Time Storm

15

They tell me that, after a while, I came to and gave everybody, including Porniarsk, orders to pack up and move on; and I kept the avatar and all of us moving steadily for the better part of the next three weeks. Just moving, not stopping to investigate what was beyond the mistwall, or in any of the buildings or communities we passed. Pushing forward, as if I was on a trek to some far distant land of great promise.

Moments of that trek, I dimly remember. But only moments. I was too full of the end result of all the speculations I had been making about the time storm—now paying off all at once. I did have flashes of awareness of what I was doing, and of what was going on around me. But it was all background, unimportant scenery, for the real place I was in and the real thing I was doing, which was The Dream.

In The Dream I was the equivalent of a spider. I say “the equivalent of,” because I was still myself; I was just operating like a spider. If that doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do by way of explanation. As description, it hardly makes sense to me either; but I’ve never found another way to describe what that particular brain-hurricane was like.

In The Dream, then, I was spider-like; and I was clambering furiously and endlessly about a confusion of strands that stretched from one end of infinity to the other. The strands had a pattern, though it would have taken someone infinite in size to stand back enough to perceive it as a whole. Still, in a way I can’t describe, I was aware of that pattern. My work was with it; and that work filled me with such a wild, terrible and singing joy that it was only a hairline away from being an agony. The joy of working with the pattern, of handling it, sent me scrambling inconceivable distances, at unimaginable speeds, across the strands that filled the universe, with every ounce of strength, every brain cell engaged in what I was doing, every nerve stretched to the breaking-point. It was a berserk explosion of energy that did not care if it destroyed its source, that was myself, as long as things were done to the pattern that needed doing; and somehow this was all associated with my memories of my first determination to put my brand on the world about me; so that the energy sprang from deep sources within me.

Actually, what I was experiencing was beyond ordinary description. The pattern was nameless. My work with it was outside definitions. But at the same time, I knew inside me that it was the most important work that ever had been and ever would be. It carried an adrenalin-like drunkenness that was far beyond any familiar self-intoxication. People talk, or used to talk, about drug highs. This high was not a matter of chemistry but of physics. Every molecule of my body was charged and set vibrating in resonance with the pattern and the work I was doing upon it.

Meanwhile, I continued, with some detached part of my consciousness, to lead and direct my small band of pilgrims; effectively enough, at least, so that they did not depose me as a madman and set up some new leader in my place. Not—as I found out later—that they did not all notice a difference in me and individually react to, or use, that difference to their own purposes. When I returned wholly to myself, I found that a number of things were changed.

It may have been sheer accident that I was able to return at all, but I don’t think so. I think I was ready to back off from the pattern, at least for a while; and what triggered my return was only a coincidence, or the first summons able to reach over the long distance to that part of me that was out there on the web-strands of the universe.

It was Sunday—I almost said, “of course”—who brought me back. Apparently, he had been sticking to me like a paid attendant all through this three week period. I would guess he had sensed enough of the fact that a major part of my mind was missing, to make him worried. Most of the time I must have paid him no attention. But during my brief flashes of awareness of those about me, I remember being annoyed by the fact that I was literally tripping over him every time I turned around.

In this instance, I was momentarily partway back in my full senses, and I had deliberately left the others, gone off out of sight and sound of the others to find a place where I could sit on a rock and be alone for a bit. Sunday had followed me; and he pushed himself on me, after I was seated, almost crawling into my lap. I shouted at him to go away; and in exasperation, when he paid no attention, I cuffed at him with my open hand.

It was not a hard blow. I had never hit Sunday hard; but sometimes, swinging at him was the only way to get across the idea that I was serious about what I wanted. Still, as I struck at him, that little part of my mind that was back, apart from the pattern, was beginning to feel a twinge of guilt for hitting him. Only, abruptly, that guilt was lost in a much deeper feeling of shock, and suddenly, I was stone-cold sober, free of the web-pattern for the first time in three weeks.

