Bearing an Hourglass (19 page)

The prospect of paradox overwhelmed him for the moment. Could he interfere with the events of his past self and change events he had already experienced? He had been told he was an entity apart, in control of time—but he had never consciously tested paradox. He might change the lives of other people—but how could he change his own? Yet if he did not, he would be consumed by the Bem. This did not appeal any more than the prospect of paradox did.

Now he saw the Femme approaching. Hastily he willed the sand and slid forward a few minutes, managing to keep his place within the ship. He floated behind the Bem as she held his former self aloft.
This
was what he had come to undo.

He remembered how he had been wrenched when he turned over the Hourglass, because that reversed his own timeline. Would it do that now, returning him to this point, or a point before the Bem had grabbed him? He had to try!

He turned the glass—and found himself moving backward, along with the scene. The Bem retreated with her burden to the back room, while he—

He turned the Hourglass over again, and forward progress resumed. The Bem returned.

This wasn’t getting him anywhere, because it wasn’t changing reality, just his present perception of it. Reality was like a holo he could run forward or backward but could not change. But change was what he needed.

Still, if he could affect reality one way, he could affect it another. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand black.

The scene froze, except for himself. The Bem held the prior Norton aloft, both of them like statues.

Funny—he didn’t remember being frozen before. But, of course, the objects were not aware of that, and his
prior self was now an object. When they resumed action, they thought it had proceeded uninterrupted. So he could have been frozen …

Norton stepped forward, windmilling in air when his feet lacked traction, grabbed a tentacle, and wrenched it off his other self’s arm. The tentacle was cold, slimy, and repulsive, but he was able to unwind it. Then he tackled the others. Soon he had his former self free. They were floating, the now-self animate, the then-self a statue.

Very well. He had rescued himself from the Bem. But how could he recombine?

One way to find out. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand white again. Normal time resumed.

The Bem waved her tentacles. “Hey, where’d you go?” she exclaimed indignantly.

“I’m not sure,” the then-Norton said.

“Don’t worry about it,” the now-Norton said. “We’ve got to get rid of this monster before she eats us both!”

“My thought exactly,” the other Norton agreed. “No sense giving her gas.” He floated to the drifting rod, grabbed it, and tried to stalk the Bem. This wasn’t very successful.

Then the Bem helped. She shot out a tentacle and grabbed the other Norton around the waist. Thus anchored, then-Norton raised the rod with both hands and brought it down on what passed for the Bem’s head. An eye shattered; now-Norton wasn’t certain whether it was the one he had kicked in before, a new one, or whether this was happening before he had kicked that eye.

“Ooooh, that smarts!” the Bem exclaimed, retreating toward the control panel.

Then another strange thing happened. Norton’s position jumped. He found himself in the other body, the tentacle around his waist, the rod in his hands.

He had recombined! Time had progressed beyond the point at which he had commenced his time travel, so now there was only one of him. His experience had combined, too; he remembered being mysteriously freed from the clutch of the Bem, as well as remembering doing it while
time was frozen. He had been in two halves, and now was whole again. One half was longer than the other, having never been frozen in time, but both were himself. That slight difference in the experience of the two selves gave him a special perspective, like binocular vision, providing a new perception of the depth of reality.

The Bem, however, was righteously angry about her shattered eye. “You struck me!” she screamed. She shot out another tentacle to grab the rod and wrest it from Norton’s grasp.

“I bashed your head in,” Norton said. “How come you aren’t unconscious?”

“I have no head,” the Bem explained. “You hit my apex.”

Norton brought up his foot and kicked the monster in the crotch. But the Bem did not react. “Why aren’t you doubled over in pain?” he asked. “Male or female, that should hurt!”

“I have no crotch,” the Bem said, gesturing with the rod. “That’s merely a nether bifurcation.”

Norton grabbed the rod back. The tentacles did not let go, so he wrestled the rod about until it was endwise and shoved it violently through the jellylike central mass of the monster. Still there was no reaction.

“But I just stabbed you through the heart!” he cried.

“I have no heart,” the Bem said.

Three more tentacles whipped forward. One of them grabbed the Hourglass, which was now floating next to Norton. “Hey, that’s mine!” he shouted. “Give it back!”

