Across Realtime

TWO

Everyone agreed with Marta that the show had been impressive. Many didn't realize that the "show" wouldn't end with one afternoon of fireworks. The curtain calls would go on for some time, much more dismal than impressive.

The rescue blasting had been about a hundred times as energetic as the nineteenth-century Krakatoa blow-off. Billions of tonnes of ash and rock were pumped into the stratosphere that afternoon. The sun was a rare sight in the days that followed, at best a dim reddish disk through the murk. In Korolev, there was a heavy frost on the ground every morning. The almost-jacarandas were wilted and dying. Their spider families were dead or moved to burrows. Even in the jungles along the coast, temperatures rarely got above fourteen degrees now.

It rained most of every day-but not water: the dust was settling out. When it came down dry, it was like gray-brown snow, piling obscene drifts on houses and trees and the bodies of small animals; the New Mexicans ruined the last of their jetcopters learning what rock dust does to turbines. Things were even worse when it came down wet, a black fluid that changed the drifts to mud. It was small consolation that the bombs were clean, and the dust a "natural product."

Korolev robots quickly rebuilt the monorails. Wil and the Dasgupta brothers took a trip down to the sea.

The dunes were gone, blasted inland by the rescue-day tsunamis. The trees south of the dunes were laid out flat, all pointing away from the sea. There was no green; all was covered with ash. Even the sea had a layer of scum on it. Miraculously, some fishermonkeys lived. Wil saw small groups on the beach, grooming the ash from each other's pelts. They spent most of their time in the water, which was still warm.

The rescue itself was an undoubted success. The Peacer bobble now sat on the surface. The third day after the detonation, a Korolev flier visited the blast site. The pictures it sent back were striking. Gale-force winds, still laden with ash, drove c across gray scabland. Glowing orange-red peeked through netted cracks in the scab. At the center of this slowly freezing lake of rock sat a perfect sphere, the bobble. It floated two-thirds out of the rock. Of course, no nicks or scour marred its surface No trace of ash or rock adhered. In fact, it was all but invisible: its mirror surface reflected the scene around it, showing the net of glowing cracks stretching back into the haze.

A typical bobble, in an untypical place.

"All things shall pass." That was Rohan Dasgupta's favorite misquote. In a few months, the molten lake would freeze over, and an unprotected man could walk right to the side of the Peacer bobble. About the same time, the blackout and the mud rains would end. For a few years there would be brilliant sunsets and unusually cool weather. Wounded trees would recover, seedlings would replace those that had died. In a century or two, nature would have forgotten this affront, and the Peacer bobble would reflect forest green.

Yet it would be unknown thousands of years before the bobble burst, and the men and women within could join the colony.

As usual, the Korolevs had a plan. As usual, the low-techs had little choice but to tag along.

"Hey, we're having a party tonight. Want to come?"

Wil and the others looked up from their shoveling After three hours mucking around in the ash, they all looked pretty much the same. Black, white, Chinese, Indian, Aztlan - all were covered with gray ash.

The vision that confronted them was dressed in sparkling white. Her flying platform hovered just above the long pile of ash that the low-techs had pushed into the street. She was one of the Robinson daughters. Tammy? In any case, she looked like some twentieth-century fashion plate: blond, tan, seventeen, friendly.

Dilip Dasgupta grinned back at her. "We'd sure like to. But tonight? If we don't get this ash away from the houses before the Korolevs bobble up, we'll be stuck with it forever." Wil's back and arms were one big ache, but he had to agree. They had been doing this for two days, ever since the Korolevs announced tonight's departure. If they could get all the gray stuff pushed back from the houses before they bobbled up, it would be sluiced away by a thousand years of weather when they came back. Everyone on the street had pitched in, though with lots of grumbling-directed mostly at the Korolevs. The New Mexicans had even sent over some enlisted men with wheelbarrows and shovels. Wil wondered about that: he couldn't believe that someone like Fraley was really overcome by a spirit of cooperation. This was either honest helpfulness on the part of lower officers, or else a subtle effort to bring the other low-techs into the NM camp, future allies against the Korolevs and the Peacers.

The Robinson girl leaned on her platform, and it drifted closer to Dasgupta. She looked up and down the street, then spoke with an air of confidentiality. "My folks like Yel‚n and Marta a lot-really. But Daddy thinks they carry some things too far. You Early Birds are going to be at our level of tech in a few decades anyway. Why should you have to slave like this?"

