The Time Dweller

THE TIME DWELLER

DUSK HAD COME to the universe, albeit the small universe inhabited by Man. The sun of Earth had dimmed, the moon had retreated and salt clogged the sluggish oceans, filled the rivers that toiled slowly between white, crystalline banks, beneath darkened, moody skies that slumbered in eternal evening.

Of course, in the sun's long life this stage was merely one interlude. In perhaps a few thousand years, it would flare to full splendour again. But for the meantime it kept its light in close rein, grumbling in its mighty depths and preparing itself for the next step in its evolution.

It had taken time in its fading and those few creatures who had remained on its planets had managed to adapt. Among them was Man, indefatigable; undeserving, really, considering the lengths he had gone to, in previous epochs, to dispose of himself. But here he was, in his small universe consisting of one planet without even the satellite which had slid away into space long since and, in its passing, left legends on his lips.

Brown clouds, brown light, brown rocks and brown ocean flecked with white. A pale rider on a pale beast thumping along the shore, the dry taste of ocean salt in his mouth, the stink of a dead oozer in his nostrils.

His name was the Scar-faced Brooder, son of the Sleepyeyed Smiler, his father and the Pinch-cheeked Worrier, his mother. The seal-beast he rode was called Urge. Its glossy coat was still sleek with the salt-rain that had recently ceased, its snout pointed eagerly forward and its two strong leg-fins thwacked the encrusted shore as it galloped along, dragging its razor-edged tail with scant effort. The Scar-faced Brooder was supported on his steed's sloping back by a built-up saddle of polished silicon that flashed whenever it reflected the saltpatches studding the ground like worn teeth. In his head, held at its butt by a stirrup grip, was his long gun, the piercer with an everlasting ruby as its life. He was dressed in sealskin dyed in sombre rust-red and dark yellow.

Behind him, the Scar-faced Brooder heard the sound of another rider, one whom he had tried to avoid since morning.

Now, as evening quietly flowed brown and misty into black night, she still followed, He turned his calm face to look, his mouth tight and white as the scar which rose from its corner to follow his left cheek-bone. She was in the distance, still, but gaining.

He increased his speed.

Brown clouds boiled low like foam across the dark sand of the flat, and their seals slapped loudly over the damp shore as she neared him.

He came to a pool of salt-thick water and Urge splashed into it. It was warm. Still she followed him, even into the water, so that he turned his steed and waited, half-trembling, until she rode up, a tall, well-formed woman with light brown hair long and loose in the breeze.

'Dearest Tall Laugher,' he told his sister,' for me there is no amusement in this game.'

Frowning, she smiled.

He pressed his point, disturbed, his calm face earnest in the fading brown light that was all the clouds would let pass.

'I wish to ride alone.'

'Where would you go, alone, when together we might be carried to more exotic adventure?'

He paused, unwilling and unable to answer.

'Will you come back?'

'I would prefer not to,'

A cold, silent wind began to buffet them as it came in suddenly from the sea. Urge moved nervously.

'You fear what the Chronarch might do?'

'The Chronarch has no love for me - but neither has he hatred. He would prefer me gone from Lanjis Liho, to cross the great salt plains of the west and seek my fortune in the land of fronds. He would not trust me with a small part of the Future, as you know, nor give a fraction of the Past into my safekeeping. I go to shape my own destiny!'

'So - you sulk!' she cried as the wind began to mewl.' You sulk because the Chronarch delegates no honours. Meanwhile, your loving sister aches and is miserable.'

'Marry the Big-brained Boaster! He has trust of Past and Future both!'

He forced his restless seal-beast through the thick water and into the night. As it moved, he reached into the saddle sheath and took out his torch to light his way. He depressed its grip and it blazed out, illuminating the surrounding beach for several yards around. Turning, he saw her for a moment in the circle of light, motionless, her eyes aghast as if he had betrayed her.

Oh, I am lonely now, he thought, as the wind blew cold and strong against his body.

He headed inland, over the salt-rocks, towards the west. He rode all night until his eyes were heavy with tiredness, but still he rode, away from Lanjis Liho where Chronarch, Lord of Time, ruled past and present and watched the future come, away from family, home and city, his heart racked with the strain of the breaking, his mind fevered fire and his body all stiff from the demands he made of it.

Into the night, into the west, with his torch burning in his saddle and loyal Urge responding to his affectionate whispering. To the west, until dawn came slowly up from behind him and covered the barren land with soft light.

