She seized Nadine’s hand, and they plunged through.
The space inside expanded in a great wheel to all sides. Ellie spun about. There were doors everywhere–and all of them closed. She had not the faintest idea which one led back to her own New York City.
Wait, though! There were costumes appropriate to each time hanging by their doors. If she just went down them until she found a business suit ...
Nadine gripped her arm. "Oh, my God!"
Ellie turned, looked, saw. A doorway–the one they had come through, obviously–had opened behind them. In it stood Mr. Tarblecko. Or, to be more precise, three Mr. Tarbleckos. They were all as identical as peas in a pod. She had no way of knowing which one, if any, was hers.
"Through here! Quick!" Nadine shrieked. She’d snatched open the nearest door.
Together, they fled.
"Oolohstullalu ashulalumoota!" a woman sang out. She wore a jumpsuit and carried a clipboard, which she thrust into Ellie’s face. "Oolalulaswula ulalulin."
"I ... I don’t understand what you’re saying," Ellie faltered. They stood on the green lawn of a gentle slope that led down to the ocean. Down by the beach, enormous construction machines, operated by both men and women (women! of all the astonishing sights she had seen, this was strangest), were rearing an enormous, enigmatic structure, reminiscent to Ellie’s eye of Sunday school illustrations of the Tower of Babel. Gentle tropical breezes stirred her hair.
"Dawn Era, Amerlingo," the clipboard said. "Exact period uncertain. Answer these questions.
Gas–for lights or for cars?"
"For cars, mostly. Although there are still a few–"
"Apples–for eating or computing?"
"Eating," Ellie said, while simultaneously Nadine said, "Both."
"Scopes–for dreaming or for resurrecting?"
Neither woman said anything.
The clipboard chirped in a satisfied way. "Early Atomic Age, pre- and post-Hiroshima, one each.
You will experience a moment’s discomfort. Do not be alarmed. It is for your own good."
"Please." Ellie turned from the woman to the clipboard and back, uncertain which to address.
"What’s going on? Where are we? We have so many–"
"There’s no time for questions," the woman said impatiently. Her accent was unlike anything Ellie had ever heard before. "You must undergo indoctrination, loyalty imprinting, and chronomilitary training immediately. We need all the time-warriors we can get. This base is going to be destroyed in the morning."
"What? I ..."
"Hand me your key."
Without thinking, Ellie gave the thing to the woman. Then a black nausea overcame her. She swayed, fell, and was unconscious before she hit the ground.
"Would you like some heroin?"
The man sitting opposite her had a face that was covered with blackwork tattoo eels. He grinned, showing teeth that had all been filed to a point.
"I beg your pardon?" Ellie was not at all certain where she was, or how she had gotten here. Nor did she comprehend how she could have understood this alarming fellow’s words, for he most certainly had not been speaking English.
"Heroin." He thrust the open metal box of white powder at her. "Do you want a snort?"
"No, thank you." Ellie spoke carefully, trying not to give offense. "I find that it gives me spots."
With a disgusted noise, the man turned away.
Then the young woman sitting beside her said in a puzzled way, "Don’t I know you?"
She turned. It was Nadine. "Well, my dear, I should certainly hope you haven’t forgotten me so soon."
"Mrs. Voigt?" Nadine said wonderingly. "But you’re ... you’re ... young!"
Involuntarily, Ellie’s hands went up to her face. The skin was taut and smooth. The incipient softening of her chin was gone. Her hair, when she brushed her hands through it, was sleek and full.
She found herself desperately wishing she had a mirror.
"They must have done something. While I was asleep." She lightly touched her temples, the skin around her eyes. "I’m not wearing any glasses! I can see perfectly!" She looked around her. The room she was in was even more Spartan than the jail cell had been. There were two metal benches facing each other, and on them sat as motley a collection of men and women as she had ever seen.
There was a woman who must have weighed three hundred pounds–and every ounce of it muscle. Beside her sat an albino lad so slight and elfin he hardly seemed there at all. Until, that is, one looked at his clever face and burning eyes. Then one knew him to be easily the most dangerous person in the room. As for the others, well, none of them had horns or tails, but that was about it.
The elf leaned forward. "Dawn Era, aren’t you?" he said. "If you survive this, you’ll have to tell me how you got here."
"I–"
"They want you to think you’re as good as dead already. Don’t believe them! I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place, if I hadn’t come back afterward and told myself I’d come through it all intact." He winked and settled back. "The situation is hopeless, of course. But I wouldn’t take it seriously."
Ellie blinked. Was everybody mad here?
In that same instant, a visi-plate very much like the one in the police car lowered from the ceiling, and a woman appeared on it. "Hero mercenaries," she said, "I salute you! As you already know, we are at the very front lines of the War. The Aftermen Empire has been slowly, inexorably moving backward into their past, our present, a year at time. So far, the Optimized Rationality of True Men has lost five thousand three hundred and fourteen years to their onslaught." Her eyes blazed. "That advance ends here! That advance ends now! We have lost so far because, living downtime from the Aftermen, we cannot obtain a technological superiority to them. Every weapon we invent passes effortlessly into their hands.
"So we are going to fight and defeat them, not with technology but with the one quality that, not being human, they lack–human character! Our researches into the far past have shown that superior technology can be defeated by raw courage and sheer numbers. One man with a sunstroker can be overwhelmed by savages equipped with nothing more than neutron bombs–if there are enough of them, and they don’t mind dying! An army with energy guns can be destroyed by rocks and sticks and determination.
"In a minute, your transporter and a million more like it will arrive at staging areas afloat in null-time. You will don respirators and disembark. There you will find the time-torpedoes. Each one requires two operators–a pilot and a button-pusher. The pilot will bring you in as close as possible to the Aftermen time-dreadnoughts. The button-pusher will then set off the chronomordant explosives."
This is madness, Ellie thought. I’ll do no such thing. Simultaneous with the thought came the realization that she had the complex skills needed to serve as either pilot or button-pusher. They must have been given to her at the same time she had been made young again and her eyesight improved.
"Not one in a thousand of you will live to make it anywhere near the time-dreadnoughts. But those few who do will justify the sacrifices of the rest. For with your deaths, you will be preserving humanity from enslavement and destruction! Martyrs, I salute you." She clenched her fist. "We are nothing! The Rationality is all!"
Then everyone was on his or her feet, all facing the visi-screen, all raising clenched fists in response to the salute, and all chanting as one, "We are nothing! The Rationality is all!"
To her horror and disbelief, Ellie discovered herself chanting the oath of self-abnegation in unison with the others, and, worse, meaning every word of it.
The woman who had taken the key away from her had said something about "loyalty imprinting." Now Ellie understood what that term entailed.