A World Out of Time

"What was that?"

"They stopped time for me. There was a building where some criminals went to be stored against need." The bitter smile again: "I was to be flattered. Only unusual breakers of the law were thought to be of future need to the State. People of high intelligence or with good genes or interesting tales to tell to future historians. The building would hold perhaps ten thousand, no more. I was lucky they let me keep my medicines. At that I could only choose as much as I could carry."

She leaned close above the water bed. "Never mind this. Corbell, I want you to know that there was an earlier form of immortality. If we find it, we can both be young again."

"I'm ready," said Corbell. He pulled at the soft bindings on his wrists. "I'm on your side. I'd love to be young again. So why not untie me?" It can't be this easy.

"We may search a long time. I have already searched for a long time. I must have your youth drugs, Corbell. They may not be as good as the dictators' immortality, but they must be better than mine."

Oh.

He had to answer. "They're aboard ship, in orbit. They can't help you anyway. You're probably older than I am, not counting the time I gained in cold sleep." He felt discomfort from the sweat pooled under him; he felt more sweat starting; he felt his helplessness. He saw her raise the cane.

She waited until he had stopped thrashing before she said, "I understand you. You come from a time earlier than mine. Your medicines are more primitive than mine. I ca

"It's true! Listen, I was born before men landed on the Earth's Moon! When the cancer in my belly started eating me alive I had myself frozen. There was-"

"Frozen?" She didn't believe him.

"Frozen, yes! There was the chance that medical science would find a way to heal the cancer and the damage done by broken cell walls and-" His defense ended in a howl. She held the cane on him for a long time.

He heard: "Open your eyes."

He didn't want to.

"I'll use the cane."

His eyes were clenched like fists, his face a snarl of agony.

"A frozen man is a preserved corpse. You won't lie again, will you?"

He shook his head. His eyes were still closed. Now he remembered what Peerssa had told him about phospholipids in the glia around brain nerves. They froze at 70° F, and that was the end of the nerves. He'd been committing suicide. And why not? But he'd never, never convince the Norn.

"Let me speak this right," said Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar. "I won't tell you about the first time I was taken from the zero-time jail. The second time happened because the zero-time generator had used up its power source. More than a thousand of us came suddenly into a world that was baked and without life. The weather was hot enough to kill. It killed most of us. The rain came down like floods of bath water, but without rain we would all have died. Many of us reached this place where days are six years long and nights are six years long, but life is still possible. I was old. I didn't want to die."

Resigned, he opened his eyes. "What happened to the others?"

"The Boys captured them. I don't know what happened after. I escaped."

"Boys?"

"Don't be distracted. For many years I used my time only to stay alive. I searched for the dictator immortality, but I never found it, and I grew old. I was half lucky. I found a small zero-time, a storage place for records in the forms of tape and of chemical memory, and for gene-tailored seeds. At first I kept my medicines in it. Later I emptied it out to make a zero-time jail just for myself. Then I altered the subway system to take any passenger from the hot places directly to me. I made warning systems to free me from zero-time when the subway system was in use.

"Do you understand why I did all of this? My only hope was the advanced medicines that must be carried by any long-range explorer. One day an explorer would come back from another galaxy or from one of our satellite galaxies. He would know no better than to land in places of Earth that are too hot. He would need to come to the polar places immediately." She stood above him like a great bird of prey. "The subway system would send him to me, carrying the medicines developed in my future, that will let me grow young when my own medicines have only let me stay old. Corbell, you are that man."

"Look at me!"

She shrugged. "You may be a thousand years old, or ten thousand. What you must know is this: If you are what you say, you are useless to me. I will kill you."

"Why?" But he believed her.

She said, "We are the last of the State. We are the last of people. Those who remain are not people anymore. If we could grow young, we could breed and raise more people. But if you do not have the medicines, of what use are you?" He heard her try to soften her voice. His own voice said to him, "Consider. You are too old for even your advanced medicines to affect you. I am different. Give me back my health and I will search out the real immortality that the dictator class used. You are old and frail. You will rest while I search."

"All right," he said. The old woman was a Norn, right enough. She was both life and death to him now. "My medicines are in orbit. I'll take you to my landing craft. I'll have to contact my ship's computer."

She nodded. She raised the cane, and he flinched. "If you break your word, you will take your own life, when I let you."

III

When she was safely on the other side of the headboard, Corbell let himself relax. An almost silent sigh of released tension... followed by a woffish grin and an urge to whoop, savagely repressed. At last Corbell had set himself a goal.

He had come down to die on Earth. But this was better.

His hands came free. He sat up, but she gestured him back with the cane. She made him put his wrists together and bound them before she freed his ankles.

The cloth stuck to his wrists like bandages. He didn't think he could pull loose.

The bedroom's picture windows had stretched before they broke. The edges were like lines of daggers curved outward. He followed Mirelly-Lyra, stepping carefully through the daggers, into knee-high grass.

She gestured him ahead of her, toward a bubble-car like those he had found in One City. Where his feet fell big insects fled, whirring. It was even hotter outside, but at least there was a breath of breeze. The sun sat on the horizon, huge and red, casting long blurred shadows. A hard-to-see red circle on the red sky, smaller than the sun, must be Jupiter.

The car seemed to rest on the very tips of the grass blades. It did not shift as Corbell climbed in. Mirelly-Lyra gestured to him to slide over (with the cane, the cane that was anesthetic and instrument of torture and what else? He was afraid to learn) and climbed in beside him. She bent to the console, hesitated, then punched numbers. "We go for your pressure suit," said the translator at her belt.

The car moved smoothly away. Mirelly-Lyra half relaxed; she was not steering. Already Corbell knew that he could not return by car. He didn't know the destination number of the house.

Down the hill and into a narrow valley the car drove, accelerating. Now they were moving at hellish speed. Corbell gripped a padded bar on the dashboard and wished he dared close his eyes.

She was studying him. "You did not use such cars?"

"No." Inspiration made him say, "We didn't have such things on Dogpatch."

She nodded. The knot in Corbell's belly eased open. God help him if she came to believe that he had left Sol system ahead of her. He had to convince her that he came from her own future.

But there must have been inventions he would know nothing about, things humanity would not have forgotten. Like what? A bathtub designed to fit human beings? A cold cure? A permanently sharp razor blade, or a treatment to stop the beard growing at all? A hangover cure that works?