The Walking Shadow. Brian Stableford
a lot, but they aren’t very fond of jumpers, and the Metascientists prefer to look after their own, if they can. That’s why you were brought here, to us. You’ll be safe here, until you know what’s going on and can figure things out for yourself. It’s difficult; even the ones who know exactly what they’re doing when they jump aren’t really ready for what they find. For most, it’s something of a disappointment. So many seem to expect the world to have changed much more than it has, to have got better. Can you answer some questions now?”
“I’ll try,” said Paul. His mouth felt dry despite the coffee-substitute, and his voice was hoarse.
“Did you jump during the war? That’s important, because if you jumped from the plague years, you could be ill and you’ll have to be immunized?”
“Which war?” asked Paul, his voice hardly above a whisper.
She seemed relieved when she heard that answer. “It was the late 2020s and early 2030s. There aren’t many jumpers here from those years—not many that are still in stasis, anyhow. There were a lot in the east and the south, where the nuclear strikes were, but they just die when they come out. You must have jumped before 2027, then?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when exactly?”
Caution made him shake his head.
“What’s your name?”
This time he compromised, and said “Paul”. It didn’t cause her to jump to any conclusions. She accepted it without really taking any notice, as if his ability to remember it had only been a test.
“The world hasn’t changed all that much,” she said, “in spite of the wars. All they did was smash it up a little. Africa’s supposed to be uninhabited now, and so is Europe. It was said after the war that Russia was destroyed, but that might not be true. There are people in eastern Asia, but it’s said that they’re maintaining a low level of technology—they don’t communicate. The only other nations with whom we have any substantial trade are Argentina and Australia. They escaped most of the devastation. Practically all of North America that’s still habitable is part of the Reunion—that’s the former USA—and Argentina now includes the bits of the other South American countries that survived. There are really several more-or-less independent states within it, but they don’t correspond to the old national boundaries.”
“The only reason we’ve managed to keep things going here in much the same way that they were before the wars is that the plague depopulated the country to such an extent that we’ve been able to exploit stockpiled goods and keep enough factories going to tide us over. We have a kind of scavenger economy—but slowly, of course, things are getting worse. They say this is the last real city in the Reunion. Things are supposed to be better in Australia, but the government won’t let people emigrate, and they run all the big ships. The government say that things can get better, and that they will in time, if only we’ll devote ourselves to rebuilding, but lots of people won’t work for the government, or for anyone—they prefer to scavenge on their own behalf. They say that the government wants to conscript everyone into a kind of industrial army, but of course they can’t. People just wouldn’t do it, and it isn’t possible to police the whole country any more. There’d have to be more police than workers. The government hasn’t held an election in ten years, and when they do they only put up their own candidates, but they can’t do anything the people really don’t want them to do, because they just couldn’t enforce it.”
“What do you do?” asked Paul, feeling obliged to make some contribution to the discussion.
“I’m a student. We all are, here in the house. There are five of us. The city has the only university—the only big university, anyhow—in the Reunion. People come to it from all over.”
“What do you study?”
“Agricultural science.”
“What do you intend to do when you finish?”
She lowered her eyes. “I suppose it depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“On how things seem. You see, we don’t really know where the world is headed. No one does. We’re not quite sure what it’s for...getting things back to the way they were, even if we can. We still have trouble with things like nuclear fallout...nobody really thinks the world can be remade, and no one’s convinced that we should remake it the way that we know how...because of what happened to it before, you see. If you’d lived through the war, you’d know what I mean. It depends, I suppose, on him.”
“Who?”
“Paul Heisenberg.”
All through the dialogue he had been feeling remote from it all. He had listened, with a degree of fascination, but he had never felt that there was any real connection between what had been said and himself. Until she spoke his name, it was all a dream.
“He’s going to come back, soon,” she said. “Maybe he can tell us what to do. He’s the only one who can.”
Paul swallowed, although there was no more liquid left in the cup or in his mouth. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He couldn’t imagine what kind of question he might reasonably ask. Instead, he held out the empty cup.
“More?” she asked.
He nodded.
She plucked it out of his hand, and turned toward the door. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes,” she said. “You’re all right...aren’t you?”
He nodded again, and then looked away, because, for some reason, he could no longer meet her gaze. She looked at him hard, studying him carefully for the first time.
“It must be about dawn,” she said, inconsequentially. Then she added: “Your name’s Paul.” Her tone was neutral.
He looked back at her.
Her voice had changed completely when she said: “Paul who?”
CHAPTER NINE
The wrangling had reached such a pitch of frustration and pointlessness that Lindenbaum was glad when the telephone at his side began to bleep. He didn’t wait for the aide to pick it up, but snatched it up himself. For the call to have been put through to the conference room it had to be important.
“Yes,” he said, incisively. He let his voice identify himself.
Diehl, who was sitting back from the argument, trying to balance out his seething anxiety with a feeling of contempt for those who couldn’t help showing their fear and frustration, saw the president’s face change as the caller said his piece. Before a quarter of a minute had passed he knew that it was something bad. He sat up straight. One by one, the others realized that something was on, and closed down the chatter.
“Who the hell is this?” said Lindenbaum, not loudly, but with a hint of a snarl. Diehl knew immediately that something weird was happening. It wasn’t the kind of question the president should have needed to ask. What was more, the president obviously didn’t get an answer. When he laid the receiver down his face was dark with gathering fury.
Lindenbaum’s eyes roamed the faces that were silently watching him, and finally settled on Diehl’s. “How does it happen,” he said, “that at a time like this some crazy can reach me on a top security line?”
Diehl did his best to look surprised, but in truth he was not. He was growing used to things happening that had never happened before, and which ought not to happen, from a logical viewpoint.
“What did he say?” he asked, quietly.
“He said that there’s a fleet of goddam spaceships somewhere beyond the moon.”
Diehl blinked. Someone down the other end of the table laughed, but stifled the laughter very quickly.
“That’s crazy,” someone said.
Diehl was