Dickson, Gordon - Time Storm

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TIME STORM

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and

any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, N.Y. 10471

ISBN; 0-671-72148-8

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First Baen printing, December 1992

Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10020

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION: TO THE UBKARIANB

Daring the 1930s and 1940s anyone writing science fiction did so almost exclusively for magazines.

Then in the early 1950s the magazine market began to die and paperback books took over. But the

paperback books were on the stand one week and gone the next By the time an author's newest book

came out his older books had disappeared.

As a result, during these later years, when the magazines were mostly gone and the paperback books

were coining and going, there were only a few of us who could afford to be fuD-thne writers of

science fiction; and the fact that this was possible at an was only because libraries continued to

be the only real market for hardcover science fiction. The libraries alone bought science fiction

books on a regular basis, shelved mem, and made them continuously available to readers; and in

this way libraries kept both science fiction and those of us who wrote it, alive.

To librarians everywhere, therefore, this book—the youngest of my literary children to see use

tight of day—Is dedicated.

The leopard—I called him Sunday, after the day I found him—almost never became annoyed with the

girl, for all her hanging on to him. But he was only a wild animal, after all, and there were

Hants to his patience.

What had moved me to pick up first him, then her, was something I asked myself often without

getting a good answer. They were nothing but encumbrances and no concern of mine. My only concern

was getting to Omaha and Swannee. Beyond that point there was no need for me to think. But ... I

don't know. Somehow out of the terrible feeling of emptiness that I kept waking up to in the

mornings, I had gotten a notion that *n a world where nearly all the people and animals had

vanished, they would be living creatures I could talk to. Talk to," however, had turned out to be

the working phrase; because certainly neither of them was able to talk back. Crazy cat and

speechless girl and with them, myself, who before had always had the good sense never to need

anybody, dragging them both along with me across a landscape as mixed up and insane as they were.

But, of course, without me they would have bean helpless.

This time, the trouble erupted just as I pushed the panel truck over a rise in late summer wheat

country, which I figured had once been comland, a little below the one-time northern border of

Iowa. AH the warning I heard was a sort of combination meow-snarl. Not a top-pitch, ready-to-fight

sound, but a plain signal that Sunday bad had enough of being treated tike a stuffed animal and

wanted the girl to leave him alone. I braked the panel sharply to a stop on the side of the empty,

two-lane asphalt road and scrambled over the seat backs into the body of the truck.

2 TIME STORM ',

"Cat!" I raved at him. "What the. hell's got Into yon now?"

But of course, having said his piece and already gotten her to let him go, Sunday was now feeling

just fine. He lay there, completely self-possessed, cleaning the fur on the back of his right

forepaw with his tongue. Only, the girl was huddled up into a tight little ball that looked as if

it never intended to come unwound again; and that made me lose my temper.

I cuffed Sunday; and he cringed, putting his head down as I crawled over him to get to the girl. A

second later I felt his rough tongue rasping on my left ankle in a plea for forgiveness—for what

he did not even understand. And that made me angry all over again, because fflogical-ry, now, I

was the one who felt guilty. He was literally insane where I was concerned. I knew it, and yet I

bad taken advantage of that to knock him around, knowing I was quite safe in doing so when

otherwise he could have had my throat out in two seconds as easy as yawning.

But I was only human myself, I told myself; and here I had the girl to unwind again. She was still

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in her ball, completely unyielding, afl elbows and rigid muscle when I put my hands on her. I had

told myself I had no real feeling for her, any more man I had for Sunday. But somehow, for some

reason I had never understood, it always damn near broke my heart when she went like that My

younger sister had had moments of withdrawal something Hke that—before she grew out of diem. I bad

guessed this girl to be no more than fifteen or sixteen at die most, and she had not said a word

since the day I found her wandering by the road. But she had taken to Sunday from the moment I had

led her back to the truck and she first laid eyes on him. Now, it was as if he was the only living

thing in the world for her; and when he snarled at her like that, it seemed to hit her like being

rejected by everyone who had ever loved her, all at once.

I had been through a number of crises Hke this one with her before—though the others bad not been

so obviously Sunday's fault—and I knew that mere was nothing much to be done with her until she

began to relax. So I sat down and wrapped my arms around her, cuddling her as close as her

rigidness would allow, and began to try to talk her out of it The sound of my voice seemed to

help.

TIME STORM 3 **

although at that time she would never show any kind of direct response to it, except to follow

orders.

So, there I sat, on the mattresses and blankets in the back of the panel truck, with my arms

around her narrow body that was more sharp bones than anything else, talking to her and telling

her over and over again ft at Sunday wasn't mad at her; he was just a crazy cat, and she should

pay no attention when he snarled, except to leave him alone for a while. After a while I got tired

of repeating the same words and tried singing to her—any song that I could remember. I was aware

it was no great performance. I may have believed at mat time that I was hell on wheels at a number

of things, but I knew singing was not one of them. I had a voice to scare bullfrogs. However, that

had never seemed to matter with the girt It was keeping up the human noise and holding her that

helped. Meanwhile, all the time this was going on, Sunday had crept up as close to us as he could

and had his fore-paws around my left ankle, his forehead butted against my knee.