Because I missed him. My hand swung through nothing but empty air, and I almost fell off the stone.

Sunday had dodged—and that was all wrong. I don’t mean wrong, physically, of course. Naturally, his cat reflexes made my human ones look silly. If he had wished, at any time in all the while we had been together, he could have seen to it that no finger of mine ever came close to him. But he never had. He had never dodged before. It was one of the effects of the time storm upon him. When I would lose my temper and slap him, he only closed his eyes, flattened his ears, and crouched down like a kitten before an annoyed mama leopard.

But this time, he had dodged. And he sat now, just out of arms’ length, gazing at me with an expression that, for the first time in our months of being together, I could not read.

“Sunday?” I said wonderingly.

He came to me then, with a bound, pushing against me, licking at my hands and face and purring like a motorboat. Just as he evidently had known I was gone, now he knew I was back. Indeed, indeed I was back—and it was wonderful from my point of view as well. I hugged the old son of a bitch and came close to crying over him, in return.

It was at this moment that a shadow fell across us both; and I looked up to see the girl. Where she had come from—whether she had been standing off at a distance, watching Sunday and me—I don’t know. But there she was; and the look on her face was like the look now on Sunday’s. I almost reached out my arms to her also, as naturally and instinctively as I was hugging and punching Sunday; but just as I was about to do so, the back of my mind said, “Hold it! What’re you doing? She’s no crazy leopard!” And I hesitated.

It was only a second’s hesitation, but apparently it was enough. The look went out of her face, and the next thing I knew, she was gone. For a wild moment I thought of going after her; then I told myself there was no point in it until she got over whatever had made her leave.

Her going like that had left me with an empty place inside me and just above my belt buckle, though. I sat where I was, fondling Sunday until I felt normal again, then got to my feet; and the two of us headed back toward the others, who were at a noon camp just over a rise to our left. I joined them; and nobody seemed to notice anything different about me.

However, beginning at once, and through the three days that followed, I quickly began to discover differences in them. It dawned on me that those in my inner circle of people had been as aware of my abnormal mental state as had Sunday and the girl and had gone on pretending to everybody else that I was perfectly normal, for reasons of their own.

The reason in Marie’s case was obvious. As the consort of the leader of our little band, she had a self-interest in seeing that I was not deposed for reasons of mental incompetence. Tek, apparently, liked the position of follower for some strong reason of his own. I got the impression that he was waiting for something, and the time was not yet ripe for whatever it was. Bill volunteered his reason.

“Thank God you’re all right again,” he said to me, the first time we were off together out of earshot of the others, on an advance patrol in the pickup. “If you’d gone on that way, with your mind a thousand miles off most of the time, for another week, this outfit would have fallen apart.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “Tek and Marie would probably have worked out some kind of agreement to keep the tribe together.”

He looked at me, I thought, a little oddly.

“Even if they had,” he said, “that’d be as bad as falling apart. We’re not out here just to survive. We’re out here to find out what makes the temporal discontinuities operate. With you not in charge, any hope of that’d be lost.”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“Necessarily: I can’t control them, and you’re the only other intelligent person here.” He was serious.

“Don’t underestimate Tek,” I said.

“He’s smart,” said Bill grimly. “He’s not intelligent. He can’t appreciate the value of going after knowledge for its own sake. If he ever tries to take over from you, I’ll kill him. I told him so.”

I stared at Bill. Evidently, he meant what he had said.

“There’s no danger,” I said. “Anyway, you’d better wait until I call for help, before you go thinking of killing anyone. We don’t want anybody shot by mistake.”

“All right,” said Bill. Exactly as if he was agreeing not to pass the salt at breakfast until I asked for it.

“Good,” I said. “Now everything’s just the way it has been. Let’s forget it.”

