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[Illustration]
By FRITZ LEIBER
THE BIG TIME
_You can't know there's a war on--for the Snakes coil and Spiders
weave to keep you from knowing it's being fought over your live and
dead body!_
Illustrated by FINLAY
CHAPTER 1
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly's done.
When the battle's lost and won.
--Macbeth
ENTER THREE HUSSARS
My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe
me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate
chiefly outside space and time--not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such
places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either.
I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also
bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I
need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity
Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the
Change War, a war of time travelers--in fact, our private name for being
in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back
to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help
our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long
killing business, believe me.
You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all
the time and maybe you've had hints of it without realizing.
Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be
bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the
next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing
because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt
sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever
been scared of Ghosts--not the story-book kind, but the billions of
beings who were once so real and strong it's hard to believe they'll
just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever wondered about those things
you may call devils or Demons--spirits able to range through all time
and space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of
space between the galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole
universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you've had hints
of the Change War.
How I got recruited into the Change War, how it's conducted, what the
two sides are, why you don't consciously know about it, what I really
think about it--you'll learn in due course.
* * * * *
The place outside the cosmos where I and my pals do our nursing job I
simply call the Place. A lot of my nursing consists of amusing and
humanizing Soldiers fresh back from raids into time. In fact, my formal
title is Entertainer and I've got my silly side, as you'll find out.
My pals are two other gals and three guys from quite an assortment of
times and places. We're a pretty good team, and with Sid bossing, we run
a pretty good Recuperation Station, though we have our family troubles.
But most of our troubles come slamming into the Place with the beat-up
Soldiers, who've generally just been going through hell and want to
raise some of their own. As a matter of fact, it was three newly arrived
Soldiers who started this thing I'm going to tell you about, this thing
that showed me so much about myself and everything.
When it started, I had been on the Big Time for a thousand sleeps and
two thousand nightmares, and working in the Place for five hundred-one
thousand. This two-nightmares routine every time you lay down your dizzy
little head is rough, but you pretend to get used to it because being on
the Big Time is supposed to be worth it.
The Place is midway in size and atmosphere between a large nightclub
where the Entertainers sleep in and a small Zeppelin hangar decorated
for a party, though a Zeppelin is one thing we haven't had yet. You go
out of the Place, but not often if you have any sense and if you are an
Entertainer like me, into the cold light of a morning filled with
anything from the earlier dinosaurs to the later spacemen, who look
strangely similar except for size.
Solely on doctor's orders, I have been on cosmic leave six times since
coming to work at the Place, meaning I have had six brief vacations, if
you care to call them that, for believe me they are busman's holidays,
considering what goes on in the Place all the time. The last one I spent
in Renaissance Rome, where I got a crush on Cesare Borgia, but I got
over it. Vacations are for the birds, anyway, because they have to be
fitted by the Spiders into serious operations of the Change War, and you
can imagine how restful that makes them.
"See those Soldiers changing the past? You stick along with them. Don't
go too far up front, though, but don't wander off either. Relax and
enjoy yourself."
Ha! Now the kind of recuperation Soldiers get when they come to the
Place is a horse of a far brighter color, simply dazzling by comparison.
Entertainment is our business and we give them a bang-up time and send
them staggering happily back into action, though once in a great while
something may happen to throw a wee shadow on the party.
* * * * *
I am dead in some ways, but don't let that bother you--I am lively
enough in others. If you met me in the cosmos, you would be more apt to
yak with me or try to pick me up than to ask a cop to do same or a
father to douse me with holy water, unless you are one of those
hard-boiled reformer types. But you are not likely to meet me in the
cosmos, because (bar Basin Street and the Prater) 15th Century Italy and
Augustan Rome--until they spoiled it--are my favorite (Ha!) vacation
spots and, as I have said, I stick as close to the Place as I can. It is
really the nicest Place in the whole Change World. (Crisis! I even
_think_ of it capitalized!)
Anyhoo, when this thing started, I was twiddling my thumbs on the couch
nearest the piano and thinking it was too late to do my fingernails and
whoever came in probably wouldn't notice them anyway.
The Place was jumpy like it always is on an approach and the gray velvet
of the Void around us was curdled with the uneasy lights you see when
you close your eyes in the dark.
Sid was tuning the Maintainers for the pick-up and the right shoulder of
his gold-worked gray doublet was streaked where he'd been wiping his
face on it with quick ducks of his head.
Beauregard was leaning as close as he could over Sid's other shoulder,
one white-trousered knee neatly indenting the rose plush of the control
divan, and he wasn't missing a single flicker of Sid's old fingers on
the dials; Beau's co-pilot besides piano player. Beau's face had that
dead blank look it must have had when every double eagle he owned and
more he didn't were riding on the next card to be turned in the gambling
saloon on one of those wedding-cake Mississippi steamboats.