She bit at a fingernail. "I really wish you could come to our party.... Hey! Why don't we do this: You keep working, say till about six. Maybe you can get it all cleaned by then, anyway. But if you can't, don't worry. My folks' robots can take care of what's left while you go get ready for the party." She smiled, then continued almost shyly. "Do you think that would be okay? Could you come then?"

Dilip looked at his brother Rohan, then replied, deadpan, "Why, uh, yes. With that backup, I think we could make it."

"Great! Now look. It's at our house starting around eight. So don't work past six, okay? And don't bother eating, either. We've got lots of food. The party'll go till the Witching Hour. That will leave you plenty of time to get home before the Korolevs bobble up."

Her flier drifted sideways and climbed beyond the trees that encircled the houses. "See you!" Twelve sweaty shovel pushers watched her departure in numbed silence.

A smile spread slowly across Dilip's wide face. He looked at his shovel, then rolled his eyes at the others. Finally he shouted, "Screw it!", threw the shovel to the ground, and jumped up and down on it.

This provoked a heartfelt cheer from the others, the NNI corporals included. In moments, the newly liberated workers had departed for their homes.

Only Brierson remained on the street, still looking in the direction taken by the Robinson girl. He felt as much curiosity as gratitude. Wil had done his best to know the high-techs: for all their idiosyncrasies, they'd seemed united behind the Korolevs. But no matter how friendly the disagreement, he saw now that they had factions, too. I wonder what the Robinsons are selling.

The public area of the Robinsons' place was friendlier than the Korolevs'. Incandescent lamps hung from oaken beams The teak dance floor opened onto a buffet room, an outdoor terrace, and a darkened theater where the hosts promised some extraordinary home movies later.

While guests were still arriving, the younger Robinson children ran noisily about the dance floor, dodging among the guests in a wild game of tag. They were tolerated, more than tolerated. They were the only children in the world.

In some sense, almost everyone present was an exile. Some had been shanghaied, some had jumped to escape punishment (deserved and otherwise), some (like the Dasguptas) thought that stepping out of time for a couple of centuries while their investments multiplied would make them rich. On the whole, their initial jumps had been short-into the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth centuries.

But somewhere in the twenty-third, the rest of humanity disappeared. The travelers coming out just after the Extinction found ruins. Some-the most frivolous, and the most hurried of the criminals-had brought nothing with them. These starved, or lived a few pitiful years in the decaying mausoleum that was Earth. The better-equipped ones-the New Mexicans, for example-had the means to return to stasis. They bobbled forward through the third millennium, praying to find civilization revived. All they found was a world sinking back to nature, Man's works vanishing beneath jungle and forest and sea.

Even these travelers could survive only a few years in realtime. They had no medical support, no way to maintain their machines or produce food. Their equipment would soon fail, leaving them stranded in the wilderness.

But a few, a very few, had left at the close of the twenty-second century-when technology gave individuals greater wealth than whole twentieth-century nations. These few could maintain and reproduce all but the most advanced of their tools. Most departed civilization with a deliberate spirit of adventure. They had the resources to save the less fortunate scattered through the centuries, the millennia, and finally the megayears that passed.

Except for the Robinsons, no one had children. That was something reserved for the future, when humankind's ghosts made one last try at reclaiming the race's existence. So the kids who played raucous tag across the dance floor were a greater wonder than any high-tech magic. When the Robinson daughters gathered up their younger siblings for bed, there was a moment of strange, sad silence.

Wil drifted through the buffet room, stopping here and there to talk with his new acquaintances. He was determined to know everyone eventually. Quite a goal: if successful, he would know every living member of the human race. The largest group-and for Wil the most difficult to know-were the New Mexicans Fraley himself was nowhere in sight, but most of his people were here. He spotted the corporals who had helped with the shoveling, and they introduced him to some others. Things were friendly till an NM officer joined the group.

Wil excused himself and moved slowly toward the dance floor. Most of the advanced travelers were at the party, and they were mingling. A crowd surrounded Juan Chanson. The archeologist was arguing his theory of the Extinction. "Invasion. Extermination. That's the beginning and the end of it." He spoke a clipped, rattling dialect of English that made his opinions seem even more impressive.

"But, Professor," someone-Rohan Dasgupta-objected, "my brother and I came out of stasis in 2465. That couldn't have been more than two centuries after the Extinction. Newer Delhi was in ruins. Many of the buildings had completely fallen in. But we saw no evidence of nuking or lasing."

"Sure. I agree. Not around Delhi. But you must realize, my boy, you saw a very small part of the picture, indeed. It's a great misfortune that most of those who returned right after the Extinction didn't have the means to study what they saw. I can show you pictures... LA a fifty-kilometer crater, Beijing a large lake. Even now, with the right equipment, you can find evidence of those blasts.