A little further through the morning he heard a sound as of cloth flapping in the wind and when he turned his head he saw a green tent pitched beside a shallow crevasse, its front flap dancing. He readied his long piercer and halted Urge.

Drawn out, perhaps, by the noise of the seal-beast's movement, a man's head poked from the tent like a tortoise emerging from the recesses of its shell. He had a beak of a nose and a fish-like pecker of a mouth, his large eyes were heavy-lidded and a tight-fitting hood hid hair and neck.

'Aha,' said the Scar-faced Brooder in recognition.

'Hmm,' said the Hooknosed Wanderer, also recognizing the mounted man confronting him. 'You are some distance from Lanjis Liho. Where are you bound?'

'For the land of fronds.'

He resheathed his piercer and clambered down from the high saddle. He passed the tent, its occupant's head craning round to follow him and stared into the crevasse. It had been widened and deepened by human tools, revealing pieces of ancient wreckage.' What's this?'

'Nothing but the remains of a crashed spaceship,' replied the Hooknosed Wanderer in such obvious disappointment that he could not have been lying. ' My metal diviner found it and I had hoped for a capsule with books or film.'

'There were never many of those. I'd say they had all been gathered by now.'

'That's my belief, too, but one hopes. Have you breakfasted?'

'No. Thank you.'

The hooded head withdrew into the tent and a thin hand held back the flap. The Scar-faced Brooder bent and entered the cluttered tent. There was a great deal of equipment therein; the Hooknosed Wanderer's livelihood, for he sustained himself by bartering some of the objects he found with his metal diviner and other instruments.

'Apparently, you have no riding animal,' said the Scar-faced Brooder as he sat down and crossed his legs between a soft bundle and an angular statuette of steel and concrete.

'It was necessary to abandon her when my water was exhausted and I could find none to replace it. That is why I was heading for the sea. I am exceedingly thirsty, am suffering from salt-deficiency since I have no liking for the salt which grows in these parts.'

'I have plenty in my saddle barrel,' he said. ' Help yourself - good salt water, slightly diluted with fresh, if that suits your taste.' He leant back on the bundle as the Wanderer, nodding sharply, scrambled up, clasping.a canteen and left the tent.

He returned smiling. ' Thanks. I can last for several days, now.' He pushed aside his clutter of antiques, discovering a small stove. He activated it, placed a pan on top and began frying the leg-fish he had trapped recently.

'Which city was your destination. Brooder? Only two are in easy reach from here-and both lie still many leagues hence.

Is it Barbart or Piorha?'

'Barbart in the land of fronds, I think, for I should like to see green vegetation instead of grey or brown. And the ancient places thereabouts have, I must admit, romantic connotations for me. I should like to go and wallow in racial memory, sense the danger of uncontrolled Past, insignificant Present and random Future… '

'Some feel it as that,' the Wanderer smiled, shuffling the leg-fish on to plates. ' Especially those from Lanjis Liho where the Chronarchy holds sway. But remember, much will be in your mind. You may see Barbart and the land of fronds, but its significance will be decided by you, not by it. Try to do as I do - make no judgments or descriptions of this world of ours.

Do that, and it will treat you better.'

'Your words seem wise, Wanderer, but I have no precedents by which to judge them. Perhaps when I have placed some of the Future in the Past, I will know.'

'You seem tired,' said the Wanderer when they were finished eating,' would you like to sleep?'

'I would. Thanks.' And while the Hooknosed Wanderer went about his business, the Brooder slept.

He rose in the mellow afternoon, roused Urge who had taken advantage of his master's slumber to rest also, and wished the Wanderer goodbye.

'May your blood stay thick,' said the Wanderer formally, ' and your mind remain open.'

He rode away and by dusk had come to the moss which was primarily grey and brown, but tinted in places with patches of light green. He took out his torch and fixed it in its saddle bracket, unwilling to sleep at night because of the potential danger of predatory life.

Once the light from his torch showed him a school of oozers, moving at right angles to his path. They were far inland for their kind, these great white slug-creatures that raised their heads to observe him. He felt he could hear them sniffing at his body salt as perhaps their leech ancestors had sniffed out the blood of his own forefathers. Urge, without prompting, increased his speed.

