A World Out of Time Part 11

"Did you expect to? Play it again for me." He listened to Peerssa's recording of a boyish voice speaking in rea.s.suring liquid tones. Afterward he sighed. "If that guy was waiting to meet me himself, what could I tell him? What could he tell me? I'll probably be dead before I could learn his language."

"Your story has wrung my heart. Most of your contemporaries only had one life to live."

"Yeah."

"Your self-centered viewpoint has always bothered me. If you could see yourself as-"

"No, wait a minute. You're right. You're dead right. I've had more than most men are given. More than most men can steal, for that matter. I'm going to stop b.i.t.c.hing."

"You amaze me. Will you now dedicate your services to the State?"

"What State? The State's dead. My self-centeredness is as human as your fanaticism."

The stranger's voice spoke again, in beautiful incomprehensible words-and Corbell saw him. His face was beyond the car's forward wall, beyond the metal, as if the metal were transparent. A hologram? Corbell leaned forward.

It was the bust of a boy, fading below the shoulders. He was twelve or so, Corbell guessed, but he had the poise of an adult. His skin was golden, his features were a blend of races: black, yellow, white, and something else, a mutation perhaps, that left him half bald; he had only a fringe of tightly curled black hair around the base of the skull and over the ears, and an isolated tuft above the forehead.

The face smiled rea.s.suringly and vanished. The car shot forward and down.

Corbell was on a roller coaster. He pulled out a chair arm and hung on. The car fell at a slant for what felt like half a minute. Then there was high gravity as car and tunnel curved back to horizontal.

Light inside, darkness outside. Corbell was beginning to relax when the car rolled, surged to the left; rolled, surged to the right; steadied. What was that? Changing tunnels?

His ears popped.

Peerssa spoke. "Your speed is in excess of eight hundred kilometers per hour and still accelerating. A remarkable achievement."

"How do they do it?"

"At a guess, you are riding a gravity-a.s.sisted linear accelerator through an evacuated tunnel. You are about to pa.s.s beneath the Pacific Ocean. Can you still hear me?"

"Barely."

"Corbell, answer if you can. Corbell, answer..." Peerssa's voice faded completely.

"Peerssa!"

Nothing.

Corbell's ears and sinuses felt pressure. He worked his jaw. There was no reason to panic, he told himself. Peerssa would pick him up when he reached Antarctica.

The hissing sound of motion was sleep-inducing. Corbell was tempted to lie down-preferably with his feet forward, because there would be deceleration at the end. To sleep, perchance to dream.

What kind of dreams does the last man on Earth have while traveling beneath the Pacific Ocean at Mach one-and-a-half in a subway system that hadn't been repaired in hundreds of years? He could be stopped beneath the Pacific, to suffocate slowly, while an almost human ghost rea.s.sured him that service would be resumed as soon as possible. Peerssa could wait forever for him to emerge.

Too much imagination and I'll scare myself to death. Too little and I'll get myself killed.

Corbell worked his jaw to relieve pressure in his ears. Had Peerssa said evacuated? evacuated? He poked his head into the helmet to see the dials. He poked his head into the helmet to see the dials.

Air pressure was down and still dropping.

He panted as he worked his way into the pressure suit. "Vacuum tunnel, right," he gasped. "Stupid, stupid! The car leaks." And what else had deteriorated in this ancient system of tunnels?

But now the ride was superlatively smooth. Presently Corbell emptied his bladder; then emptied his suit's bladder into the toilet. The urine ran boiling through the bowl without leaving a trace. A frictionless surface.

Hours pa.s.sed. He dozed sitting up, woke, lay down on his face, didn't like that, lay down on his back with the backpack a bulge under his shoulders and a chair arm under his head. Better. He slept.

A surge woke him. He sat up. He sucked syrup... sucked the last of it, and it was almost enough. He felt acceleration; was he going uphill? Half a minute of low gravity, a final surge backward. He felt himself at rest. There was an almost subsonic thump thump beyond the metal end of the car. beyond the metal end of the car.

The gla.s.s door, and the metal door beyond it, both popped open at the same time. Corbell had just stood up when the thunderclap slapped him backward.

Sometimes you would end a long backpacking trip with aches in every muscle and a mind void of everything except the determination to keep walking no matter what. In much the same frame of mind, Corbell got to his feet and limped toward the doors. His ears rang. His head hurt where he'd b.u.mped it on his helmet. He'd twisted his back. He felt stupid: The thunderclap of air slamming into vacuum should not have surprised him.

