The Nick Of Time Part 12

There was a loud, ringing pop, and the three of them were in another part of the nowhere. Here there were trenches in the "ground." They weren't dugouts because the ground wasn't made of earth. Thetrenches looked like permanent regular features molded into the contour of whatever the ground was made of, put there when the ground had been put there. There was less fog, but there was still some thin yellowish mist creeping down into the trenches and hanging around about knee level. In the trenches were hundreds and thousands of soldiers, all with black stuff smeared on their faces, all with rifles and soup-plate helmets, all with large frightened eyes and cleverly engineered bayonets, all with nervous tics and World War One British Army uniforms. They were waiting for something. They'd probably been waiting for it a long time. They looked like if they had to wait much longer, they'd go whanging off like a busted guitar string snapping and whipping around at the end of the fret board.

"Well," said Cheryl. The rather historical-looking scene, almost ba.n.a.l in its implications, was at least more comprehensible than the vast empty place they had come from. To be sure, this place was still part of that skyless, sunless, earthless universe, but here there were more people and things. It made this nonplace seem more lived-in; it gave this nightmare a homey touch.

General Arthur Leidecker jumped down into one of the trenches. Everyone immediately came to attention. Leidecker asked who was in charge of the unit. A captain saluted and identified himself; Leidecker nodded in a preoccupied way, indicated Mihalik and Cheryl, and then strode off down the trench, stopping now and then to cheer up a terrified young man or straighten someone's tunic.

The captain looked up at the brave temponauts. "Don't just loll around waiting for a b.l.o.o.d.y invite," he cried. "Get down here before you get your a.r.s.es shot off." They turned and tried to gaze through the mist behind them; but if there were enemy trenches nearby, they were out of sight. Mihalik put his arms around Cheryl and handed her down gently to the captain, then jumped down nimbly beside them. "Rifles in that bunker," said the officer briskly. "I've got a lot to see to before the balloon goes up. You two take care of yourselves?"

"Yes, sir," said Mihalik.

"Good show. We'll be counting on you to do your part."

"For G.o.d and Admiral Nelson," said Cheryl under her breath.

"For the Queen," said the captain over his shoulder. Then he was gone.

"G.o.d save the Queen," said Mihalik. He looked at Cheryl. "Well, here we are in the thick of it again.

At least they're not using thasers or static guns. I hope we do as well with rifles as we did with the rapiers against the cardinal's men."

"We had the benefit of Dr. Waters's ESB training then," Cheryl reminded him. "Without that, I wouldn't have known which end of the rapier to hold. I know even less about rifles."

"They can't be that complicated," said Mihalik. "I'll get us a couple, and maybe one of these guys will give us a few pointers." He went down to the bunker and returned in a few minutes with two rifles, ammunition, and two helmets. "They wanted me to leave a deposit on the rifles and the helmets," he said.

"I couldn't believe it. I told them I didn't have any money at all with me. I had to sign for them, and they said they'd collect it after the battle, if we were still alive."

Cheryl laughed without humor. "I a.s.sume that if we're killed, we won't have to pay."

"Who knows, in this place?" said Mihalik. "They may have some way of--"

"Watch where you're pointing that thing, baby," said a sleepy-eyed young soldier. He was wearing a ripped, mud-stained uniform; Mihalik wondered where the mud came from.

"Sorry," said Cheryl. She swung the old Enfield around by its sling, trying not to get in anyone's way.

The soldiers were packed shoulder to shoulder in the trench, and it was easy to step on someone's foot or accidentally put an elbow in someone's eye.

"It's all right," said the soldier. He didn't sound British at all. He looked at them for a little while.

"Helmets," he said at last. "All you got are helmets. You're dressed kind of informally for going over the top, aren't you?" Mihalik and Cheryl looked at their helmets, which they were holding in the hands that weren't holding Enfields. They clapped their helmets on their heads.

"We got our orders at the last minute," said Mihalik. "You know how it is."

The young man nodded. He closed his eyes and his head drooped; it looked like he'd fallen suddenly asleep. A moment later his eyes opened again halfway. "My name is Sopko," he said. He stuck out agrimy hand.

"Frank Mihalik." He took Private Sopko's hand and shook it. "This is Cheryl. She's a game little lady."

"She better be," said the young man. "You just call me Petie. I guess we're buddies now."

"Guess so," said Mihalik.

"Trench life demands that you have buddies," said Petie. "They die on you, though. You watch them get blown to bits in sh.e.l.l holes or machine-gunned down in front of you, you watch them on barbed wire or bayoneted in no-man's-land. Then you make new buddies. Without buddies, what have you got?"

