Hawksbill Station

IX

In the darkness, Hahn did not notice Barrett at first. He sat up slowly, shaking off the stunning effects of a trip through time. After a few seconds he pushed himself toward the lip of the Anvil and let his legs dangle over it. He swung them to get the circulation going. He took a series of deep breaths. Finally he slipped to the floor. The glow of the field had gone out in the moment of his arrival, and so he moved warily, as though not wanting to bump into anything.

Abruptly Barrett switched on the light and said, “What have you been up to, Hahn?”

The younger man recoiled as though he had been jabbed in the gut. He gasped, hopped backward a few steps, and flung up both hands in a defensive gesture.

“Answer me,” Barrett said.

Hahn regained his equilibrium. He shot a quick glance past Barrett’s bulky form toward the hallway and said, “Let me go, will you? I can’t explain now.”

“You’d better explain now.”

“It’s easier for everyone if I don’t,” said Hahn. “Let me pass.”

Barrett continued to block the door. “I want to know where you’ve been. What have you been doing with the Hammer?”

“Nothing. Just studying it.”

“You weren’t in this room a minute ago. Then you appeared. Where’d you come from, Hahn?”

“You’re mistaken. I was standing right behind the Hammer. I didn’t—”

“I saw you drop down on the Anvil. You took a time trip, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me! You’ve got some way of going forward in time, isn’t that so? You’ve been spying on us, and you just went somewhere to file your report—somewhen —and now you’re back.”

Hahn’s forehead was glistening. He said, “I warn you, don’t ask too many questions. You’ll know everything in due time. This isn’t the time. Please, now. Let me pass.”

“I want answers first,” Barrett said. He realized that he was trembling. He already knew the answers, and they were answers that shook him to the core of his soul. He knew where Hahn had been.

Hahn said nothing. He took a few hesitant steps toward Barrett, who did not move. He seemed to be gathering momentum for a rush at the doorway.

Barrett said, “You aren’t getting out of here until you tell me what I want to know.”

Hahn charged.

Barrett planted himself squarely, crutch braced against the doorframe, his good leg flat on the floor, and waited for the younger man to reach him. He figured he outweighed Hahn by eighty pounds. That might be enough to balance the fact that he was spotting Hahn thirty years and one leg. They came together, and Barrett drove his hands down onto Hahn’s shoulder’s, trying to hold him, to force him back into the room.

Hahn gave an inch or two. He looked up at Barrett without speaking and pushed forward again.

“Don’t—don’t—” Barrett grunted. “I won’t let you—”

“I don’t want to do this,” Hahn said.

He pushed again. Barrett felt himself buckling under the impact. He dug his hands as hard as he could into Hahn’s shoulders and tried to shove the other man backward into the room, but Hahn held firm, and all of Barrett’s energy was converted into a thrust rebounding on himself. He lost control of his crutch, and it slithered out from under his arm. For one agonizing moment Barrett’s full weight rested on the crushed uselessness of his left foot, and then, as though his limbs were melting away beneath him, he began to sink toward the floor. He landed with a reverberating crash.

Quesada, Altman and Latimer came rushing in. Barrett writhed in pain on the floor. Hahn stood over him, looking unhappy, his hands locked together.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have tried to muscle me like that.”

Barrett glowered at him. “You were traveling in time, weren’t you? You can answer me now!”

“Yes,” Hahn said at last. “I went Up Front.”

An hour later, after Quesada had pumped him with enough neural depressants to keep him from jumping out of his skin, Barrett got the full story. Hahn hadn’t wanted to reveal it so soon, but he had changed his mind after his little scuffle.

It was all very simple. Time travel now worked in both directions. The glib, impressive noises about the flow of entropy had turned out to be just noises.

“How long has this been known?” Barrett asked.

“At least five years. We aren’t sure yet exactly when the breakthrough came. After we’re finished going through all the suppressed records of the former government—”

“The former government?”

Hahn nodded. “The revolution came in January. Not really a violent one, either. The syndicalists just mildewed from within, and when they got the first push they fell over.”

“Was it mildew?” Barrett asked, coloring. “Or termites? Keep your metaphors straight.”

