um, I see you two have met,” Herb was saying.

Moosic looked over at her. “I still don’t know your name.”

A little thrill went through her, and she had an urge to say Agnes or Sarah or even Megan, just to throw something of her own into it, but she did not. She would go along, because these people owned her, and that’s what they expected her to do.

“When you’ve nightsided past your trip point, you may as well pick any name,” she told him. “I call myself Dawn, because it’s a new start and I kind of like the sound of it. I have lots of other names, but they don’t mean nothing to me anymore.” The moment she said the name, it became hers. It felt right and sounded right. She was Dawn Moosic, destined to be so, and it did not seem bad at all.

Over the next few weeks they grew inseparable. Although the whole thing continued to trouble her, the fact was that he was simply the most wonderful man she’d ever known, and she wanted him, wanted him desperately. She could hardly wait for an opening, but he was still slightly aloof, slightly hesitant.

She took him out to the waterfall, and they talked, and she showed him the belt and how it operated. It seemed so natural, so nice.

Suddenly there came the sound of tremendous explosions, and her heart skipped a beat. He jumped up and began to run back towards the base; she followed right behind.

They stopped at the edge of the jungle, which still offered concealment, and both saw immediately that there was no way to get through the attackers to the entrance. The Earthsiders were building, and had almost completed, their weapon. Ron looked at her in alarm. “We have to do something!”

Until this moment she’d reserved the option of canceling out, of telling him the truth, but now she realized that it had gone too far. It was going to happen, and nothing whatsoever could prevent it now except their capture or deaths, and that she did not intend. “What do you suggest? We can’t get through that mob—they’ll kill us. We can’t get to that weapon, whatever it is. It’d be suicide. And neither of us is armed.”

They watched in frustration, enforced observers. “Why don’t they defend themselves?” he muttered. “Surely they must have been prepared for this.” He paused a moment. “Your time belt! We could use it to go back just a little and warn them!”

She shook her head. “Won’t work. Just like any other time, you can’t be in two places at once. Besides—they were warned. The computer refused to let them take any action.”

“Huh? Why!”

“It’s part of a nightside time loop. In time, causes can precede events, but the events must be allowed to come about or much worse will happen. God knows, I don’t pretend to understand it. I—I just accept what must be now.”

He looked at her strangely, then back at the scene, which was getting worse. The device was completed now and powered up, and what was clearly a barrel or projector was aimed directly at the base. The sound of an air horn caused the attack from the gargoyles to be broken off, and they retreated a respectful distance. Then the weapon was brought into play, shooting a continuous beam of what seemed almost liquid blue energy at the complex. The energy struck and seemed to flow over the entirety of the building.

There was a crackling sound near them, and Moosic looked over to see tiny fields of electricity dancing around Dawn’s time belt. The small red displays blinked on and off erratically. “The time belt!” he almost shouted, in no danger with the din of the attack masking them. “It’s shorting out!”

For a moment it flashed into her mind, all of it, and she froze, not certain just what to do. He was shouting, and suddenly she made her decision. She wanted him, wanted it, no matter what the final cost. She picked up the microphone and dialed the base frequency. “Dawn to Base—we are caught outside and unarmed. Advise!”

There was a crackling sound, and then a tinny voice responded. “Use the belt and get out now! It’s your only chance…” And then it went dead. She turned and looked at him and tears welled up inside her, but refused to come out.

“Here! Let’s open the belt wide so it goes around both of us. It’ll be tight, but I think we can manage,” she said.

“You mean use it now?”

“While we still can. The base may fall or short out any minute!”

The belt was never intended for two people and was an extremely tight fit, but they seemed to make it as she’d predicted. More electricity danced, and she had trouble making the adjustments on the belt.

Everything blacked out and they were falling, but ever so briefly. Then all exploded again into reality, but this time into darkness.

The belt continued to sputter. They got it off as quickly as possible and it fell to the ground, then lit up the area with a display of dancing sparks.

“Where’d we go?” he asked her.

“Nowhere. There wasn’t time. I just tapped the advance for a decade. We’re still on the island, ten years in the future of the attack. That should be safe enough. I didn’t dare try any long jump. What if the power failed? And if we did make it, we’d be assimilated.”

He nodded. The belt continued to crackle, then made a single electronic whine which slowly faded and died. They were again in darkness. There were no dancing sparks, no red readouts on the belt.

