The Escape (7 page)

The shuttle lifted and settled twice before Drickel's stop, but only a handful of people-most of them in orange jumpsuits-got off. He was heading for the main shuttle station of Period 889. Most of the people had got off up-line in times much more conducive comto family travel. He traveled the millions of years with his eyes closed. Even though he hadn't been on the shuttle in six-point-seven Real Time years, every movement of the shuttle was familiar to him. He could almost plot the course in his sleep.

When the shuttle landed in 889, Drickel disembarked alone. It didn't surprise him. No one had ever gotten off the shuttle in this Period with him, not in all the Real Time years he'd been a Watchman. As he walked down the ramp, he remembered why he disliked this station. He hated the air here. It was far too dry. It would be even worse where he was going. His nose always dried up and it was everything he could do to keep enough balm on his lips to keep them from bleeding. His job consisted of answering calls and guarding the abandoned shuttle stations in fifty different Periods. The choice Periods, of course, rarely required his 69 services. He always traveled to the difficult Periods," the one no one wanted to visit, not even on a scholarly quest. Eighteighty-nine Real Time was tolerable, but three hundred thousand years farther along wasn't.

As he stepped off the ramp the air instantly dried out his nose and eyes. It was a warm afternoon, closer to fiot on the payed surface, and it made him long for his jungle. There the air was moist. It hugged him like steam and felt like a friendly presence.

Here the air was an enemy, taking his life forces and giving him nothing in return. He stopped to allow himself to adjust to people again. They flowed around him like water around a stone. Most wore the blues and purples of government workers, but a few tottered by on their pointed platform shoes, expressing their distaste comat public transportation. Most of these folks were middle-income bureaucrats who earned just enough money to look as if they earned more. The really important people were invisible to most of the citizens. They never felt as if they had to wear clothing to impress, never spent ostentatiously in public. Drickel liked to think of himself as one of them-his home was the place all of his earnings went-but in actuality, he was just one step above the tottering middle management. The difference between him and them was simply one of information.

They knew what the future would bring. He had been there.

Repeatedly.

The crowds always made him a bit dizzy. He made 70 himself breathe the dry air and watched people pass., He was lucky that he had been called to 889. The really popular periods had stations three times this busy. Many of these shuttles took off less than a quarter full. It didn't surprise him. He couldn't imagine tilde why anyone would visit this time period, let alone live here. But obviously millions did. He walked slowly through the heat and dry air to the nearest transport building, letting the small crowds move around him. He had learned years ago that being in a hurry just never did much good, especially in this job. He entered the building, wincing when he realized the air was warmer here, but smelled worse. People stepped in and out of the transporters, the faces changing, but the movements staying the same. Conversations flowed like good music, punctuated by loud and silent moments. He walked around a line and went to a booth that appeared to be out of order. It was actually reserved for service personnel. On the destination pad he keyed in his special code and then stepped inside.

The noise of the talking crowds in the terminal disappeared in midthrum. He had a moment of silence before he heard the hum of machines and the clicking of keys. The transporter had moved him almost a kilometer below the surface of"...the shuttle field.

He blinked in surprise. All of the bureaucrats were away from their computers. Most were sipping blackbean sugar water from pointed glass cups that matched their shoes. They were all speaking in soft, 71 animated voices. The bureaucrats' high comcollars and tight sleeves reminded him of the rules they all enforced: restrictive and necessary only because others might take advantage.

He stepped off the pad into the high-ceilinged room that smelled of pine. He had always thought of that as cool air scent, but someone had decided to fill this hot stuffy office with baby trees. Farther down one hall stood Aleisen trees, and even farther, fems grew out of the stone. Computers winked at various locations near the trees, and the few chairs in the room were occupied.

This was Shuttle Control for Period 889 and the connection to Mean Time Control in Period One. The two hundred employees down here were in charge of making sure a ship went only to the exact point and time it was programmed to go. This control room, and the others like it in every Period, were the very soul and heart of the society spread out through almost a billion years of time.