Hahn glanced away. “Anyway, the government fell, We’ve got a provisional liberal regime in office now. Don’t ask me much about it. I’m not a political theorist. I’m not even an economist. You guessed as much.”

“What are you, then?”

“A policeman,” Hahn said. “Part of the commission that’s investigating the prison system of the former government. Including this prison.”

Barrett looked at Quesada, then at Hahn. Thoughts were streaming turbulently through him, and he could not remember when he had last been so overwhelmed by events. He had to work hard to keep from breaking into the shakes again. His voice quavered a little as he said, “You came back to observe Hawksbill Station, right? And you went Up Front tonight to tell them what you saw here. You think we’re a pretty sad bunch, eh?”

“You’ve all been under heavy stress here,” Hahn said. “Considering the circumstances of your imprisonment—”

Quesada broke in. “If there’s a liberal government in power now and it’s possible to travel both ways in time, then am I right in assuming that the Hawksbill prisoners are going to be sent Up Front?”

“Of course,” said Hahn. “It’ll be done as soon as possible. That’s been the whole purpose of my reconnaissance mission. To find out if you people were still alive, • first, and then to see what shape you’re in, how badly in need of treatment you are. You’ll be given every available benefit of modern therapy, naturally. No expense spared—”

Barrett scarcely paid attention to Hahn’s words. He had been fearing something like this all night, ever since Altman had told him Hahn was monkeying with the Hammer, but he had never fully allowed himself to believe that it could really be possible.

He saw his kingdom crumbling.

He saw himself returned to a world he could not begin to comprehend—a lame Rip Van Winkle, coming back after twenty years.

He saw himself leaving a place that had become his home.

Barrett said tiredly, “You know, some of the men aren’t going to be able to adapt to the shock of freedom. It might just kill them to be dumped into the real world again. I mean the advanced psychos—Valdosto, and such.”

“Yes,” Hahn said. “I’ve mentioned them in my report.”

“It’ll be necessary to get them ready for a return in gradual stages. It might take several years to condition them to the idea. It might even take longer than that.”

“I’m no therapist,” said Hahn. “Whatever the doctors think is right for them is what’ll be done. Maybe it will be necessary to keep them here. I can see where it would be pretty potent to send them back, after they’ve spent all these years believing there’s no return.”

“More than that,” said Barrett. “There’s a lot of work that can be done here. Scientific work. Exploration. I don’t think Hawksbill Station ought to be closed down.”

“No one said it would be. We have every intention of keeping it going, but not as a prison.”

“Good,” Barrett said. He fumbled for his crutch, found it and got heavily to his feet. Quesada moved toward him as though to steady him, but Barrett shook him off. “Let’s go outside,” he said.

They left the building. A gray mist had come in over the Station, and a fine drizzle had begun to fall. Barrett looked around at the scattering of huts. At the ocean, dimly visible to the east in the faint moonlight. He thought of Charley Norton and the party that had gone on the annual expedition to the Inland Sea. That bunch was going to be in for a real surprise, when they got back here in a few weeks and discovered that everybody was free to go home.

Very strangely, Barrett felt a sudden pressure forming around his eyelids, as of tears trying to force their way out into the open.

He turned to Hahn and Quesada. In a low voice he said, “Have you followed what I’ve been trying to tell you? Someone’s got to stay here and ease the transition for the sick men who won’t be able to stand the shock of return. Someone’s got to keep the base running. Someone’s got to explain to the new men who’ll be coming back here, the scientists.”

“Naturally,” Hahn said.

“The one who does that—the one who stays behind—I think it ought to be someone who knows the Station well, someone who’s fit to return Up Front, but who’s willing to make the sacrifice and stay. Do you follow me? A volunteer.” They were smiling at him now. Barrett wondered if there might not be something patronizing about those smiles. He wondered if he might not be a little too transparent. To hell with both of them, he thought. He sucked the Cambrian air into his lungs until his chest swelled, grandly.

“I’m offering to stay,” Barrett said loudly. He glared at them to keep them from objecting. But they wouldn’t dare object, he knew. In Hawksbill Station, he was the king. And he meant to keep it that way. “I’ll be the volunteer,” he said. “I’ll be the one who stays.”

He looked out over his kingdom from the top of the hill.