The World At The End Of Time Part 13

So did Pooketih. "You made some of us quite silly, Wan-To," he pointed out. "Perhaps one of us thought some other of us was trying to kill him. Why should any of us think that, Wan-To?"

Wan-To considered how to answer that. It sounded like a serious question. Was there guile behind it?

He was not quite sure how much guile Pooketih possessed. Pooketih was certainly not one of the cleverest of Wan-To's tribe. By the time he created Pooketih, Wan-To had already noticed worrying signs of insolence from Haigh-tik and Gorrrk and Mromm. And insolence was the first stage of insurrection.

It was quite likely, Wan-To had decided even then, that one of these ages he would have to take measures against them. So when he made Pooketih and the later ones he cautiously withheld from them a good quarter of his knowledge and at least half of his compet.i.tive drive. (But maybe even half was still dangerously much?) "There is nothing in the universe that can harm any of us, except each other," Wan-To said cautiously. "I suppose that the knowledge that you can be destroyed by somebody is likely to make you think of destroying him first-for a certain type of mind, I mean."

"Do I have that type of mind, Wan-To?"

"Not on purpose," Wan-To said glumly.

"Do you?"

Wan-To hesitated, almost considering telling Pooketih the truth. But caution vetoed that impulse. "I made you," he pointed out. "I made all of you, because I wanted your companionship. I would miss you if you were gone."

"You can make others," Pooketih said sadly.

That was too true to deny. Wan-To was silent. Pooketih went on unhappily, "It was so nice when you first generated my patterns. I knew so little! Everything you told me was a wonderful surprise. I remember your telling me what your own star was like, and how it differed from mine."

Wan-To was suddenly uneasy. "That was a different star," he said quickly. "I have moved since."

"Oh, yes, so have I, several times. But that was so interesting, Wan-To! I wish you could tell me again."

Now Wan-To was definitely uncomfortable. "I don't want to do that now," he said shortly.

"Then tell me something different," Pooketih pleaded. "Tell me-for instance, tell me why it is that some groups of stars have suddenly changed their courses and moved away from us."

Wan-To wasn't uneasy anymore. Now he was quite convinced that Pooketih was trying, in his silly, innocent way, to probe for information he should not have. Wan-To said deceitfully, "Ah, but wouldn't that be interesting to know, Pooketih? Perhaps you can find out. Try to do that, Pooketih, then you tell me!"

And then Wan-To terminated the conversation and paused to consider.

Was it possible that Pooketih was not wholly without guile after all?

It was with regret that Wan-To decided Pooketih must be slain. As it turned out, though, that wasn't easy to do, because Wan-To himself was not safe. When five consecutive stars of his own type flared, each with a stellar ma.s.s between .94 and 1.12, Wan-To began for the first time in his long life to be afraid.

The resemblance between those stars and his own could not be an accident. Some one of his copies had deduced enough of what Wan-To's home star was like to start a systematic campaign of destruction. Someone's searching fire was specifically directed at him. him.

The option of flight was always open to him. He could quit this star and move to another. He could choose an unlikely one, he thought; maybe a little red dwarf, or one of those short-lived Wolf-Rayet kind of things. Neither was attractive as a permanent home-the dwarf star too confining, the huge infant star too unstable. But that was exactly the reason why no one would look for him there.

But-getting there! That was the problem! It meant abandoning the concealment of his star and launching himself as a pure pattern of energy, as naked and unprotected as any molting Earthly crustacean, across the interstellar void. The danger would not last for long. He would not be easy to spot. There was a good chance that he could make the journey and be safely hidden before one of his sibs detected his presence. He calculated the odds on survival as at least a hundred to one.

That one chance in a hundred was too much to take. Especially, Wan-To thought with pleasure, as he had a few tricks still up his sleeve.

So for some little time Wan-To was quite busy. He was making another copy of himself.

Practice, Wan-To was sure, made perfect. This time he was going to make the exact person he intended, without any possibly dangerous traits. Also, he schemed, with certain memories carefully excised; this copy would never cause him any trouble.