"I've spent centuries tracking down and interviewing the travelers who were alive in the late third millennium. Why, I even interviewed you." Chanson's eyes unfocused for a fraction of a second. Like most of the high-techs, he wore an interface band around his temples. A moment's thought could bring a flood of memory. "You and your brother. That was around 10000 AD, after the Korolevs rescued you-"

Dasgupta nodded eagerly. For him, it had been just weeks before. "Yes, they had moved us to Canada. I still don't know why-ø.

"Safety, my boy, safety. The Laurentian Shield is a stable place for long-term storage, almost as good as a cometary orbit." He waved his hand dismissingly. "The point is, I and a few other investigators have pieced together these separate bits of evidence. It is tricky; twenty-third-century civilization maintained vast databases, but the media had decayed to uselessness within a few decades of the Extinction. We have fewer contemporary records from the era than we do from the Mayans'. But there are enough... I can show you: my reconstruction of the Norcross invasion graffiti, the punched vanadium tape that W. W. Sanch‚z found on Charon. These are the death screams of the human race.

"Looking at the evidence, any reasonable person must agree the Extinction was the result of wholesale violence directed against populations that were somehow defenseless.

"Now, there are some who claim the human race simply killed itself, that we finally had the world-ending war people worried about in the twentieth century...." He glanced at Monica Raines. The pinch-faced artist smiled back sourly but didn't rise to the bait. Monica belonged to the "People Are No Damned Good" school of philosophy. The Extinction held no mysteries for her. After a moment, Chanson continued. "But if you really study the evidence, you'll see the traces of outside interference, you'll see that our race was murdered by something... from outside."

The woman next to Rohan gave a little gasp. "But these

.. these aliens. What became of them? Why, if they return -we're sitting ducks here!"

Wil stepped back from the fringes of the group and continued toward the dance floor. Behind him, he heard Juan Chanson's triumphant "Exactly! That is the practical point of my investigations. We must mount guard on the solar frontiers-" His words were lost in the background chatter. Wil shrugged to himself. Juan was one of the most approachable of the high-techs, and Wil had heard his spiel before. There was no question the Extinction was the central mystery of their lives. But rehashing the issue in casual conversation was like arguing theology-and depressing, to boot.

A dozen couples danced. On the stage, Alice Robinson and daughter Amy were running the music. Amy played something that looked like a guitar. Alice's instrument was a more conventional console. They improvised on a base of automatic music generators. Having two real humans out front, whose voices and hands were making part of the music, made the band exciting and real.

They played everything from Strauss waltzes, to the Beatles, to W. W. Arai. A couple of the Arai pieces Wil had never heard: they must have been written after his... departure. Partners changed from dance to dance. The Arai tunes brought more than thirty people onto the floor. Wil stayed at the edge of the floor, for the moment content to observe. On the other side, he saw Marta Korolev; her partner was not in evidence

Marta stood swaying, snapping her fingers to the music, a faint smile on her face. She looked a little like Virginia: her chocolate skin was almost the shade Wil remembered. No doubt Marta's father or mother came from America. But the other side of her family was clearly Chinese.

Appearance aside, there were other similarities. Marta had Virginia's outgoing good humor. She combined common sense with uncommon sympathy. Wil watched her for many minutes, trying not to seem to watch. Several of the bolder partiers -Dilip was first-asked her to dance. She accepted enthusiastically, and soon was on the floor for almost every tune. She was very good to watch. If only

A hand touched his shoulder and a feminine voice sounded in his ear. "Hey, Mr. Brierson, is it true you're a policeman?"

Wil looked into blue eyes just centimeters from his. Tammy Robinson stood on tiptoe to shout into his ear. Now that she had his attention, she stood down, which still left her a respectable 180 centimeters tall. She was dressed in the same spotless white as before. Her interface band looked like a bit of jewelry, holding back her long hair. Her grin was bounded by dimples: even her eyes seemed to be smiling.

Brierson grinned back. "Yes. At least, I used to be a cop."

"Oh, wow." She took his arm in hers and edged them away from the loudness. "I never met a policeman before. But 1 guess that's not saying a lot."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I was born about ten megayears after the Singularity -the Extinction, Juan calls it. I've read and watched all about

17 cops and criminals and soldiers, but till now I've never actually met any."

Wil laughed. "Well, now you can meet all three."

Tammy was abashed. "I'm sorry. I'm really not that igno-rant. I know that police are different from criminals and sol-diers. But it's so strange: they're all careers that can't even exist unless lots of people decide to live together."

