No—wait—
Another day, he begged. Half a day. Another three hours.
No chance. The equations were inexorable. Forces had to balance.
Now—now—onward—
26. Sean + 5×1012minutes
He was five trillion minutes from home and the giant ape was no longer his immediate problem. Because the pendulum had swung and the iron fist of the displacement force had grabbed him and converted him into a shower of tachyons and sent him rocketing off toward the other end of time. So it was Eric who was destined to show up right in the path of the ape’s charge, when they started down the homeward slope of the voyage.
I have to do something to warn him, Sean thought. But what?
He looked around. He was standing in a fragrant bower of blossoming plants that sprouted on shining crystalline stalks three feet high, plants that looked like nothing he had ever seen before. And a great blue world was shining overhead like a dazzling beacon, filling half the sky.
It looked a little like the Earth, that huge world floating up there. There was one great bulging land mass that was very much like Africa, though it seemed too far to the south, and he couldn’t find Europe where it ought to be, only abroad ocean occupying what might have been the place of the Mediterranean Sea. To the west Sean could make out something similar to the curve of North America’s eastern seaboard, though the shape wasn’t a perfect match with what he remembered, and the West Indies weren’t there. Far down to the side was an enormous round hump of an island, vaguely in the position that South America once had had.
If that was Earth, then, that loomed above him in the sky, it was an Earth vastly transformed.
Earth? Up there in the sky? Then where was he? On the moon?
A garden of fragrant green and gold flowers rising on stalks of crystal—on the moon?
Flowers on the moon? Sweet fresh air on the moon?
Nine and a half million years. Anything was possible.
He took a few steps. The pull of gravity seemed normal enough. It should feel almost like floating, he knew, to walk on the moon. Unless they had changed that, too. If they could give the moon an atmosphere and make gardens grow on it, they could give it Earth-like gravitation also.
Should the Earth look this close, though? He wasn’t sure. He wished his astronomy was a little sharper. And his knowledge of geology, too. He knew that the continents drifted around, over the course of many millions of years, but could they have rearranged themselves so drastically in just nine and a half million? Eric would know, of course. But Eric wasn’t here.
The people of this era, Sean decided, can do anything they feel like doing. They can move the moon closer to the Earth. They can move South America farther from North America. Anything. Anything.
An age of miracles is what it must be.
He felt like an apeman suddenly swept millions of years forward into a world of telephones, television, computers,spaceships. Miracles. Miracles everywhere. And that was really what he was, he knew: a primitive creature, a prehistoric ape, a hairy shambling ancient man who needed to shave his face every day and who still carried an appendix around in his belly. How they must pity him, the unseen watchers who—he was entirely sure—were studying him now! Were they human at all? Did the human race still exist? Or had it died out long ago, and given way to some race of superbeings?
He reached down and let his fingers caress one of the lovely crystalline flowers.
It wriggled with pleasure like a cat being stroked, and began to sing, a slow, sinuous, sensuous melody.
Immediately the others nearby started to preen and sway as if trying to get Sean’s attention. Touch me,they were telling him. Touch me, touch me, touch me! Make me sing!
He was reminded of the garden of talking flowers that Alice had found in Looking-Glass Land: the vain and haughty Tiger-lily, and Rose, and Violet. How many times had he read that book, he and Eric! Eric had always liked Wonderland better; Sean had preferred the world beyond the looking-glass. And now here he was in Looking-Glass Land himself, where the flowers sang, and the blue Earth hung in the sky instead of the moon.
“You like that, do you?” he asked the flowers.
And he stroked this one and that, reaching out toward them, going on down the garden row until hundreds of them were swaying and singing. The sweetness of their song was dreamlike on the thick perfumed air. He had never heard anything so beautiful.
A great strange peace came over him. He felt a Presence in his spirit. Something magical, something almost divine. Slowly he walked between the rows of flowers, savoring the mild night air, pausing often to stare up at the blue world that seemed so close overhead. It was an overwhelming privilege, being here in this place so many millions of years beyond his own time. He knew he would never see more of it than this garden, and that he would never understand any of it at all, but none of that mattered. He was here. He had been touched by Something that was as far beyond him as he was beyond the apes of the forests of humanity’s dawn. Something magnificent. Something all-powerful. And yet, small as he was, splendid and mighty as It was, he felt a kinship with It. He was part of It; It was a part of him.
Then he thought of Eric, and the snarling, roaring, maddened giant ape that he was fated to meet head-on when it was his turn to arrive back there in that prehistoric jungle. And his mood of harmony and tranquility shattered.
At once the flowers began to sing a soothing song. He stared at them a long while, not soothed, brooding about his brother. That ape looked really murderous. What if he kills Ricky, Sean thought? What happens to the experiment? What happens to the world? What happens tome? It was the big risk that they had all tried to make believe would not be a factor. But Sean had seen the look in that ape’s eye.
If only I could warn him, he thought. But how? How?
To the flowers he said, “I have to save my brother.”
They made a gentle humming sound.
He sat quietly, staring at a smooth flat white rock, like a gleaming slab of marble, just in front of him in the garden.
An idea came to him.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve got to mess up this beautiful place a little. But it may be that the whole structure of the past and the future depends on it.”
He took out his laser and turned it to high beam. And began to write, carving a message on that flawless stone slab in ugly black charred letters.
RICKY—DANGER!!!
As concisely as he could, he told his brother when and where the ape was waiting for him in the time stream. And suggested in the strongest possible way that he had better have his anesthetic dart gun primed and ready the moment he arrived.
“Do you think that’ll do it?” he asked the flowers. “Will he turn up here in this exact spot? Will he see the message? Will he be able to nail the ape in time?”
The flowers were singing again. Soothing, comforting sounds. Everything will be all right, they were saying. Everything will be fine.
I hope that’s true, Sean thought, trying to relax.
Gradually the magic returned. This was too beautiful a place to be tangled up in fears and fretfulness for long.
He felt that celestial harmony again. He felt that peace, he felt that Presence.
Then the flowers fell silent. He stared up at the shining Earth with trembling wonder.
27. Eric + 5×1013minutes
Onward—
—onward, unimaginably far—
He hovered in space, midway between somewhere and anywhere. There was golden light all about him. Comets left dazzling trails in the void. Suns whirled and danced. He filled his hands with the stuff of space, warm and soft.