Neither Mihalik nor Cheryl had the faintest idea. "We're from New York," said Cheryl. "Where are you from?"

Petie looked at her curiously. "Nowhere," he said. "Where is there to be from?"

"New York, for one," said Mihalik.

"No such place," said Petie. "There aren't any real places. There's only this, and this isn't a real place.

If you saw a place and it was real, it wouldn't be here, so it wouldn't exist. It can't exist, QED. Take your New York, for instance."

"You may be right about New York," said Cheryl, "but I've been in some other places that were mighty persuasive about being real."

Petie laughed and shrugged. "Oh, sure," he said, "haven't we all? That doesn't prove anything, though.

They're not real because they're not here. It's a simple test you can apply to anywhere you happen to find yourself."

There was a long silence while Petie seemed to go to sleep again and Mihalik and Cheryl thought over what he'd had to say about reality. "You know," said Mihalik after a while, "I think the whole question of the nature of reality is pointless: you can never define reality. You can't say, 'This universe is real and that universe isn't.' I think I'm going to stop thinking about it and just deal with our problems. The h.e.l.l with whether or not they're real problems."

"Psychosomatic pain hurts just as much as real pain," said Cheryl. She looked at her rifle.

"Psychosomatic death may be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, too."

"Think of all the universes as self-enclosed units bound in some kind of matrix, like motes of dust in a beam of sunlight. One mote has no knowledge of any other mote, and can't have any knowledge of the sunbeam, either. Then we, in our dust-mote universe--"

"Frank," said Cheryl wearily, "philosophers were going through all that before the time of Socrates.

That's the oldest question on the books. You're defining reality again, and you just said you weren't going to do that anymore."

"I had trouble with enuresis when I was a kid, too," said Frank. "Eventually I triumphed, as I will this time also."

Cheryl kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I have the utmost confidence in you, Frank," she said.

Petie woke up again. "Miss anything?"

"Nope," said Mihalik.

"d.a.m.n it," said Petie. "Hoped the signal'd come and gone, and everything was over."

"A soldier's life is a tiresome one," said Cheryl.

"Who are we fighting, anyway?" asked Mihalik.

Petie laughed; it must have been a ludicrous question. "Those guys," he said, pointing in the direction of the enemy trenches, still invisible to Mihalik and Cheryl.

"What's it all about?" asked Mihalik.

Petie squinted his eyes. "You really don't know?"

Cheryl shook her head. "We're new here."

"Ah," said Petie, "some sort of miracle. Created out of nothing as adults, like Adam and Eve."

"No," said Mihalik, "we've been trying to tell you. We came from someplace else."

Petie shook his head slowly. "It's easier for me to believe the spontaneous creation theory."

"Whatever," said Cheryl. "Why are we fighting them?" asked Mihalik.

"'Cause they want to kill us," said Petie.

Mihalik looked at Cheryl. "Sounds like a good enough reason to me," he said.

"Uh huh," she said.

"See," said Petie, "the Queen--"

"Queen Hesternia?" asked Cheryl.

"Yeah. The Queen--"

"The strong-willed kind," said Mihalik. "She reminds me of a teacher I had in eleventh grade.

Hesternia's got a nicer build on her, though. I'd like to get her all mussed up and muddy."

Petie's eyes opened very wide. The whites of his eyes completely encircled the irises. "You've seen the Queen?" he asked reverently.

"Talked with her. Gave her a piece of my mind, I hope to tell you," said Cheryl.

"I saw you arrive with the general. Old Foghead. But the Queen herself.... I've never known anyone who'd actually been that close to her." He looked at Mihalik and Cheryl with a kind of awe.

Mihalik just shrugged modestly. "She seemed all right, once you got to know her." He saw a faint greenish glow of jealousy in Cheryl's eyes and added, "I suppose she's just not my type, though." He put his arm around Cheryl's waist, and they kissed.

"It seems an odd time and place for a public display of affection," said Petie.

"So who knows?" asked Cheryl. "We may never have another opportunity. That might well have been our last kiss."

Mihalik gave Petie a wry smile at one side of his mouth. "No, it won't be our last kiss," he said, and he kissed Cheryl once more.

The Battle of Pa.s.schendaele, Back by Popular Demand Petie was about to say something when a lieutenant clambered out of the trench and began to shout.

"That's my platoon leader," said Petie with a sigh. "I guess it's show time, folks." The lieutenant drew his pistol and ordered his men to follow him. All along the trench, men carrying heavy packs and gripping 1917-vintage rifles started to holler and push and fight their way up the rickety wooden ladders. They were going over the top.