Drickel liked this control room more than any of the other Periods he worked in. He liked the plants and the warm feel. The people here had made this place comfortable and welcoming. Some Controls had done nothing more than leave the rock walls the chambers were carved out of and stick in desks. Those always seeited dark, oppressive, and cold to him. He couldn't imagine how anyone could work there.

"Hey, Drickel, it's been a lot of Real Time." A heavyset man wearing a meter-tall red wig set his blackbean sugar water glass in the dirt beside a pine and extended his hand.

"About thirteen years, Red." Drickel switched his carryall bag to his other hand and stepped forward, grasping Red's firm grasp. He had forgotten how his name sounded when spoken by another person. And Red was one of his favorites.

He got his name from the red wigs he had favored since he was a boy. "You're looking young. Still living in One with all the masses?" Red laughed.

"Wow, what a memory. Actually when they promoted me, I moved to Eight-Seven. Got myself a place down in Southern City. Still crowded, but not as bad as One." "You really should try the wilderness life," Drickel said. He missed it already.

"My wife's been telling me the same thing.

Who knows." Red shrugged and then glanced around. "You just missed all the excitement. We actually had a Time Alarm right above us this morning." "You're kidding," Drickel said. He hadn't heard of a Time Alarm in all his years of service.

No wonder no one was working. This would be a real day to remember. "What happened?" "Amazing violations," Red said. "Four last I heard." "Four people?" "Nope," Red said. "Four violations before they got shipped to Control. One an eighthundred level." Drickel felt a chill run down his back. Eighthundreds were extremely serious.

"Actual physical violation?" he asked. "More than one, if you want to get technical," Red said. His normally placid eyes had a slight glint. 73 Shuttle Control never saw much excitement.

"Three PlanetHoppers tried to steal a Period shuttle. We backtimed a force of sixty to stop them. Control whisked the prisoners through here and back to One without much delay." "Enough delay to cause two more four-hundred violations!" someone yelled from the back. Clearly the group had been discussing the event ever since it happened.

Drickel shook his head in amazement.

Backtiming was seldom used and very dangerous.

Control must have thought the situation drastic. He wondered if he would ever discover the details. He doubted it. So he moved through the scattered groups, shaking his head when a man offered him a glass, and headed for the tunnel.

Red kept pace with him. They weren't really friends, but they might have been if Drickel had been the friendly type.

"What brings you back to good old Eight-eightynine?" Red asked. "A problem up-Period they want my help on." Red glanced around to make sure no one was listening. "I've got clearance now f6r up-time.

I'll walk you." They started off toward the back of the big room, following a path that led in and around desks and trees. "The promotion got you into the Back Room, huh?" The Back Room was the high-security part of Control! It was the branch of Control he worked for. Only a very few people in each Period knew the truth about. the future in Real Time. That wasone of the 74 many reasons why it was so forbidden to travel inside any 500,000-year Period. If knowledge of the Near Future got out, it would destroy the society.

"Yeah," Red said, shaking his head. "Sometimes I wish they'd never told me all the future-histoTy stuff. I would sleep better, you know?" Drickel knew. But he had done enough work uptime to stop fearing the Near Future. Now he just complained about it-to himself, since he was not allowed to discuss his work with anyone outside of the Back Room. Red stopped at a plain door labeled NO AD-MMRAWEvery and keyed a code into the panel. Then he put his hand on a plate and a small light flashed orange. Drickel moved forward and repeated the procedure. As the light flashed again, the door opened and the two men moved inside. In front of them stretched a long stone hallway with no decoration. The air here had a processed chill. Drickel shuddered as he always did when he stepped into the Back Room.

"You been up-Period at all?" he asked as they headed down the hall. Red nodded. "Just once, right after the Second Exodus. I have nightmares about the emptiness." Drickel nodded. "I'm jumping about fifty thousand years after that. I've been there a few times.

Most everything is totally gone except for the old ships. PlanetHoppers mess with those ships.

