"If all things are relative, then position must be."
Tansie looked blank. "I'm asking no questions," she said. "But 'time',
too, must be relative. And I know that 'time' is relative to 'space',
too. The entropy factors change near massive bodies. Why not 'time?'
'Time' changes with velocity, as does mass. 'Time', mass, and velocity
are all factors."
"You forgot energy. Velocity is a function of energy, which is
interchangeable with mass, which affects the 'temporal strains'. The
whole is one--or in less elision, they are all manifestations of one
another."
Tansie smiled, stood up from the control of the ship, and beckoned with
her thumb. "You're the brilliant physicist," she said. "But I'll bet I
can fry a non-existant egg better than you can."
"Mind if I ask where you get these imaginary eggs?"
The girl laughed and tossed her auburn hair at him. "Real hens lay real
eggs. There's two possibilities--"
"I know," he said, joining in with her good spirits, "Either we
have a gang of 'time-trapped' poultry, or the art of getting
'time-trapped'--along with an icebox full of provender--takes a firm
stand somewhere along the line."
"There's means," she admitted.
"Okay," he said. "You cook--and also explain to me just why you seem to
think I'm the brilliant one."
"We know you are," she said; "you bear the necessary knowledge to avert
disaster."
"Me?"
"You." She pointed at him with a flapjack-flipper, then used it to
fracture the shell of an egg. "But no explanation of that right now;
it's too consarned complicated. Wait until you learn more about it, and
it'll save us all a lot of time."
"But I'm curious."
"Naturally," she said with a whimsical smile. "But I'm going to make
the best of this trip, and I don't want to spend every waking hour in
explanation; you'd grow tired of me."
* * * * *
The smell of bacon and eggs permeated the place. Les lifted his face
and made a show of flaring nostrils sniffing hungrily. The aroma of
toast was added, to which was again the odor of butter hitting the hot
toast.
"If that tastes as well as it sounds to the nose," he grinned, "I could
take a lot of your company."
Tansie whirled the plate before him, placed a cup of coffee beside it.
Then she sat across the table from him with her own plate and plied her
knife and fork in silence.
He wondered about Tansie; she was singularly receptive to his likes and
dislikes, even to the idea of not talking while he was eating. He said
nothing until the coffee, and then he looked up and smiled. "That," he
said, "was to the taste of Caesar."
She dropped a curtsy that was not well executed because she was not
wearing the kind of skirt that makes a curtsy the sweeping genuflection
it was intended for. "I render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
What stuck foremost in his mind was the fact that Tansie had neglected
to supply sugar and cream for the coffee--which might have been a
natural gesture--and he wondered whether she knew that he used neither.
He did not press the question; he would let more evidence pile up
before he accused her of being able to read his mind.
"You'll be interested in a look outside," she said.
"Why?"
"We're not many months ahead, so far. The trees have fallen, and
greened again; yet there is sufficient non-coincident growth to make
the sight somewhat bizarre."
They went to the control cabin and Tansie slowed the ship until the
gray haze outside diminished and the landscape became clear again.
The sight _was_ strange. Now, instead of coincident trees, only
the main branches were single. The leaves were in that 'temporal'
double-exposure, since the twin worlds were beginning to lose their
twinship, each following its own line of future.
"Weird," he agreed, "but I thought we'd be heading into 'space' for
certain."
"We are in 'space'," she said. "So far as true 'time' is concerned.
The earth is way back there." She pointed off vaguely in a gesture
that embraced a full fifty degrees. "Trouble is that this heap wouldn't
spacehop worth a tin cent in real life. But remember, we have little
true inertia, and therefore a bit of propulsion does a lot of work
against a minute mass. It also is less a matter of protection than
convenience. You could get out now if you wanted to."
"No," he said.
"But we will stop to stretch our legs after lunch." That, too, struck
Les Ackerman in the right pocket.
* * * * *
Tansie had picked him up at about six o'clock in the morning, and the
time between then and the clock's registration of noon was pleasant.
The girl was brightly amusing and bafflingly vague as it pleased her
fancy. She intrigued Ackerman's interest deeply, and the liking was
heightened by the almost certain fact that she knew much more about
the thing, but was not telling. There was time, she said. Most of the
talk was light, or deliberately kept light by Tansie Lee. It went as
follows, or approximately so, depending upon the subject: "But how did
you find me?" he asked.
"I knew where--and when--you'd be."