So, after a while, illogically, I reached down and patted his head, which he took as forgiveness.

I was a complete fool for both of them, in some ways. Shortly after that, the girl began to stir.

The stiffness went out of her. Her arms and legs extended themselves; and without a word to me she

pulled away, crawled off and put her arms around Sunday. He suffered it, even licking at her face

with his tongue. I unkinked my own cramped muscles and wem back up front to the driver's seat of

the truck.

Then I saw it, to the left of the highway. It was a line of sky-liigh mist or dust-haze, less than

a couple of hundred yards away, rolling down on uc at an angle.

There was no time for checking on the two back mere to see if they were braced for a racing start

I jammed the key over, got the motor started, and slammed the panel into motion down the narrow

asphalt lane between the brown-yellow of the standing wheat, now gently wind-rippled by the breeze

that always preceded a mistwall, until the plant-tops wavered into varying shades of gold.

No mistwall I had seen, with the time change line its presence always signalled, had ever moved

faster than about thirty miles an hour. That meant that unless this one was an exception,

theoretically, any car in good working order on a decent road should have no trouble outrunning it

The difficulty arose, however, wheat—as now •—the mistwall was not simply coming up behind us, but

moving at an angle ifontcjng the road. I would have to drive over half the length of the wall or

more—and some mistwaQs were up to ten miles long—to get out of its path before it caught us, along

with everything else in its way. I held the pedal of the accelerator to the floor and sweated.

According to the needle on the speedometer, we were doing nearly a hundred and ten—which was

nonsense. Eighty-five miles an hour was more like the absolute top speed of the panel truck. As it

was, we swayed and bounced along the empty road as if five more miles an hour would have seat us

flying off it

I could now see the far end of the mistwall. It was still a good two or three miles away; and the

wall itself was only a few hundred yards off and closing swiftly. I may have prayed a little bit

at tins point, in spite of being completely irreligious. I seem to remember that I did. In the

weeks since the whole business of the time changes started, I had not been this close to being

caught since that first day in the cabin northwest of Duluth, when I had, in fact, been caught

without knowing what hit me. I had thought then it was another heart attack, come to carry me off

for good this time; and the bitterness of being chopped down before I was thirty and after I had

spent nearly two years putting myself into the best pos-

TIME STORM 5

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rible physical shape, had been like a dry, ugly taste in my throat just before the change tine

reached me and knocked me out

I remember still thinking that it was a heart attack, even after I came to. I had gone on tM"*"ng

that way, even after I found the squirrel that was still in shock from k; the way Sunday had been

later, when I found him. For several days afterwards, with the squirrel tagging along behind me

tike some miniature dog until I either exhausted it or lost it, I did not begin to realize the

size of what bad happened. It was only later that I began to understand, when I came to where

Duluth should have been and found virgin forest where a couple of hundred thousand people had

lived, and later yet, as I moved south, and stumbled across the tog cabin with the bearded man in

cord-wrapped leather leggings.

The bearded man had nearly finished me. It took me almost three minutes too long after I met him

to realize mat he did not understand that the rifle in my hand was a weapon. It was only when I

stepped back and picked up the hunting bow, that he pulled his fancy quick-draw trick with the axe

he had been using to chop wood when I stepped into his clearing. I never saw anything fike it and

I hope I never see it again, unless Fm on the side of the man with the axe. It was a sort of

scunitar-bladed tool with a wide, curving forward edge; and he had hung it on his shoulder, blade-

forward, in what I took to be a reassuring gesture, when I first tried to speak to him. Then he

came toward me, speaking some kind of Scanduuvian-sounding gibberish in a friendly voice, the axe

hung on his shoulder as if he had forgotten it was there.

It was when I began to get worried about the steady way he was coming on and warned him back with

the rifle, that I recognized suddenly that, apparently, as far as he was concerned, I was carrying

nothing more man a dub. For a second I was merer/ paralyzed by the enormity of that insight. Then,

before I could bring myself to shoot Urn after all in self-defense, I had the idea of trying to

pick op the bow with my free hand. As an idea, it was a good one—but the minute he saw the bow in

my hand he acted; and to this day, I*m not sure exactly how he did it

He reached back at belt-level and jerked forward on the handle-end of the axe. It came off his

shoulder—

6 TIME STORM

spinning, back, around, under his arm, up !n the air and over, and came down, incredibly, with the

end of its handle into his fist and die blade edge forward. Then he threw it

I saw it come whirling toward me, ducked instinctively and ran. I heard it thunk into a tree

somewhere behind me; but by then I was into the cover of the woods, and he did not follow.

