9: PARADOX

Josh was intrigued by this woman from the future—if that was what she was! Bisesa’s face was handsome and well proportioned, if not beautiful, her nose strong and her jaw square; but her eyes were clear, her cut-short hair lustrous. She had a strength about her, even physically, that he had seen in no woman before: faced with this unprecedented situation, she was confident, if edgy with fatigue.

As the evening wore on, he took to following her around, puppylike.

It had been a long day—the longest of Bisesa’s life, she said, even if she had lost a few hours—and Captain Grove’s advice that the newcomers should be allowed to eat and rest seemed wise. But they insisted they had work to do before resting. Abdikadir wanted to check on Casey, the other pilot. And he wanted to return to the machine they called their “Little Bird.” “I have to erase the memory banks of the electronic gear,” he said. “There’s sensitive data in there, especially the avionics . . .” Josh was entranced by this talk of intelligent machines, and he imagined the air full of invisible telegraph wires, transmitting mysterious and important messages hither and yon.

Grove was inclined to allow the request. “I can’t see how we can be harmed by allowing the destruction of what I don’t understand anyhow,” he said dryly. “And besides—you say it is your duty, Warrant Officer. I respect that. Time and space may flow like toffee, but duty endures.”

For her part Bisesa wanted to retrace the track her helicopter had taken, she said, before the crash. “We were shot down. I think that was just after we noticed the sun dancing around the sky. So—you see? If we’ve somehow come through some, some barrier in time, then whoever shot at us must be on this side too . . .”

Grove thought this jaunt would be better left until morning, for he could see Bisesa’s fatigue as well as Josh could. But Bisesa didn’t want to stop moving—not yet—as if to stop would be to accept the extraordinary reality of the situation. So Grove approved the mission. Josh’s respect for the man’s judgment and compassion grew; Grove understood what was going on here no better than anybody else, but he was clearly trying to deal with the simple human needs of the people who had, literally, fallen out of the sky into his domain.

A field party was drawn together: Bisesa, with Josh and Ruddy, both of whom insisted on accompanying her, and a small squad of privates under the nominal command of the Geordie private Batson, who, it seemed, might have impressed Grove enough that day to earn a promotion.

By the time they set out from the fort the dark was gathering. The soldiers carried oil lamps and burning torches. They walked directly east from the site of the chopper’s crash. Bisesa had estimated the distance at no more than a mile.

The lights of the fort receded, and the Frontier dusk opened up around them, huge and empty. But Josh could see thick black mounds of cloud on every horizon.

He hurried beside Bisesa. “If it is true—”

“What?”

“This business of slipping through time—you, and the man-ape creatures—how do you think it can have happened?”

“I’ve no idea. And I’m not sure if I’d rather be a castaway in time or a victim of a nuclear war. Anyhow,” she said briskly, “how do you know you’re not the castaway?”

Josh quailed. “I never thought of that. You know, I can scarcely believe I am even holding this conversation! If you had told me this morning that before I slept this night I would see a flying machine powerful enough to carry people inside it—and that those people would, and plausibly too, claim to be from a future a century and a half hence—I would have thought you were insane!”

“But if it’s true,” Ruddy said insistently, jogging alongside them—never very fit, he was panting a little—“if it’s true, there’s so much you know, so much you could tell us! For our future is your past.”

She shook her head. “I’ve seen too many movies. Have you never heard of the chronology protection conjecture?”

Josh was baffled, as was Ruddy.

Bisesa said, “I guess you don’t even know what a movie is, let alone know Terminator . . . Look—some people think that if you go back in time and change something, so that the future you came from can’t exist any more, you could cause a huge catastrophe.”

“I don’t understand,” Josh confessed.

“Suppose I told you where my great-great-great-grandmother lives, right now, in 1885. Then you go out, find her, and shoot her.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Never mind! But if you did, I would never be born—and so I could never come back to tell you about my grandmother—and you’d never shoot her. In which case—”

“It’s a paradox of logic,” Ruddy breathed. “How delightful! But if we promise not to molest your grandmother, can you tell us nothing of ourselves?”

Josh scoffed. “How would she ever have heard of us, Ruddy?”

Ruddy looked thoughtful. “I have the feeling that she has, you know—heard of me at any rate. A chap knows when he’s been recognized!”

But Bisesa would say no more.

As the last daylight seeped away, and the stars receded to infinity above them, the little party grew closer together, the soldiers’ bantering talk subdued, their lanterns held high. They were walking into strangeness, thought Josh. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t know who lay out there, or where they were going. They couldn’t even be sure when they would find themselves . . . He thought they all seemed relieved when they passed a low hill and the rising Moon, a quarter full, shed a cold light on the rocky plain. But the air was strange, turbulent, and the Moon’s face an odd yellow-orange.

“Here,” said Bisesa suddenly. She had stopped before a scraping in the ground. Stepping closer, Josh saw that the earth was fresh and moist, as if recently dug.

“It’s a foxhole,” Ruddy said. He hopped down into the hole, and brandished a length of pipe, like a bit of drainpipe. “And is this the fearsome weapon that shot you out of the sky?”

“That’s the RPG launcher, yes.” She peered east. “There was a village just over there. A hundred meters, no more.” The soldiers held up their lanterns. There was no village to be seen, nothing but the rocky plain that seemed to stretch to the horizon. “Perhaps there is a boundary near here,” Bisesa breathed. “A boundary in time. What a strange thought. What is happening to us? . . .” She lifted her face to the Moon. “Oh. Clavius is gone.”

Josh was at her side. “Clavius?”

“Clavius Base.” She pointed. “Built into a big old crater in the southern highlands.”

Josh stared. “You have cities on the Moon?”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t call it a city. But you can see its light, like a captured star, the only one in the circle of the crescent Moon. Now it’s gone. That isn’t even my Moon. There is a crew on Mars, and a second on the way—or there was. I wonder what’s become of them . . .”

There was a grunt of disgust. One of the soldiers had been rooting at the bottom of the foxhole, and now emerged with what looked like a piece of meat, still dripping blood. The stink was sharp.

“A human arm,” Ruddy said flatly. He turned away and vomited.

Josh said, “It looks to me like the work of a great cat . . . It seems that whoever attacked you did not live long to enjoy his triumph.”

“I suppose he was as lost as I am.”

“Yes. I apologize for Ruddy. He doesn’t have a very strong stomach for such sights.”

“No. And he never will.”

Josh looked at her; her eyes were full of moonlight, her expression empty. “What do you mean?”

“He was right. I do know who he is. You’re Rudyard Kipling, aren’t you? Rudyard bloody Kipling. My God, what a day.”

Ruddy didn’t respond. He was hunched over, still retching, and bile stained his chin.

At that moment the ground trembled, hard enough to raise little clouds of dust everywhere, like invisible footfalls. And rain began to fall, from thick black clouds that came racing across the Moon’s empty face.