I'm getting real' tired of that." "Anyone living there at all?" Red asked.

"No," Drickel said as they reached the end of the tunnel and another thick door opened. "Too damn cold and dry. The entire planet is deserted during that time." "Amazing," Red said.

"Not really. Everyone left during the Second Exodus and they shut down all of the Period shuttles." Drickel glanced at Red.

He'd seen Red's reaction before, had had the same reaction himself. The only differetice was that Drickel had had a lot of empty Real Time to think about the choices. "I mean, Red, think about it," Drickel said. "Now we can live anywhere in time and some Periods are too damn crowded. But if we could live in that same Period without people, most of us would. The dimensional shifts must have seemed like a miracle when they were discovered. Over two and a half million choices of an uninhabited planet per Period. If you had that kind of choice, wouldn't you go and live in a dimension that was not crowded? Or maybe totally empty? Imagine having an entire planet to yourself" "My mind can't grasp other dimensions, let alone two and a half million of them," Red said. "I keep thinking, what if one of my kids made a dimension shift without telling me?

How would I ever find him?" "Control would," Drickel said, although he wasn't so certain.

"That's what we're here for." "Good point," Red said. But Drickel could tell that Red didn't believe it any more than he did.

The operator on duty was a woman who had sensibly abandoned her high button collars and tight sleeves. She still wore tied leggings, but on her small feet the pointed platforms looked stunning. She 76 smiled at Drickel when he introduced himself.

Her name was Noughi, and if he hadn't been responding to an Alarm, he might have spent a few precious Real Time minutes getting to know her.

She worked alone in a small, stone-walled room that smelled of high-density sugar water. A single drooping fem covered half of her desk. Behind her, a large Control station filled one wall, and the other wall was filled with a small sledlike device with a padded bench seat in it. A personal time-jump shuttle.

"I got another reading just before you arrived," Noughi said. "On this station. But it's a bit of a distance from the time-jump point." Drickel nodded.

Those PlanetHoppers were really eager. Sometimes there would be several trigger events after the first Alarm.

"How late will I be in Real Time?" "The time-jump point is an hour after the first alarm. I tried to get dispensation to send you in earlier, but Control says no to that for some reason." Always regulations to worry about. And other things.

"Is the underground shuttle still being maintained in that time?" he asked. Noughi shook her head. "Not a chance. But the tunnels are mostly still open. You got a personal transporter in case of a cave-in?" Drickel tapped his belt and held up his bag. "Got all my standard tricks." "Sounds like you're in for a hike," Red said.

"Makes me earn my pay." Drickel turned back to Noughi. "What's the source of the interference?" "We're not sure," she said, "but we think there's

Vacuum Ship in orbit over this station at the point you are jumping in. They may have sensors, so stay out of phase." Drickel nodded. "Well then, it's time I go scare them away." He tossed his bag on the orange chair, then sat beside it. He grinned at Noughi. "Anything else I should know?" "Just my Real Time address," she said. "I'll code it into your files." "If it's anywhere crowded, you'll have to visit him," Red said. Her smile was warm. "All he has to do is ask." Drickel smiled in return. He would ask-after he checked her files. The open collar was intriguing but the shoes hinted at some values he didn't hold. He waved his hand. She nodded and pressed a panel on her board. The next thing he knew he was in blackness.

He swore softly to himself as he fumbled around on his belt. After so many years in the business, it was amazing that he never remembered to turn on a lamp before he jumped.

Kjanders attached himself to three different family groups near the old shuttle, trying to pretend as if he belonged. If one of the parents looked at him, he would move on. The key was to look involved, but not too involved. He managed to keep himself near the shuttle and no orange suit had even noticed him.

Not yet anyway.

He wa only about ten meters away from the shuttle when he heard it whir. A burst of excitement ran 72 through him. He sprinted across the pavement and managed to get up the ramp as it was rising.

He slipped into one of the seats as the door snapped shut. The lights went on, and the whirring continued. This old thing sounded as if it would fall apart at any second.