“Oh, Jesus!” he breathed, half cursing and half praying. “The power’s gone out!”

She stared down at the blackness. “Or the belt’s O.K., but no longer connected to a power source. I—I think they shorted out the base.”

It was done! Now, suddenly, she felt completely drained, and things seemed to snap inside her mind. She found herself crying uncontrollably, and he tried to comfort her as best he could, misunderstanding the cause.

Finally, she had cried herself out, and drifted into a strange and very deep sleep. When she awoke, she felt amazingly good, with no sense of trouble and only a sense of adventure. She watched him poking at the remains of the base foundation and checking the growths, and all she could think was, I am his and he is mine.

He saw her lying there, staring at him, then came over. “Well, in one way it’s not so bad. Almost the Garden of Eden, you might say. We won’t starve, that’s for sure, and the stream is a secure water supply. From the looks of the sun and the jungle I’d say this place has two climates, hot and hotter. Of course, there are no doctors, no dentists, no nails or hammers or saws. Nothing but the clothes on our backs, such as they are.”

He’s right, she decided. He is Adam and I am Eve.

“These flimsy things aren’t going to last long out here,” she noted. She kicked off her boots and started to remove her clothes.

“Going natural, huh?”

“You should, too,” she told him. “We won’t have these forever, so we better get our skin and feet toughened up. We might figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, eventually, but there’s nothing I’ve seen on this island that can be used to make clothes or shoes. I’ll use these, as long as they last, when we explore the island, but not otherwise. There’s no use.”

“You’ve got a point,” he admitted and stripped as well. They stood up and looked at each other. “You know,” he said, “we really are Adam and Eve.” He went over to her and hugged her.

“You’re turning on,” she noted softly.

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” He grew suddenly serious. “You know we may be here for the rest of our lives.”

“However long they may be,” she replied. “I’m making a personal decision right here and now. I’m not going to think about time at all. Not now, not unless I have to. There’s nothing else except now. There’s nobody else but us. There’s no place else but here.” And she meant it.

“That’s fair enough,” he agreed. “Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe this is the place for nightsiders. Let’s make the most of it.” And, with that, they kissed, and the kiss turned into what she had wanted from the start.

He was very, very good. And so was she.

At first, during their explorations of the island, he referred to the past and tried to get her to tell a little about her own, but that soon stopped. She had literally blocked the past from her mind and allowed her emotions full rule. He certainly was falling in love with her, and she worshipped him. Her whole life, the center of her universe, was him.

Eventually, of course, the playtime ended, and she grew pregnant. She was delighted, not fearful, of the prospect, since deep down, she knew it would come out all right.

About the only thing she hadn’t figured on was just how much outright terrible pain was involved in having the kid.

They named him Joseph, after Moosic’s father.

They didn’t roam so much after he was born, but set up housekeeping near the groves. With the birth of Ginny she became, in fact, a prehistoric homebody. She loved him and she loved the children and she loved having his children, no matter what the discomfort. It was, she felt, what she was meant to do. It was a busy time, and it was enough.

As she had Sarah, then Cathy, then Mark, she changed still more, but it was not something she noticed. Ron was getting old and his hair was turning white, but it was a gradual thing and not something either really paid any attention to. For her part, the plentiful fruits, vegetables, and the fish Ron brought from ocean traps caused her to gain more weight, and made her less and less ambitious about going very far from her tiny Eden-like world.

The fat and the fact that over the years her hair had grown in scraggly fashion down past her ass didn’t bother her, but her declining vision did. By the time Joseph’s voice had lowered and Ginny had experienced her First period, she was effectively blind.

Of course, the children were doing much of the work now, such as it was, under their father’s supervision, and the home itself was so fixed that she could navigate it and even do some cooking and cleaning without really having to see at all. She knew, though, that Joseph and Ginny were experimenting with each other, and it bothered her, although there seemed little to do or say about it. It was, after all, inevitable.

And then, finally, came the day of the storm when Joseph had not returned, and she’d nagged Ron until he’d gone out to look for the young man. And in a little more time Joseph ran back, screaming and crying, shouting that he’d killed his father.

It took much comforting as the storm blew in and washed by the island. She felt sad in one way that it was over now, for from the depths of her mind came almost instant understanding of the moment, an understanding she could not convey to the children—particularly the guilt-ridden Joseph.

“You didn’t kill him,” she soothed. “You just sent him away to a different place.”

“Then when will he be back?”