As he left them, he felt that the oozers represented the true native of Earth now. Man's place was no longer easy to define, but it seemed that he had been superseded. By remaining alive on the salt-heavy Earth he was outstaying his welcome. If there was another home for Man, it did not lie here but in some other region; perhaps not even the region of space at all but in dimensions where natural evolution could not affect him.

Brooding, as was his bent, he continued to ride for Barbart and, by the following day, had reached the delicate frond forests that waved golden green in the soft sunlight, all silence and sweet scent. Urge's bounding gait became almost merry as they fled over the cushions of moss between the shaded spaces left by the web-thin fronds waving and flowing in the gusts of air which occasionally swept the forest.

He dismounted soon and lay back on a bank of comfortable moss, breathing the scented breeze in luxurious self-indulgence.

His mind began to receive disjointed images, he heard his sister's voice, the sonorous tones of the Chronarch denying him a function in the House of Time - a function which he had expected as of right, for had not his grand-uncle been the previous Chronarch? He saw the twisting many dimensioned Tower of Time, that wonder-work of an ancient architect with its colours and strange, moving angles and curves. And then he slept.

When he awoke it was night and Urge was hooting at him to wake. He got up sleepily and hauled himself into the saddle, settled himself, reached for his torch and adjusting it rode through what seemed to be a network of black and stirring threads that were the fronds seen in the cold torchlight.

The next morning he could see the low-roofed houses of Barbart lying in a valley walled by gentle hills. High above the roofs, a great contrivance of burnished brass glowered like rich red gold. He speculated momentarily upon its function.

Now a road became evident, a hard track winding among the moss dimes and leading towards the city. As he followed it he heard the muffled thud of a rider approaching and, somewhat wary for he knew little of Barbart or its inhabitants, reined in Urge, his piercer ready.

Riding towards him on a heavy old walrus came a young man, long-haired and pleasant-featured in a jerkin of light blue that matched his eyes. He stopped the walrus and looked quizzically at the Scar-faced Brooder.

'Stranger,' he said cheerfully, ' it is a pleasant morning.'

'Yes it is-and a pleasant land you dwell in. Is that city Barbart?'

'Barbart, certainly. There's none other hereabouts. From where are you?'

'From Lanjis Liho by the sea.'

'I had the inkling that men from Lanjis Liho never travelled far.'

'I am the first. My name is the Scar-faced Brooder.'

'Mine is Domm and I welcome you to Barbart. I would escort you there save for the fact that I have a mission from my mother to seek herbs among the fronds. I am already late, I fear. What time is it?'

'Time? Why the present, of course.'

'Ha! Ha! But the hour - what is that?'

'What is "the hour"?' asked the Brooder, greatly puzzled.

'That's my question.'

'I am afraid your local vernacular is beyond me,' said the Brooder politely, but nonplussed. The lad's question had been strange to begin with, but now it had become incomprehensible.

'No matter,' Domm decided with a smile.' I have heard you people of Lanjis Liho have some peculiar customs. I will not delay you. Follow the road and you should be in Barbart in less than an hour.'

'Hour' - the word again. Was it some division of the league used here? He gave up wondering and wished the youth ' thick blood' as he rode on.

The mosaiced buildings of Barbart were built in orderly geometric patterns about the central quadrangle in which lay the towering machine of burnished brass with its ridges and knobs and curlicues. Set in the centre of the machine was a great round plaque, divided into twelve units with each unit of twelve divided into a further five units. From the centre arose two pointers, one shorter than the other and the Scar-faced Brooder saw them move slowly. As he rode through Barbart, he noticed that facsimiles of this object were everywhere and he judged, at last, that it was some holy object or heraldic device.

Barbart seemed a pleasant place, though with a somewhat restless atmosphere epitomized by the frantic market-place where men and women rushed from stall to stall shouting at one another, tugging at bales of bright cloth, fingering salt-free fruits and vegetables, pawing meats and confectioneries amid the constant babble of the vendors crying their wares.

Enjoying the scene, the Scar-faced Brooder led his seal-beast through the square and discovered a tavern in one of the side plazas. The plaza itself contained a small fountain in its centre and benches and tables had been placed close by outside the tavern. The Brooder seated himself upon one of these and gave ' his order to the fat girl who came to ask it.

'Beer?' she said, folding her plump, brown arms over her red bodice. 'We have only a little and it is expensive. The fermented peach juice is. cheaper.'

'Then bring me that,' he said pleasantly and turned to watch the thin fountain water, noting that it smelt of brine hardly at all.