"How did you know?"
"Well, for one thing, it's history."
"Yeah," he drawled, "but whose?"
"The unwritten history of the no-world." She laughed.
"Balderdash."
"Well," she said. "We do not exist; we are not really here. Therefore
the history of our lives is also figmentary. It doesn't exist."
"No?"
"Nope," she said with a shake of her head. "Nothing is real."
"Then how do you read facts out of an unreal book?"
"How do you multiply a real unit by an imaginary number?"
"We do it--Oh nuts."
"Okay," she laughed. "It'll all come out in the wash. Lunch?"
"Lunch!" he said firmly.
He led her to the galley and rummaged idly into the cabinets. In one
he found a bottle that smelled inviting. "Will this," he asked, holding
it up and sloshing the amber fluid in the bottle, "give we unreal
people unreal hangovers?"
"It depends," she told him, opening the refrigerator and handing him a
tray of ice cubes.
"Depends," he said ruminatively, busily mixing, "Upon the truth of
positives and negatives. A real person with an unreal hangover might
not feel it any more than I can feel an object that doesn't exist
simultaneously. Similarly, we unreal people might not notice a real
hangover. But if we unreal folks get unreal hangovers by drinking
unreal whiskey, it might hurt. Is that it? Is that what it depends on?"
She took the proffered glass. "Nope," she said, looking at him over the
rim of her glass. "It just depends--like as usual--upon how much of
this stuff you think you can pack away."
They stopped after lunch, parked the vehicle in a grove of trees and
went out for a walk.
"I note that things are single," said Ackerman.
"Wrong," she said. "Look again. Down."
He looked down. Down--through the hard earth to where there was another
surface at least fifty miles below. Another ground-plane, dim, unreal,
but like the one upon which they stood.
"Why?" he asked her.
"Your explosion was minute, as cosmic powers go. But this is many years
later. The most minute deviation will make a difference in displacement
after a hundred years. You, my sweet, are a Man Who Moves Worlds." The
capital letters were implied by her tone, and the affectionate term
seemed to come naturally.
It pleased Ackerman. Tansie was an attractive girl. She was as lost in
the middle of the 'time-lines' as he was. Friendship--even love--might
come swiftly under attractive isolation, but Ackerman believed that
neither the isolation nor the length of time had been great enough
yet. The attractiveness was admittedly there.
And something in the back, ignored-because-it-was-unpleasant part
of his mind was telling him, vainly, to watch out because this was
entirely too idyllic.
* * * * *
Ackerman clapped a lid down on the malcontent thought and reached for
Tansie's hand to help her up over a fallen log.
He retained her hand after help was no longer necessary; he liked it.
The pleasant contact crowded out the wonder if on the other existance,
miles away, had a similar fallen log.
He cast a sidelong look at her, and caught her watching him. They both
stopped and faced one another.
Tansie stood there proudly, facing him, waiting. He fumbled mentally
for a moment and then blurted: "Tansie. Tansie, what is all this?"
She smiled wistfully. "Not yet," she said. "It all must be. I--am not
to tell you yet. And--Les--I'd prefer, even so, not to spoil it."
"Spoil it?" he exploded. "My idea is to get whatever trouble there is
to be over with so that I can take the rest of whatever time there is
for me to know you better."
"You'll have a lifetime," she promised. "Providing you are a completely
free agent. My dear, this way I am sure of the future. One small slip,
and the future is changed. You--"
"Baloney!"
Tansie took a step towards him. "Forget it." Her eyes were inviting--He
looked into them; Ackerman, in thirty years of life, had never before
met the girl whose eyes drew him so.
He reached for her, and Tansie came willingly into his arms. He thought
briefly that Tansie could make him forget anything--and was proven
right; he forget even that.
3
Seconds, or seven thousand years later, a rough laugh broke it up.
Tansie hurled herself away from him, whirling out of his arms. The
other was facing them less than ten yards away.
"Very pretty," he said with heavy scorn. "Very pretty." He waved at
them with a carbine. "So the great physicist, the hope of the civilized
world, ultimate founder of the galactic empire, is found lollygagging
with a broad."
"Listen--" snarled Ackerman. He lunged forward, blind with anger. The
loud _crack!_ of the rifle brought his head up, and the bullet smacked
the ground between his feet.
"What's the matter?" asked the other with an oily voice. "You object to
my term? Well--Tansie, you tell him."