“He—he won’t be back.”

“ ’Cause he’s dead!”

“No, because they won’t let him come back—again.”

“Why?”

“I guess you’ll have to ask them. They’ll come for us soon.”

“I don’t want them here! Not if they took Dad!” The other children nodded in agreement.

“That’s all right. It’s for the best. You’ll have to grow up now, kids. I’m afraid it’s time.”

They came for them only two days after the storm let up. Three of them came, anyway—Doc and Chung Lind and Herb, the three who’d been closest to them. The children were hostile, and Doc, in particular, was taken aback by their accusations that the Outworlders had taken their father from them. It was particularly tough because it was true.

They used the belts to get back to the new base location. The basic medical problems could be taken care of, including her two cancerous growths. One of them, benign but still growing, was the reason why she believed herself pregnant once more. In truth, it would have prevented any such happening.

The Outworlders, it seemed, had a cure for cancer and much else.

The children, surprisingly, were in good shape, although Ginny, Sarah, and Mark were decidedly overweight. They all had, to Doc’s satisfaction, a natural extra skin layer with mild pigmentation that absorbed and diluted the most harmful radiation. The mutation did not seem natural, and was not. Doc had been unable to treat the adults for such protection, but she had been able to add the genetic instructions on both sides should children develop. The computer, of course, had provided the information and done the actual work.

From a civilization whose builders could fly through sand, stand crushing pressures and horrible heat, and take oxygen from the rocks, such a minor thing was child’s play.

The children never completely lost their feelings of hostility for the team, but concern for their mother and the wonders of the base soon diverted their minds. Rather quickly they were picking up a modern education, although, so far, it had been next to impossible to get them to wear any clothes at all. Ginny, however, more than appreciated the tiny absorbent material, vaginally inserted, that took away much of the problem of the monthly period. Doc had some pills that did away with the cramps and headaches.

Doc could fix almost everything that was wrong with Dawn, but the eyes defeated her. “I’m afraid you’ll need a full eye transplant, which is not only tricky but requires a perfect match,” she told her. “Either that, or you’ll have to trip.”

“I don’t want to trip—not yet,” Dawn responded. “The children are having a tough enough time getting over the loss of their father. And that transplant you talk about sounds like a pretty chancy thing.”

“It is, unless you went to the edge and had them grow a perfect pair and implant them with their equipment and facilities. The trouble is, not much is left up there that would be tolerable to normal humans. They will have to go, though. There are growths behind them that threaten the brain itself, and it’s too risky to use my ray surgery on it.”

Even though she had only a sense of light and dark and vague shapes, the prospect of that frightened her. “I—1 don’t want to lose them.”

“Don’t worry. First, we can replace them with inert copies fabricated here. You’ll look more normal than the current pair makes you look now. Then we’ll use a little device that I looked up in the computer banks. It’s being worked on now. It’ll allow you some vision, particularly in dim light.”

That excited her. “You mean I might be able to see the kids? Actually see them as they are now?”

“That’s about it.”

Dawn started to cry softly. “They’re what I have—now.”

The operation was, from Doc’s point of view, a simple one, and with her futuristic medical equipment and computer-guided and computer-operated surgical kit, it was not even all that painful. In fact, Dawn had not realized how much pain she’d been living with until it was all done and the relief swept through her.

She was already used to being blind, and now, during the healing period, she memorized every inch of the place. She spent most of the time Doc would allow with the children, of course, who were learning at a rapid pace, thanks to the teaching machines and computer-guided instruction. They had the best of both worlds, the most advanced technology together with a whole new wilderness to play in and explore outside.

Members of the team came and went on various mysterious missions, but Doc remained behind, as she did on all but the most extraordinary of occasions. They did not want to risk her outstanding medical skills unless they were needed uptime.

She lost weight, too, and felt better, although she still tipped Doc’s scales at better than ninety-seven kilograms— well over two hundred pounds for her five-foot four-inch frame.

It was months before the bandages could come off, but still more time before they could try Doc’s gadget. The kids approved her new look; even the eyes, they assured her, were big, warm, and natural. Her hair had been cut very short for the operation, and she kept it that way, knowing it was easy to care for.

She had been gone almost fourteen years, not the ten or twelve Ron had estimated, and was physically thirty-four. Now, after a lot of skilled work with the best medical technology, she was beginning to look more her own age, and feel it, too.