In order to do all that, Wan-To had to scan every part of his memory stores. Copy a pattern here, strike one out there; it was a lot like an earthly computer expert trying to adapt a program for, say, air traffic control to become one for, perhaps, ballistic missile defense. It took a long time, for there were billions of years of memories in Wan-To's store, and during all that time Wan-To could not permit himself any interruptions at all. So he turned off most of his scanning systems, muted the attention calls from his relations, even shut down his communication with the doppel on the planet Nebo. (As it happened, this was too bad in some ways, but Wan-To didn't know that.) He devoted himself entirely to the construction of the new being, and when its patterns had been completed he activated it with pride and hope.

The new being stirred and looked around. "Who are you?" it asked. And, almost in the same moment, "More important, who am I?"

"I am Wan-To, whom you love and wish well," Wan-To told it. "Your name is also Wan-To."

"But we can't both have the same name! Can we?"

"We do, though," Wan-To informed him. "Of course, just between the two of us you should have a different name, otherwise it would be very confusing, wouldn't it? So, just for the two of us-let me see-yes, I think we will call you 'Traveler.' "

"That isn't a proper name," Traveler complained. "Does it mean I am going to go somewhere?"

"How clever you are," Wan-To said with pride. "Yes. You are going to leave this star and take up residence in another one, far away."

"Why?"

"Because no star is big enough for two like us," Wan-To explained. "Don't you feel cramped? I do. We'll be much happier when you have a star of your own.

Traveler thought that over for a time. "I don't feel happy at all," he said. "I feel very confused. Why is that, Wan-To? Why don't I remember why you made me?"

"You're still very young," Wan-To said promptly. "Naturally you are still learning. But to develop properly you will have to go to a star of your own, and you are going to do that right away."

"I am?" the copy wailed. "But, Wan-To, I'll be lonely!"

"Not at all!" Wan-To cried. "That's the best part, Traveler! See, as soon as you leave here you will activate your communications systems-do you know where they are?"

"Yes," the copy confirmed after a moment. "I've found them. Shall I do that now?"

"No, no!" Wan-To said hastily. "Not now! now! When you're on your When you're on your way. way. You will call all your new friends, who are waiting to meet you-Haigh-tik and Pooketih and Mromm. You will simply say to them, 'h.e.l.lo, this is Wan-To calling.' " You will call all your new friends, who are waiting to meet you-Haigh-tik and Pooketih and Mromm. You will simply say to them, 'h.e.l.lo, this is Wan-To calling.' "

"Is that all I say?" the copy asked doubtfully.

"No," Wan-To said judiciously. ''You will also want to tell them exactly where you are. That information you will also find in your stores if you look. And then-and this is the most important part, Traveler-then you will forget that I exist. You will be be Wan-To." Wan-To."

"I don't know how to do that," the copy wailed.

"You don't have to," Wan-To a.s.sured him comfortably. "You'll find that I've already arranged that; once you leave this star you won't remember anything about it, or me. And then," he promised grandly, "your new friends will tell you everything you need to know. They will answer all your questions. Now go, Traveler. And I wish you a happy journey."

When Wan-To's last remaining sensor informed him of a vector boson blast a few light-years away, he began to feel more at ease. They had taken the decoy. The zapping of G-3 stars would stop.

Now all he had to do was wait until the others had wiped themselves out . . . perhaps, he thought, for quite a long time.

Like Viktor and Reesa, in another place and time, he did not then know just how long that time would be.

CHAPTER 14.

By the time Viktor got his eyes well open he almost wanted to close them again. Even the long, still sleep of the freezers was better than this madhouse! First it was Reesa, shaky, fearful, trying to explain things to him- "We're about to land on Newmanhome. These people found us and thawed us out . . ."

And then it was a man in a kilt, bearded and belligerent. "If you want him landed, get him awake, do you hear me? There's no time to waste!"