Lots o f people. Like more than a single family. Brierson glimpsed the abyss that separated them.

"1 think you'll like having other people around, Tammy."

She smiled and squeezed his arm. "Daddy always says that. Now I'm beginning to understand."

"Just think. Before you're a hundred, Korolev Town will be almost like a city. There could be a couple of thousand people for you to know, people more interesting and worthwhile than criminals."

"Ugh. We're not going to stay for that. I want to be with lots of people-hundreds at least. But how could you stand to be locked in one little corner of time?" She looked at him, seemed suddenly to realize that Brierson's whole life had been stuck in a single century. "Gee. How can I explain it? Look- where you come from, there was air and space travel, right?" Brierson nodded. "You could go anywhere you wanted. Now, suppose instead you had to spend your life in a house in a deep valley. Sometimes you hear stories about other places, but you can never climb out of the valley. Wouldn't that drive you crazy?

"That's how I'd feel about making a permanent stop at Korolev. We've been stopped for six weeks now. That's not long compared to some of our stops, but it's long enough for me to get the feeling: The animals aren't changing. I look out and the mountains just sit there." She made a little sound of frustration. "Oh, I can't explain it. But you'll see some of what I mean tonight. Daddy's going to show the video we made. It's beautiful!"

Wil smiled. Bobbles didn't change the fact that time was a one-way trip.

She saw the denial in his eyes. "You must feel like I do. Just a little? I mean, why did you go into stasis in the first place?" He shook his head. "Tammy, there are lots of people here who never asked to be bobbled.... I was shanghaied." A crummy embezzlement case it had been. When he thought back, it was so fresh in his mind, in many ways more real than the world of the last few weeks. The assignment had seemed as safe as houses. The need for an armed investigator had been a formality, required by his company's archaic regs: the amount stolen was just over the ten thousand gAu. But someone had been desperate or careless... or just plain vicious. Most jurisdictions of Wil's era counted offensive bobbling of more than a century as manslaughter: Wil's stasis had lasted one thousand centuries. Of course, Wil did not consider the crime to be the murder of one W. W. Brierson. The crime was much more terrible than that. The crime was the destruction of the world he had known, the family he loved.

Tammy's eyes grew wide as he told his story. She tried to understand, but Wil thought there was more wonder than sympathy in her look. He stopped short, embarrassed.

He was trying to think of a suitable change of subject when he noticed the pale figure on the far side of the dance floor. It was the person he'd seen at the beach. "Tammy, who's that?" He nodded in the direction of the stranger.

Tammy pulled her gaze away from his face and looked across the room. "Oh! She's weird, isn't she? She's a spacer. Can you imagine? In fifty million years, she could travel all over the Galaxy. We think she's more than nine thousand years old..And all that time alone." Tammy shivered.

Nine thousand years. That would make her the oldest human Wil had ever seen. She certainly looked more human tonight than on the beach. For one thing, she wore more clothes: a blouse and skirt that were definitely feminine. Now her skull was covered with short black stubble. Her face was smooth and pale. Wil guessed that when her hair grew out, she might look like a normal young woman-Chinese, probably.

A half-meter of emptiness surrounded the spacer; elsewhere the crowd was packed close. Many clapped and sang; there was scarcely a person who could resist tapping a foot or nodding in time to the music. But the spacer stood quietly, almost motionless, her dark eyes staring impassively into the dancers. Occasionally her arm or leg would twitch, as if in some broken resonance with the tunes.

She seemed to sense Wil's gaze. She looked back at him, her eyes expressionless, analytical. This woman had seen more than the Robinsons, the Korolevs - more than all the high-techs put together. Was it his imagination that he suddenly felt like a bug on a slide? The woman's lips moved, the twitching motion lie remembered from the beach. Then it had seemed a coldly alien, almost insectile gesture. Now Wil had a flash of insight: after nine thousand years alone, nine thousand years on God knows how many worlds, would a person still remember the simple things-like how to smile?

"C'mon, Mr. Brierson, let's dance." Tammy Robinson's hand was insistent on his elbow.

Wil danced more that night than since he'd been dating Virginia. The Robinson kid just wouldn't quit. She didn't really lave more stamina than Brierson. He kept in condition and kept his bio-age around twenty; with his large frame and tendency to overweight he couldn't afford to be fashionably middle-aged. But Tammy had the enthusiasm of a seventeen-year-old. Paint her a different color and she reminded him of his daughter Anne: cuddly, bright, and just a bit predatory when it came to the males she wanted.