Only it wasn’t—just the way it had been, I mean. For one thing, Marie had gone away from me in a manner that’s hard to describe. She acted no differently than she ever had, but it was almost as if she had given up hope that there could be anything more than an alliance of convenience between us. Put that way, it doesn’t sound like anything too important. But it left me feeling guilty in spite of the fact that I was fully convinced that I owed her nothing; and, in addition, I was helpless to do anything to mend the situation.

Tek had also changed. He was as much at my orders as ever, but I found him taking charge of the other men whenever there was a vacuum of command, quite as if I had appointed him my lieutenant. And finally, there was the girl....

For one thing, she had evidently acquired a name while my mind was off on the web. It sounded like “Elly” when the others used it; but Marie, when I asked her, told me that it was actually Ellen and that Tek had given it to the girl. Well, at least, that made more sense. It was unlikely she had suddenly remembered her name, when she had gone this long time without remembering anything else. But when I asked Tek what made him think he could name her, he denied he had.

“I had to call her something,” he said. “I asked her what she wanted for a name, and that’s the one she picked for herself.”

Ellen was a pretty enough name in its own way; I wondered where she had gotten it. But “Elly,” or however they might have spelled its contraction, was ugly, I thought. I could not bring myself to use it. As far as I was concerned she was still “the girl”; but I was plainly a minority of one in that.

Tek was paying a good deal of attention to her, and she was spending most of her time in his company. For no particular reason, I found I didn’t approve of that either. She had developed more than I had noticed—I now noticed—since those first days when the only things that looked human on her were a shirt and jeans. She wore dresses now that, possibly with Marie’s help, had been altered to fit her; and her hair was always clean, tied in a ponytail at the back of her head. She was even starting to develop a few curves.

All this was to her credit, of course. She was as sparing with words as ever, but the change in her made her seem a good deal older; and possibly that was what had attracted Tek’s interest in her. As I say, I found that I didn’t approve—although there seemed no specific reason I could nail down for going to him and telling him to leave her alone.

In the first place, even if he agreed, I knew her better than to think she would leave him alone, particularly if I was the one who ordered it. In the second place, I had been ready to abandon her behind me on the bank of that river, so who was I to assume any responsibility for her? Finally, what did I have against Tek, anyway? Since he had been with us, he had been a model of propriety and obedience to orders; and she was only somebody born yesterday. So why make it any of my business?

I still didn’t like it. I was stuck with the irrational feeling that he was nowhere near good enough for her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get her alone to tell her so. I had been wrong about thinking she would get over what had put her off when I had hesitated in reacting to her, back on the rock where Sunday had returned me to my complete self. As far as she seemed to be concerned, I was invisible and inaudible.

To hell with her, I thought, and put my mind to deciding what our tribe should aim for next. We had evidently been travelling with no goal at all, being kept moving by my half-minded, but compulsive, determination. The evening of the day I made up my mind to put the whole question of the girl and Tek out of my mind for good, I waited until after dinner and then got Porniarsk and Bill together. •

“Come along with me in one of the jeeps,” I said. “It’s time we had some discussion about this whole business of the time storms. I want to talk to the two of you, alone.”

“No,” said Porniarsk. “You want to talk to me, alone.”

Bill looked startled and then bleak. He was not much at giving away his feelings through his expressions, but I had learned to read him fairly well by this time; and what I now read was that Porniarsk’s words were like a slap in the face to him.

“Sorry, Porniarsk,” I said. “I’m the one who decides how many of us are going to talk, and when.”

“No,” said Bill. “You talk to him alone. It may be important.”

He turned around and walked off.

I opened my mouth to call him back and then closed it again. Inside that boy-sized body and behind that innocent face was the identity of a mature and intelligent man; and he had just shown himself capable of thinking in larger terms than I, in my reaction against Porniarsk’s words.

I turned to look at the alien. It was still early evening and the whole landscape around us was softened and gentled by the pinkening light. Amidst all that softness, the bony-plated, uncouth form of Porniarsk looked like a miniature dinosaur out of a brutal and prehistoric age. Porniarsk said nothing now, merely stood looking at me and waiting. There was no way I could guess whether he had understood my reaction and Bill’s and was simply unconcerned with our human feelings, or whether he had understood neither of us at all.

