Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Patsy

If the others had taken the news as hard as Patsy, they didn't show it. They were all clustered around whoever was wearing the helmet at that moment, every one of them demanding another turn. It was like Christmas at Uncle Cubby's, with every child demanding the one best toy at once. Even Dannerman and Rosaleen, though Dannerman had reported resentfully that his turn had been a washout, since as far as he could tell he was simply in bed asleep. (Which, Patsy thought, supported her own feeling that it was the middle of the night-assuming they were in the same time zone.) And Rosaleen had seen nothing at all, didn't even share Dannerman's conviction that the reason was that she had been asleep.

But then there was Jimmy Lin.

His turn lasted longer than any of the others were willing to tolerate. He clung to the helmet, trying to wave them off with his arms; and when at last he took it off he was beaming. "You guys had me worried," he said. "You know, armed guards, and jail cells, and all that? But I was just fine. I'm pretty sure I was in Jiuquan-the Chinese space center? And I was in my old Fiat electric? Driving somewhere from the base? I know that road; it hadn't changed much since the last time I was there. I could see the launchpads way off by the hills-oh, there's no doubt about it; that's where I was. And I was in uniform; I could see the sleeve of my tunic. It looks like I got a promotion, too, because I was wearing full commander's stripes."

"I thought you got kicked out of the astronaut corps," Dannerman objected.

Jimmy scowled at him. "Well, I did. But I know what I saw, so I guess they reinstated me. Anyway, I wasn't alone in the car, and I don't know for sure where the two of us were going, but I think we were planning on having a pretty good time. Oh, and the language we were talking in was Chinese"

"What were you talking about?" Dannerman demanded.

Jimmy gave him the ghost of a smile. "What do you think we were talking about? It was a date, man!"

"Old reliable Lin," Martin groaned. "Always right there with his gonads blazing."

"Don't be so envious," Jimmy said, enjoying himself. "Let's see, what else? It was maybe late afternoon, I think. Probably we were just coming from a shift at the base. I was kind of hungry, but I was also-well, Martin, yeah, I have to admit that I was feeling kind of horny, too."

Rosaleen had been listening intently, but now she frowned. "What I don't understand," she said, "is-assuming it's true that they've planted bugs in our copies-how come we're receiving anything from them? Dopey said they'd lost their communications."

"Maybe only with the Beloved Leaders at their headquarters, wherever that is?" Patrice put in.

Dannerman nodded. "That could be it. Remember, Dopey also said something about using the Starlab equipment to track down the Omega Point man? He may not have contact with his Beloved Leaders, but apparently he still does with Starlab."

Rosaleen considered that. "It sounds plausible," she said, and hesitated. Then she reached for the helmet. "I think I would like to try another turn for myself."

That made everyone quiet down. Jimmy handed her the helmet without a word. Rosaleen carefully settled it around her head and fumbled with the opaque goggles until they locked in position.

She was silent for a moment, while everyone waited. Then she removed the helmet again. "Yes," she said in a colorless, conversational tone, "there is nothing there but blackness for me." She handed the helmet to the person standing beside her, who happened to be Martin, and added, "I can think of only one explanation. There is no copy of me on Earth."

"But we saw you being sent there in the Horch message!" Pat said worriedly.

Rosaleen did not respond to that, except to say, "I think I would like to rest for a while."

Then a most surprising thing happened. Martin took the helmet from Rosaleen's hand, but he didn't put it back on. He laid it on the floor and, instead, took Rosaleen Artzybachova's arm and helped her over to a position by one wall. He settled blankets around her until he was sure she was comfortable.

Patsy stared. Could this be Martin? For a moment she almost toyed with the thought that when they weren't looking Dopey had somehow slipped a doppelganger general in among them in Delasquez's place. Well, that was fantasy, sure; but to find General Delasquez caring for somebody else was almost as fantastic.

By the time he came back the others were gathered around the cooker-all but Jimmy Lin, who had seized the chance to get back in the helmet. Martin didn't speak. He stood over the pile of rations, staring down at it, but making no move to take anything for himself.

Impulsively, Patsy spoke to him, keeping her voice low so that the others might not hear. "That was nice of you, Martin."

For a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer. He reached down and selected a ration packet at random. Then he said, "My mother was like that. Quite old, but active, alert, in fact a very brilliant woman… until her sister died."

"Her sister died?" Patsy repeated. The man was being even more difficult than usual.

He studied the packet for a moment, then slit it open with a thumbnail. "They were quite close," he said. "Then afterward it was quite different for my mother. Her condition deteriorated very fast."

He looked up at Patsy for the first time. "I see you don't understand," he commented.

"No. You're right. I don't."

