Marooned in Realtime

'We came out of stasis in 2295, just before Mudge's numerology said Christ would put on the Big Show. There was nothing but ruins, a civilization destroyed, a race exterminated. Mudge reviewed his mumbo-jumbo and concluded that we had overshot, that Christ had come and gone. The stupid jerk! He just could not accept what we saw around us. Something had visited the Solar System in the mid-twenty-third, but it hadn't been holy. The evidence of alien invasion was everywhere. Mudge had arrived with scarcely more than sackcloth and ashes. I'd brought plenty of equipment. I could do analysis, back up my claims. I had the power to save what humans were still in stasis.

'Yelen, right from then my goal was the same as yours. Even while you high-techs were still in stasis, I was planning for it. The only difference was that I knew about the aliens. But I couldn't convince Mudge of them. In fact, the signs were so subtle, I began to wonder if anyone else would believe me.' Chanson came to his feet, his talk speeding up. 'Unless we guarded against the invaders, all the goodwill in the world could not resurrect the human race. I had to do something. I — I enhanced some of the evidence. I nuked a few ruins. Surely, not even a blind man could ignore that!' He looked at Yelen and Tammy accusingly. 'Yet when you returned to realtime, you weren't convinced. You couldn't accept even the clearest evidence.... I tried. I tried. Over the next two thousand years I traveled all over the Solar System, discovering the signs of the invasion, emphasizing them so even idiots could not miss them.'

'In the end, I had a little success. W. W. Sanchez had the patience to look at the facts, the open-mindedness to believe. We persuaded the rest of you to be a bit more cautious. But the burden of vigilance still rested on me. No one else was willing to put sentries in far solar space. Over the years, I destroyed two alien probes — and still Sanchez was the only one who was convinced.' Juan was staring through Wil; he might have been talking to himself. 'I really liked Bil Sanchez. I wish he hadn't dropped out; his settlement was just too small to succeed. I visited him there several times. It was a long, idyllic, downhill slide. Bil wanted to do research, but all he had was that punched tape he'd found on Charon. He was obsessed with it; the last time I saw him he even claimed it was a fake.' A faintly troubled look passed across Juan's face. 'Well, that settlement was too small to survive, anyway.'

Yelen's eyes were wide, white showing all around the irises; her whole body had gone rigid. Chanson could not notice, but sudden death was in the air.

Wil stepped into Yelen's line of sight; his voice was a calm echo of Chanson's distant tone. 'What about Marta, Juan?'

'Marta?' Juan almost looked at him. 'Marta always had an open mind. She granted the possibility of an alien threat. I think Lu's arrival scared her; the creature was so obviously inhuman. Marta talked to Lu, got access to some of her databases. And then — and then '- tears started in his eyes —'she started asking the db about Mudge.' How much had Marta suspected? At the time, probably nothing; most of the jumbled references to Mudge had no connection with Chanson. It was tragic bad luck she started so close to Juan's secret. 'I should never have lied about my past, but now it was too late. Marta could destroy all I had worked for. The colony would be left defenseless. I had to, I had to —'

'Kill her?' Yelen's voice was a shout.

'No!' Juan's head snapped up; the reality around him was not to be ignored. 'I could never do that. I liked Marta! But I had to... quarantine her. I watched to see if she would denounce me. She never did — but then I realized I could never be sure what she might say later. I couldn't let her back.

'Please listen to me! I made mistakes; I pushed too hard to make you see the truth. But you must believe. The invaders are out there, Yelen. They'll destroy everything you and Marta dreamed of if you don't believe m —' Juan's voice became a scream. He fell heavily, lay with arms and legs twitching.

Two quick steps and Wil was kneeling by his side. Wil looked down at the agonized face; he'd had two days to prepare for this moment, to suppress the killing rage he felt every time he saw Chanson. Korolev had had no such time; he could almost feel her eyes boring death through his back. 'What did you do to him, Yelen?'

'I shut him down, cut his comm links.' She stepped around Wil, to look down at Chanson. 'He'll recover.' There was a tight smile on her face; in a way, it was scarier than her rage. 'I want time to think of just revenge. I want him to understand it when it comes,' Her eyes snapped up to the nearest bystanders. 'Get him out of my sight.' For once there was no debate; her words might as well have been electric prods. Tunc and three low-techs grabbed Chanson, carried him towards the flier that was drifting down the side of the amphitheater. Wil started after them.

'Brierson! I want to talk to you.' The words were abrupt, but there was something strange in Yelen's tone. Wil came back down the steps. Yelen led him around the side of the platform — away from the crowd, which was just beginning to come out of shock. 'Wil,' she said quietly, 'I want — I'd like to see what Marta said.' What Marta said when she wasn't writing for Chanson's eyes.

Wil swallowed; even winning could be hard. He touched her shoulder. 'Marta left the fifth cairn, just like I told Chanson. If we'd found it during the first few thousand years.... After fifty thousand, all we could see was that there had been a sheaf of reed paper inside. It was powder. We'll never know for sure what she wanted to tell us.... I'm sorry, Yelen.'

TWENTY-SIX

It was snowing. From over the hill came shouts, occasional laughter. They were having a snowball fight.

W. W. Brierson crunched down the hillside to the edge of the pines. Strange that with the world so empty he would still want to be alone. Maybe not so strange. Their dormitory was a crowded place. No doubt there were others who'd left the snowballers,