Doc was soused as usual, sitting at the bar with his top hat pushed back
and his knitted shawl pulled around him, his wide eyes seeing whatever
horrors a life in Nazi-occupied Czarist Russia can add to being a drunk
Demon in the Change World.
Maud, who is the Old Girl, and Lili--the New Girl, of course--were
telling the big beads of their identical pearl necklaces.
You might say that all us Entertainers were a bit edgy; being Demons
doesn't automatically make us brave.
Then the red telltale on the Major Maintainer went out and the Door
began to darken in the Void facing Sid and Beau, and I felt Change Winds
blowing hard and my heart missed a couple of beats, and the next thing
three Soldiers had stepped out of the cosmos and into the Place, their
first three steps hitting the floor hard as they changed times and
weights.
* * * * *
They were dressed as officers of hussars, as we'd been advised,
and--praise the Bonny Dew!--I saw that the first of them was Erich, my
own dear little commandant, the pride of the von Hohenwalds and the
Terror of the Snakes. Behind him was some hard-faced Roman or other, and
beside Erich and shouldering into him as they stamped forward was a new
boy, blond, with a face like a Greek god who's just been touring a
Christian hell.
They were uniformed exactly alike in black--shakos, fur-edged pelisses,
boots, and so forth--with white skull emblems on the shakos. The only
difference between them was that Erich had a Caller on his wrist and the
New Boy had a black-gauntleted glove on his left hand and was clenching
the mate in it, his right hand being bare like both of Erich's and the
Roman's.
"You've made it, lads, hearts of gold," Sid boomed at them, and Beau
twitched a smile and murmured something courtly and Maud began to chant,
"Shut the Door!" and the New Girl copied her and I joined in because the
Change Winds do blow like crazy when the Door is open, even though it
can't ever be shut tight enough to keep them from leaking through.
"Shut it before it blows wrinkles in our faces," Maud called in her
gamin voice to break the ice, looking like a skinny teen-ager in the
tight, knee-length frock she'd copied from the New Girl.
But the three Soldiers weren't paying attention. The Roman--I remembered
his name was Mark--was blundering forward stiffly as if there were
something wrong with his eyes, while Erich and the New Boy were yelling
at each other about a kid and Einstein and a summer palace and a bloody
glove and the Snakes having booby-trapped Saint Petersburg. Erich had
that taut sadistic smile he gets when he wants to hit me.
The New Boy was in a tearing rage. "Why'd you pull us out so bloody
fast? We fair chewed the Nevsky Prospekt to pieces galloping away."
"Didn't you feel their stun guns, _Dummkopf_, when they sprung the
trap--too soon, _Gott sei Dank_?" Erich demanded.
"I did," the New Boy told him. "Not enough to numb a cat. Why didn't you
show us action?"
"Shut up. I'm your leader. I'll show you action enough."
"You won't. You're a filthy Nazi coward."
"_Weibischer Englaender!_"
"Bloody Hun!"
"_Schlange!_"
The blond lad knew enough German to understand that last crack. He threw
back his sable-edged pelisse to clear his sword arm and he swung away
from Erich, which bumped him into Beau. At the first sign of the
quarrel, Beau had raised himself from the divan as quickly and silently
as a--no, I won't use that word--and slithered over to them.
"Sirs, you forget yourselves," he said sharply, off balance, supporting
himself on the New Boy's upraised arm. "This is Sidney Lessingham's
Place of Entertainment and Recuperation. There are ladies--"
* * * * *
With a contemptuous snarl, the New Boy shoved him off and snatched with
his bare hand for his saber. Beau reeled against the divan, it caught
him in the shins and he fell toward the Maintainers. Sid whisked them
out of the way as if they were a couple of beach radios--simply nothing
in the Place is nailed down--and had them back on the coffee table
before Beau hit the floor. Meanwhile, Erich had his saber out and had
parried the New Boy's first wild slash and lunged in return, and I heard
the scream of steel and the rutch of his boot on the diamond-studded
pavement.
* * * * *
Beau rolled over and came up pulling from the ruffles of his shirt bosom
a derringer I knew was some other weapon in disguise--a stun gun or even
an Atropos. Besides scaring me damp for Erich and everybody, that
brought me up short: us Entertainers' nerves must be getting as naked as
the Soldiers', probably starting when the Spiders canceled all cosmic
leaves twenty sleeps back.
Sid shot Beau his look of command, rapped out, "I'll handle this, you
whoreson firebrand," and turned to the Minor Maintainer. I noticed that
the telltale on the Major was glowing a reassuring red again, and I
found a moment to thank Mamma Devi that the Door was shut.
