Across Realtime

THIRTEEN

Something flashed in the air above Wil, and his legs went numb. He went down, just short of where the Kid had been standing. Even as the breath smashed out of him, he was trying to get back to his knees. It was no good. He snorted blood, and rational thought resumed. Someone had stungunned him.

Around him there was shouting and people were still backing away, unsure if his berserker charge might continue. The game had broken off; the glowball's light was steady and unmoving. Wil touched his nose; bloodied but unbroken.

When he twisted back onto his elbows, the babble quieted.

Steve Fraley walked toward him, a wide grin on his face. "My, my, Inspector. Getting a little carried away, aren't you? I thought you were cooler than that. You, of all people, should know that we can't support the old grudges." As he got closer, Wil had to strain to look up at his face. Wil gave up and lowered his head. Beyond the NM President, at the limit of the glowball's illumination, he saw the Kid puking on the grass.

Fraley stepped close to the fallen Brierson, his sport shoes filling most of the near view. Wil wondered what it would be like to get one of those shoes in the face-and somehow he was sure that Steve was wondering the same thing.

"President Fraley." Yel‚n's voice spoke from somewhere above. "I certainly agree with you about grudges."

"Um, yes." Fraley retreated a couple of steps. When he spoke, it sounded as if he were looking upwards. "Thanks for stunning him, Ms. Korolev. Perhaps it's for the best that this happened. I think it's time you realized who you can trust to behave responsibly-and who you cannot."

Yel‚n did not reply. Several seconds passed. There was quiet conversation around him. He heard footsteps approach, then Tun‡ Blumenthal's voice. "We just want to move him away from the crowd, Yel‚n, give him a chance to get his legs back. Okay?"

"Okay."

Blumenthal helped Wil roll onto his back, then picked him up under the shoulders. Looking around, Wil saw that Rohan Dasgupta had grabbed his legs. But all Wil could feel was Blumenthal's hands; his legs were still dead meat. The two lugged him away from the light and the crowd. It was a struggle or the slender Rohan. Every few steps, Wil's rear dragged on the ground, a noise without sensation.

Finally, it was dark all around. They set him down, his back against a large boulder. The courts and bonfires were pools of light clustered below them. Blumenthal sat on his heels beside Wil. "Soon as you feel a tingling in those legs, I suggest you try walking, Wil Brierson. You'll have less an ache that way."

Wil nodded. It was the usual advice to stungun victims, at least when the heart wasn't involved.

"My God, Wil, what happened?" Curiosity struggled with embarrassment in Rohan's voice.

Brierson took a deep breath; the embers of his rage still glowed. "You've never seen me blow my stack, is that it, Rohan?" The world was so empty. Everybody he'd cared about was gone... and in their place was an anger he had never known. Wil shook his head. He'd never realized what an uncomfortable thing continuing anger could be.

They sat in silence a minute more. Pins-and-needles prickling started up Wil's feet. He'd never known a stun to wear off so quickly; another high-tech improvement, no doubt. He rolled onto his knees. "Let's see if I can walk." He climbed to his feet, using Dasgupta and Blumenthal as crutches.

"There's a path over here," said Blumenthal. "Just keep walking and it'll get easier."

They tottered off. The path turned downwards, leaving the picnic grounds behind the crest of a hill. The shouts and laughter faded, and soon the loudest sounds were the insects. There was a sweetish smell-flowers?-that he'd never noticed around Town Korolev. The air was cool, downright cold on those parts of his legs that had regained sensation.

At first, Wil had to put all his weight on Blumenthal and Dasgupta. His legs seemed scarcely more than stumps, his knees now locking, now bending loose with no effective coordination. After fifty meters his feet could feel the pebbles in the path and he was doing at least part of the navigating.

The night was clear and moonless. Somehow the stars alone were enough to see by-or maybe it was the Milky Way? Wil looked into the sky ahead of them. The pale light was strangely bright. It climbed out of the east, a broad band that narrowed and faded halfway up the sky. East? Could the megayears change even that? Wil almost stumbled, felt the others' grasp tighten. He looked higher, saw the real Milky Way slicing down from another direction.

Blumenthal chuckled. "There wasn't much going on at the Lagrange zones in your time, was there?"

"There were habitats at L4 and L5. They were easy to see, like bright stars," nothing like this stardust haze.

