A World Out of Time

"The differences between..." Peerssa stopped.

Corbell got angry. "That's Earth. Earth!" The screwed-up solar system bothered him too, when he let it. "Peerssa, that was Earth's plate tectonics you were describing! Did you find the island that used to be California?"

"I found two islands that might have been California, three million years ago."

"Well, then! Did that happen by coincidence?"

"No," Peerssa lied.

"Call that area where you put the grid One City. Call the Antarctic area Three City. Now, what about Two City? Where is that?"

"Bordering the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia."

"Land me in One City, then." More calmly, Corbell added, "I must be nuts, looking for civilization. Why do I want to spend my last days fighting a foreign language? But maybe I'll have time to find out what happened here."

Corbell filled the probe nose cone with medicines, food, a tank of fresh water, tanks of oxygen. The plastic foam would hold them. He moored more solidly the ultrasonic whistle, controlled by signal from Peerssa, that would melt the foam.

He had put on muscle weight. The heart attack he feared, and thought he was prepared for, had never come. Don Juan's twenty-second-century medicines had given him that. But he lived with hot wires in his shoulders: Tendonitis.

At the last-braced in the middle of the ravaged nose compartment, with one hand on the spigot of the foam tank-he hesitated. "Peerssa? Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"What will you do after I'm down?"

"I will wait until I am sure you are dead. Then I will search other systems for the State."

"You're no crazier than I am." He wondered how long Peerssa expected him to last-and didn't ask. He opened the spigot. Foam surrounded him and congealed.

Thrust built up under his back, held for a time, then eased to almost nothing. Presently there was turbulence. It was a powered landing, not a meteoric re-entry. The thrust built up again, held, died. The probe rotated... and there was a jar that drove him two inches into the foam.

Peerssa spoke in his suit radio. "May I consider myself free of your commands?"

Corbell suffered a quick, vividly detailed nightmare. "Melt the foam first!" he cried. But Peerssa was no longer bound by his orders. Peerssa would take vengeance on one whom the State considered a criminal and arch-ingrate. The foam would not melt. Corbell would die here, embedded like a fly in amber, his freedom mere yards away!

He felt a lurch. Then another. The nightmare ended. He sank through melting foam, blind, to a solid bulkhead. The foam ran from his faceplate, and he saw that the inspection hatch was wide open.

Corbell stepped into the opening and looked out and down.

Peerssa had landed the big cylinder on its side, on attitude jets. The sun, high overhead, was nonetheless a sunset sun, red and inflated. The land ran flat to a range of sharp-edged granite hills. It was all dead: browns and grays, dead rock and dust. Heat made the air shimmer like water.

The State had not provided exit ladders for a package probe. Peerssa had been clever again. The foam had run out the hatch and congealed into a foam plastic slope. Corbell walked down it, and his boots crunched, as on snow partly thawed and refrozen. He stepped out onto the soil of Earth.

The soil had died.

Three million years. Wars? Erosion? Loss of water when Earth fled inexplicably from an inexplicably expanding sun? At this moment he didn't care. He raised his hands to his faceplate- "Do not try to take off your suit. Corbell, have you left the probe?"

-ready for his first breath of fresh air in a long time. "Why not?"

"Have you left the probe?"

"Yeah."

"Good. For purposes of discussion I have spoken of this world as Earth. Now I may speak of the differences. You have landed on a world marginally habitable at best, in a region uninhabitably hot."

"What?" Corbell looked down. The outside temperature register was set at chin level below the edge of his faceplate. It didn't look bad, not bad at- centigrade! The State used centigrade!

Peerssa said, "It's too hot, Corbell. Temperatures in the equatorial zone range from fifty-five degrees centigrade upward. The oceans are above fifty degrees. I find little chlorophyll absorption in the oceans, and none on land, barring certain mountain valleys. You would have done better to land near one or the other pole."

Somehow Corbell was not even shocked. Had he half expected this? My death is the end of the world -a very human attitude. And three million years, after all... "So that's what happened to the oceans."

"The atmosphere holds thousands of megatons of water vapor, enough to support the hypothesis that Earth's continental shelves have become dry land. What remains of the oceans should be very salty. Corbell, we still don't know."

"What about those mountain valleys?"

"In a mountain range corresponding to Earth's Himalayas, there are valleys between one and two kilometers high. Some life has survived there."

Corbell sighed. "All right. Which way is civilization?"

"Define civilization."

"One City. No, just point me at the closest place where someone is using power."

"Four point nine kilometers distant there is minor usage of power. I doubt you will find people, or even living beings. The power level has not varied since we made orbit. I think you will find nothing but machines ru

"I'll try anyway. Which way?"

"West. I can locate you. I will guide you."

III

Corbell had not gone hiking in a long time.

The suit was not uncomfortable. Most of his equipment's weight rested on his shoulders. The boots were not hiking boots, but they fit. He set out in a rhythmic stride, breathing the ca

He rested, then set out in a more leisurely stroll. It was level land: not ankle-breaking country, though he had to watch his footing. It was packed earth with rocks inset, and there were gentle wind-carved risings and failings-off.

Peerssa led him to the range of hills and apparently expected him to walk straight across them. Corbell turned left until he could find an easier slope. He found he was grumbling subvocally.

He had had to grumble subvocally for lo, these eight years' waking time in which he had grown one hundred and eighty years old while three million years passed on Earth. Grumble aloud and you couldn't know what Peerssa might pick up and take as an order. Goddamn literal computers, he grumbled. Sleep tanks and super medicines that don't keep you young. Air and cooling equipment getting heavier with each step. Why couldn't they have put a belly band in this suit? A belly band was the greatest invention since the wheel. It let a hiker carry the weight on his hips instead of his back. If the State had had its head screwed on right- Which was silly. The suit was designed for free-fall and use aboard ship. Not hiking. And if Peerssa took orders, it was a damn good thing. And he was lucky to be on Earth at all. And, Corbell thought as he topped the crest, he was damn glad to be here. Puffing, bent over so he could pant better, half listening for the heart attack he'd been expecting for so long, it came to him that he was happy.

Yeah! In three million years, probably no human being had ever done what he had done. Be nice if there were someone to brag to.

He saw the house.

It was on a higher crest of hills beyond this one. Otherwise he might not have noticed it. It was just the color of the hills: gray and dust-brown; but he saw its regular shape against the blue of sky. It was set against the rock slope.

It took him another two hours to reach it. He was being careful with himself. Even so, he knew how his legs would hurt tomorrow, if there was a tomorrow. He was two-thirds of the way up that second range of hills when he found the remains of a broken road. Then it was easier.