Hearing, perhaps, a strange accent, a man emerged from the shadowy doorway of the tavern and, tankard in hand, stood looking down at the Scar-faced Brooder, an amiable expression on his face.

'Where are you from, traveller?' he asked.

The Brooder told him and the Barbartian seemed surprised.

He seated himself on another bench.

'You are the second visitor from strange parts we have had here in a week. The other was an emissary from Moon. They have changed much, those Moonites, you know. Tall, they are, and thin as a frond with aesthetic faces. They dress in cloth of metal. He told us he had sailed space for many weeks to reach us… '

At this second reference to the unfamiliar word ' week', the Brooder turned his head to look at the Barbartian. ' Forgive me,' he said,' but as a stranger I am curious at certain words I have heard here. What would you mean by " week " exactly?'

'Why - a week - seven days - what else?'

The Brooder laughed apologetically. 'There you are, you see. Another word - days. What is a days?'

The Barbartian scratched his head, a wry expression on his face. He was a middle-aged man with a slight stoop, dressed in a robe of yellow cloth. He put down his tankard and raised his hand. ' Come with me and I will do my best to show you.'

'That would please me greatly,' said the Brooder gratefully.

He finished his wine and called for the girl. When she appeared he asked her to take care of his steed and to make him up a bed since he would be staying through the next darkness.

The Barbartian introduced himself as Mokof, took the Brooder's arm and led him through the series of squares, triangles and circles formed by the buildings, to come at length to the great central plaza and stare up at the pulsing, monstrous machine of burnished bronze.

'This machine supplies the-city with its life,' Mokof informed him.' And also regulates our lives.' He pointed at the disc which the Brooder had noted earlier. ' Do you know what that is, my friend?'

'No. I am afraid I do not. Could you explain?'

'It's a clock. It measures the hours of the day,' he broke off, noting the Brooder's puzzlement. ' That is to say it measures time.'

'Ah! I am with you at last. But a strange device, surely, for it cannot measure a great deal of time with that little circular dial. How does it note the flow…?'

'We call a period of sunlight" day " and a period of darkness " night." We divide each into twelve hours - '

'Then the period of sunlight and the period of darkness are equal? I had thought… '

'No, we call them equal for convenience, since they vary.

The twelve divisions are called hours. When the hands reach twelve, they begin to count around again… '

'Fantastic!' the Brooder was astounded. 'You mean you recycle the same period of time round and round again. A marvellous idea. Wonderful! I had not thought it possible.'

'Not exactly,' Mokof said patiently. 'However, the hours are divided into sixty units. These are called minutes. The minutes are also divided into sixty units, each unit is called a second. The seconds are… '

'Stop! Stop! I am confounded, bewildered, dazzled! How do you control the flow of time that you can thus manipulate it at will? You must tell me. The Chronarch in Lanjis Liho would be overawed to learn of your discoveries!'

'You fail to understand, my friend. We do not control time.

If anything, it controls us. We simply measure it.'

'You don't control… but if that's so why-?' The Brooder broke off, unable to see the logic of the Barbartian's words.

'You tell me you recycle a given period of time which you divided into twelve. And yet you then tell me you recycle a shorter period and then an even shorter period. It would soon become apparent if this were true, for you would be performing the same action over and over again and I see you are not. Or, if you were using the same time without being in its power, the sun would cease to move across the sky and I see it still moves. Given that you can release yourself from the influence of time, why am I not conscious of it since that instrument,' he pointed at the dock, ' exerts its influence over the entire city.

Or, again, if it is a natural talent, why are we in Lanjis Liho so busily concerned with categorizing and investigating our researches into the flow if you have mastered it so completely?'

A broad smile crossed the face of Mokof. He shook his head.

'I told you-we have no mastery over it. The instrument merely tells us what time it is.'

'That is ridiculous,' the Brooder said, dazed. His brain fought to retain its sanity. ' There is only the present. Your words are illogical!'

Mokof stared at his face in concern. ' Are you unwell?'

'I'm well enough. Thank you for the trouble you have taken, I will return to the tavern now, before I lose all hold of sanity!'

The clutter in his head was too much. Mokof made a statement and then denied it in the same breath. He decided he would cogitate it over a meal.

When he reached the tavern he found the door closed and no amount of banging could get those inside to open it. He noticed that his saddle and saddle-bags were resting outside and he knew he had some food in one of the bags, so he sat on the bench and began to munch on a large hunk of bread.