Finally came the day when they tried out the seeing eye device. It resembled nothing so much as a pair of tight-fitting goggles, but there was a lot of microcircuitry and even a small computer and power pack in it. It took in the scene and transmitters broadcast it in code to the optic nerves, fooling them into believing that they were getting correct information from real eyes. It had its limitations. Because the thing was basically an infrared device, the images transmitted were mostly in black and white, or soft gray-browns and yellows, as Dawn saw it. Images were sharp and clear at night or in a room with muted lighting, but they faded as the light source was raised. In a brightly lit room it was barely adequate; in full daylight, or in the face of a searchlight beam or fire, it was useless and even a little painful. It also had an effective range of about a hundred yards, with little or no peripheral vision.

Worse, it could be worn only for a hour or so a day. The power supply was quite limited and, when run down, it caused all sorts of random impulses to be sent to the brain instead.

Still, it was sight—real sight. Wearing the goggles, she could see again, could see the kids as they were now for the first time. To Dawn, it was a miracle.

Doc seemed almost apologetic about its limitations. “It was developed late in the nineteen-eighties,” she told Dawn. “This model was actually in production in a limited way, but very expensive, early in the nineties. Then they came up with the ability to organically grow matched eyes for specific patients, and all work on perfecting this was dropped. A pity. The people who would appreciate it the most were the elderly who couldn’t have transplants and those who, for one reason or another, couldn’t stand the surgery to begin with. It’s even more frustrating because the technology to produce eyes for you better than new is available—up at the edge. But it takes time to grow them, and a lot of equipment and skill. The Earthsiders aren’t likely to do it for you, and the Outworlders are more likely to redo the whole you in ways you never even thought of.”

She nodded. “It’s enough—for now.”

“You realize,” Doc added, “that the reason they never gave us the capability was because we don’t need it. We can regulate a trip point and take a different cure.”

Dawn sighed. “Yes, I know. And that’s what you expect me to do.” She paused a moment. “But—if I do, then I won’t be their mother anymore. Oh, I’ll know, but how do you explain it to them!”

“I think,” Doc said, “that it’s time to call a meeting.”

Chung Lind, as squad leader, was chairman of the base general committee. Herb, as his exec, was also on it, and Doc, the most permanent of the residents, was included, too. This trio was absolute in their decisions, although, of course, those for whom they worked severely limited their options.

The huge Oriental leader was serious, as usual, but so was the usually light and airy Herb. Doc was grim. Dawn didn’t have to see them to know that.

“Doc has called this committee into session, but it had to be done anyway, as we are running out of option time from the computer and its controllers on the edge,” Lind began. “Doc has put this off many times, and we have gone along, but things must come to a head—and soon. Do you understand what this is all about. Dawn?”

She nodded. “I think so. You’re going to decide the fate of me and my children.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, although the ultimate choice will be yours. I’m afraid it’s the same sort of thing we face here all the time. Not a lack of choices, but a lack of good ones. Doc?”

“I finally called this meeting, after fighting it for months, because something happened to make me realize that I was being, in my own way, as cruel as the other choices, although I thought of it as kindness. I wanted to give the kids some adjustment time, and a leg up on joining a very strange world, and, I admit, we wanted to give you some time as well. I think we all agreed we owed it to you. Now, however, I realize we may have gone too far.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” Dawn responded, “but what is the crisis? You and I both know that we can fix things uptime now or later.”

“In a sense, that’s true,” Doc agreed, “but relative time moves on when we are in phase, as we are here. The war goes on, and it is increasingly brutal and ugly. Have you ever wondered what most of us are doing here?”

“Many times,” she admitted.

“You may have been told, or maybe not, that the Earthside leaders have a fall-back position here in the Safe Zone. When the ultimate defeat comes, they will escape to that base, sealing themselves off by detonating the other fifteen thousand nuclear weapons stockpiled from the old days. They will destroy the Earth and every living thing on it.”

“Eric told me that. He gave it as his reason for fighting on their side.”

“Dawn,” Herb put in, “they’re in pretty sad shape. The truth is, the Outworlders could win very quickly. They’ve had the ability to do it for years. The only reason they don’t is that cache of nuclear weapons. They are not out to commit genocide on the people of Earth, believe me. But they have to continue the war, at a reduced level, to keep the pressure on. If they stopped, perhaps for as little as a year or two, it’s possible that Earth could regroup. They have spaceships with terrible weapons hidden in nearly impregnable bunkers far underground, but they have no way to launch them without access to surface installations. They are mother ships for hordes of fighters that can be launched only from space. We can keep them down there by incessant attack, but that’s it. If we let up, they can launch. They still can’t win, but they might just wind up destroying both sides.”