Five days later I was where die twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul bad been—and they looked as

if they had been abandoned for a hundred years after a bombing raid that had nearly leveled them.

But I found the panel truck there, and it started when I turned its key. There was gas in the

filling station pumps, though I had to rig up a little kerosene generator I liberated from a

sporting goods store, in order to pump some of ft into the tank of the truck, and I headed south

along U*S. 3SW. Then came Sunday. Then came the girt...

I was almost to the far end of the mistwaE now, although to the left of the road die haze was less

than a hundred yards from the roadway; and little stinging sprays of everything from dust to fine

gravel were beginning to pepper the left side of the panel, including my own bnd and shoulder

where the window on that side was not rolled up. But I had no time to roll it up now. I kept

pushing the gas pedal through the floor, and suddenly we whipped past the end of the wall of mist,

and I could see open country clear to the summer horizon.

Sweating, I eased back on the gas, let use truck roll to a stop, and half-turned it across die

road so I could look behind us.

Back where we had been, seconds before, die mist had already crossed die road and was moving on

into die fields that bad been on die road's far aide. They were ceasing to be there as it

passed—as die road itself had already ceased to be, and die farm land on the near side of the

road. Where die grain had rippled in die wind, there was now wild, grassy hillside—open country

sparsely interspersed with a few chimps of bees, rising to a bluff, a crown of land, less than a

quarter of a mile off, looking so close I could reach out and touch it There was not a breath of

wind stirring.

I put die panel back in gear again and drove off. After a while die road swung in a gentle curve

toward a small

TIME STORM 7

Mown that looked as normal as apple pie, as if no mistwall had ever passed through it It could be.

of course. My heart began to pound a little with hope of running into someone sane I could talk

with, about everything that had happened since that apparent heart attack of mine in die cabin.

But when I drove into Main Street of die town, between die buildings, there was no one in sight;

and die whole place seemed deserted. Hope evaporated into caution. Then I saw what seemed to be a

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barricade across the street up ahead; and a single figure crouched behind it with what looked like

a rocket launcher cm his shoulder. He was peering over die barricade away from me; al-tiiaugh he

must have heard die sound of die motor coming up die street behind him.

I pulled die truck into an alley between two stores and stopped it

"Stay here and stay quiet," I told die girl and Sunday.

I took die carbine from beside my driver's seat and got out Holding it ready, just in case, I went

up behind dw man crouched at die barricade. Up tiiis close I could see easily over die

barricade—and sure enough, tiiere was another mistwall, less than a mile away, but unmoving. For

die first time since I had come into die silent town, I became conscious of a steady sound.

It came from somewhere up ahead, beyond the point where the straight white concrete highway

vanished into the unmoving haze of the mistwaU—a sftiall buzzing sound. Like the sound of a fly in

an enclosed box on a hot July day such as this one was.

"Get down," said the man with the rocket launcher.

I pulled my head below the top line of the makeshift barricade—furniture, rolls of carpeting, cans

of paint—that barred the empty street between the gritty sidewalks and the unbroken store windows

in the red brick sides of the Main Street building. Driving hi from the northwest, I had thought

at first that mis small town was still living. Then, when I got closer, I guessed it was one of

those places, untouched but abandoned, such as I bad run into further north. And so it was, in

fact; except for the man, his homemade barricade, and the rocket launcher.

The buzzing grew louder. I looked behind me, back down Main Street I could just make out the

brown, left front fender of the panel truck showing at the mouth of the alley into which I had

backed it There was no sound or movement from inside it The two of them in there would be obeying

my orders, tying still on the blankets in the van section, the leopard probably purring a little

in its rough, throaty way and cleaning the fur of a forepaw with its tongue, while the girl held

to the animal for comfort and companionship, in spite of the heat

When I looked back through a chink in the barricade, mere was something already visible hi the

road. It had evidently just appeared out of the naze, for it was coming very fast Its sound was

die buzzing sound I had heard earlier, now growing rapidly louder as the object raced toward us,

TIME STORM 9

' seeming to swell in size, like a balloon being inflated against the white backdrop of the haze,

as it came.

It came so fast that there was only time to get a glimpse of it It was yellow and black in color,

like a wasp, a small gadget with an amazing resemblance to a late-model compact car, but half the

size of such a car, charging at us down the ruler-straight section of highway like some outsize

wind-up toy.

I jerked up my rifle; but at the same time the rocket launcher went off beside me with a flat dap

of sound. The rocket was slow enough so that we could see it like a black speck, curving through

the air to meet the gadget coming at us. They met and there was an explosion. The gadget bopped up

off the road shedding parts which flew toward us, whacking into the far side of the barricade like

shrapnel. For a full minute after ft quit moving, there was no sound to be heard. Then the

whistling of birds and the trifling of crickets took up again.