Suddenly, from above him, he heard a cry and looking up he saw an old woman's head regarding him from a top-storey window.

'Ah!' she cried.' Aah! What are you doing?'

'Why, eating this piece of bread, madame,' he said in surprise.

'Filthy!' she shrieked.' Filthy, immoral pig!'

'Really, I fail to - '

'Watch! Watch!' the old woman cried from the window, Very swiftly, three armed men came running into the plaza.

They screwed up their faces in disgust when they saw the Scarfaced Brooder.

'A disgusting exhibitionist as well as a pervert!' said the leader.

They seized the startled Brooder.

'What's happening?' he gasped. ' What have I done?'

'Ask the judge,' snarled one of his captors and they hauled him towards the central plaza and took him to a tall house which appeared to be their headquarters.

There he was flung into a cell and they went away.

An overdressed youth in the next cell said with a grin: ' Greetings, stranger. What's your offence?" 'I have no idea,' said the Brooder. ' I merely sat down to have my lunch when, all at once… '

'Your lunch? But it is not lunch-time for another ten minutes!'

'Lunch-time. You mean you set aside a special period to eat oh, this is too much for me.'

The overdressed youth drew away from the bars and went to the other side of his cell, his nose wrinkling in disgust.' Ugh -you deserve the maximum penalty for a crime like that!"

Sadly puzzled, the Brooder sat down on his bench, completely mystified and hopeless. Evidently the strange customs of these people were connected with their clock which seemed to be a virtual deity to them. If the hands did not point to a certain figure when you did something, then that act became an offence. He wondered what the maximum penalty would be.

Very much later, the guards came to him and made him walk through a series of corridors and into a room where a man in a long purple gown wearing a metallic mask was seated at a carved table. The guards made the Brooder sit before the man and then they went and stood by the door.

The masked man said in a sonorous voice: ' You have been accused of eating outside the proper hour and of doing it in a public place for all to see. A serious charge. What is your defence?'

'Only that I am a stranger and do not understand your customs,' said the Brooder.

'A poor excuse. Where are you from?'

'From Lanjis Liho by the sea.'

'I have heard rumours of the immoralities practised there.

You will learn that you cannot bring your filthy habits to another city and hope to continue with them. I will be lenient with you, however and sentence you to one year in the antique mines.'

'But it is unjust!'

'Unjust, is it? Watch your tongue or I will extend the sentence!'

Depressed and without hope, the Brooder allowed the guards to take him back to his cell.

The night passed and morning came and then the guards arrived. ' Get up,' said the leader,' the judge wishes to see you again!'

'Does he intend to increase my sentence, after all?'

'Ask him.'

The judge was tapping his desk nervously as the Brooder and his guards entered.

'You know of machines in Lanjis Liho, do you not? You have some strange ones I've heard. Do you wish to be released?'

'I wish to be released, of course. Yes, we know something of machines, but… '

'Our Great Regulator is out of control. I would not be surprised if your crime did not provide the shock which caused it to behave erratically. Something has gone wrong with its life core and we may have to evacuate Barbart if it cannot be adjusted. We have forgotten our old knowledge of machines.

If you adjust the Great Regulator, we shall let you go. Without it, we do not know when to sleep, eat or perform any of our other functions. We shall go mad if we lose its guidance!'

Scarcely understanding the rest of the judge's statement, the Brooder heard only the fact that he was to be released if he mended their machine. On the other hand, he had left Lanjis Liho for the very reason that the Chronarch would not give him trust of any instruments. He had little experience, yet, if it meant his release, he would try.

When he arrived again in the central plaza, he noted that the machine of burnished bronze - the Great Regulator, they called it - was making a peculiar grumbling noise and shaking mightily.

Around it, trembling in unison, stood a dozen old men, waving their hands.

'Here is the man from Lanjis Liho!' called the guard. They looked anxiously at the Scar-faced Brooder.

'The life-core. It must certainly be the life-core,' said an ancient, tugging at his jerkin.

'Let me see,' said the Scar-faced Brooder, not at all sure that he could be of help, They wound off several of the machine's outer plates and he stared through thick glass and looked at the luminous life-core.

He had seen them before and knew a little about them. He knew enough, certainly/to understand that this should not be glowing bright purple and showering particles with such constancy.