Maud was jumping up and down, cheering I don't know which--nor did she,
I bet--and the New Girl was white and I saw that the sabers were working
more businesslike. Erich's flicked, flicked, flicked again and came away
from the blond lad's cheek spilling a couple of red drops. The blond lad
lunged fiercely, Erich jumped back, and the next moment they were both
floating helplessly in the air, twisting like they had cramps.
I realized quick enough that Sid had shut off gravity in the Door and
Stores sectors of the Place, leaving the rest of us firm on our feet in
the Refresher and Surgery sectors. The Place has sectional gravity to
suit our Extraterrestrial buddies--those crazy ETs sometimes come
whooping in for recuperation in very mixed batches.
From his central position, Sid called out, kindly enough but taking no
nonsense, "All right, lads, you've had your fun. Now sheathe those
swords."
For a second or so, the two black hussars drifted and contorted. Erich
laughed harshly and neatly obeyed--the commandant is used to free fall.
The blond lad stopped writhing, hesitated while he glared upside down at
Erich and managed to get his saber into its scabbard, although he turned
a slow somersault doing it. Then Sid switched on their gravity, slow
enough so they wouldn't get sprained landing.
* * * * *
Erich laughed, lightly this time, and stepped out briskly toward us. He
stopped to clap the New Boy firmly on the shoulder and look him in the
face.
"So, now you get a good scar," he said.
The other didn't pull away, but he didn't look up and Erich came on. Sid
was hurrying toward the New Boy, and as he passed Erich, he wagged a
finger at him and gayly said, "You rogue." Next thing I was giving Erich
my "Man, you're home" hug and he was kissing me and cracking my ribs and
saying, "_Liebchen! Doppchen!_"--which was fine with me because I do
love him and I'm a good lover and as much a Doubleganger as he is.
We had just pulled back from each other to get a breath--his blue eyes
looked so sweet in his worn face--when there was a thud behind us. With
the snapping of the tension, Doc had fallen off his bar stool and his
top hat was over his eyes. As we turned to chuckle at him, Maud squeaked
and we saw that the Roman had walked straight up against the Void and
was marching along there steadily without gaining a foot, like it does
happen, his black uniform melting into that inside-your-head gray.
Maud and Beau rushed over to fish him back, which can be tricky. The
thin gambler was all courtly efficiency again. Sid supervised from a
distance.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked Erich.
He shrugged. "Overdue for Change Shock. And he was nearest the stun
guns. His horse almost threw him. _Mein Gott_, you should have seen
Saint Petersburg, _Liebchen_: the Nevsky Prospekt, the canals flying by
like reception carpets of blue sky, a cavalry troop in blue and gold
that blundered across our escape, fine women in furs and ostrich plumes,
a monk with a big tripod and his head under a hood--it gave me the
horrors seeing all those Zombies flashing past and staring at me in that
sick unawakened way they have, and knowing that some of them, say the
photographer, might be Snakes."
Our side in the Change War is the Spiders, the other side is the Snakes,
though all of us--Spiders and Snakes alike--are Doublegangers and Demons
too, because we're cut out of our lifelines in the cosmos. Your lifeline
is all of you from birth to death. We're Doublegangers because we can
operate both in the cosmos and outside of it, and Demons because we act
reasonably alive while doing so--which the Ghosts don't. Entertainers
and Soldiers are all Demon-Doublegangers, whichever side they're
on--though they say the Snake Places are simply ghastly. Zombies are
dead people whose lifelines lie in the so-called past.
* * * * *
"What were you doing in Saint Petersburg before the ambush?" I asked
Erich. "That is, if you can talk about it."
"Why not? We were kidnapping the infant Einstein back from the Snakes in
1883. Yes, the Snakes got him, _Liebchen_, only a few sleeps back,
endangering the West's whole victory over Russia--"
"--which gave your dear little Hitler the world on a platter for fifty
years and got me loved to death by your sterling troops in the
Liberation of Chicago--"
"--but which leads to the ultimate victory of the Spiders and the West
over the Snakes and Communism, _Liebchen_, remember that. Anyway, our
counter-snatch didn't work. The Snakes had guards posted--most unusual
and we weren't warned. The whole thing was a great mess. No wonder Bruce
lost his head--not that it excuses him."
"The New Boy?" I asked. Sid hadn't got to him and he was still standing
with hooded eyes where Erich had left him, a dark pillar of shame and
rage.
"_Ja_, a lieutenant from World War One. An Englishman."
"I gathered that," I told Erich. "Is he really effeminate?"
"_Weibischer?_" He smiled. "I had to call him something when he said I
was a coward. He'll make a fine Soldier--only needs a little more
shaping."
"You men are so original when you spat." I lowered my voice. "But you
shouldn't have gone on and called him a Snake, Erich mine."