The music swept them round and round, taking Marta Korolev in and out of his view. Marta danced only a few times with any one partner and spent considerable time off the floor, talking. This evening would leave the Korolev reputation substantially mellowed. Later, when he saw her depart for the theater, he suppressed a sigh of relief. It had been a depressing little game, watching her and watching her, and all the time pretending not to.

The lights brightened and the music faded. "It's about an hour to midnight, folks," came Don Robinson's voice. "You're welcome to dance till the Witching Hour, but I've got some pictures and ideas I'd like to share with you. If you're interested, please step down the hall."

"That's the video I was telling you about. You've got to he what Daddy has to say." Tammy led him off the floor, eve though another song was starting. The music had lost some its vibrancy. Amy and Alice Robinson had left the bandstand The rest of the evening would be uninterpreted recordings

Behind them, the crowd around the dance floor was breaking up. There had been hints through the evening that this la entertainment would be the most spectacular. Almost everyone would be in the Robinsons' theater.

As they walked down the hall, the lights above them were dim. The theater itself was awash with blue light. A four-met: globe of Earth hung above the seats. It was an effect Wil had seen before, though never on this scale. Given several satellite t views it was possible to construct a holo of the entire planet and hang its blue-green perfection before the viewer. From the entrance to the theater, the world was in quarter phase, more ing just touching the Himalayas. Moonlight glinted faintly o the Indian Ocean. The continental outlines were the family ones from the Age of Man.

Yet there was something strange about the image. It too Wil a second to realize just what: There were no clouds.

He was about to walk around the globe to the seating when lie noticed two shadows beyond the dark side. It looked like Don Robinson and Marta Korolev. Wil paused, resisting Tammy's urging that they hurry to get the best seats. The roof was rapidly filling with partygoers, but Wil guessed he was the only one who had noticed Robinson and Korolev. There w, something strange here: Korolev's bearing was tense. Every few seconds she chopped at the air between them. The shadow that was Don Robinson stood motionless, even as Korolev became more excited. Wil had the impression of short, unsatisfactory replies being given to impassioned demands. Wil couldn't he the words; either they were behind a sound screen, or they weren't talking out loud. Finally Robinson turned and walks out of sight behind the globe. Marta followed, still gesturing

Even Tammy hadn't noticed. She led Brierson to the edge of the audience area and they sat. A minute passed. Wil saw Marta emerge from beyond the sunlit hemisphere and v , behind the audience to sit near the door.

Then there was music, just loud enough to still the audience. Tammy touched Wil's hand. "Oh. Here comes Daddy."

Don Robinson suddenly appeared by the sunside hemisphere. He cast no shadow on the globe, though both shone in the synthetic sunlight. "Good evening, everyone. I thought to end our party with this little light show-and a few ideas I'm hoping you'll think about." He held up his hand and grinned disarmingly. "I promise, mostly pictures!"

His image turned to pat the surface of the globe familiarly. "All but a lucky few of us began our journey down time unprepared. That first bobbling was an accident or was intended as a single jump to what we guessed would be a friendlier future civilization. Unfortunately-as we all discovered-there is no such civilization, and many of us were stranded." Robinson's voice was friendly, smooth, the tone traditionally associated with the selling of breakfast food or religion. It irritated Wil that Robinson said "we" and "us" even when he was speaking specifically of the low-tech travelers.

"Now, there were a few who were well equipped. Some of these have worked to rescue the stranded, to bring us all together where we can freely decide humanity's new course. My family, Juan Chanson, and others did what we could-but it was the Korolevs who had the resources to bring this off. Marta Korolev is here tonight." He waved generously in her direction. "I think Marta and Yel‚n deserve a big hand." There was polite applause.

He patted the globe again. "Don't worry. I'm getting to our friend here.... One problem with all this rescuing is that most of us have spent the last fifty million years in long-term stasis, waiting for all the `principals' to be gathered for this final debate. Fifty million years is a long time to be gone; a lot has happened.

"That's what I want to share with you tonight. Alice and the kids and I were among the fortunate. We have advanced bobblers and plenty of autonomous devices. We've been out of stasis hundreds of times. We've been able to live and grow along with the Earth. The pictures I'm going to show you tonight are t lie 'lion -is movies,' if you will, of our trip to the present.

"I'm going to start with the big picture-the Earth from space. The image you see here is really a composite-I've averaged out the cloud cover. It was recorded early in the fourth millennium, just after the Age of Man. This is our starting point.