"Put enough stuff in Luna's orbit and you'll see more than just a few new stars. In my time, millions lived there. All Earth's heavy industry was there. Things were getting crowded. There's only so much thermal and chemical pollution you can dump before your factories begin to poison themselves."

Now Wil remembered things Marta and Yel‚n had said. "But it's mainly bobbles there now."

"Yes. This light isn't caused by factories and civilization. Third-body perturbations have long since flushed the original artifacts. Now it's a handy place for short-term storage, or to park observing equipment."

Wil stared at the pale glow. He wondered how many thousands of bobbles it took to make such a light. He knew Yel‚n still had much of her equipment off Earth. How many millions of tonnes were in "short-term storage" out there? For that matter, how many travelers were still in stasis, ignoring all the messages the Korolevs had laid down across the megayears? The light was ghostly in more ways than one.

They went another couple of hundred meters eastwards. Gradually Wil's coordination returned, till he was walking without help and only an occasional wobble. His eyes were fully dark-adapted now. Light-colored flowers floated in the bushes to the side of the path, and when they nodded close the sweetish smell came stronger. He wondered if the path was natural or a piece of Korolev landscaping. He risked his balance by looking straight up. Sure enough, there was something dark against the stars. Yel‚n's auton-and probably Della's, too was still with them.

The path meandered southwards, to the naked rock that edged the cliffs. From below came a faint sighing, the occasional slap of water against rock. It could have been Lake Michigan on a quiet night. Now for some mosquitoes to make him feel truly at home.

Blumenthal broke the long silence. "You were one of my childhood heroes, Wil Brierson." There was a smile in his voice.

"What?"

"Yes. You and Sherlock Holmes. I read every novel your son wrote."

Billy wrote... about me? GreenInc had said Billy's second career was as a novelist, but Wil hadn't had time to look at his writing.

"The adventures were fiction, even though you were the hero. He wrote 'em under the assumption that Derek Lindemann hadn't bumped you off. There were almost thirty novels; you had adventures all through the twenty-second."

"Derek Lindemann?" Dasgupta said. "Who... Oh, I see.

Wil nodded. "Yeah, Rohan." Wimpy Derek Lindemann... the Kid. "The guy I tried to kill just now." But for a moment his anger seemed irrelevant. Wil smiled sadly in the darkness. To think that Billy had created a synthetic life for the one that had been ended. By God, he was going to read those novels!

He glanced at the high-tech. "Glad you enjoyed my adventures, Tun‡. I assume you grew out of it. From what I hear, you were in construction."

"True and true. But had I wished to be a policeman, it would've been hard. By the late twenty-second, most habitats had fewer than one cop per million population. It was even worse in rural areas. A deplorable scarcity of crime, it was." Wil smiled. Blumenthal's accent was strange-almost singsong, a cross between Scottish and Amerasian. None of the other high-techs talked like this. In Wil's time, English dialect differences had been damping out; communication and travel were so fast in the Earth-Luna volume. Blumenthal had grown up in space, several days' travel time from the heartland.

"Besides, I wanted more to build things than to protect folks. At the beginning of the twenty-third, the world was changing faster than you can imagine. I'll wager there was more technical change in the first decade of the twenty-third than in all the centuries to the twenty-second. Have you noticed the differences among the advanced travelers? Monica Raines left civilization in 2195; no matter what she claims now, she bought the best equipment available. Juan Chanson left ill 2200-with a much smaller investment. Yet Juan's gear is superior in every way. His autons have spent several thousand years in realtime, and are good for at least as much more. Monica has survived sixty years and has only one surviving auton. The difference was five years' progress in sport and camping equipment. The Korolevs left a year after Chanson. They bought an immense amount of equipment, yet for about the same investment as Chanson; a single year had depreciated the 2200 models that far. Juan, Yel‚n, Genet-they're aware of this. But I don't think any of them understand what nine more years of progress could bring.... You know I'm the last one out?"

Wil had read that in Yel‚n's summaries. The difference hadn't seemed terribly important. "You bobbled out in 2210?"

"True. Della Lu was latest before me, in 2202. We've never found anyone who lived closer to the Singularity."

Rohan said softly, "You should be the most powerful of all."