"But this must be very similar for Rosaleen. You see, there is no copy of Rosaleen on Earth, although we saw her being sent there. How can that be? Because, of course, the Rosaleen who returned to Earth has died."

Died.

Patsy stole a look at Rosaleen, lying with her eyes closed and only a part of her face visible among the blankets. What could that feel like, losing one of yourself? Patsy tried to imagine how she would feel if Pat died, or Patrice, but she didn't try for long. The thought hurt, with kinds of pain Patsy had never felt before.

Something else was troubling her, too. It felt like guilt. Rosaleen's exposed face was gray. Although she had stood as erect as ever while they were talking, Patsy remembered that Rosaleen had been biting her lip, and when she turned away she had limped worse than ever.

That was where the guilt lived. It was her fault, after all-that is, it was Dr. Patrice Adcock's fault-that the old woman was here in this place, a place that certainly was not a good environment for an ailing woman in her-what were they?-at least her nineties. Maybe more. Rosaleen had been comfortably retired to the leisure of her Ukrainian dacha, as at her age she had every right to be, until Pat called her in for this mad venture, with its even madder consequences. If she died as a result of all this-

Patsy finished her meal and lay down to sleep, hoping to blot out some of the things that were on her mind. She did not want to think of Rosaleen's dying, and she was glad when at last she seemed to be drifting off to sleep.

The sleep didn't last long; what woke her was another ground-shake-not big, but enough to rouse her. She opened her eyes in time to see the wall doing its magic trick. The bright mirror was streaked with glowing pink and red, the colors shimmering over the surface like oil on a pool of water. The display lasted for a dozen seconds; then the swirls of color disappeared. It didn't turn transparent this time, and a moment later the wall was a bright and unflawed mirror again, and nothing had changed.

The others were all awake, Martin and Rosaleen standing by the cooker; Patsy covertly studied Rosaleen's face, but it showed nothing but fatigue. Jimmy Lin was holding the helmet in his hand, his expression thunderous. "What a time to lose contact!" he cried; and, as soon as things had settled down again, hastily jammed the thing back on his head.

Patrice gave him an unfriendly look, then turned to Patsy. "I think the son of a bitch is getting laid in China," she muttered. "Did you get enough sleep? I took another turn while you were out and I was-we were-still in that jail, and nothing was happening. Except that I was dressed and sitting in the chair. Just sitting there, with, I guess, nothing to do. Martin did a little better, though."

"I will tell her," Martin said. He fished a ration packet out of the cooker, juggled it a moment in his hands before passing it on to Rosaleen and made sure that the old lady was able to handle it before he told Patsy what he had observed. He had been standing at a lectern at the front of a briefing room, while some other astronaut at another lectern was going over a 3-D virtual of the interior of Starlab. "It didn't look the way we saw it when we were there. It was, I imagine, the way it had been before Dopey's people rearranged it. And every once in a while someone would ask me if that was how I remembered it, and I said yes." He hesitated. "That isn't the truth, of course. I must have been lying to them. But I didn't^/like I was lying. And that guard with the gun was sitting right behind me."

That was interesting, but Patsy had nearer concerns. She drew some water from the tank and rubbed it over her face, then used the space they had set aside as the latrine, leaving the others to argue with Martin as to how he could tell whether or not his copy was lying. She didn't listen. She was thinking about Rosaleen-and thinking, too, at the same time, that splashing a few drops of water on her face was all well enough, but, God, what she would give for a real bath. Not to mention some clean clothes. Not to mention-well, everything that made civilization worth having.

By the time she was as presentable as she had any way of getting Jimmy Lin was out of the helmet and his face wore a broad grin. "That," he announced, "was great. Listen, I'm not one to kiss and tell, but-"

"Do not tell, then," Martin said savagely.

"Yes, but honestly-"

"Shut up," Pat ordered.

"Ah," said Jimmy, understanding at last. "I'd just be rubbing salt in the wounds, eh? Well, I can see how you feel, but I have to say-no," he corrected himself, catching Pat's glare at him. "I guess I don't have to say. But you know what I'm thinking."

And he turned and headed for the cooker. Over his shoulder he called, "The dinner was great, too. Gave me an appetite."

"Son of a bitch," Patrice said moodily, and changed the subject. "Patsy? Did you hear about Dan-Dan?"

"What about Dan-Dan?"-looking at him.

Dannerman said reluctantly, "I guess it's important enough to tell. All right. About half an hour ago I took a turn in the helmet. I was awake, all right. I was getting dressed. And I had a hell of a hangover."

"What were you celebrating, do you know?" Patsy asked curiously.

