A World Out of Time

"I knew dikta women."

"There may be Girls still in the world. We can threaten them... or can we? Uranus will be upon us before we can reach these places. Krayhayft-"

Far down the street, Corbell caught motion. "Your spear," he said, holding it out.

Skatholtz turned to take the spear. In that position he missed seeing what Corbell saw: a bubble-car skimming trees at ninety miles per hour, dropping and slowing.

Krayhayft must have caught something in Corbell's face. He ran forward, crying, "Alert!"

Startled, Skatholtz glanced back.

Corbell jumped out the window.

The Boys had quick reactions. As Corbell crossed the splinters of glass a spear haft rapped his ankles hard, threw him off balance. He curled tight and hugged his knees. Instead of landing on his head he fell on his shoulders in high corn. Skatholtz was coming through the window in a graceful swan dive. Corbell rolled, found his feet and ran.

Krayhayft threw his machete. It slashed viciously at Corbel's calves as it spun past. Krayhayft screamed, "Stop or die!"

Skatholtz barked from close behind him. "Veto! He knows something!"

Corbell dug in.

The bubble-car had stopped just at the entrance. Through the torn vines that still wrapped it Corbell saw white hair and white beard. Gording reached across to open the door. He was holding a stick against the doorpost. Why?

Hell with it. He threw himself in, thrashed to turn around.

Skatholtz was right there-gaping in horror as he skidded to a panic stop. Corbell slammed the door in his face.

That stick across the door: Gording must have strung thread across the door, and was holding it back with the stick. It could have cut Corbel's hand off. Hell with that, too. "Go!"

"I don't know the codes."

"Oh, for-" Corbell jabbed five times at the compressed hourglass figure. It was the first thing he thought of, and it was good enough: The World Police Headquarters in Sarash-Zillish. The car surged away.

Corbell looked back-straight into Skatholtz's eyes, before the Boy prudently dropped from the car. He'd lost his spear. It should have been lying in the street behind him, but it wasn't.

Blood was ru

Gording said, "Wind the thread around the rock. Do it now, before you cut yourself."

Corbell obeyed. The thread was thin as cobweb, hard to find. He was careful. The car jerked to left and right, dodging bushes, trees, random rubble.

II

He had fled from the Norn in a car that was deathly silent except for the wind. But now he heard a low, almost subliminal whine. "How old is this-tchiple? Was it in good shape? I didn't think to ask."

"I don't repair tchiples. They must have safety devices. The Boys who built them expected to live forever. Where are we going?"

"Sarash-Zillish, where the Boys spend the long night. It's got machines we can use, maybe. Next question is, does it have Boys?"

"Not yet, I think. I don't really know."

"We'll have to risk it. My God!" Corbell was staring at something that could have meant his death by stupidity. The disk- "I never thought of it at all. I didn't have a credit disk. How was I going to run a car?" He asked, "How did you happen to have one?"

"The tales tell that name coins were used when the Girls ruled. I reasoned that when the land thawed, the bodies of the dead would be buried outside the city to make the land fertile. There I fled, and there I dug, and I was right. Boys and Girls must have died by the thousands when the Girls came. I found bones and bones all tangled together, and some wore clothes, and in the clothes I found name coins. I tried them in the slot of a tchiple. One coin still kept its pattern." He regarded Corbell dubiously. "You did not remember that you would need a name coin?"

Corbell flushed. "There was a lot to think about."

"I might have been luckier in my ally."

"I guess. Thanks for coming back for me."

"I had to, because you made another mistake. Does this car guide itself?"

The car's motion had settled down. Now Corbell saw that they had left Parhalding and were skimming across an endless rippling field of wheat. He said, "Unless Skatholtz's spear... yeah, it guides itself."

"Then look at my hair."

There was nothing at all peculiar about Gording's hair. It had grown a little tangled, a little greasy, but it was uniformly white... five days after the cat-tail had bitten Gording.

Gording broke an embarrassed silence. "Will I go back to the dikta? Will I tell them that there is dikta immortality, but Corbell has lost it? We have to find it, Corbell."

"I don't believe it. The cat-tails weren't... I don't believe it! Damn it, Gording, there was no kind of injection except that cat-tail bite!"

"Something you ate or drank or inhaled. You may have felt odd afterward. Sick. Elated. Disoriented."

"Getting old is more complicated than that. There are... Do you know how people get old?"

Gording sprawled comfortably in his seat, facing Corbel. The old man showed no sense of urgency. "If I knew everything about aging I would make dikta immortality. I know genera! things. Substances build up in the body like... the ashes of a dying fire. Some the body can handle without help. It collects them into garbage places for storage and ejects them. Some harmful stuff can be removed from the walls of blood vessels and the tissues of the brain by the right medicines. Dust and smoke that collects in the lungs can be washed away. Without the hospital we would die much faster.

"But some... ashes collect in the smallest living parts of the body. No organ can remove them. I can imagine a chemical, a medicine, that would change these substances to other substances that dissolve more easily, without killing the-"

"Without killing the cell. You're just guessing, aren't you? We know there's dikta immortality, but we don't know how it does what it does. How does a Boy's body do it?"

Gording gestured negation: a brushing stroke with the hand. "That's the wrong line of thought. Dikta immortality came first. It must be more primitive, less indirect.-Corbell, relax. Nothing can happen until the tchiple stops. We should rest."

"I feel a strong urge to beat my head against something hard. When I think of how I pushed you into jumping me and then threw a cat-tail in your face, teeth first..." He didn't know Boyish for I'm sorry.

"How oddly you think. You know what you expected. Young and strong and black-haired Gording would throw his arms around your knees and cry wetly into your incredibly hairy chest and offer you his women...." Gording laughed. "Yes, I know you think that way. No, they are not my women. They are their own, and I am my own, as and when the Boys let us rule ourselves. Do you remember how the women acted when you spoke of one man to every woman?"

"Ah... vaguely."

"You must have lived strangely. Don't you know that there are times when a woman doesn't want a man? What does he do then? Borrow a woman whose contract is to another man?" Gording was thoroughly amused.

And his relaxation was contagious. Corbell settled himself lower in the recline chair. He said, "You'll find out, if we get our dikta immortality."

Gording looked startled. "I think you're right. We would have to free ourselves from the Boys. Raise our boy-children to immortal adults. Slowly the number of women to each man would drop toward one. But-" He smiled. "It would take centuries."

They could see the rain sweeping toward them across the wheat. It exploded against the front of the car. Against the thunder of the rain Corbell raised his voice: "Have you ever tried to escape?"