She still didn’t see where this was going.

“So, you see, we’re fighting a bloody and terrible holding action. The more destruction and death it spreads, the more terrible it is. The only way we can take them out, though, is to neutralize those nuclear bombs. To locate and deactivate or destroy every one of them. That’s our job.”

“It can be quite subtle,” Lind added. “Great caverns used for this purpose can be rendered unusable in earlier centuries, with no disruptions to humans. Even such things as soil and rain balances in certain areas can be altered so that what’s there is subjected to corrosion. Trace elements made in future labs can be added to areas so that communications on the firing bands are jumbled. A tiny flaw, subtly introduced in the program used to create the weapons’ microprocessors, can backfire on them over time, although it will test out in the short run.”

There was enough of Moosic and the Sergeant still in there that she did understand, although the scope of the project was fantastic.

“You see now,” Herb said, “that we’re in a hell of a fix. We’re not cold and immoral beings, sitting back here taking blind orders from a computer which gets its orders from nonhuman things up front. We’re trying to save the human race from extinction, here on Earth as well as what it’s become out there in space. Time’s running out, as crazy as that sounds. There is a level of battle which will cause Earthside to collapse even without the final push, and that’s approaching. Because we work in absolute time when we’re in phase—relative time is a misnomer, meaning that we are related to the edge—a year here for us advances the edge a year as well. Worse, the assassination of Karl Marx accelerated that critical point.”

“So Eric did them far more harm than good,” she commented.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. We think their plan is simple. We think they hope to buy absolute time by tracing us back and knocking this complex out of commission,” Lind told her.

“But—they already tried that, and it failed!”

“They’re not so sure it did,” Lind told her. “The attack was part of the loop that is still being worked out. They have yet to steal one of our belts, which is why, once the attack was known, we preset the homing key to bring anyone back to the old location. It would match with what they know of the geography around the complex, including what they got from you. We escaped for the same reason that we can’t lose up front—we have far more power available to us than they do. It’s more efficient, better managed, and doesn’t need to be diverted to defense.”

“The trouble is,” Herb added, “we still have years to work on the project. The number of weapons is just plain enormous, and we must make certain we neutralize as many as possible, in all the countries that had and made them. And, even with all the power we have, we are about at the maximum number of people for unrestricted and pinpoint time travel, particularly with the gear we must occasionally move. We need the time, but we have less than we need under optimum requirements. At least we need that much, to do what we can.”

She was more practical than that. “What’s this have to do with me?”

“First, we must undo the loop that made you. Karl Marx must not die in Trier. Ideally, however, Neumann must still escape to erase any chance of things going wrong. That will be tricky. To create Neumann, Alfie must be rescued. Loops are best undone in the reverse order that they were done, and very carefully. We want to create no more loops and ripples.”

“Why not just prevent the killing of Marx in London, then?” she wanted to know. “I mean, that’s a ripple.”

“But it’s a ripple in our favor,” Lind told her. “It has no major effects, but as a martyrdom it makes Earthside’s job of changing the past as Moosic knew it even harder. You’ll have to trust us on that one, but that’s why Eric and the rest had to go back to Trier. Their ripple had worked against them, so they had to undo it and tilt the scale the other way.”

She sighed. “I never really understood it all before, and I’m having more trouble now.”

“Time is a complex science. We still don’t completely understand all of the things that pop up from dealing with and changing it,” Doc said sympathetically. “Just when even we think we have it cold, some wild card comes up and smacks us in the face, telling us that we aren’t so smart after all.”

She shook her head in confusion. She really didn’t want to hear anything more, except what it all had to do with her and the kids—now. “So? You’re telling me I’m no longer welcome? That we’re in the way?”

“In a sense,” Herb replied, “but don’t take that unkindly. You are one of the innocents who always gets caught up in somebody else’s war. We need you, of course, to help undo the loops and reconcile the facts. We expect Trier to be holy hell, because they’ll expect it and have some unknown defenses set up for us. Worse, only four of us are able to make the trip at all, for reasons you probably understand.”

That much she did. The rest probably would wind up in far corners of the world, or be instantly assimilated. “Go on.”