"_Schlange?_" The smile got crooked. "Who knows--about any of us? As
Saint Petersburg showed me, the Snakes' spies are getting cleverer than
ours." The blue eyes didn't look sweet now. "Are you, _Liebchen_, really
nothing more than a good loyal Spider?"
"Erich!"
"All right, I went too far--with Bruce and with you too. We're all
hacked these days, riding with one leg over the breaking edge."
Maud and Beau were supporting the Roman to a couch, Maud taking most of
his weight, with Sid still supervising and the New Boy still sulking by
himself. The New Girl should have been with him, of course, but I
couldn't see her anywhere and I decided she was probably having a
nervous breakdown in the Refresher, the little jerk.
"The Roman looks pretty bad, Erich," I said.
"Ah, Mark's tough. Got virtue, as his people say. And our little
starship girl will bring him back to life if anybody can and if ..."
"... you call this living," I filled in dutifully.
* * * * *
He was right. Maud had fifty-odd years of psychomedical experience, 23rd
Century at that. It should have been Doc's job, but that was fifty
drunks back.
"Maud and Mark, that will be an interesting experiment," Erich said.
"Reminiscent of Goering's with the frozen men and the naked gypsy
girls."
"You are a filthy Nazi. She'll be using electrophoresis and deep
suggestion, if I know anything."
"How will you be able to know anything, _Liebchen_, if she switches on
the couch curtains, as I perceive she is preparing to do?"
"Filthy Nazi I said and meant."
"Precisely." He clicked his heels and bowed a millimeter. "Erich
Friederich von Hohenwald, _Oberleutnant_ in the army of the Third Reich.
Fell at Narvik, where he was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline
lengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report
Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to
provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the
_voyageurs_ underground. At your service."
"Oh, Erich, it's all so lousy," I said, touching his hand, reminded that
he was one of the unfortunates Resurrected from a point in their
lifelines well before their deaths--in his case, because the date of his
death had been shifted forward by a Big Change after his Resurrection.
And as every Demon finds out, if he can't imagine it beforehand, it is
pure hell to remember your future, and the shorter the time between your
Resurrection and your death back in the cosmos, the better. Mine, bless
Bab-ed-Din, was only an action-packed ten minutes on North Clark Street.
Erich put his other hand lightly over mine. "Fortunes of the Change War,
_Liebchen_. At least I'm a Soldier and sometimes assigned to future
operations--though why we should have this monomania about our future
personalities back there, I don't know. Mine is a stupid _Oberst_, thin
as paper--and frightfully indignant at the _voyageurs_! But it helps me
a little if I see him in perspective and at least I get back to the
cosmos pretty regularly, _Gott sei Dank_, so I'm better off than you
Entertainers."
I didn't say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I
found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father's repose,
that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A.
Forzane, professor of physiology, born in Norway and buried in Chicago.
Woodlawn Cemetery is a nice gray spot.
"That's all right, Erich," I said. "We Entertainers Got Mittens too."
He scowled around at me suspiciously, as if he were wondering whether I
had all my buttons on.
"Mittens?" he said. "What do you mean? I'm not wearing any. Are you
trying to say something about Bruce's gloves--which incidentally seem to
annoy him for some reason. No, seriously, Greta, why do you Entertainers
need mittens?"
"Because we get cold feet sometimes. At least I do. Got Mittens, as I
say."
* * * * *
A sickly light dawned in his Prussian puss. He muttered, "Got mittens
... _Gott mit uns_ ... God with us," and roared softly, "Greta, I don't
know how I put up with you, the way you murder a great language for
cheap laughs."
"You've got to take me as I am," I told him, "mittens and all, thank the
Bonny Dew--" and hastily explained, "That's French--_le bon Dieu_--the
good God--don't hit me. I'm not going to tell you any more of my
secrets."
He laughed feebly, like he was dying.
"Cheer up," I said. "I won't be here forever, and there are worse places
than the Place."
He nodded grudgingly, looking around. "You know what, Greta, if you'll
promise not to make some dreadful joke out of it: on operations, I
pretend I'll soon be going backstage to court the world-famous ballerina
Greta Forzane."
He was right about the backstage part. The Place is a regular
theater-in-the-round with the Void for an audience, the Void's gray
hardly disturbed by the screens masking Surgery (Ugh!), Refresher and
Stores. Between the last two are the bar and kitchen and Beau's piano.
Between Surgery and the sector where the Door usually appears are the
shelves and taborets of the Art Gallery. The control divan is stage
center. Spaced around at a fair distance are six big low couches--one
with its curtains now shooting up into the gray--and a few small tables.
It is like a ballet set and the crazy costumes and characters that turn
up don't ruin the illusion. By no means. Diaghilev would have hired most
of them for the Ballet Russe on first sight, without even asking them
whether they could keep time to music.