Gridlock and Other Stories Part 8

I suddenly felt very tired. What had started as a boring evening listening to Weasel Martin and the other UFO freaks had turned into something else again. Either I had stumbled onto the greatest adventure of all time -- and I mean of all time -- or else I was in the hands of a certifiable nut. The whole night had been like a dream and fatigue had worn me down until I could hardly think. I bit down hard on my lip, hoping the pain would clear my fuzzy head. I had some hard decisions to make.

"What's the matter, Duncan?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper. "Don't you believe me?"

"I don't know what to believe," I said. "I'm not making any decisions until I get caught up on my sleep."

"A good idea," she said, standing and stretching. Her newly lithe form flickered in the firelight.

"You take the bedroom and I'll take the couch," I said.

She smiled broadly and grasped her sweater at the hem, pulling it quickly over her head. "No need for false chivalry. My culture is not your culture -- and I've been celibate much too long in this masquerade I have been playing at."

She turned and walked into the bedroom, her naked back beckoning me to follow. After a moment's tussle with my conscience, I gave in and followed. Suddenly the thought of not getting to sleep for another couple of hours did not bother me at all.

I woke to the sensations of morning; the constant drip of melting snow running from the roof; the smell of breakfast cooking on the stove the heat of pine speckled suns.h.i.+ne across my upper body. I smiled, stretched, and opened my eyes. I was alone. I could hear Jane moving about in the other room.

A sunbeam flashed through the window, scintillating dust particles in the air. By the angle, I judged the time to be around ten o'clock in the morning.

I raised myself up on one elbow and yelled, "Where are you, woman?"

She came to the door wearing oversized Levi's and a flannel s.h.i.+rt. "Morning, sleepyhead. I borrowed some of your uncle's clothes. I hope he won't mind."

"Uncle's a p.u.s.s.ycat, at least where beautiful women are concerned," I said. She blushed at the compliment. I was surprised to realize that I really meant it.

"Breakfast is almost ready. Why don't you get up and get dressed? Lots to do today. We have to be up on the Rim by full dark. The shuttle could make the jump anytime after dusk."

She went back into the kitchen while I dressed. I put on the same clothes I had worn since yesterday morning, feeling slightly itchy at the prospect. I wished the water had been turned on. I couldhave used a bath. Running a hand across my chin, I sc.r.a.ped over the day's growth of beard. My tongue caressed slimy teeth. In spite of my general slovenliness, I felt good. Some of the mental haze that had plagued me since things had started last night was gone.

Jane ladled pancakes onto a plate as I came out of the bedroom. I crossed over to where she stood and nibbled her ear. She giggled just like any red blooded American girl. You would never know to look at her that she was a creature from another universe. I let my hands roam lovingly.

There was a sharp rap on the door.

Jane stiffened in my arms. "Who's that?"

I tried to keep my voice light. "Probably just the neighbors from across the meadow. They have seen the smoke and came over to get the latest gossip. It gets d.a.m.n lonely up here in the winters."

She looked around frantically. "The beamers?"

Now it was my turn to be startled. The beamers! What had I done with them? Then I remembered. They had chafed me while tucked into my belt. When we had gotten back to the rooming house, I had transferred them to the pockets of my leather jacket. The jacket that I had taken off in the generator shack and which still hung on a nail out there. "Out back," I said, hooking a thumb in that direction. "Don't worry, I'll get rid of our visitors."

"Duncan Allen MacElroy?" the man standing on the porch asked as I opened the door.

I did not bother to answer. There didn't seem a need.

The stranger was short and squat, with overhanging eyebrows. His wide smile showed a jagged row of teeth. Those were not his most noticeable features, however. The beamer he held in my face guaranteed that I barely noticed his physical peculiarities.

The tinkle of breaking gla.s.s sounded behind me and Jane screamed. I whirled around to see a second Dalgir level his beamer at her through the broken window.

After that, things seemed like a dream again.

In a matter of minutes three Dalgir -- one had been hiding out back in case we had made a run for it -- had searched us with brusque, impersonal efficiency and frog marched us into the bedroom. I was ordered to turn and face the wall, while a scuffle went on behind me. When I was finally allowed to turn back, Jane lay face up on the rumpled bed. Her body was curiously limp; her violet eyes gazed dazedly at the ceiling.