"Should be, perhaps. But the fact is, I'm not one of the willing travelers. I was more than happy to live when I was. 1 never had the least inclination to hop into the future, to start a new religion or break the stock market.... I'm sorry, Rohan Dasgupta, I-"

"It's okay. My brother and I were a little too greedy. We thought `What can go wrong? Our investments seem safe; after a century or two, they should make us very rich. And if they don't, well, the standard of living will be so high, even being poor we'll live better than the rich do now.' " Rohan sighed. "We bet on the progress you speak of. We didn't count on coming back to jungles and ruins and a world without people." They walked several paces in silence. Finally Rohan's curiosity got the better of him. "You were shanghaied, then. like Wil?"

"I... don't think so; since no one lived after me, it's impossible to know for sure. I was in heavy construction, and accidents happen.... How's the legs, Wil Brierson?"

"What?" The sudden change of topic took Wil by surprise "Fine now." There were still pins and needles, but he had no trouble with coordination.

"Then let's start back, okay?"

They walked away from the cliffs, past the sweet blossoms The campfires were invisible behind several ridgelines; they had come almost a thousand meters. They walked most of the way back with scarcely a word. Even Rohan was silent.

Wil's rage had cooled, leaving only ashes, sadness. He wondered what would happen the next time he saw Derek Lindemann. He remembered the abject terror on Lindemann's face. The disguise had been a good one. If Phil Genet hadn't pointed Wil right at the Kid, it might have been weeks before he nailed him. Lindemann had been seventeen, a gawky Anglo-, now he looked fifty, a somewhat pudgy Asian. Clearly there had been cosmetic surgery. As for his age.. , well, when Yel‚n and Marta decided to do something, they could be brutally direct. Somewhere in the millions of years that Wil and the others spent bobbled, Derek Lindemann had lived thirty years of realtime without medical support. Perhaps the Korolevs had been out of stasis then, perhaps not; the autons that attended their bobble farm on the Canadian Shield would have been competent to provide for him. Thirty years the Kid lived essentially alone. Thirty years inward turning. The Lindemann that Wil knew had been a wimp. No doubt his embezzling was petty revenge against his relatives in the company. No doubt he bobbled Brierson out of naive panic. And for thirty years the Kid had lived with the fear that one day W. W. Brierson would recognize him.

"Thanks for... talking to me. I-I'm not usually like this." That was true, and perhaps the most unnerving part of the whole day. In thirty years of police work, he'd never blown up. Perhaps that wasn't surprising; knocking customers around was a quick way to get fired. But in Wil's case, being cool had come easy. He was truly the low-pressure type he seemed. How often he had been the calm one who talked others down from the high ledges of panic and rage. He'd never been the kind who went from anger to anger. In the last weeks, all that had changed, yet... "You've both lost as much as I, haven't you?" He thought back to all the people he had talked to this afternoon, and shame replaced his embarrassment. Maybe of W. W. Brierson had always been unflappable because he never had any real problems. When the crunch came, he was the weakest of all.

"It's okay," Blumenthal said. "There have been fights before. Some people are hurting more than others. And for each of us, some days are worse than others."

"Besides, you're special, Wil," said Rohan.

"Hub?"

"The rest of us have our hands full rebuilding civilization.

Korolev is giving us enormous amounts of equipment. It needs lots of supervision; there's not enough automatic stuff to go around. We're working as hard as anyone in the twentieth century. I think most of the high-techs are, too. I know Tun‡ is.

"But you, Wil, what is your job? You work just as hard as any of us-but doing what? Trying to figure out who killed Marta. I'll bet that's fun. You have to spend all your time, off by yourself, thinking about things that have been lost. Even the laziest low-tech isn't in that bind. If someone wanted to drive you crazy, they couldn't have invented a better job for you."

Wil found himself smiling. He remembered the times Rohan had tried to get him to these picnics. "Your prescrip- tion?" he asked lightly.

"Well..." Rohan was suddenly diffident. "You could get off the case. But I hope you won't. We all want to know what happened to Marta. I liked her the most of all the high-techs..end her murder might be part of something that could kill the rest of us.... I think the important thing is that you realize what the problem is. You're not falling apart. You're just under more pressure than most of us.

"Also, there's no point in working on it all the time, is there? I'll bet you spend hours staring into blind alleys. Spend more time with the rest of humanity. Ha! You might even find some clues here!"

Wil thought back over the last two hours. On Rohan's last point there was no possible disagreement.