I had been pretty well ignoring Porniarsk during the last few weeks of my involvement with The Dream; and in fact, there seemed little to be learned from him unless he chose to inform us. His speech by this time was as human as that of the rest of us; but the thoughts behind his words, when he did speak, remained indecipherable. He moved from one statement to another by a logic mostly invisible to our human thinking.

And yet—he was not without some kind of emotion, even some kind of warmth. There was no more sentiment to be read in the tones of his voice, or in his actions, than in those of a robot; but he seemed... likeable. I don’t know what other word to use. He seemed to radiate a sort of warmth that we all, including the men we had acquired along with Tek, felt and responded to. Even the animals seemed to feel it. I had seen how Sunday had taken to him at first sight. The dogs also, in their rare free moments when they were not under command or tied up, would seek him out, wagging their tails and sniffing him all over each time as if this was a first meeting, before ending by licking at his armor-plated hide. Porniarsk paid them no more attention than he did Sunday or one of us humans when he was not exchanging specific information on some point or other. He seemed not to need to eat. Whenever he had no place in particular to move to, he would fold up and drop into a lying position with a clatter like that of a dumped load of bricks. But whether he ever slept in this position, I had never been able to find out. Certainly, I had never caught him with his eyes closed.

So—Porniarsk was a conundrum. He usually left us no choice but to accept him pretty much as he was. And now, with Bill having walked off, I found myself about to do just that, one more time.

“All right, Porniarsk,” I said. “It’s you and me then. Come on.”

I climbed into the jeep beside which we had been standing as we talked. Porniarsk made one of the astounding leaps he seemed to be capable of with only a slight flexing of his post-like legs, and crashed down into the seat beside me, on his haunches. The jeep rocked sideways on its springs—I had estimated before this that if Porniarsk weighed an ounce, he must weigh well over three hundred pounds—but recovered. I started the vehicle up and we drove off.

I did not go more than a few hundred yards, just enough to put us out of earshot of the rest of the camp. Then I killed the motor and turned to Porniarsk. It was an odd feeling to find myself almost nose to nose with that massive, bulldog-like head. For the first time I noticed his eyes were not just brown in color, but so deep a brown as to be almost black. This close, I could see their pupils contract and expand in cat-fashion, while we talked.

“All right, Porniarsk,” I said. “I need your help. You evidently know a lot more about the time storm effects than we do. I want to stop this random moving around just in hopes we’ll run into a piece of country that’s future enough for us to be able to do something about the mistwalls and the rest of it. I need you to help me figure out where to head.”

“No,” said Porniarsk.

“No?” I said.

“You do not need me to help you find a trigger area,” said Porniarsk.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. This, coming on top of his rejection of Bill, was enough to stir my temper again.

“It’s supposed to mean that my assistance is not required to set you on the road to the destination you wish. You’ve already set yourself on that road.”

I took rein on my emotions. I reminded myself that I had to stop anthropomorphizing him. He was probably only trying to tell me something, and the fact that he was not built to think like a human was getting in the way.

“Since when?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

“Since your temporary abstraction, and during your partial involvement with the overall problem, ever since the moment in which my words caused you to visualize the magnitude of it. Am I making myself—” Porniarsk broke off uncharacteristically in mid-sentence. “Am I talking sense?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How’d you know why I collapsed, or about how I’ve been since?”

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, “and drawing conclusions from what you do. The conclusions are those I just stated.”

“What’ve I been doing, then?”

“Going,” he repeated, with no hint of impatience in his voice, “toward a trigger area.”

I felt a sort of delicate feeling—an instinct to caution. There was no way he could have known what had been working in the back of my mind with The Dream, these last few weeks; but he was talking one hell of a lot as if he had read my mind.

“That could be an accident,” I said. “What makes you think it’s anything more than an accident?”

