He felt like a god.
He was a god.
This was Time Ultimate. The power of the singularities that had propelled him through time reached its limit here. The world he knew lay 95 million years behind him. Here in this realm of light everything was utterly strange. He was drifting among the stars, far from Earth. Earth? He could barely remember Earth. He could barely remember himself, who he was, why and how he had come here. So far away now, so faint in his mind. All that noisy striving, all that energy, all that restless seeking. The boiling cauldron that had been Earth and its billions of people.
He knew that they had found whatever it was they had been seeking, those restless questing people, back in that time when Earth still was. They had gained their answers long ago and they had become like gods. And Earth was gone now, and they were gone with it, gone forth into the universe, into this shining kingdom.
They had touched the stars, and the stars had accepted them into their company. As they would accept him, pilgrim out of time that he was.
How can it be, he wondered, that I’m out here in space and still able to breathe?
And a quiet voice out of nowhere said, While you are here, you will be as we are. And when you leave we will restore you to what you were.
Who are you, he asked? Where are you? What are you?
We are everyone. And we are everywhere. We are those for whom you prepared the way. And we protect you now and cherish you and welcome you among us.
I see, Eric said, and almost thought he did.
His long journey now seemed almost like a dream. Fragments of strange scenes floated through his mind: endlessly branching tunnels through which strange silent creatures marched, and a boy coming out of a small house on an earthquake-jumbled street, and vines flourishing in tropical heat, and squat shaggy creatures gathered around a fire in a cave on a snowy hillside, and giant redwood trees rising like the columns of a cathedral, and an Englishman in riding clothes pointing to a hominid ape that had been extinct four million years, and a camel with the neck of a giraffe, and more, much more. A torrent of images. He had made a voyage beyond all belief; and it was not over yet, for soon the pendulum would be carrying him back down the eons, taking him to new wonders as he descended through time. But that was yet to come. He was here now, in the great stillness of the world beyond the world, dwelling among people who had touched the stars.
He, too, could touch the stars. He could reach out and embrace them and engulf them, and be engulfed by them. Here blazed a blue star, and here a white one, and here a giant red one in the forehead of the night, and he touched them all. And felt the throbbing weight of the billions of years of Creation upon him. And heard the soaring song of those who had gone forth before him into this realm of light. And drifted on the bosom of the firmament. And gave thanks. And joined in that great song.
28. Sean -5×1013minutes
There were dinosaurs all over the place. You walked around a bush and there was a dragon the size of a school bus eating its breakfast. You came over a hill and there was something that looked like an armored tank taking its babies for a stroll. You looked up and a flotilla of pterodactyls went zooming by, flapping their long leathery wings.
It was a real zoo here. A Cretaceous zoo, fantastic monsters lumbering around everywhere. You had to look lively to keep from getting trampled on, of course. And there was always that itchy feeling between your shoulder blades that made you think a tyrannosaurus was coming up behind you, thinking about a snack.
The air was hot and dank. Gigantic ferns, big as palm trees, formed dark close forests. Dragonflies the size of hawks fluttered around terrifyingly, buzzing and droning.
“Ricky?” Sean said out loud. “Ricky, you ought to see this! Man, you’d go crazy! This stuff is really wasted on me. But you, you old dinosaur freak—”
Well, Eric would be seeing all this soon enough, he knew. Unless something had happened to him during his zigzag voyage across the immensity of time. Sean didn’t want to think about that possibility. Eric was all right. Eric had to be all right. And he’d be showing up here in a little while so that they could begin the homeward leg of their incredible journey.
This was Time Ultimate, the farthest swing of the pendulum. They had gone as far as they could go.
Right now Eric was somewhere out in the unthinkably remote future, 95 million years on the other side of Time Zero. And he, Sean, was here in the Cretaceous period, with a triceratops family grazing at the edge of the marsh and something that looked like a brontosaurus, but probably wasn’t, rearing its snaky head high over the surface of the lake down there. But at any moment the force of the pendulum would be fully extended and he and Eric would start their downward swing, back toward Time Zero and the scientists waiting for them in the laboratory.
Sean had a pretty good idea of what it would be like. For an instant, time would seem to stand still. Then there would be a breathtaking plunge across the whole span of the displacement as he and Eric changed places. Eric would land here, among his beloved dinosaurs, and Sean would go swinging outward into whatever unimaginable place the world of A.D. 95 million might be.
And then from there, it would be down the line for them. He would shoot into the world of nine and a half million years ago, and then to the one of 951,000 years in the future, and then to 95,000 years in the past, and so on all the way back, changing places with Eric at each level, one brother replacing the other without an instant of transition.
So Eric would visit the garden of miracles on the moon, Eric would have to cope with the charging giant ape, Eric would turn up at the Thanksgiving dinner that never was. Eric would have to deal with those bison-hunters back in Arizona. Eric would take his place in Quintu-Leela’s arms and probably he too would be swept off into time too fast for it to matter. Eric would cheer at President Harding’s inauguration parade. Eric would show up for the tail end of his own parade in Glendora.
And meanwhile—
Sean stood leaning against a tree fern that was four times his own height, watching the parade of giant reptiles, and thinking of everything that had befallen him on this whirlwind trip through past and future. The world would never be the same, now that the gates of time stood wide open. And neither would he. His mind was full of such strangenesses as no other mortal being had ever experienced. None except Eric, at any rate.
Sean wondered what was in store for him in all those eras where Eric had already been.
Perils, thrills, bewilderments galore—no doubt of that. And perhaps some burst of sudden ecstasy to match or even surpass that mystical moment among the singing flowers that glowed by the light of the full Earth in the sky.
He’d know, soon enough. He could feel the force tugging at him now, starting to take him onward.
He smiled. He slapped the tree fern fondly, as if saying goodbye to an old friend, and went strolling down toward the lake. His boots made sucking noises. It was all wet, spongy swampland here. The dinosaurs all around him snorted and mooed and grunted as they went about their business.
They didn’t know what he was, and they didn’t care. They were lords of the world and they could look forward to millions of years more of snorting and mooing and grunting in this warm, leafy kingdom of theirs. Eric was going to have the time of his life when he got here. How he would hate it, when the force pulled him away. As it was pulling Sean, now.