And then there were "these people" themselves. He managed to pry his sticky eyelids apart far enough to see "these people" for himself. None were familiar. Every one was a stranger, and strange to look at. There was the tall, olive-skinned man who wore the kilt, bare-chested and bare-legged in spite of the chill. There was another man, beardless, with a page-boy bob of spa.r.s.e blond hair, who wore a ragged red pullover that came down to his knees, showing something like red tights underneath. Reesa herself wore an all-black outfit, like jogging sweats-cottony-flannelly pants and blouse, with a cowl covering most of her face. Another woman had the same outfit, except that instead of being black her sweatsuit was striped gray and white, like a prison uniform. "Who are 'these people'?" Viktor croaked.

His wife's face disappeared, and the angry, hostile countenance of a bearded man in the same all-black took her place. "I'm Mirian," the man said savagely, "and we've saved your worthless life. You've been frozen here for hundreds of years."

"I warned you we should have left them that way," called the woman in the prisoner stripes.

Mirian disregarded her. "You're awake," he told Viktor, "and you're coming down with us."

"Down?" Viktor murmured dazedly. "Down where?" But n.o.body was answering him. There were eight or ten people in the old cryonics deck, and they were all busily rigging one of the pods for a drop. Reesa came over to him, wobbly and worried, holding out a set of the black sweats.

"Put these on," she begged. "If you're not ready I think they'll just leave us here!"

"Leave us here?" Viktor blinked. "Then why did they bother to come to save us?"

There was a sudden bark of unfriendly laughter from the man who called himself Mirian. "Oh, we didn't come to get you. We need this ship. We didn't even know you were here till we opened this pod up, looking for something to eat."

"And we should've left them frozen," the woman in red insisted. "Now what are we going to do?"

"We're going to drop them," the man in the kilt said belligerently. "Mirian, too. He woke them up; he takes them away, before they get in our way anymore."

"Not me!" Mirian shouted. "I'm part of this team, Dorro!"

"You're dropping with them," the kilted man snapped, "because I say so, and I'm the captain."

"You Greats are all alike," the woman sneered, but she turned to finish rigging slings in the pod.

Viktor turned helplessly to his wife. She shook her head, helping him knot the drawstrings of his sweats. "They only woke me half an hour ago, Vik. I don't know much more than you do. They wanted Ark- Ark-I'm not sure if it's for the antimatter fuel, so they can replenish the generators on Mayflower, Mayflower, or maybe to use it to explore the rest of the solar system-" or maybe to use it to explore the rest of the solar system-"

"We of the People's Republic do not waste time in 'exploring,' " the man in the kilt said frostily.

"Well, whatever. And things aren't so good on Newmanhome anymore, they say-"

Viktor held up a hand, imploring. "I don't understand," he said.

"Oh, Viktor," his wife groaned. "Well, try this much, anyway. We're alive." alive."

That at least could not be argued. As Viktor finished dressing he told himself that simply to be alive, against all odds, was wonderful in itself. Wonderful? No, close to miraculous-thawed without microwave, without the oxygenating perfusion liquid, only raw heat. But his parts seemed to work. He thought for a moment of dying, blinded Captain Bu, who had gladly given them a chance for life on the expectation of his own reward in heaven. Thank G.o.d for Bu's born-again Christianity, Viktor thought. Without that conviction of a heavenly reward he might not have been nearly so willing to be the one who died.

Then Viktor thought of a question. "What about Earth?" he asked fuzzily. "Haven't they sent more ships?"

Mirian turned around to gape at him. Then he laughed. "Earth!" he said, and the others were laughing, too.

Viktor looked at them in puzzlement. "Did I say something funny?" he asked plaintively.

Mirian tugged at his pale, fine beard, glancing around to see if anyone else would answer. Then he said gruffly, "We have heard nothing from Earth for hundreds of years. Come, get into the pod; it's time to launch. And forget Earth."

Forget Earth!

But that was impossible. As Viktor was trying to urge his creaking muscles into the contortions necessary to climb into the capsule, twist himself into his harness, and strap himself in, he was not only not forgetting, he was actually remembering again all the scenes that had stored themselves away in the back of his childhood memories. The waves breaking on the Pacific sh.o.r.e, the white clouds in the blue sky, the heat of the high desert, the redwoods- The world. Could all that be gone? gone?