"Let's begin the journey." Robinson vanished and they had an unobstructed view of the globe. Now Wil noticed a gray haze that seemed to waver around the polar ice cap. "We're moving forward about half a megayear per minute. The camera satellites were programmed to take pictures at the same local time every year. At this rate, even climate cycles are visible only as a softening of picture definition." The gray haze-it must be the edge of the Antarctic ice pack! Wil looked more carefully at Asia. There was a blurring, a fantastically rapid mottling of greens and tans. Droughts and wetness. Forest and jungle battling savanna and desert. In the north, white flickered like lightning. Suddenly the glaring whiteness flashed southwards. It surged and retreated, again, again. In less than a quarter of a minute it was gone back to the northern horizon. Except for shimmering whiteness in the Himalayas, the greens and tans lived once more across Asia. "We had a pretty good ice age there," Robinson explained. "It lasted more than one hundred thousand years.... We're beyond the immediate neighborhood of Man now. I'm going to speed us up... to five megayears per minute."

Wil glanced at Marta Korolev. She was watching the show, but her face held an uncharacteristic look of displeasure. Her hands were clenched into fists.

Tammy Robinson leaned from her seat to whisper, "This is where it really gets good, Mr. Brierson!"

Wil turned back to the display, but his attention was split between the view and the mystery of Marta's anger.

Five million years every minute. Glacier and desert and forest and jungle blended. One color or another might fleetingly dominate the pastel haze, but the overall impression was stable and soothing. Only now... only now the continents themselves were moving! A murmur passed around the room as the audience realized what they were seeing. Australia had moved north, sliding into the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Mountains puckered along the collision. This part of the world was near the sunrise line. Low sunlight cast the new mountains in relief.

There was sound, too. From the surface of the globe, Wil heard something that reminded him of wood surfaces squeaking wetly across each other. A sound like crumpling paper accompanied the birth of the Indonesian Alps. "Those noises are real, friends," said Don Robinson. "We kept a system of seismophones on the surface. What you're hearing are long-term averages of seismic action. It took thousands of major earthquakes to make every second of those sounds."

As he spoke, Australia and Indonesia merged, the combination continuing its slide northwards, turning slightly as it came. Already the form of the Inland Sea could be discerned. "No one predicted what happened next," continued Robinson's travelogue. "There! Notice the rift spreading through Kampuchea, breaking the Asian plate." A string of narrow lakes appeared across Southeast Asia. "In a moment, we'll see the new platelet reverse direction and ram back into China-to build the Kampuchean Alps."

From the corner of his eye, Brierson saw Marta heading for the door. What is going on here? He started to get up, found that Tammy's arm was still around his.

"Wait. Why are you going, Mr. Brierson?" she whispered, starting to get up.

"I've got to check on something, Tammy."

"But-" She seemed to realize that extended discussion would detract from her father's show. She sat down, looking puzzled and a little hurt.

"Sorry, Tam," Wil whispered. He headed for the door Behind him, continents crashed.

The Witching Hour. The time between midnight and the start of the next day. It was more like seventy-five minutes than an hour. Since the Age of Man, the Earth's rotation had slowed. Now, at fifty megayears, the day was a little over twenty-five hours long. Rather than change the definition of

-he second or the hour, the Korolevs had decreed (just another of their decrees) that the standard day should consist of twenty-four hours plus whatever time it took to complete one rotation. Yel‚n called the extra time the Fudge Factor. Everyone else ailed it the Witching Hour.

Wil walked through the Witching Hour, looking for some sign of Marta Korolev. He was still on the Robinson estate, that.vas obvious: as advanced travelers, the Robinsons had plenty of robots. Rescue-day ash had been meticulously cleaned from he stone seats, the fountains, the trees, even the ground. The.cent of almost-jacarandas floated in the cool night breeze.

Even without the tiny lights that floated along the paths, Wil could have found his way without difficulty. For the first time since the blow-off, the night was clear-well, not really clear, but he could see the moon. Its wan light was only faintly reddened by stratospheric ash. The old girl looked pretty much is she had in Wil's time, though the stains of industrial pollution were gone. Rohan Dasgupta claimed the moon was a little farther out now, that there would never again be a total eclipse of the sun. The difference was not enough for Wil to see.

The reddish silver light fell bright across the Robinsons' gardens, but Marta was nowhere in sight. Wil stopped, let his breath out, and listened. There were footsteps. He jogged in their direction and caught up with Korolev still inside the estate.

"Mama, wait." She had already stopped and turned to face film. Something dark and massive floated a few meters above her. Wil glanced at it and slowed to a walk. These autonomous devices still made him uneasy. They hadn't existed in his time. and no matter how often he was told they were safe, it was still unnerving to think of the firepower they controlled-independent of the direct commands of their masters. With her protector floating nearby, Marta was almost as safe as back in Castle Korolev.