He knew, suddenly, that in an exceedingly short space of time - one of these people's ' minutes', perhaps - the life-core would reach a critical state, it would swell and burst from its confines and its radiation would destroy everything living. But, he ignored their shouts as he became lost in the problem, he would need considerably longer than that if he was to deal with it.

Soon, he realized helplessly, they would all be dead.

He turned to tell them this, and then it struck him. Why could not he, as he had guessed these citizens capable of, recycle that moment, personally? Since the previous day, his mind had been trying to see the logic in what Mokof had told him and, using parts of things the Chronarch had told him, he had constructed an idea of what the process must be like.

Experimentally, he eased himself backwards in time. Yes, it worked. The core was now as he had first seen it.

He had never thought of doing this before, but now he saw that it was easy, requiring merely a degree of concentration.

He was grateful for the Barbartians, with their weird time device, for giving him the idea.

All he had to do was to remember what the Chronarch had taught him about the nature of time-how it constantly and imperceptibly to ordinary beings re-formed its constituents to give it the apparently forward movement which affected, so broadly, the organization of matter.

Shifting himself into the time-area he had occupied a short while before, he began to study the temporal co-ordinates of the life-core. He could think of no physical means of stopping it, but if he could, in some manner, lock it in time, it would then cease to be a danger. But he would still have to work speedily, since, sooner or later, the temporal structure would fail to hold and he would sweep onwards, losing time continuously., until he was brought to the moment when the life-core began to spread its radiation.

Again and again he let himself drift up almost to the ultimate moment, shifting himself backwards, losing a few grains of time with every shift.

Then, at last, he understood the temporal construction of the core, With an effort of will he reduced the temporal co-ordinates to zero. It could not progress through time. It Was frozen and no longer a danger.

He fell back into his normal, time-stream, his body wet with sweat. They crowded about him, questioning in shrill, excited voices.

'What have you done? What have you done? Are we safe?'

'You are safe,' he said.

They seized him, thanking him with generous words, his earlier crime forgotten.' You must be rewarded.'

But he scarcely heard them, as they bore him back to the judge, for he was brooding on what he had just accomplished.

As a man might step backwards to regain lost ground, he had stepped backwards to regain lost time. He had his reward.

He was most grateful to these people now, for with their weird ideas about time, they had shown him that it was possible to exist at will in a point in time-just as it was possible to exist in a point in space. It was, he realized, merely a matter of knowing such a thing was possible. Then it became easy.

The judge had doffed his mask and smiled his gratitude.

'The wise men tell me that you worked a miracle. They saw your body flickering like a candle flame, disappearing and appearing constantly. How did you achieve this?'

He spread his hands: ' It was extraordinarily simple. Until I came to Barbart and saw the thing you call clock, I did not realize the possibilities of moving through time as I could move through space. It seemed to me that since you appeared capable of recycling the same period of time, I could do likewise. This I did. Then I studied the life-core and saw that, by manipulation of its time structure, I could fix it in a certain point, thus arresting its progress. So simple-and yet it might never have occurred to me if I had not come here.'

The judge passed a hand over his puzzled eyes. 'Ah… ' he said.

'And now,' the Brooder said cheerfully, ' I thank you for your hospitality. I intend to leave Barbart immediately, since I shall obviously never understand your customs. I return to Lanjis Liho to tell the Chronarch of my discoveries. Farewell.'

He left the court-room, crossed the plaza through crowds of grateful citizens, and was soon saddling Urge and riding away from Barbart in the land of fronds.

Two days later he came upon the Hooknosed Wanderer grubbing in a ditch he had just dug.

'Greetings, Wanderer,' he called from the saddle.

The Wanderer looked up, wiping salty earth from his face.

'Oh, 'tis you, Brooder. I thought you had decided to journey to the land of fronds.'

'I did. I went to Barbart and there - ' briefly the Brooder explained what had happened.

'Aha,' nodded the Wanderer. ' So the Chronarch is educating his people well, after all. I frankly considered what he was doing impossible. But you have proved me wrong.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think I can tell you. Come into my tent and drink some wine.'

'Willingly,' the Brooder said, dismounting.

From a plastic flask, the Wanderer poured wine into two cut-glass goblets.

