A World Out of Time

"Yeah. I get the impression the Girls and the Boys stayed apart."

"Yeah, and that made it difficult for me. The Boys and Girls, they didn't have sex to hold them together. They were two separate States on Earth, each with its territory and its rights. They must have been separate for a long time. Choss said that the Girls ruled the sky and the Boys ruled the dictators. I would have to go to the Boys to find out about dictator immortality."

"The Girls ruled the sky?" That sounded like nonsense, but...

"Choss said so. I think it was true, Corbel. I saw them vote not to move the Earth! We watched an astronomical light show, and then there were hours of discussion, and they voted!

"But I was more concerned with dictator immortality. Choss promised to learn what I wanted from the Boys. I was valuable to them, Corbel. They gained prestige from the stories I told and the shows they made about me." Anger crackled in the translator's voice as Mirelly-Lyra relived evil memories. "They were forever amused by what I did not know. Other groups of Girls began reviving other prisoners. After many years I decided that Choss had done nothing to get me what I wanted. I would have to reach the Boys."

"It figures."

"What?"

"Choss couldn't go to the Boys. They'd claim you as a dictator. Their property."

"I... never thought of that. I was a fool."

"Go on."

"The Boys held the land masses of the southern hemisphere. They had built heated domes in the south polar continent. They held two other continents and many islands. But the Girls ruled more useful land, and more power too, if they really ruled the sky. I knew that the Earth had been moved. There were times when Jupiter shone so brilliantly that one could see the banding and pick out the moons. I was afraid of these Girls. I was trying to find a safe way to steal an aircraft, but I waited too long.

"One day Choss told me that they were tired of me, that I must go back in zero-time. I was no longer a new thing. I took a plane that night. They let me fly a long way before they brought me back with the autopilot. I learned that they had made a show of my escape."

"Fun people, your Girls. They put you back in the box?"

"Yes. They let me keep my translator. It was the only thing they did for me. Later they lowered two Boys they had caught during a fight. The Girls had given them soul whips," she said with grim amusement, "and I was the only one who could talk to them."

"Soul whip?"

"I used one to make you docile. It didn't work. A few more applications may help."

"Finish your story."

"We waited a long time. Nobody came to free us. Finally the machinery stopped. Everything was killing-hot. The Boys ruled us with the soul whip, and I was their translator, but there was little cooperation. Some of us lived to reach the southernmost continent. There they were captured by Boys, all but me. I fled back across the water alone.

"It was a long time before I learned enough to feel myself safe. I had to learn what could be eaten, what foods would not spoil, how to hide from storms: all things you will have to learn, too. I was old when I could begin searching again. For ten years I searched for dictator immortality through the ruins the Boys and Girls left me. Then I emptied out my small zero-time storage place and went into it to wait for... you."

"Nice try."

"When you are young again, then mock me!"

"I don't expect that will happen."

"We can't give up."

Corbell laughed. "I can give up. I guess I don't believe in your dictator immortality. Have you ever seen anyone get young?"

"No, but-"

"Do you even know what makes people get old? Fires don't burn backward, lady."

"I am not a doctor. I only know what anyone knows. Inert molecules gather in the cells to clog them, like... like silt and garbage and the poisons of industry gather in a great inland sea, until the sea becomes a great inland swamp. The cells become less... active. Some die. One day there are too few active cells living too slowly. Other inert matter accumulates to block the veins and arteries... but I have medicines to dissolve them."

"Cholesterol, sure. But getting the dead stuff out of a living cell without killing it would be something else again. I think you were hoaxed," said Corbell. "Choss and her friends acted like nasty children. Why not your Boy lawyer too? Remember, you asked the Girls. They didn't raise the subject."

"But why?"

"Oh, just to see what you'd-"

"No!"

"Everyone dies. Your lawyer's dead. Choss is dead. Even civilizations die. There was a civilization here that could move the Earth. Now there's nothing."

After a longish silence came the calm voice of the translating box. "There are Boys where you're going. I tried to talk to them once. They know nothing of dictator immortality."

"Do they know what happened to civilization?"

"You said it yourself. There were two States on Earth. They must have fought."

"It could have happened." War between the sexes had always seemed silly to Corbell. Too much fraternizing with the enemy, haha. But if sex didn't hold them together?

"The Boys know nothing," she repeated. "Perhaps there was never dictator immortality in the south polar continent."

"You've got a one-track mind. If it ever existed, you found it in every city in the world. Used up. Rotted."

"One year, Corbell."

Might as well try it... "How does this sound? Let me use your medicines. I can travel faster and look further if I'm young and healthy."

Another long pause. Then, "Yes, that makes sense."

"I thought you'd say no." Here was his chance! But... "Nuts. No, I just can't risk it. You scare me too much. This way at least I get a year."

She screamed something that was not translated. The receiver went dead.

A year, he thought. In a year I'll be dug in so deep she'll never find me at all.

Chapter SIX: THE CHANGELINGS

I

Corbell came to the Antarctic shore in near darkness. The vanished sun had left dark red splashed across the northern horizon, and a red-on-red circle that was Jupiter's night side. To east and west he picked out tiny Jovian moons. Ahead, dark woods came down to a dark shore.

The trees came at him, spreading out.

Then the smooth ride was bouncing Brownian motion, and the car was dodging tree trunks at maniac speed. He gripped the padded bar to keep himself from bouncing around inside. He dared not close his eyes. The chase scenes through Four City should have burned away his capacity for terror, but they hadn't, they hadn't.

The old trees forced their way through a tangle of burgeoning life, vines, underbrush, big mushrooms, everything living on each other. A pair of huge birds ran screaming from the car. The car rode high, but branches slashed at its underside.

The forest thi

The car was slowing. Thank God. It scraped slowly over crackling brush, stopped in the open, and sank. Corbell got out onto moist grass. He stretched. He looked about him.

In the darkness it was barely possible to pick out two distant curved wails of hexagonal filigree where a dome must have stood. Corbell found no sign of the great black cube, the subway station, that had been the center of every city he'd seen so far.

He was parked beside what must be World Police Headquarters: a great wall of balconies and dark windows, with a row of large circular holes at the top, holes big enough to be access ports for flying police cars.