Now that he'd caught up with her, he didn't know quite what to say. "What's the matter, Marta? I mean, is anything wrong?"

:fit first, he thought she would not answer. She stood with balled fists. The moonlight showed tear streaks on her face. She slumped and brought her hands up to her temples. "That b-bastard Robinson. That slimy bastard!" The words were choked.

Wil stepped closer. The protection device moved forward, keeping him in clear view. "What happened?"

"You want to know? I'll tell you... but let's sit down. I-I don't think I can stand much longer. I'm s-so mad. " She walked to a nearby bench and sat. Wil lowered his bulk beside her, then started. To the hand, the bench felt like stone, but it yielded to main body weight like a cushion.

Marta put a hand on his arm, and for an instant he thought she might touch her head to his shoulder. The world was a very empty place now, and Marta reminded him so much of things lost.... But coming between the Korolevs was probably the single most boorish, the single most dangerous, thing he could do. Wil said abruptly, "This may not be the best place to talk." He waved at the fountain and the carefully tended trees. "I'll bet the Robinsons monitor the whole estate."

"Hah! We're screened." Marta moved her hand from his arm. "Besides, Don knows what I think of him.

"All these years, they've pretended to support our plan. We helped them, gave them factory designs that didn't exist when they left civilization. All the time, they were just waiting-taking their pretty pictures-while we did all the work, bringing what was left of the human race to one place and time

"And now that we have everyone together, now that we need everyone's cooperation, now they start sweet-talking people away from us. Well, I'll tell you, Wil. Our settlement is humankind's last chance. I'll do anything, anything, to protect it." Marta had always seemed so cheerful, optimistic. That made her fury even more striking. But the one did not make hypocrisy of the other. Marta was like a mother cat, suddenly ferocious and deadly in protecting her kittens.

"So the Robinsons want to break up the town? Do they want their own colony?"

Marta nodded. "But not like you think. Those lunatics want to continue down time, sightseeing their way into eternity. Robinson figures if he can persuade most of us to come along, he'll have a stable system. He calls it a `timelike urbanization.' For the next few billion years, his colony would spend about a month per megayear outside of stasis. As the sun goes old main sequence, they'll move into space and bobble through longer and longer jumps. He literally wants to follow the evolution of the whole goddamned universe!"

Brierson remembered Tammy Robinson's impatience with living at the same rate as the universe. She'd been campaigning for the scheme her father must now be selling to the audience back in the theater.

Wil shook his head and chuckled. "Sorry. I'm not laughing at you, Marta. It's just that compared to the things you should be worrying about, this is ludicrous.

"Look. Most of the low-techs are like me. It's been only weeks of objective time since I left civilization. Even the New Mexicans spent only a few years in realtime before you rescued them. We haven't lived centuries `on the road' like you advanced types. We're still hurting. More than anything, w c want to stop and rebuild."

"But Robinson is so slick."

"He's so slick you can scrape the grease off. You've been away from that kind for a long, long time. Back in civilization, we were exposed to sales pressure almost every day.... There's only one lever he has, and that's something you should be worrying about in any case."

Marta smiled wanly. "Yel‚n and I worry about so many things, Wil. You have something new for us?"

"Maybe." Wil was silent for a moment. The fountain across from their bench burbled loud. There were soft hooting sounds in trees. He hadn't expected this opportunity. Until now the Korolevs had been approachable enough, but they didn't seem to listen. "We're all grateful to you and Yel‚n. You saved u from death-or at least from life alone in an empty world. We have a chance to start the human race again.... But at the same time, a lot of low-techs resent you advanced travelers in your castles above town. They resent the fact that you make all the decisions, that you decide what you will share and what we will work at."

"I know. We haven't explained things very well. We seem omnipotent. But don't you see, Wil? We high-techs are a few people from around 2200 who brought our era's version of good-quality camping and survival gear. Sure, we can make most any consumer product of your time. But we can't reproduce the most advanced of our own devices. When those finally break, we'll be as helpless as you."

"I thought your autons were good for hundreds of years."

"Sure, if we use them for ourselves alone. Supporting an army of low-techs cuts us down to less than a century. We need each other, Wil. Apart, both groups face dead ends. Together, we have a chance. We can supply you with databases, equipment, and a good approximation to a twenty-first-century standard of living-for a few decades. As our support decays, you provide the human hands and minds and ingenuity to fill the gaps. If we can get a high birth rate, and build a twenty-first-century infrastructure, we may pull this out."

"Willing hands? Like the ash shoveling we've had to do?" He didn't mean the question to sound nasty, but it came out that way.