“You withdrew,” he said. “But then you recovered enough to guide your party, if not in a straight line, in a consistent direction by the most travellable route, toward the location of an area I know to contain devices of assistance at a technological level, which might achieve a first step of halting the moving lines of temporal alteration—temporal discontinuities, as Bill calls them, or mistwalls, as you say.”

I stared at him.

“If you know about a place like that,” I said, “why haven’t you done something about the temporal—oh, hell, whatever you want to call them—before now?”

“The devices are devices of assistance, but not of a design which will assist me. I’m an avatar, as I told you, an avatar of Porniarsk Prime Three. The devices would be of assistance to Porniarsk himself, but he’s otherwise engaged.”

“Tell him to drop whatever’s otherwise engaging him then, and get over here.”

“He wouldn’t come,” said the avatar. “This planet is your problem. The problem of Porniarsk is a larger one. It involves many planets like this. Therefore, he has such as I who am his avatar, so he can have several manipulative sets of himself at work. But all I am is an avatar. Alone, I can’t manipulate the forces involved here, no matter how competent the device of assistance available to me.”

I shook my head.

“All right, then, Porniarsk—or Porniarsk’s avatar—” I began.

“Porniarsk is fine,” he interrupted. “You’ll never meet Porniarsk himself, or any of his other avatars, so there’s no danger of confusion.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “You’ve got me pretty confused right now. I don’t understand any of this.”

“Of course,” said Porniarsk, agreeable. “You’re uneducated.”

“Oh? Is that it?”

“How could you be otherwise? You’ve never had the chance to learn about these forces and their effects. I can’t educate you, but I can explain specific elements of the situation as you run across them. Trying to explain them before you encounter them won’t work because you don’t have either the vocabulary or the concepts behind the vocabulary.”

“But I will when I run into these elements?” I said. “Is that it?”

“On encountering the experience, you’ll see the need for the appropriate terms, with which you might then be able to understand enough of the underlying concepts to work with.”

“Oh?” I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but this kind of conversation with Porniarsk had a habit of driving me to it. “My understanding’s not guaranteed then?”

“Be reasonable,” said Porniarsk; and this kind of appeal in colloquial, uninfected English from the genial gargoyle sitting next to me, had to be experienced to be believed. “How can I guarantee your understanding?”

How, indeed? He had a point, there.

“I give up,” I said, and I meant it. “Just tell me one thing. How did I happen to know enough to head in the right direction?”

“I don’t know,” Porniarsk answered. “I’d expected that, sooner or later, you’d ask me if there were any future areas containing the means to do something about the time storm effects locally, that is, here on this world. Then I could have directed you to such an area. However, you’ve directed yourself to one without me. I don’t understand how. Porniarsk himself wouldn’t understand how, though perhaps he could find the answer. I’m only an avatar. I can’t.”

“All right, tell me what to do now, then,” I said.

Porniarsk’s head creaked in a negative shaking.

“There’s nothing I can advise you on until you’ve experienced the immediate future area of the assistance device technology,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen you do this much by yourself, I’d be cautious about advising you in any case. It might be that you’ll learn more, and faster, on your own.”

“I see,” I said. “That’s fine. That’s just fine. Then tell me, why did you stop Bill from coming out here with us, if you weren’t going to tell me anything anyway?”

“Bill wouldn’t believe me,” said Porniarsk. “He doesn’t trust me.”

“And I do?”

The gargoyle head leaned slightly, almost confidentially, toward mine.

“You’ve learned something you shouldn’t have been able to learn by yourself,” said Porniarsk. “You’ve touched the greater universe. Of course, you don’t trust me, either. You’re too primitive to trust an avatar of another kind, like myself. But in your case, trust isn’t necessary.”

“Oh?” I said. “Why?”

“Because you want to believe me,” said Porniarsk. “If what I’m saying is true, then you’re headed toward something you want very much. That’s not the same thing as trust; but trust can come later. For now, your wanting to believe will do.”