A World Out of Time

The planet must be smaller than it had been at Corbell's birth. Its drive was not all that efficient; it must have blown away mega-mega-tons of atmosphere during aeons of maneuvering. For all that, a gas giant planet was now passing two million miles from the Earth.

It was tremendous. It glowed half full near the horizon: a white half-disk touched with pink, banded and roiled with storms, and a night side black against the stars. From the black edge a tiny, intense violet-white flame reached out and out, lighting the night side, expanding, reddening, dissipating.

Mirelly-Lyra said something that was pure music. No wonder she had been able to persuade men to do her bidding. (The old man's voice said, "Glorious.") Her white robe was a shapeless pale shadow in the dark. Corbell stood a little apart from her. Now that she was no longer an old woman, he was more afraid of her than ever. In truth, the Norn now ruled the fate of the world.

Corbell was very twitchy tonight.

He called into the helmet in his hands. "Peerssa, how goes it?" And waited for the response. Nothing, nothing-

"Green bird." The autopilot was indecently calm. "It was difficult to plot a new path that would not intersect a moon, but I did it. Earth's new orbit will be somewhat eccentric. Her average temperature will vary around ten degrees lower."

"Good enough." Corbell set the helmet down. His urge was to call Peerssa every two minutes. A giant planet falling that close wasn't glorious, it was terrifying.

She said it again. "Glorious. To think that the State reached such heights! And now there are only savages."

"We'll be back," he said, and laughed too loudly. "Gording doesn't know it, but what he's doing in Dikta City is forming the basis for a population explosion. In three thousand years we'll be building interstellar spaceships again. We'll need them. Earth will be too crowded."

"I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps Gording did. Do you really think the dikta will come? A million years of slavery, after all-"

"They'll have to come." He'd thought it out in all its intricate detail. "In a few months Cape Horn and Four City will be in the Temperate Zone. Plants that grow well in Antarctica will grow well here once we transport them. In Antarctica it'll be colder than the Boys expect. They'll huddle in Sarash-Zillish through six Olde Earth years of darkness. Meanwhile the dikta will be setting themselves up here."

"All very well if the Boys wait. You've said they're very intelligent. They may attack immediately."

"Let them wait a few months and we'll give them a nasty shock! We'll have Peerssa in orbit then. Didn't he tell you? He's got a thing that can blast them from orbit while they try to cross the ocean. They'll think it's the Girls. They'll try to wipe out the Himalaya valleys and the Sea of Okhotsk. But if they wait long enough .

there's going to be rain, a lot of rain, when the Earth cools off. It'll probably swallow Dikta City. The Boys'll think the dikta drowned."

Uranus jetted violet-white flame. Peerssa's path through Jupiter's moons was a complicated one. The night was vivid with lights: dayside Uranus, the pinpoint flare on Uranus's night side, Jupiter, the swarming moons. The air was hot and humid and redolent with some rare scent, not quite musk, not quite flower shop. Corbell wondered where it came from. Were whales holding a mating season offshore? The air went to his head.

"Corbell?"

"Yeah?"

"What if the dikta are content to grow old gracefully?"

In the dark he could barely make out her impish smile. (Impish? It was that same malevolent smile, with the wrinkles gone. Had it always been merely impish?) He said, "They still won't have a choice."

A nasty thought came to him then, and he made haste to correct himself. "They won't have a choice about coming here. They can take dikta immortality or leave it." All the same, he had manipulated the dikta-for their own good-and would not Peerssa say the same to Corbell? I'd better be right! If they've got complaints in a hundred years, I'll still be there to hear them!

The shadow in the dark asked, "Will the dikta men find me beautiful?"

"Yes. Beautiful and exotic. If the women liked me, the men will like you."

She turned to him. "But you don't find me beautiful."

"My sex urge is supposed to-"

"That is no answer!" she flared. "You lay with the dikta women!" He flinched back. "If you must know, I've always been a little afraid of a beautiful girl. And I'm scared stiff of you. My hindbrain thinks you're still carrying that cane."

"Corbell, you are well aware that the dikta may not survive the change in their biological rhythms. The sun shows every day in Four City, all through the year." She touched his arm. "Even if they live, we are the last human beings. If we die without children..."

He wanted to shrink away, but something in him simultaneously wanted to move closer. He suppressed both urges. "You're moving too fast. There may be dikta women already carrying my children. That'll tell us if they're human-and even if they aren't, they're close enough."

"Let's go inside. The heat-" When he gestured toward the garish intruder in the sky, she tugged at his arm. "If it falls on the Earth, do you really want to be watching?"

"Yes." But he picked up the helmet and followed her. She didn't have the cane anymore. All she had to wave at him was a planet ten times the size of the Earth.

It was cooler in the elevator. Air conditioning. His nerves still tingled, whether from Uranus's passing or from the nearness of the Norn... He sniffed suddenly, and had to swallow a laugh. That was what he had smelled on the roof. She had never worn perfume before.

Her hood was thrown back. Her hair was exotic: long, fine white hair flowing out of a fiery red undercoat. Of the wrinkles of age there were only traces left. Her breasts were... exotic, yeah: high and conical, delightfully pointed under the robe. Would the dikta see them as powerfully sensual or as evidence of animal origin?

The elevator had stopped. The doors opened. But Corbell was flattened against the wall, and Mirelly-Lyra wasn't moving, either. She watched him uneasily as he took in great lungsful of air, using all of his strength to hold himself stiff.

He wanted her. It was a madness in him, and he was terrified. "Perfume," he said, and his voice was a croak.

She said, "Yes. Shame on you for forcing me to such means. If it gives you pleasure to attack my pride, you've won."

"I don't understand!"

"Pheromones. I altered my medical system to make pheromones to affect your sex urge. Pheromones are biochemical cues." She stepped forward, put her hands on his shoulders. "Do you think I wanted it this-" And the touch of her was all it took.

The fastenings on her robe weren't fastened, save one, which ripped. He had more trouble with his own loincloth, his hands were shaking so, and he howled with frustration. She had to do it for him. He took her on the floor of the elevator, quickly, violently. Maybe he hurt her. Maybe he wanted to.

And his head still bubbled with the perfume. He had not had time to notice the differences in her. Now he did. Even fifty thousand years had wrought changes. Her ankles were heavier, her body was thicker in every dimension, than the standard of beauty in 1970 A.D. And she had the damndest eyes, with a tilt that was not oriental.

and a soft woman's mouth. He took her again. She wasn't passive, but she wasn't wholly enjoying it, either; she was frightened of what she had unleashed.

Afterward he was calmer. They moved out of the elevator onto the cloud-rug floor. The third time it was she who mounted him. He tried to hold himself back, to let her find her own way, but when it was over he could see his handprints bone white on her hips. He said, belatedly, "Are you all right?"