"Here we go," said Mihalik to Cheryl. "Stay back, and I'll cover for you. When everything quiets down a little, you can come up and join me. Either we're going to chase the enemy out of its trenches, or they'll punch us back here. You and I will be together again when it's safe."

"I'm going with you now, Frank," she said. "If we die, we die together."

"Cheryl--"

"You picked a fine time for a domestic squabble," said Petie. They watched the other soldiers scrambling out of the trench. Then Petie added his shout to the cacophony of the battlefield: "Let's go get 'em!" An instant later, Private Sopko was out of the trench, reaching down to help steady Cheryl while she climbed the crude ladder. Mihalik followed her and then all three were standing on the mist-shrouded ground, watching Leidecker's forces charging across the wire-strung, b.o.o.by-trapped no-man's-land.

Sh.e.l.ls were exploding all around them, some from Queen Hesternia's artillery behind them, some from the enemy's artillery far ahead. The explosions made no mark on the ground, but there were plenty of built-in sh.e.l.l holes to jump into; these sh.e.l.l holes must have been provided at the same time the trenches had been laid out. The artillery rounds didn't even scratch the ground, but the flying shrapnel was taking its toll. Mihalik watched tensely as dozens of men nearby fell screaming. No one seemed interested in rescuing and treating the wounded. Mihalik never saw anyone who looked like a medic.

"Frank!" shouted Cheryl over the noise of the bombardment. He had been lost in thought, his rifle hanging loosely from the sling in his hand. Now he realised how vulnerable he was and he began to move.

He made his way forward toward the first sh.e.l.l hole where Petie and Cheryl were waiting.

"Sorry," he said, after he'd dropped into the shallow crater. "I was just thinking."

"You ought to practice thinking more often," said Petie. "That way when you get an idea, it won'tfreeze you up. Some people haven't thought for so long that when they have a real insight of their own, they get totally incapacitated."

"Say, pal," said Mihalik, "make all the jokes and snide comments you want. Even tough old veterans like you must get a little quaky when the big guns start to talk."

"Naw," said Petie, "I'm not nervous. I've been through this a hundred times before."

"Then let's keep up with the rest of the company," said Mihalik. "They're all ahead of us now. We got to keep moving."

"No, we don't," said the private. "How do you think I've lasted so long in this army? What we're doing, see, is we're guarding the rear. We'll just stay here until we don't hear any more sh.e.l.ls going off.

Then we'll run like h.e.l.l, bellowing like heroes, and grab a place in the next trench. Or else, in the case of disaster, we'll just mix ourselves into what's left of our own company as it fights its way back to our original trench. There's been so many battles, and they always end with one side capturing a trench or two from the other side. From Tommy's point of view, it doesn't seem like anything changes one way or the other, but who am I to make judgments? We do what we're ordered to do, and we'll end up in some trench not far from here, waiting until the generals decide to order a new a.s.sault. The waiting is harder to take than the fighting."

"You make it sound so futile," said Cheryl.

"That's just what it is," said Petie.

A sh.e.l.l detonated a few feet from their hole. Instinctively all three people ducked down as far as they could and clutched their helmets tightly to their heads. If this place had had real ground, fragments of stone blasted out of the new crater would have injured as many men as the explosion itself. The only danger here, though, was from the sh.e.l.l itself; the explosion or the shrapnel could kill you. Other than that, Mihalik, Cheryl, and Petie were perfectly safe, at least as safe as they'd been in the trench. "It's a matter of statistics," said Petie, sitting with his arms crossed on his knees, his rifle tossed casually to one side. "What are the odds that one of those whiz-bangs will land right here in this hole? Pretty slim, I'd say. If we got out of the hole, the enemy's sharpshooters would have three fine plump targets to aim at.

Let them aim at somebody else."

"What do you mean, 'plump'?" asked Cheryl. She sounded annoyed.

"Never mind," said Petie. "Just be quiet and watch the war.

"So who is the enemy?" asked Mihalik. "The army of somebody just across the border from Queen Hesternia's territory?"

"Uh huh," said Petie, "in a way."

"n.o.body's ever told us what Queen Hesternia is the Queen of," said Cheryl.

The soldier raised an eyebrow. "She's the Queen of the Past. She rules over all time that has already been and gone. Out there is the army of King Proximo, who rules the future."

Mihalik and Cheryl exchanged dubious glances. "How can anyone rule the past or the future?" asked Cheryl. "How did Hesternia get to be Queen of the Past?"

Petie shrugged. "It's a crummy job, I admit," he said, "but someone's got to do it."

"This must be an old war, then," said Cheryl.

Petie laughed. "It goes back a long way."