Then he couldn't think for a moment, because the hatches were grinding closed and he felt the quick nudge as the capsule fell free from its mother ship. He saw there was a window. It was tiny, and in a poor position for him to look out of it. But he did catch a quick glimpse of what had to be the proud planet of Newmanhome . . .

But it was different, terribly different! There were a few clouds, but they were hard to see, because almost everything was white. Great Ocean was a wide blue sea no longer. It was as icy as Earth's Arctic Ocean, and, as with the Arctic, there was no clear line between sea and sh.o.r.e. Everything, everything, everything, was ice. was ice.

"Hold on for retrofire!" Mirian shouted.

The sudden hammer blow of the rockets bruised Viktor's unpracticed body. That was only the beginning. The buffeting of atmospheric reentry seemed to go on forever. Then it ended; and then they were just falling, swaying on their sail-film parachutes.

Viktor shut his eyes. They no longer stuck together when he blinked, but he could feel the incrustations at their edges, and the flakes of dirt and dead skin on his body. Everything was happening too fast. He hadn't quite gotten used to being fired at by-whatever it was-on the planet Nebo; this unexpected new situation was more than he could take in.

Something very bright penetrated even his closed lids.

He opened them just in time to see a spot of incandescent light swing around the interior of the capsule as it rocked. Everyone was averting their eyes. The very bright something had peered in, for just a second.

"My G.o.d," Viktor said wonderingly. "Was that the sun?" sun?"

Mirian turned to him fiercely. "The sun? No, of course not. Are you crazy?"

"Then what was it?" Viktor persisted.

Mirian stared at him for a moment. Then he shook his head. "I keep forgetting-you don't know anything at all, do you? It wasn't always there, they say." He swayed as the capsule bobbed in a strong gust of wind, nearing the ground. "Brace yourself for landing!" he yelled; and then, to Viktor, he said, "That bright thing-it was what they call the 'universe.' "

CHAPTER 15.

As it turned out, the time before Wan-To felt secure again was a very long time indeed. An appallingly long time, when you consider that through all of it Wan-To did not dare speak to any of his colleagues.

It wasn't because he wasn't hungry for conversation. He was very nearly desperate. So desperate that he had split himself into fractions once or twice, for convenience in talking to himself. It wasn't satisfying, but he had gone on trying to pretend that the echo he was hearing was really intelligent talk-until he thought that was making him almost irrational. He stopped that. He would have tried almost anything by then, though. He even began to wish that he could at least still talk to the harmless, stupid Matter-Copy Number Five. But that had long ago stopped being possible. It wasn't the distance. Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky pairs ignored distance. It was the relativistic effects of the speed the doppel's plunging flight had begun to attain. At Five's velocity, so close now to c, c, the pair was no longer identical. Even if the ERP had worked, the conversation would have been hopeless, because time dilation had come into play-a moment of Doppel Five's time was tedious millennia for Wan-To and the rest of the universe-but that problem didn't arise, because the ERP was no longer operational at all, and that was the end of that. Wan-To did not expect ever to hear from that doppel again. the pair was no longer identical. Even if the ERP had worked, the conversation would have been hopeless, because time dilation had come into play-a moment of Doppel Five's time was tedious millennia for Wan-To and the rest of the universe-but that problem didn't arise, because the ERP was no longer operational at all, and that was the end of that. Wan-To did not expect ever to hear from that doppel again.

Then he began to have problems of another kind.

He observed that the core of his star was filling with ash.

That was something to worry about. The stuff wasn't really "ash" in the sense of the oxidized residue of a chemical combustion, naturally; it was a slurry of helium ions, the stuff that was left over when hydrogen fused. He regretted a little that he had picked a mainstream star slightly larger than the norm. Yes, you got more energy to play with when your home star was large, but it didn't last as long, either.

Still, who could have guessed that he would be stuck stuck in the thing, a prisoner, afraid to venture out? in the thing, a prisoner, afraid to venture out?

Now and then the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky communicators called Wan-To's name. He never replied.

Wan-To hadn't replied to anyone for a long time. He was far too suspicious. He was convinced that any call was almost certainly a trick, just one of his adversaries hoping to find out if he was really dead. Wan-To was too wise a bunny to fall for Brer Fox's wiles.