"I don't think I was celebrating anything at all. I think my duplicate is in the deep shit. I was wearing a collar, you see."

"Collar?"

"The tracker kind," he said impatiently. "The kind they put on you so they always know where you are. So they can hear everything you say, and everything anybody says to you."

"Oh, hell," Patsy said, suddenly sympathetic. She wanted to put her arm around him, checked the impulse with Pat standing right there. "So you're in trouble, too?"

"House arrest, I guess. Pretty much the same as Martin and you."

Pat turned to Patsy. "Any ideas? Can you figure out why we're all in trouble back home-all but Jimmy, anyway?"

"Maybe," Dannerman offered, "it has something to do with what Martin is saying about lying to them."

"But why would we all be lying?" Patrice asked reasonably. "I mean, all but Jimmy, I guess. What reason could we have?"

Dannerman shrugged. No one said anything for a while, and Patsy looked around the cell. Martin and Rosaleen were talking quietly over by the cooker. Jimmy Lin was sitting with his back to the wall, hands locked behind his head, a broad, reminiscent gring on his face.

Pat was looking at him, too. "Bastard," she said. "But, hey, think about it. Suppose we could get this little piece of technology back to Earth! Suppose we put these bugs into, I don't know, maybe a couple of vid stars, boy and girl-or boy and boy, or whatever; listen, any kind of preference anybody had. And then we could rent out helmets while they were getting it on. Can you imagine what kind of money people would pay? Mad sex, any kind of sex, without all that trouble of actually having to find Mr. Right and then getting a motel room and all… and no worry about catching something or getting pregnant or- Well," she said hastily, aware of Dannerman's eyes on her, "I mean, simply as a commercial venture."

"I know what you mean," he said kindly. Then he added, "I was thinking of something, too. I was thinking, what if the Bureau had this technology? Then they wouldn't have to get people like me to infiltrate terrorist groups or criminal gangs or whatever. Just catch one of the gang, stick a bug into him, set him loose. From that moment on everything he saw or did would go right to the Bureau."

"Oh, Dan!" Patrice said in dismay. "Do you know what you're saying? It wouldn't have to be just criminals! What if some government used that to keep track of everybody, all the time? Talk about your police states!"

And Pat said meditatively, "Maybe that isn't a kind of technology we would want to bring back, after all."

Silence for a moment, and then Dan said, "I wonder if we have a choice. I wonder if that might not be some of this wonderful stuff that the Beloved Leaders are going to give the human race if they're let in."

Then there was more silence, a lot of it, as everybody thought about that. Until Patsy sighed and shook herself. "Maybe I should take another turn in the helmet," she said, and accepted the device as Dannerman handed it to her.

As soon as she was locked in the pictures flashed before her, just as before-the same doubled images: herself in the helmet as seen through Patrice's eyes, and at the same time the bare cell on Earth. There, she discovered, she seemed to be eating breakfast. Some machine-scrambled eggs, far overcooked for her taste, some dry toast, a cup of weak coffee. She didn't much like the taste of the food. Even less liked the dizzying duplication of images, which threatened to give her a headache. She closed her eyes to shut them out for a moment, and discovered that made no difference; she could feel that her eyelids were clamped shut, but she was still seeing both scenes.

Maybe, she thought, there was a way to ease that particular problem, at least. If Patrice were simply to keep her eyes closed and sit as still as possible while she herself was in the helmet, wouldn't that cut down on the "spillover"? It might be worth a try, she thought. And was on the point of taking the helmet off to tell her so, when the floor shook again under her feet. She staggered. The helmet images blurred and distorted, but through Patrice's eyes she could see that the wall was flaring again.

By the time she got the helmet off it was a kaleidoscope of color and the ground was still shaking, slow, remorseless swings back and forth. Patsy sat down abruptly to keep from falling- as everyone else was doing-and they watched the light show on the wall in fascination and fear. It flickered through the spectrum, settling on a dull red that felt as though it were actually radiating heat…

Then-it disappeared.

There was no color at all where the wall had been. The smooth, resilient floor had turned into a pattern of closely woven metal strands. The ceiling, too, had changed; the even white glow was gone. Where it had been there was now a mesh that looked like bleached burlap, through which a pale light filtered from somewhere else. The same light illuminated the scene beyond the walls: Rosaleen's "file cabinets," the broad corridor along which Dopey had brought them to the cell, the two-domed metal object and all sorts of other things, too many and too strange to take in at once. Nothing obstructed her view.

Everybody was up and staring now. And Jimmy Lin, standing at the urinal, reached out with one hand to where the wall had been. He pulled his arm back slowly and turned, blinking, to the others. "There's nothing there," he said. "There isn't any wall at all anymore."