"Peerssa!" he called. "This is Corbell for himself. Answer if you can."

Nothing. Where the h.e.l.l was Peerssa? There was nothing blocking him now, was there?

Corbell shook his head. All he could do was keep wading through the surprises until they stopped him.

There were dim lights far back in a great open s.p.a.ce. He picked out couches and alcoves and the faintly glowing lines of a wall map. Numbers at his chin showed pressure normal or a bit higher, temperature warm but bearable.

He opened his faceplate.

The air was warm and musty. He smelled dry rot. He lifted his helmet, sniffed again. A trace of animal smell- "Meep?"

He jumped, then relaxed. Where had he heard such a sound? It was friendly and familiar. Motion caught at his eye, left- "Meee!" The beast came questing through dusty cloud-rug. It was a snake, a fat furred snake. It came toward him in an S shaped flow. Its fur was patterned in black and gray and white. It stopped and lifted its beautiful cat's face and asked again, like a cat, "Meep?"

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," said Corbell.

Something rustled behind him.

He forgot the furred snake. He was sleepy, so sleepy that in a moment he knew he would pa.s.s out. But there were furtive sounds behind him, and he turned, fighting to stay on his feet.

Under a hooded robe of white cloth with a touch of iridescence in it: a bent human form.

While the cat-snake distracted him, she had struck. He saw her in shadow: tall and stooped, gaunt, her face all wrinkles, her nose hooked, her eyes deep-set and malevolent in the shadow of the hood. Her swollen hands held a silver cane aimed at Corbell's eyes.

He saw her for a bare moment while the numbness closed over him. He guessed he was seeing his death.

II.

He was on his back on a form-fitting surface, his legs apart, his arms above his head. The air was wet and heavy and hot. Sweat ran in his crotch and armpits and at the corners of his eyes. When he tried to move the surface surged and rippled, and soft bonds tightened round his wrists and ankles.

His pressure suit was gone. He wore only his one-piece undersuit, on a world uninhabitably hot. He felt naked, and trapped.

Light pressed on his eyelids. He opened them.

He was on a water bed, looking at gray sky through the jagged edges of a broken roof. He turned his head and saw more of a bedroom: curved headboard with elaborate controls, arc of couch with floating coffee table to match.

These bedrooms must have been ma.s.s-produced, like prefab houses. But a tornado had hit this one. The roof and the picture windows had exploded outward.

The old woman was watching him from the arc of sofa.

He thought: Norn. Fate in the shape of an old woman. She was vivid in his memory, and so was the silver cane in her hand. He watched her stand and come toward him... and the fur boa round her shoulders raised a p.r.i.c.k-eared head and watched him back. It was curled one and a half times around her neck. The tip of its tail twitched.

Dammit, that was a cat. He remembered a cat like that, Lion Lion, though he'd forgotten the boyhood friend who owned it. Lots of luxurious fur, and a long, rich, fluffy tail. If Lion's tail had been multiplied by three and attached to Lion's head, this beast would have been the result.

But how could evolution cost a cat its legs?

He didn't believe it. Easier to believe that someone had tampered with a cat's genes, sometime in these last three million years.

The woman stood over him now, her cane pointed between his eyes. She spoke.

He shook his head. The bed rippled.

Her hand tightened on the cane. He saw no trigger, but she must have pulled a trigger, because Corbell went into agony. It wasn't physical, this agony. It was sorrow and helpless rage and guilt. He wanted to die. "Stop!" he cried. "Stop!"

Communication had begun.

Her name was Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar.

She must have had a computer somewhere. The box she set on the headboard was too small to be more than an extension of it. As Corbell talked-meaninglessly at first, babbling merely to stop her from using the cane-the box functioned as a translator. It spoke to Corbell in Corbell's own voice, to Mirelly-Lyra in hers.

They traded nouns. Mirelly-Lyra pointed at things and named them, Corbell gave them his own names. He had no names for many of the things in the room. "Cat-tail," he called the furred snake. "Phone booth," he called the instant-elsewhere booth.

She set up a screen: a television that unrolled like a poster. Another computer link, he guessed. She showed him pictures. Their vocabularies increased.

"Give me food," he said when his hunger had grown more than his fear. When she understood, finally, she set a plate beside him and freed one of his hands. Under her watchful eye and the threat of her cane, he ate, and belched, and communicated, "More."