I looked over at the rocket launcher.

"Good," I said to the man. "Where did you get that launcher, anyway?"

"Somebody must have stolen it from a National Guard outfit,'* he said. "Or brought it back from

overseas. I found it with a bunch of knives and guns and other things, in a storeroom behind the

town police office.*1

He was as tall as I was, a tight-shouldered, narrow-bodied man with a deep tan on his forearms,

and on his quiet, bony face. Maybe a little older than I; possibly in his late thirties. I studied

him, trying to estimate how hard it would be to kill him if I had to. I could see him watching,

doubtless with the same thought in mind.

It was the way things were, now. There was no shortage of food or drink, or anything material you

could want But neither was there any law, anymore—at least n°ne I'd been able to find in the last

three weeks.

To break the staring match, I deliberately looked away to the gadget, lying still now beyond the

barricades, and nodded at it,

"I'd Hke to have a look at it dose up," I said. "Is it safer

"Sure." He got to his feet, laying down the rocket launcher. I saw, however, he had a heavy

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revolver—possibly a thirty-eight or forty-four—in a bolster on the hip away from me; and a deer

rifle carbine Hke mine was lying against the barricade. He picked it up in his left hand. "Come

on," he said. "They only show up one at a time; on a staggered schedule, seven to ten hours

apart."

I looked down the road. There were no other wrecked shapes in black and yellow in sight along ft.

"You're sure?** I said. "How many have you seen?*

He laughed, making a dry sound in his throat Hke an old man.

"They're never quite stopped," he said. "Like this one. Ifs harmless, now, but not really done

for. Later HH crawl back, or get puttied back behind the mist over there—you'll see. Come on."

He climbed over the barricade and I followed him.

When we got to the gadget, it looked more than ever Hke

an overlarge toy car—except that where the windows

should be, there was a flat yeOow surface; and instead of

four ordinary-sized wheels with tires, the lower halves of

something Hke sixteen or eighteen small metal disks

showed through the panel sealing the underbody. The

rocket had torn a huge hole in the gadget's side.

"Listen," said the man, stooping over the bole. I came

TIME STORM 11

Tdose and listened myself. There was a faint buzzing still going on down there someplace inside it

"Who sends these things?** I said. "Or what sends them?**

He shrugged.

"By the way," I said, "I'm Marc Despard." I held out my hand.

He hesitated.

"Raymond Samuelson," he said.

I saw his hand jerk forward a Httle, men back again. Outside of that, he ignored my offered hand;

and I let it drop. I guessed that he might not want to shake hands with a man he might later have

to try to kill; and I judged mat anyone who worried about a nicety like that was not Ekety to

shoot me in the back, at least, unless lie had to. At the same time, there was no point in asking

for trouble by letting any nrisimrtftrsfandings arise.

"I'm Just on my way through to Omaha,** I said. "My wife's there, if she's still all right But I'm

not going to drive right across that time change fine out there if I've got a choke." I nodded at

the haze from which the gadget had come. "Have you got any other roads leading south or east from

the town?"

"Yes," be said. He was frowning. "Did you say your wife was mere?"

"Yes," I answered. For the life of me, I had meant to say "ex-wife," but my tongue had slipped;

and it was not worm straightening the matter out now for someone Hke Samuelson.

"Look," he said, "you don't have to go right away. Stop and have dinner.**

Stop and have dinner. Something about my mentioning ft wife had triggered off a hospitality reflex

in him. The famuiar, homely words he spoke seemed as strange and out of place, here between the

empty town and the haze that barred the landscape to our right, as the wrecked gadget at our feet.

"AH right," I said.

W» went back, over the barricade and down to the panel truck. I called to the leopard and the girl

to come out, and introduced them to Samuelson. His eyes widened at the sight of the leopard; but

they opened even more at the sight of the gui behind the big cat-

TIME STORM

"I caU the leopard 'Sunday/ ** I said. "Hie guTs never told me her name."

I put out my band and Sunday stepped forward, flattening his ears and nibbing his head up under my

palm with a sound that was like a whimper of pleasure.

**I came across him just after a time change had swept die area where he was," I said. "He was

still in shock when I first touched him; and now I've got his soul in pawn, or something like

that. You've seen how animals act, if you get them right after a change, before they come all the

way back to being themselves?"

Samuefeon shook his head. He was looking at me now with some distrust and suspicion.

"That*s too bad," I said. "Maybe you'll take my word for it, then. He's perfectly safe as long as

I'm around."

I petted Sunday. Samuelson looked at the girl.

"Hello," he said, smiling at her. But she simply stared back without answering. She would do

anything I set her to doing, but I had never been able to make her seem conscious of herself. The

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straight, dark hair hanging down around her shoulders always had a wild look; and even the shirt

and jeans she was wearing looked as if they did not belong on her.