'Lanjis Liho,' he said, ' was founded in ancient times as an experimental village where new-born children were taken and educated according to the teachings of a certain philosopher called Rashin. Rashin regarded people's attitude towards Time as being imposed on their consciousness by their method of recording and measuring it-by the state of mind which said "the past is the past and cannot be changed," " we cannot know what the future holds" and so forth; Our minds, he decided, were biased and while we continued to think in this way we should never be free of the shackles of time. It was, he felt, the most necessary shackle to cast off. He said, for instance that when the temperature becomes too hot, a man devises a means of keeping himself cool. When it rains he enters a shelter or devises a shelter he can transport with him. If he comes to a river, he builds a bridge, or if to the sea-a boat. Physical difficulties of a certain intensity can be overcome in a physical way. But what if the difficulties intensify to the degree where physical means can no longer work against them?'

The Brooder shrugged. 'We perish-or find some means other than physical to combat them.'

'Exactly. Rashin said that if Time moves too swiftly for a man to accomplish what he desires he accepts the fact passively.

Rashin thought that with re-education Man might rid himself of his reconception and take as easily to adjusting Time to his requirements as he adjusts nature. A non-physical means you see.'

'I think I understand a little of what you mean,' said the Scar-faced Brooder. ' But why is it necessary, I wonder?' The question was rhetorical, but the Wanderer chose to answer.

'On this world,' he said, ' we must admit it, Man is an anachronism. He has adapted to a degree but not sufficiently to the point where he could sustain himself without artifice.

The planet has never been particularly suitable for him, of course, but it has never been so inhospitable as now.

'The Chronarchy, as I have said, is a conscious experiment.

Time and Matter are both ideas. Matter makes a more immediate impression on Man, but Time's effects are longer lasting. Therefore the Chronarchy, down the ages, has sought to educate its people into thinking of Time in a similar way as they think of Matter. In this way it has been possible to produce a science of time, like the science of physics. But it has only been possible to study time until now - not manipulate it.

'We may soon master Time as we once mastered the atom.

And our mastery will give us far greater freedom than did our nuclear science. Time may be explored as our ancestors explored space. Your descendants, Scar-faced Brooder, shall be heir to continents of time as we have continents of space. They shall travel about in time, the old view of Past, Present and Future abolished. Even now you regard these in an entirely different light-merely as convenient classifications for the study of Time.'

'That is true," he nodded, ' I had never considered them anything else. But now I am unsure what to do, for I fled to Barbart originally to settle and forget Lanjis Liho where I went unhonoured.'

The Wanderer smiled a little. ' I do not think you will go unhonoured now, my friend,' he said.

The Brooder saw the point and smiled also. ' Perhaps not,' he agreed.

The Wanderer sipped his wine. ' Your journeyings in space are all but ended, anyway. For space is becoming increasingly hostile to Man and will soon refuse to sustain him, however much he adapts physically. You and your like must enter the new dimensions you've discovered and dwell there. Go back to Lanjis Liho of your birth and tell the Chronarch what you did In Barbart, show him what you did and he will welcome you. Your reason for leaving no longer exists. You are the first of the Time Dwellers and I salute you as the salvation of mankind.' The Wanderer drained his glass.

Somewhat overwhelmed by this speech, the Brooder bade the Wanderer farewell and thick blood, left the tent and climbed upon the back of Urge.

The Wanderer stood beside the tent, smiling at him. ' One day you must tell me how you did it,' he said.

'It is such a simple thing - you just live through the same period of time instead of different ones. Perhaps this is just the start and soon I will be able to explore further abroad -or is the word "a-time"? But now I will be off for I'm impatient to tell my news to the Chronarch!'

The Wanderer watched him ride away, feeling a trifle like the last dinosaur must have felt so many millions of years before.

Once again, the Scar-faced Brooder rode along the seashore, staring over the sluggish waves at the brown sky beyond.

Salt shone everywhere across the land, perhaps heralding an age where crystalline life-forms would develop in conditions absolutely unsuitable for animal life as he knew it.

Yes, the period when Man must change his environment radically had come, if Man were to survive at all.

The Earth would cease to support him soon, the sun cease to warm him. He had the choice of living for a while in artificial conditions such as the Moonites already did, or of completely changing his environment - from a physical one to a temporal one!Definitely, the latter was the better choice. As the sky darkened over the sea, he took out his torch, depressed the handle and sent a great blaze of light spreading across the inhospitable Earth.

The first of the Time Dwellers goaded his seal-beast into a faster pace, impatient to tell the Chronarch his welcome news, impatient to begin the exploration of a new environment.