She took the plate behind the headboard. A minute or so later she brought it back reloaded, with fruit and a slice of roasted meat, hot and freshly cut, and a steamed yellow root that tasted like a cross between squash and carrot. As he shoveled down the first plateful of food he had hardly noticed what he was eating. Now he found time to wonder: where did she cook it? and to guess that she used the "phone booth" to reach her stove.

The cat-tail dropped from the old woman's shoulders onto the bed. Corbell froze. It wriggled across the bed and sniffed at the meat. Mirelly-Lyra thumped it on the chest and it desisted. Now it crawled up onto Corbell's chest, reared and looked him in the eyes.

Corbell scratched it behind the ears. Its eyes half closed and it purred loudly. Its belly was hard leather, ridged like a snake's, but its fur felt as luxurious as it looked.

He finished his second helping, feeding some of the meat to the cat-tail. He dozed off wondering if Mirelly-Lyra would shake him awake.

She didn't. When he woke the sky was black and she had turned on the lights. His free hand was bound again.

His pressure suit was nowhere in sight. Even if she freed him she would still have the cane. He didn't know if the "phone booth" worked. At the back of his mind he wondered if Peerssa, thinking him dead, had gone on to another star.

What did she want with him?

They worked on verbs, then on descriptive terms. Her language was of no form he had ever heard about, but the screen and mechanical memory made it easy for them. Soon they were trading information: "Take off the ropes. Let me walk."

"No."

"Why?"

"I am old."

"So am I," said Corbell.

"I want to be young."

He couldn't read expression in her voice or in the translator's version of his own. But the way she'd said that jerked his head up to look at her. "So do I."

She shot him with the cane.

Guilt, fear, remorse, death-wish. He cried and writhed and pulled at his bonds for eternal seconds before she turned it off.

Then he lay staring at her in shock and hurt. Her face worked, demonically. Abruptly she turned her back on him.

His thrashings had frightened the cat-tail. It had fled.

"I want to be young-" and blam! blam! And now her back was rigid and her fists clenched. Did she hide red rage, or tears? Why? And now her back was rigid and her fists clenched. Did she hide red rage, or tears? Why? Is it my fault she's old? Is it my fault she's old? One thing was clear: She was keeping him tied up for her protection and his own. If she used the cane on him when his hands were free, he might kill himself. One thing was clear: She was keeping him tied up for her protection and his own. If she used the cane on him when his hands were free, he might kill himself.

The cat-tail crawled back onto his chest, coiled, and reached to rub noses with him. "Meee!" It demanded an explanation.

"I don't know," he told the beast now rumbling like a motor on his chest. "I don't guess I'll like the answer."

But he was wrong.

She freed one of his hands and fed him. It was more of the same: two fruits, a steamed root, roasted meat. She fed the cat-tail while she was at it.

The fruit was fresh. The meat was like overdone roast beef sliced moments ago. She had been out of sight behind the headboard for no more than a minute. Even a microwave oven wasn't that that fast, or hadn't been in 1970. It stuck in his mind... fast, or hadn't been in 1970. It stuck in his mind...

And he had to go to the bathroom.

She was irritatingly, embarra.s.singly slow to understand. He knew she had the idea when she began to pace, scowling, dithering as to whether to leave him in his own filth. Eventually she freed him, first (from behind the headboard) his wrists, then his feet. She stood well back, covering him with the cane, while he went into the middle closet.

Alone at last, with the door blocking her eyes, he let out a shuddering sigh.

He wouldn't try to escape. Not this time. He knew too little. It wasn't worth the risk that she wouldn't let him go to the bathroom again. It wasn't worth the risk of the cane.

The cane: It had reduced him to a groveling slave, instantly, twice. He had never even considered considered keeping his dignity. In that, the cane lost half its power: He could feel no shame. Still, he knew that too many applications of the cane would leave him nothing like a man. keeping his dignity. In that, the cane lost half its power: He could feel no shame. Still, he knew that too many applications of the cane would leave him nothing like a man.

He was a sh.e.l.l of a man reanimated by electrical currents and injections of memory RNA. He had been changed again and again, but whatever he was, he was still a man. What the cane might do to him was cruder, more damaging.

He would cooperate.

But: She was mad. Even if sane by the standards of her time- unlikely-by Corbell's she was mad, and dangerous. Old and feeble as he was, he would have to escape before she killed him.

The "phone booth" must be working; he'd seen no microwave oven here in the bedroom. Good.