They were the best of available choices, though, I had put her into a dress once, shortly after I

had found her; and the effect had been pitiful. She had looked like a caricature of a young girl

in that dress.

"She doesn't talk," I said. MI came across her a couple of days after I found the leopard, about

two hundred miles south. The leopard was about where the Minneapo-fis-St Paul area used to be. It

could have come from a zoo. The girl was just wandering along the road. No telling where she came

from."

"Poor kid," said Samuelson. He evidently meant it; and I began to think it even more unlikely that

he would shoot me in (he back.

We went to bis house, one block off Main Street, for dinner.

"What about the—whatever-you-can-them?" I asked. "What if one comes while you aren't there to stop

it?"

The buzzers," he said. "No, Hke I told you, they don't run on schedule, but after one's come by,

if s at least six and a half hours before the next one. It's my guess there's

HMB STORM 13

* some kind of automatic factory behind the mist mere, mat takes mat kmg to make a new one."

Samuelson's house turned out to be one of those tall, ornate, late-nineteenth century homes you

still see in small towns. Two stories and an attic with a wide screen porch in front and lilac

bushes growing aH along one side of it The rooms inside were small, dark and high-ccalinged, with

too much furniture for their flborspace. He had rigged a gas motor and a water tank to the well m

his basement that had formerly been run by an electric pump; and he had found an old, black, wood-

burning stove to block up in one corner of this spacious kitchen. The furniture was clean of dust

and in order.

He gave us the closest thing to a normal meal mat Fd eaten—or the girt had, undoubtedly—since the

time storm first hit Earth. I knew k had affected all the Barm, by mis time; not just the little

part west of the Great lakes in Norm America, where I was. I carried a good all-bands portable

radio along and, once in a whfle, picked up a fragment of a broadcast from somewhere. The

continuity—or discontinuity—Unes dividing the time areas usually blocked off radio. But sometimes

things came through. Hawaii, evidently, was unique in hardly having been touched, and Fd

occasionally heard bits of shortwave from as far away as Greece. Not that I listened much. There

was nothing I could do for me people broadcasting, any more man there was anything they could do

for me.

I told Samuelson about this whfle he was fixing dinner, and he said he had run into the same thing

with bom the shortwave and long-wave radios- he had set up. We agreed that the storm was not over.

"We've only had the one time change here in Saulsburg, though," he said. "Every so often, 111 ace

a line of change moving across country off on the horizon, or gta^fog still for a whfle out mere;

but so far, none's come this way."

"Where did all the people go, mat were in this placer I asked.

His face changed, all at once.

"I don't know," he said. Then he bent over the biscuit dough he was making, so mat his face was

hidden away from me. **! had to drive over to Peppard—that*s the

TIME STORM

next town. I drove and drove and couldn't find it. I began to think I was sick or crazy, so I

turned the car around and drove home. When I got back here, it was like you see it now."

It was dear he did not want to talk about it But 1 could guess some of what he had lost from the

house. It had been lived in by more than one adult, and several children. There were a woman's

overshoes in the front closet, toys in a box in one corner of the living room, and three bicycles

in good condition in the garage.

"What did you do for a living?" he asked me after a moment

"I was retired,** I said.

He frowned over that, too. So I told him about myself. The time storm had done nothing in my case

to leave me with things I did not want to talk about, except for the matter of Swannee, down in

Omaha; and somehow I was perfectly comforted and sure that she and that city had come through the

time storm changes unharmed, though I had heard no radio broadcasts from there.

MI started investing in the stock market when I was nineteen," I said, "before I was even out of

college, I struck it lucky." Luck, of course, had nothing to do with it; but I had found I could

not tell people that Because the word "stocks" was involved, it had to be hick, not hard research

and harder-headed decision-making, that hint made money for me. "Then I used what I had to take

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over a company that made trailers and snowmobiles; and that did all right I'd be there yet, but I

had a heart attack."

Samuelson's eyebrows went up.

"A heart attackr he said. "You're pretty young for something like that."

"I was damned young," I said. "I was twenty-four.**

I discovered suddenly that I had been wrong about not having things I did not want to talk about I

did not want to tell him about my heart attack. He looked too much tike a man who'd never had a

sick day in his life.

"Anyway," I said, "my doctor told me to take H easy and lose weight That was two yean ago. So I

sold out, set up a trust to support me, and bought a place up in the woods of northern Minnesota,

beyond Ely—if you know fhet state. I got back in shape, and I've been fine ever since; until the

time storm hit three weeks ago."

TIME STORM

T "Yes," he said.

The food was ready, so I helped him carry it into the dining room and we all ate there; even

Sunday, curled up in a corner. I had thought Samuelson might object to my bringing the leopard

into his house, but he had not

Afterwards, we sat on his screened porch at the front of the house, with the thick leaves of tile

sugar maple in the yard screening us from the western sun. It was after six by my watch, but now

in midsummer, there were at least another three hours of light left Samuelson had some homemade

white wine which was not bad. It was not very good either, but the town was apparently a dry town;

and of course, he had not left it since he had first come back here and found his people gone.