“Make me!” the Bem sneered.

But Norton couldn’t make her, for she dangled the Hourglass just out of his reach. He couldn’t change time, because he didn’t have the Hourglass. He was in trouble again.

The Bem slid her maw forward until it intersected the rod that was still stuck through her body. Then she used the maw to spit out the rod. Being gelatinous certainly had its advantages!

“Now it’s your turn,” the monster said, focusing a bug eye on Norton and hauling him in toward the maw again.

He kicked her in the teeth. Ouch! His whole foot felt numb from the shock. Futhermore, the maw caught his boot again and the teeth crunched into it.

There was a blast of terrible heat. “Ooooh, you shouldn’t have!” the Bem gasped, collapsing against the control panel.

Norton pulled his boot free of the crumbling teeth and twisted out of the failing grasp of the tentacles. Now he saw Bat Dursten, blaster in hand. The spaceman had finally gotten his boots on, his weapon back, and had blasted the Bem!

“In the nick o’ time, as usual,” Dursten said, blowing the smoke from his muzzle and holstering his weapon with practiced flair.

“I should have finished you when I had the chanmphnn,” the Bem said, trailing off into gibberish as her mouth melted. In fact, the entire monster was dissolving, her substance bubbling across the control panel and dripping to the floor.

“Nonsense,” Dursten said briskly. “The good guys always win. It’s in the script.” He glanced carelessly at Norton. “You okay, Nort?”

“I think so.” Norton decided not to comment on the spaceman’s inordinate delay in appearing.

“Well, let’s get back into action,” Dursten said briskly. Then he looked at the control panel. “Yaup! The cussed critter’s melted into it! That gook’ll ruin the wiring!”

The Bem marshaled enough animation to form a small mouth in the dribble near the floor. “That’s what happens, you klutz, when you blubb-drip-popple-ugh.” The rest of her plopped to the floor inertly.

“What did you call me?” the spaceman demanded ferociously.

One more bubble popped from the subsiding mass. “Gludz!” it breathed, and was no more.

“Why, you sidewinding bugger!” Dursten shouted, stomping the gook with his boot. “You take that back, hear?” But the muck only squished under his boot with the sound of a chuckle.

“How is it that the Bem falls to the floor, while we drift in free-fall?” Norton asked.

“Forget that!” Dursten snapped, drifting. “The fool stuff’s shorted the wiring! We’re out of control! We’ll crash on the dang alien planet!”

“But we’re in deep space!” Norton protested. Then, as he peered out the front viewport, he saw that there was indeed a planet rushing up below.

“Hang on, pardner!” Dursten cried, grabbing onto the pilot’s seat and hauling himself into it.

Norton followed suit, though a dribble of Bem had splatted across his chair. In a moment they were both securely buckled in, watching the ground rush up. Norton caught a glimpse of seas, continents, mountains, jungles, and shining prismatic cities. It looked very much like the kind of planet he’d like to visit—but not at this velocity.

There was a jolt that flung them forward against the restraints. “The retros,” Dursten explained. “They’re on automatic, to brake us so we don’t crash so hard.”

“That’s nice,” Norton gasped. Indeed, they were no longer falling as fast—but the descent remained harrowing.

Then the ship crashed, and everything went up in smoke.

Norton shook his head, clearing it. He was hung up on the branch of a giant, serpentine, purple tree, miraculously unhurt. Bat Dursten was strewn over another branch. The wreckage of their needleship was below, sinking slowly into a bubbling gray-green bog. This was obviously a Bem landscape!

Dursten hauled himself upright. “Looks like the Bem planet we came to raid,” he remarked. “It’s the scum of the Glob! Well, let’s get going.”

“Get going where?” Norton asked.

“To hijack a Bemship and go home, of course.”

It seemed to Norton that would be easier said than done. On the other hand, he had no better suggestion.

They climbed down the tree to the ground. A giant
antlike thing rushed up, its mandibles clacking menacingly. Dursten’s hand was a blur as he drew his blaster and blasted the thing. It exploded, and pieces of it splatted into the trunk of the tree. “Guess I fixed that creep,” the spaceman remarked, holstering his weapon.

“But how do you know it wasn’t friendly?” Norton asked, appalled at the wanton killing.