Then two of them grabbed my arms and the third applied a s.h.i.+ny steel box to my neck. There was a sharp p.r.i.c.k and I too was limp all over. It was as though my body had gone to sleep from the neck down. They brusquely tossed me on the bed beside Jane and left the room.

From then on, I did not see anything but the flyspecks on the ceiling, although I had no trouble hearing them in the next room. They had left the door open to keep an eye on us.

"Jane?" I asked softly. My mouth and eyelids were about the only things that still worked.

"Yes, Duncan."

"What happens now?"Just then, the Dalgirs started speaking to each other in their native tongue. I heard a brief "Shus.h.!.+"

from Jane as she listened intently. It is funny, but the Neanderthals are always portrayed in the movies as talking in grunts. Hollywood has never been more wrong. They spoke a language that was more than a little reminiscent of French.

After five minutes, the conversation quieted down and one of them glanced in at us. I waited for him to disappear out of the corner of my eye and whispered to Jane, "What was that all about?"

"It's bad, Duncan. Very bad. They've got a paratime communicator and are using it to call in one of their ... call it a cruiser. It is an armed shuttle with a crew of two hundred. It's second only to our biggest wars.h.i.+ps in firepower and could easily destroy a continent."

"But why call in something that large?"

"To ambush our transport when it arrives. This mission is very important to them for some reason. I was right last night. They crossed over to this timeline through my home universe. The cruiser must come the same way. A lot of people at home will die tonight."

"What are we going to do about it?" I asked.

A short, savage sob escaped from her throat. "What can we do?"

If my shoulder muscles had been free to move, I would have shrugged. It did not look as though there was much we could do.

"If only we'd had the beamers," she whispered.

I felt a hot flash of anger at myself for being so stupid. Then I savagely put the thought out of my mind. There had been no reason to think they would trail us here.

"Look," I said. "If we'd been armed, we would now be dead. You saw the way they were deployed when they jumped us!"

"Maybe we could have won a fire fight. Now we'll never know because the beamers are out with the generator."

It was then that I smiled. My mind began to race as I recalled several previous visits to my uncle's cabin. Not being hooked into the power grid was a real pain in the a.s.s. You forever had to go out and pump some more gas into the generator's fuel tank. Uncle had planned to build a reserve tank out of an old fifty-five gallon drum for years. However, he had never gotten around to it.

That meant the generator had fuel only for eight hours or so, even at the idle setting it used when there was no electrical load on the line.

"What time is it?" I whispered.

"About eleven. Why?"

I listened to the far off put-put-putof the generator.

It was a sound that I had not consciously heard since last night, although it had been there all the time. Now it somehow seemed louder. I licked my lips and waited, listening for the noise to stop.

I waited for an eternity that probably lasted only fifteen minutes. Finally, it came. The soft chugging of the generator stopped, bringing with it a silence louder than when it had been running.One of the Dalgirs was in the bedroom in a matter of seconds.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"Generator's out of fuel. Looks like you boys are going to get cold, " I said.

"Never mind that. We need power for our communications beacon. How do we get it back?"

"Know anything about cantankerous internal combustion engines?"

"I'm no barbarian," he growled, sounding a bit like Ralph Nader.

"Then you'd better let me up so I can go get it started again."

He turned and yelled, "Rimbrick!" A second Dalgir came into the bedroom, leveling a beamer at me.

Then there was a sharp p.r.i.c.k on my neck, followed by fire coursing downward through my body.

My arms and legs began to twitch uncontrollably.

When the spasm pa.s.sed, they helped me to stand on weakened legs. I walked around the kitchen to loosen up a bit. Finally, the second Dalgir, the one called Rimbrick, ordered me out the back door.

We crunched our way to the generator shack.

Once inside I set to work refilling the tank with gasoline, using an empty mayonnaise jar to transfer it from the storage barrel to the fuel tank. When the generator was topped off, I filled the jar one more time. Rimbrick stood warily two arm lengths out of reach in the doorway. I set the gasoline down next to the generator and began to putter around the mechanism. Then I picked up the jar in my left hand and leaned over to the big knife switch on the wall.

"Got to disconnect the load before I start it," I said. My body s.h.i.+elded my right hand from view as I brushed up against the coat on the wall. I waited breathlessly for the bolt of lightning in my back.