"How about the girl?" he asked me, when he first poured the wine into water glasses.

"Why notr I said. "We may be aU dead—her included —tomorrow, if the wrong sort of time change

catches us."

So he gave her a glass. But she only took a small sip, then put it down on the floor of the porch

by her chair. After a bit while Samuelson and I talked, she got out of the chair itself and sat

down on the floor where she could put an arm around Sunday, who was lying there, dozing. Outside

of raising a lazy eyebrow when he fett the weight of her arm, the leopard paid no attention. It

was amazing what he would stand from her, sometimes.

"What is itr Samuelson asked me, after we'd been talking for a while about how things used to be.

"I mean—where did it come from?**

He was talking about the time storm.

"I dont know," I said. "FH bet nobody does. But Fve got a theory."

"What*s that?" He was looking at me closely in the shadow of the porch. A little evening breeze

stirred the lilac bushes into scraping their upper branches against the side of the house.

"I think it*s just what we're calling ft," I said. "A storm. Some sort of storm in space that the

whole world ran into, the same way you could be out driving in your car and run into a

thunderstorm. Only in this case, instead of wind and rain, thunder and lightning, we get these

time changes, like ripples moving across the surface of tile world, with everything getting moved

either forward or back in time. Wherever a change passes over them."

TIME STORM

**How about here?" he asked. "The town's just where tt was before. Only the people ..."

He trailed off.

"How do you know?" I said. "Maybe the area right around here was moved forward just a year, say,

or even a month. That wouldn't be enough to make any change in the buildings and streets you could

notice, but it might have been beyond the point where everybody living here, for some reason,

decided to get out"

"WhyT

"Those buzzers, as you call them," I said. "Seeing one of them come at the town would be pretty

good reason to me to get out, if I was someone living here."

lie shook his head.

"Not everybody," he said, "Not without leaving some kind of message."

I gave up. If he did not want reasonable explanations, there was no point in my forcing them on

him.

TeQ me," be said, after we had sat there without talking for a while, "do you think God had

something to dowithitr

So mat was his hang-up. That was why he stayed here, day after day, defending a town with no

people in it That was why he had carefully adapted the well in the basement to the new conditions

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and set up a wood stove so dial he could give a regular meal at a moment's notice to a complete

family, if they should return unexpectedly, showing op at the front door, tired and hungry. I

wanted to tell him neither God nor human had ever changed tilings much for me; but now that I knew

what his question meant to him, I could not do it All at once I felt the pain in him—and I found

myself suddenly angry that someone I did not even know should be able to export his troubles to

me, like that It was true I had lost no**"i>gj not Mice him. Still....

"Who can tell?" I said, standing up. "We'd better be going."

He stood up also, quickly. Before he was on his feet, Sunday was on his, and that brought the girl

scrambling upright

"You could stay here overnight,'* he said.

I shook my head.

"You don't want to drive in the dark," he went on.

TIME STORM 17 T **No," I said. "But I'd like to get some mfles under our belt before

quitting for the day. I'm anxious to get to my wife."

I led the leopard and the girl out to the panel, which I bad driven over and now stood in his

driveway. I opened the door on the driver's side, and the other two got in, crawling back into the

body. I waited until they were settled, then got in myself and was about to back out, when

Samuelson, who had gone in the house instead of following us to the truck, came out again, almost

shyly, with a pair of large paper grocery sacks. He pushed them in through the open window at my

left.

"Here," he said. There's some food you could use. I put in a bottle of the wine, too."

Thanks." I put the two sacks on the empty front seat beside me. He looked past me, back into the

body of the van, where the girl and the leopard were already curled up, ready for sleep.

*Tve got everything, you know," he said. "Everything you could want There's nothing she could

use—clothes, or anything?"

"Sunday's the only thing she wants," I said. "As long as she's got him, there's nothing eke she

cares about"

"Well, goodby then," he said.

"So long."

I backed out into the street and drove off. In the side-view mirror I could see him walk into the

street himself so that he could look after us and wave. I turned a corner two blocks down and the

houses shut him from view.

He had given me a filling station map earner, with a route marked in pencil, that led me to the

south edge of the city and out at last on a two-lane asphalt road rising and dipping over the

land, with open, farmers* fields on either side. The fields had all been planted that spring; and

as I drove along I was surrounded by acres of corn and wheat and peas no one would ever harvest or

use. The sky-high wall of haze that was the time change line, holding its position just outside of

Samuelson's town, now to the left and behind us, grew smaller as I drove the van away from there.

