Then there was music, just loud enough to still the audience. Tammy touched Wil's hand. "Oh. Here comes Daddy."
Don Robinson suddenly appeared by the sunside hemisphere. He cast no shadow on the globe, though both shone in the synthetic sunlight. "Good evening, everyone. I thought to end our party with this little light show-and a few ideas I'm hoping you'll think about." He held up his hand and grinned disarmingly. "I promise, mostly pictures!"
His image turned to pat the surface of the globe familiarly. "All but a lucky few of us began our journey down time unprepared. That first bobbling was an accident or was intended as a single jump to what we guessed would be a friendlier future civilization. Unfortunately-as we all discovered-there is no such civilization, and many of us were stranded." Robinson's voice was friendly, smooth, the tone traditionally associated with the selling of breakfast food or religion. It irritated Wil that Robinson said "we" and "us" even when he was speaking specifically of the low-tech travelers.
"Now, there were a few who were well equipped. Some of these have worked to rescue the stranded, to bring us all together where we can freely decide humanity's new course. My family, Juan Chanson, and others did what we could-but it was the Korolevs who had the resources to bring this off. Marta Korolev is here tonight." He waved generously in her direction. "I think Marta and Yel‚n deserve a big hand." There was polite applause.
He patted the globe again. "Don't worry. I'm getting to our friend here.... One problem with all this rescuing is that most of us have spent the last fifty million years in long-term stasis, waiting for all the `principals' to be gathered for this final debate. Fifty million years is a long time to be gone; a lot has happened.
"That's what I want to share with you tonight. Alice and the kids and I were among the fortunate. We have advanced bobblers and plenty of autonomous devices. We've been out of stasis hundreds of times. We've been able to live and grow along with the Earth. The pictures I'm going to show you tonight are t lie 'lion -is movies,' if you will, of our trip to the present.
"I'm going to start with the big picture-the Earth from space. The image you see here is really a composite-I've averaged out the cloud cover. It was recorded early in the fourth millennium, just after the Age of Man. This is our starting point.
"Let's begin the journey." Robinson vanished and they had an unobstructed view of the globe. Now Wil noticed a gray haze that seemed to waver around the polar ice cap. "We're moving forward about half a megayear per minute. The camera satellites were programmed to take pictures at the same local time every year. At this rate, even climate cycles are visible only as a softening of picture definition." The gray haze-it must be the edge of the Antarctic ice pack! Wil looked more carefully at Asia. There was a blurring, a fantastically rapid mottling of greens and tans. Droughts and wetness. Forest and jungle battling savanna and desert. In the north, white flickered like lightning. Suddenly the glaring whiteness flashed southwards. It surged and retreated, again, again. In less than a quarter of a minute it was gone back to the northern horizon. Except for shimmering whiteness in the Himalayas, the greens and tans lived once more across Asia. "We had a pretty good ice age there," Robinson explained. "It lasted more than one hundred thousand years.... We're beyond the immediate neighborhood of Man now. I'm going to speed us up... to five megayears per minute."
Wil glanced at Marta Korolev. She was watching the show, but her face held an uncharacteristic look of displeasure. Her hands were clenched into fists.
Tammy Robinson leaned from her seat to whisper, "This is where it really gets good, Mr. Brierson!"
Wil turned back to the display, but his attention was split between the view and the mystery of Marta's anger.
Five million years every minute. Glacier and desert and forest and jungle blended. One color or another might fleetingly dominate the pastel haze, but the overall impression was stable and soothing. Only now... only now the continents themselves were moving! A murmur passed around the room as the audience realized what they were seeing. Australia had moved north, sliding into the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Mountains puckered along the collision. This part of the world was near the sunrise line. Low sunlight cast the new mountains in relief.
There was sound, too. From the surface of the globe, Wil heard something that reminded him of wood surfaces squeaking wetly across each other. A sound like crumpling paper accompanied the birth of the Indonesian Alps. "Those noises are real, friends," said Don Robinson. "We kept a system of seismophones on the surface. What you're hearing are long-term averages of seismic action. It took thousands of major earthquakes to make every second of those sounds."
As he spoke, Australia and Indonesia merged, the combination continuing its slide northwards, turning slightly as it came. Already the form of the Inland Sea could be discerned. "No one predicted what happened next," continued Robinson's travelogue. "There! Notice the rift spreading through Kampuchea, breaking the Asian plate." A string of narrow lakes appeared across Southeast Asia. "In a moment, we'll see the new platelet reverse direction and ram back into China-to build the Kampuchean Alps."
From the corner of his eye, Brierson saw Marta heading for the door. What is going on here? He started to get up, found that Tammy's arm was still around his.
"Wait. Why are you going, Mr. Brierson?" she whispered, starting to get up.
"I've got to check on something, Tammy."
"But-" She seemed to realize that extended discussion would detract from her father's show. She sat down, looking puzzled and a little hurt.
"Sorry, Tam," Wil whispered. He headed for the door Behind him, continents crashed.
The Witching Hour. The time between midnight and the start of the next day. It was more like seventy-five minutes than an hour. Since the Age of Man, the Earth's rotation had slowed. Now, at fifty megayears, the day was a little over twenty-five hours long. Rather than change the definition of
-he second or the hour, the Korolevs had decreed (just another of their decrees) that the standard day should consist of twenty-four hours plus whatever time it took to complete one rotation. Yel‚n called the extra time the Fudge Factor. Everyone else ailed it the Witching Hour.
Wil walked through the Witching Hour, looking for some sign of Marta Korolev. He was still on the Robinson estate, that.vas obvious: as advanced travelers, the Robinsons had plenty of robots. Rescue-day ash had been meticulously cleaned from he stone seats, the fountains, the trees, even the ground. The.cent of almost-jacarandas floated in the cool night breeze.
Even without the tiny lights that floated along the paths, Wil could have found his way without difficulty. For the first time since the blow-off, the night was clear-well, not really clear, but he could see the moon. Its wan light was only faintly reddened by stratospheric ash. The old girl looked pretty much is she had in Wil's time, though the stains of industrial pollution were gone. Rohan Dasgupta claimed the moon was a little farther out now, that there would never again be a total eclipse of the sun. The difference was not enough for Wil to see.
The reddish silver light fell bright across the Robinsons' gardens, but Marta was nowhere in sight. Wil stopped, let his breath out, and listened. There were footsteps. He jogged in their direction and caught up with Korolev still inside the estate.
"Mama, wait." She had already stopped and turned to face film. Something dark and massive floated a few meters above her. Wil glanced at it and slowed to a walk. These autonomous devices still made him uneasy. They hadn't existed in his time. and no matter how often he was told they were safe, it was still unnerving to think of the firepower they controlled-independent of the direct commands of their masters. With her protector floating nearby, Marta was almost as safe as back in Castle Korolev.