She touched his arm again. "No, Wil. That was dumb of us. Arrogant." She paused, her eyes searching his.

"Have you ever been ramjetting, Wil?"

"Huh? Uh, no." In general, Wil didn't go looking for trouble.

"But it was a big sport in your time, wasn't it? Sort of like hang gliding, but a lot more exciting-especially for the purists who didn't carry bobblers. Our situation reminds me of a typical ramjet catastrophe: You're twenty thousand meters up, ramming along. All of a sudden your jet flames out. It's au interesting problem. Those little rigs didn't mass more than a few hundred kilos; they didn't carry turbines. So all you can do is dive hell down. If you can get your airspeed above Mach one, you can usually relight the ram; if not, you make a nice crater.

"Well, we're sitting pretty right now. But the underlying civilization has flamed out. We have a long way to fall. Counting the Peacers, there will be almost three hundred low-techs. With your help we ought to be able to relight at some decent level of technology-say twentieth or twenty-first century. If we can, we'll quickly climb back. If we can't, if we fall to a pre-machine age when our autons fail... we'll be just too primitive and too few to survive. So. The ash shoveling was unnecessary. But I can't disguise the fact that there will be hard times, terribly hard work."

She looked down. "I know you've heard most of this before, Wil. It's a hard package to sell, isn't it? But I thought I would have more time. I thought I could convince most of you of our goodwill.... I never counted on Don Robinson and his slick promises and good-fellowship."

Marta looked so forlorn. He reached out to pat her shoulder. \o doubt Robinson had plans similar to the Korolevs', plans that would remain secret until the low-techs were safely suckered into his family's journey. "I think that most of us low-techs will see through Robinson. If you make it clear where his promises must be lies. If you can come down from the castle. Concentrate on Fraley; if Robinson convinces him, you might lose the New Mexicans. Fraley isn't dumb, but he is rigid and he lets his anger run away with him. He really does hate the Peacers." Almost as much as he hates me.

Half a minute passed. Marta gave a short, bitter laugh. "So many enemies. The Korolevs hate the Robinsons, the NMs hate the Peacers, almost everybody hates the Korolevs."

"And Monica Raines hates all mankind."

This time her laugh was lighter. "Yes. Poor Monica." Mama leaned toward him and this time really did rest her head against leis shoulder. Wil's arm slipped automatically across her back. She sighed. "We're two hundred people, just about all that's left. And I swear we have more jealousy and scheming than twentieth-century Asia."

They sat in silence, her head against him, his hand resting lightly against her back. He felt the tension slowly leave her body. For Wil it was different. Oh, Virginia, what to do? Marta felt so good. It would be so easy to caress that back, to slide his hand down to her waist. Most likely there'd be a moment of embarrassed backing away. But if she responded... If she responded, they'd be adding one more set of jealousies to the brew.

So Wil's hand did not move. In later times, he often wondered if things might have gone differently had he not chosen the path of sanity and caution.

He thought wildly for a moment, finally discovered a topic that was sure to break the mood. "You know I'm one of the shanghaied ones, Manta."

"Mm-hmm."

"The crime is a strange one, bobbling someone into the far future. It may be murder, but the court can't know for sure. In my time, most jurisdictions had a special punishment for it."

Silence.

"They'd bobble survival equipment and the trial record next to the victim. Then they'd take the bastard who created the problem and bobble him too-so he'd come out of stasis just after the victim...."

The spell was broken. Manta pulled slowly back. She could tell what was coming. "Sometimes the courts couldn't know the duration."

Wil nodded. "In my case, I'll bet the duration was known. And I'll bet even more that there was a conviction. There were only three suspects; I was closing in on that damn embezzler. That's why he panicked."

He paused. "Did you rescue him, Manta? Did you rescue the... person... who did this to me?"

She shook her head. Her openness deserted her when she had to lie.

"You've got to tell me, Manta. I don't need revenge"- perhaps a small lie there-"but I do need to know."

She shook her head again but this time replied. "We can't, Wil. We need everyone. Can't you see that all such crimes arc meaningless now?"

"For my own protection-"

She got up, and after a second Wil did, too.

"No. We've given him a new face and a new name. He has no motive for harming you now, and we've warned him what we'll do if he tries."

Brierson shrugged.

"Hey, Wil, have I made myself another enemy?"

"N-no. I could never be your enemy. And I want the settlement to succeed as much as you and Yel‚n."

"I know." She raised her hand in a half-wave. "G'night. Wil."

"Good night."

She walked into the darkness, her robot protector floating close above her shoulder.