In a car we were pretty safe, according to what I had learned so far. These time lines were like

lengths of rod, rolling across the landscape; but as I say, I had yet to

TIME STORM

encounter any that seemed to travel at more than thirty miles an hour. It was not hard to get away

from them as long as you could stick to a road.

I had been keeping my eyes open for something in the way of an aH-terrain vehicle, but with

adequate speed. Something like a Land Rover that could make good time on the roads but could also

cut across open country, if necessary. But so far I had not found anything.

I became aware that the engine of the van was roaring furiously under the hood. I was belting us

along the empty asphalt road at nearly seventy miles an hour. There was no need for anything like

that It was both safer and easier on the gas consumption to travel at about forty or forty-five;

and now and then gas was not easily available, just when the tank ran low. It was true I had four

spare five-gallon cans-full* lashed to the luggage carrier on the van's roof. But that was for

real emergencies.

Besides, none of the three of us had anything that urgent to run to—»or away from. I throttled

down to forty mOes an hour, wondering how I had let my speed creep up in the first place.

Hum, of course, I realized why. I had been letting Samudson's feelings get to me. Why should I cry

for hint? He was as crazy from the loss of his family as the girl was—or Sunday. But he had really

wanted us to stay the night, hi that huge house of his from which his family had disappeared; and

it would have been a kindness to him if we had stayed. Only, I could not take the chance. Sometime

in the night he might change suddenly from the man who was desperate for company to a man who

thought that I, or all of us, had something to do with whatever it was that had taken his people

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away from him.

I could not trust his momentary sanity. Samuelson had talked for a while like a sane man; but he

was still someone sitting in a deserted town, shooting rockets fun of high explosives at cut-size

toys that attacked at regular intervals. No one in that position could be completely sane.

Besides, insanity was part of things, now. Sunday was the definitive example. I could have cut the

leopard's throat, and he would have licked my hand as I was doing it. The girl was in no better

mental condition. Samuelson, like them, was caught in this cosmic joke that had over-

HME STORM 19

'taken the world we knew—so he was insane too, by definition. There was no other possibility.

Which of course, I thought, following the idea to its logical conclusion, as I drove into the

increasing twilight, meant that I had to be insane, too. The idea was almost laughable. I felt

perfectly sane. But just as I had not trusted Samuelson, if I were him, or anyone else looking at

me from the outside as I drove across the country with a leopard and a speechless girl for

companions, I would not trust myself. I would have been afraid that there could be a madness hi me

too, that would overtake me sometime, suddenly and without warning. Of course, that was all

nonsense. I put the ridiculous thought out of my head.

When the red flush of the sunset above the horizon to our right began to grow narrow and dark, and

stars were dearly visible in the clear sky to the east, I pulled the van off the road into a

comfortable spot under some cot-tonwood trees growing down in a little dip between two hills and

set up camp. It was so warm that I had the tent flaps tied all the way back. I lay there looking

out at the stars, seeming to move deeper and deeper hi the night sky, becoming more and more

important and making the earth under me feel more like a chip of matter lost in the universe.

But I could not sleep. That had happened to me a lot, lately. I wanted to get up and go sit

outside the tent by myself, with my back to the trunk of one of the cottonwoods. But if I did,

Sunday would get up and come out with me; and then the girl would get up and follow Sunday. It was

a chain reaction. A tag-end of a line from my previous two years of steady reading, during my

hermit-like existence above Ely, came back to me. Privatum comntoaum pubUco cettit—"private

advantage yields to public.** I decided to lie there and tough it out

What I had to tough out was the replaying in my head of all the things that had happened. I had

almost forgotten, until now, my last summer in high school when I started teaching myself to read

Latin because I had just learned how powerfully it underlays all our English language. Underlays

and outdoes. "Bow long, O Cataline, will you abuse our patience?* Good, but not in the same ball

game with the thunder of old Cicero's original: "Quo usque, Catilina, abutere patienta nostra?"

After the sweep of the first time change that I thought waa my second heart attack come to take me

for good

TIME STORM 21

this time—after I had found I was not dead, or even hurt—there had been the squirrel, frozen in

shock. The little gray body had been relaxed hi my hands when I picked it up; the small forepaws

had clung to my fingers. It had followed me after that for at least the first three days, when I

finally decided to walk south from my cabin and reach a city called Ely, that turned out to be no

longer there. I had not understood then that what I had done to the squirrel was what later I was

to do to Sunday —be with h when it came out of shock, making it totally dependent on me * ...

Then, a week or so later, there had been the log cabin and the man in leggings, the transplanted

Viking or whoever, who I thought was just anyone cutting firewood with his shirt off, until he saw

me, hooked the axe over his shoulder as if holstering it, and started walking toward me....