“If Trier is successfully reversed, then you must go and free Alfie. That is as much for your sake as anything, but it helps the symmetry, or so the computer says.”

She sighed. “And once all that is done? What then?”

“Then,” said Lind, “we will attempt to prevent the very attack that got you into this. In the process, if we are lucky and it all works just right, we have a chance of trapping Eric Benoni.”

That was the one prospect she found attractive in it all, but she had a nervous thought. “But—if it’s prevented, then what happens to me? None of this will have happened. You once told me I’d be a little nothing if it all didn’t work out, Doc. Were you lying to me?”

“No,” she responded, “not really. If the loop had been broken instead of reconciled, yes. But we are putting things back, more or less, the way they were. If the loop is completed, then it happened. There’s just no sign of memory, except ours, to say it did. You will exist because it did happen. And so will the kids.”

She didn’t know quite what to believe, or whom. She’d been used and lied to so damned often it was hard to believe anything. She was, however, always practical. There was really nothing she could do about it anyway, and they were calling the shots. “And after that? What happens to me and the kids?”

The three squad members exchanged glances. Finally, Doc spoke. “It’s for the sake of the children I’m pressing this now, Dawn. You see, Ginny is pregnant—by Joseph.”

Even though she’d feared such a thing, the news shocked and stunned her.

“It’s no good, Dawn, don’t you see?” Doc continued, feeling awful as she said what she had to say. “This is no place and no life for them. Any of them.”

Dawn’s gut reaction was frustration that her fake eyes, so realistic in all other respects, could not cry. “But where will they go?”

“Uptime,” Doc told her. “It’s the only way for them to gain the knowledge, the culture, everything that they’ll need. They’re virgins to time travel, really, so it will be fairly easy to establish them as important people, maybe educated people, not the kind of random jumpers like you became.”

“It’s a matter of figuring out in advance the spot time will most conveniently put you, and putting you there at exactly the right spot in space and time,” Herb explained.

“And leave them there, with no chance to make a mark?” She was almost hysterical at the idea.

“No!” Doc responded firmly. “Not unless they choose it. Once they have enough lives, enough experience, to make intelligent choices for themselves, they can choose any one of the ones they’ve been to live as or they can go all the way forward to the leading edge as only edge and nightside people can. Considering the circumstances, there is no other choice.”

“Just drop us back at the island! Just go away and leave us alone! You said they were adapted!”

“But you aren’t,” Doc reminded her. “And what kind of a life would that be? You said yourself that in assimilation they’d have no chance to make a mark, and that’s true. But what kind of a life would you condemn them to? You’re in no condition to go back, to give them any guidance. They’d become incestuous primitives, children with no future. If we did what you say, it would be better, in my opinion, if they had never lived at all!”

There. It was said, and it was hard, but there it was.

Dawn took several minutes to get hold of herself, to try to control her emotions. Finally, she managed, “And me? Where do I fit in all this?”

“Your bond to the kids is strong. Stronger, I think, than their bond to you, as bad as that sounds,” Doc replied. “You have the same choices, although, in the case of the assimilation, they’re more limited. You’ve established a pattern which time finds easiest to continue. So you can come back here and go to the edge with them, or you can pick a person and place and return there.”

She swallowed. “What you’re telling me is that I can be a whore in any time and place I want.”

Doc was grim. “Yes. Except on the edge.”

“I wouldn’t be permitted to stay—human—up there, isn’t that right?”

“Most likely not,” Lind confirmed. “They just no longer have the facilities for it. I can’t tell you whether it’s good or bad becoming one of them, and that’s honest. I have trouble even imagining what they’re like, let alone being one, even though I’ve been hundreds of human beings. But I like to think that a side, any side, in a war that tries to save as many lives as possible has to be better than one that’s going to blow up its own people in a snit at losing.”

There was silence for a while. Finally, Doc asked gently, “What do you say, Dawn? Do we close off the loop?”

“Can I… talk this over with the children before answering?”

Lind looked at Doc and then at Herb. No words were exchanged, but their thoughts were easy for him to read. There was no reason to put it off any longer, for the longer it was put off, the harder it would ever be to get the job done—and people were needlessly suffering. They didn’t like the situation any more than Dawn did, and they didn’t like the choices, either, choices that, eventually, they themselves might have to face, for the war, inevitably, would end.

“We’ll give you forty-eight hours,” Lind told her. “Time is running out.”