Nothing happened. I reached into the jacket pocket and felt the cold handle of a beamer. Praying the safety was off; I mentally judged my distance from the doorway and whirled, throwing the gasoline in one quick motion.

It caught him full in the face. He screamed, instinctively throwing his arms up to cover his eyes.

Then he realized his mistake and brought the beamer down to bear on me once more.

The hesitation was enough. I pointed my weapon at him and pulled the firing stud. There was a crash of light and the overwhelming stink of ozone. When I could open my eyes again, I saw Rimbrick down in the snow with the familiar hole burned through him. The gasoline had caught fire. Flames and a thin stream of black smoke rose upwards from his jacket.

I quickly grabbed the second beamer and headed for the cabin. I pushed the back door open and padded across the linoleum to the door opening on the living room. I hesitated. It had suddenly occurred to me that I could not answer a very important question. Exactly whose side was I on? True, circ.u.mstances seemed to have thrown me in league with Jane, but was that what I wanted? She had killed the Dalgir without warning last night. What if she was with the bad guys and these Dalgiri represented the forces of law and order? What was an outsider like me doing mixed up in this mess anyway?

I pushed open the door to the living room, indecision lying on my shoulders like a sack of concrete.

I am not sure exactly what it was that I planned. Perhaps they would surrender if I got the drop onthem. With the Dalgirs prisoner and Jane still drugged from the neck down, maybe I could sort things out.

The door squeaked slightly as it opened. Suddenly the whole question of right and wrong became academic. The leader faced me from across the room, a look of blank surprise on his face as he lunged for his beamer.

I shot him ... and the other when he tried to quick draw against me as well.

Then I sat down and was quietly sick for a few minutes. Later I released Jane, following her instructions on how to administer the antidote to whatever drug they had given us.

She wasted no time heading for the communicator. She did something incomprehensible to the controls and then cursed softly under her breath. Turning to look at me, she smiled sheepishly. "Darling, would you mind turning the electricity back on? They've drained their batteries."

I grinned. "Sure thing, boss."

I trudged back to the generator and quickly had it going again. When I returned to the cabin, Jane was just finished talking into the thing that looked like a portable radio. She snapped off the switch and turned to look gravely at me.

"Well?" I asked.

"Made it. I cannot use this thing to talk across timelines without the Dalgiri hearing, but I did get our office in New York. They will relay the message and a certain cruiser will have a big surprise waiting when it tries to cross over tonight. As for us, we wait here. The shuttle will come through right after dark to pick us up."

"Us?"

It was as though I had thrown a switch. Her eyes got a strange look in them, as though she were seeing me for the first time. Then she was in my arms.

"They could have killed us while we lay helpless in there," she said between sobs.

I held her, softly caressing the back of her neck. "Why didn't they?"

She lifted her head from my shoulder and dried her tears. "Because of you."

"Me?"

"Never mind just now," she said, sniffing. "Come over here. There is something we must talk about."

We sat on the couch. I reached over to take her in my arms, but she pushed me away.

"Don't! You can't afford to have your mind clouded with emotion just now. You've a decision to make, the most important decision of your life."

"What decision?"

She gulped and regarded me with red eyes. "Whether you will submit voluntarily to having your memories of the last day erased, or will exile yourself from this timeline forever.""I don't understand."

"Don't you see? You know about paratime! It's standard procedure to memory wipe any local who learns of our existence."

"That's grat.i.tude for you," I said. I could feel the flush rising in my cheeks. Maybe I had picked the wrong side in this war.

"I know, Duncan. It is wrong! However, civilizations sometimes cannot afford the luxury of grat.i.tude. It is a cruel universe out there. In fact, there are thousands of cruel universes throughout paratime. Sometimes we just don't have any choice."

"I don't suppose it would do any good to conk you on the head and make a run for it?"

She shook her head. "I reported your being with me the first time I called New York from the rooming house. By now headquarters has every bit of information filed with the federal government. By next week, they will be down to the state and local levels. Within a few weeks at most they would hunt you down and you'd lose an even bigger chunk of memory."

"And exile?"

"You could join us, Duncan. The Paratime Service always needs good field agents."

"I don't care much for being drafted, Jane."

"n.o.body does."

"For one thing, I'm not sure you people are right in all of this."