I was into it again. I was really starting to replay tin whole sequence, whether I wanted to or

not; and I could not endure that, lying trapped in this tent with two other bodies. I had to get

out I got to my feet as quietly as I could. Sunday lifted bis head, but I hissed at bin between my

teeth so angrily that he lay down again. The girt only stirred in her sleep and made a little

noise in her throat, one hand flung out to touch the fur of Sunday's back.

So I made it outside without them after all, into the open air where I could breathe; and I sat

down with my back against the rugged, soft bark of one of the big cottonwoods. Overhead the sky

was perfectly dear and the stars were everywhere. The air was still and warm, very transparent and

dean. I leaned the back of my head against the tree trunk and let my mental machinery go. It was

simply something I was stuck with—had always been stuck with, all my lifetime.

Well, perhaps not all Before the age of seven or eight tilings had been different But by the time

I was that old, I had begun to recognize that I was on my own—and needed no one else.

My father had been a cipher as far back as I could remember. If someone were to tell me that he

had never actually realized he had two children, I would be inclined to believe it Certainly I had

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seen him forget us even when we were before his eyes, in the same room with him. He had been the

director of the Walter H. Mannheim private library in St Paul; and he was a harmless

TIME STORM

man—a bookworm. But he was no use either to me or my' younger sister as a parent.

My mother was something else. To begin with, she was beautiful. Yes I know, every child thinks

that about its mother. But I had independent testimony from a number of other people; particularly

a long tine of men, other than my father, who not only thought so, also, but told my mother so,

when I was there to overhear them.

However, most of that came later. Before my sister was born my mother was my whole family, by

herself. We used to play games together, she and I. Also, she sang and talked to me and told me

stories endlessly. But then, after my sister was born, things began to change. Not at once, of

course. It was not until Beth was old enough to run around that the alteration in my mother became

clearly visible. I now mink that she had counted on Beth's birth to do something for her marriage;

and it had not done so.

At any rate, from that time on, she began to forget us. Not that I blamed her for it She had

forgotten our rather long since—in fact, there was nothing there to forget But now she began to

forget us as well. Not all of the time, to start with; but we came to know when she was about to

start forgetting because she would show up one day with some new, tall man we had never seen, who

smelted of cigars and alcohol.

When this first started happening, it was the beginning of ft bad time for me. I was too young

then to accept it and I wanted to fight whatever was taking her away from me; but there was

nothing there with which I could come to grips. It was only as if a glass window had suddenly been

rolled up between her and me; and no matter how I shouted or pounded on its transparent surface,

she did not hear. Still, I kept on trying to fight it for several years, during which she began to

stay away for longer and longer periods—all with my father's sQent consent, or at least with no

objections from him.

It was at the dose of those years that my fight finally came to an end. I did not give up, because

I could not; but the time came when my mother disappeared completely. She went away on one last

trip and never came back. So at last I was able to stop struggling; and as a result I came to the

first great discovery of my life, which was that nobody ever really loved anyone. There was a

TIME STORM 23

vu3t-ln instinct when you were young that made yon mink you needed a mother; and another built-in

instinct in that mother to pay attention to you. But as you got older you discovered your parents

were only other humanly selfish people, in competition with you for fife's pleasures; and your

parents came to realize that this chfld of theirs that was you was not so unique and wonderful

after all, but only a small savage with whom they were burdened. When I understood this at last, I

began to see how knowing it gave me a great advantage over everyone else; because I realized then

that life was not love, as my mother had told me it was when I was very young, but competition

—fighting; and, knowing this, I was now set free to give aD my attention to what really mattered.

So, from that moment on I became a fighter without match, a fighter nothing could stop.

It was not quite that sudden and complete a change, of course. I still had, and probably always

would have, absent-minded moments when I would still react to other people out of my early

training, as if it mattered to me whether they lived or died. Indeed, after my mother disappeared

for good, there was a period of several years in which Beth clung to me—quite naturally, of

course, because I was all she had—and I responded unthinkingly with the false affection reflex.

But in time she too grew up and went looking somewhere else for attention; and I became completely

free.

It was a freedom so great I saw most people could not even conceive of it When I was still less

than hatf-grown, adults would remark on how strong-minded I was. They talked of how I would make

my mark in die world. I used to want to laugh, hearing them say that, because .anything else was

unthinkable. I not only had every intention of leaving my mark on the world; I intended to put my

brand on it and turn it into my own personal property; and I had no doubt I could do it Free as I

was of the love delusion that blinkered all the rest of them, there was nothing to stop me; and I

had already found out that I would go on trying for what I wanted as long as it was there for me

to get

I had found that out when I had fought my mother's withdrawal from us, I had not been able to stop

struggling against that until it had finally sunk in on me that she was gone lor good. Up until

that time I had not been able

TIME STORM

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file:///F|/rah/Gordon%20Dickson/Gordon%20R.%20Dickson%20-%20Time%20StormUC.txtTIMESTORMThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©1977byGordonR.DicksonAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttorepr...

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