“You kidding? Ain’t nothing friendly on a bugger planet,” the spaceman assured him. He led the way away from the tree, scouting for a suitable enemy to hijack.

Norton followed. There still wasn’t much else to do. He wished he could linger long enough to study the exotic alien wilderness, but Dursten wasn’t waiting. Spacemen, it seemed, had no interest in wilderness.

They skirted an arm of the bog. The gray-green gook hissed, menacing them. Eyeballs sprouted all over it. Instantly Dursten’s blaster was in his hand.

“Don’t—” Norton warned.

He was too late. The spaceman had hair-trigger reflexes. He fired. The gook puffed into noxious fog that spread out, threatening to envelop them. The eyeballs were hazier now, but still managed to focus on the prey.

Dursten backed off. “That thing ain’t dying!” he exclaimed. “It’s worse’n it was! Why didn’t you say something, Nort?”

“I tried to warn—”

“Well, let’s mosey on. We got a long way to go afore night.”

“But there’s no night, here in the Glob,” Norton pointed out. “Too many close stars—”

The spaceman scratched his head with the muzzle of his blaster. “There is that,” he opined. “We’d better eat something so we don’t get hungry.” He grabbed a rich red fruit from a nearby tree.

The fruit hissed and squirted brown juice at him. Dursten jumped back, but got some on his space suit. There was a sizzle, and smoke curled up as the acid etched channels in the material. “Then again, I reckon I ain’t that hungry yet.”

They came to a large, clear, glassy crystal standing on a block in the jungle. “Wonder what this bauble is?” Dursten said, reaching out to tap it with the butt of his blaster.

“Don’t—” Norton cried.

Too late, of course. His protective reactions were just not as fast as the spaceman’s whims. Dursten’s butt touched the side of the crystal. The crystal vibrated. Light emanated from it. A humming sound developed, waxing and waning rhythmically as the light pulsed.

“Better get on out of here!” Dursten cried.

Norton’s sentiments exactly! The two men fled as a Bem spaceball came into sight on the horizon.

“It was a signal station!” Norton gasped. “Now they know we’re here!”

Ahead loomed a huge saurian shape. It looked somewhat like a green carnivorous dinosaur with a toothache and somewhat like a twenty-ton grasshopper with teeth on its knees. It opened its ponderous and marbled jaws.

This time Norton did not cry warning. He grabbed Dursten by the collar and hauled him around behind the bright yellow trunk of a tree.

The saurhopper bounded forward—just as the pursuing Bem sailed up on its antigrav saucer. The two crashed together.

“This way!” Dursten cried, taking charge of the situation, undismayed by the sheer coincidence of their escape. He ran for the alien ship that now rested in a small glade to the rear.

“But suppose there are other Bems inside?” Norton asked.

“I’ll plug ’em,” the spaceman said confidently. He was, of course, a man of action and quick decision.

Sure enough, a second Bem loomed in the irising door aperture. Dursten drew and fired in a single motion—but his blaster made a little, stupid
pfft!
and sagged in his hand. Its charge was gone.

The Bem had no hands, so it didn’t carry a blaster. But it started to change shape.

“We’d better hide,” Norton said cautiously.

But stalwart Dursten was already charging the ship. Norton had to follow or let him go alone. He followed.

The Bem had sprouted half a dozen tentacles by the time they reached the ship. Dursten made a flying tackle that knocked the monster off its nether tentacles. Norton came up and shoved the mass out of the door-iris to the ground. He caught hold of one of the spaceman’s legs and hauled him inside the ship.

“Thanks, pardner,” Dursten drawled as he got up and thumbed the button to close the iris. “Next time I’ll get me a six-shooter blaster so it don’t poop out so fast.” He forged to the control section of the ship. “Good thing I studied how to operate Bemships too,” he remarked.

To Norton, the controls looked similar to those of the needleship. He could probably operate them himself. Perhaps the Bems weren’t, after all, so different from humans.

The acceleration couches were like saucers. Dursten and Norton seated themselves within them, and automatic safety harnesses came out to secure the men. Dursten punched buttons, and the ship lifted from the ground and hovered over the purple tree.

Another Bemball loomed close. Dursten’s hand struck the firing button. A wart spat a shot of something—and the other ship exploded.