“Yes.”
“We also know—from studying historical events in your timeline—that your world was on more or less the right track until at least the mid-thirties. By the end of nineteen forty it had changed—the German invasion in May of that year failed—which implies a build-up of small events over a period of years that eventually had a significant impact. Most likely, the snapshot took place somewhere around nineteen thirty-six, twenty-three years ago as far as you’re concerned.”
“If you say so,” Floyd said grudgingly, conceding nothing.
“Now look at the same span of time in our chronology. We know that time passes at the same rate in your world as it does in mine. It’s twenty-two sixty-six now. Subtract twenty-three years and we’re back in twenty-two forty-three, which is more or less when the Slashers had control of Mars and its moons, including Phobos.”
“Where we’re headed,” Floyd added, if only to show that he was paying attention.
“Yes. And I can’t believe that’s a coincidence. My guess is that the snapshot began to evolve forward in time from the moment the Slashers opened the portal on Phobos. A little bit of the external universe must have begun to leak into the ALS, collapsing the image into a normal state of matter. The snapshot came alive.”
In his mind’s eye, Floyd had a sudden, horrible mental image. He pictured a kind of theatrical stage populated by stiff mechanical dancers, still as statues, coated in years’ worth of dust. And then they began to move, slowly at first, choreographing their clockwork movements to music from a grindingly slow fairground organ. As the tortured, wheezing music gained speed, so did the dancers, whirling and gyrating in orbits and epicycles. He tried to shake the image, but the little figures danced on, gaining speed.
“But even if that were true,” Floyd said, “even if I and everyone I know had been kept asleep for all those years—all those hundreds of years—shouldn’t we remember it?”
“You wouldn’t remember a damned thing,” Auger said. “You skipped over three-hundred-odd years between heartbeats, Floyd—you and everyone else on the planet. Maybe you felt the tiniest moment of déjà vu, or some other thing the French have a word for, but that would have been it.”
“Everyone on the planet would have felt it?”
“Maybe. But how many of you would have even thought to remark on it?”
“You can’t expect me just to accept this,” he said.
“Floyd, I’m not asking you to accept anything.” She sounded, for a moment, desperately sorry for him. Hearing that in her voice only made him more afraid that she was, indeed, telling the truth and nothing more.
“I’m not a copy of Wendell Floyd,” he said, panic rising in his voice despite his attempts to keep it under control. “I am Wendell Floyd.”
“You’re a perfect copy. That’s precisely how you would feel.”
“Then what does that make me? Some kind of ghost, some kind of phoney imitation?”
“That’s the way some people might see it.”
“And is that the way you see it?”
“No,” she said, after just too much hesitation. “Not at all.”
“Now I know why you were so worried that I wouldn’t be able to pass through that censor thing,” Floyd said.
“I couldn’t know what would happen. No one had tried to bring anyone out of E2 before.”
“It treated me like any other human being. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose it is. But listen to me, Floyd: you will never belong in my world. Your world is back in Paris, as real or otherwise as it might be.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I have every intention of returning.”
Something caught her eye again: some glint of meaning in the tumble of numbers racing across the display screens. She flipped banks of switches, peered at the numbers again. Her face was a mask of intense, troubled concentration.
“It’s still getting closer?” Floyd asked.
“I’m worried about this. It almost looks as if…” But then she shook her head, as if trying to dislodge whatever upsetting thought had taken up residence. “It can’t be.”
“What can’t be?”
“I might be making a mistake here,” she said.
“I’ll take the risk. What’s got you so rattled?”
“I think what I’m seeing is the end of the tunnel behind us. It’s acting like a reflecting surface, bouncing signals back towards us.”
“But we left Paris behind hours ago.”
“I know. And I think something bad must have happened just as we left. The numbers make it look as if the tunnel’s collapsing, folding shut just behind us.”
“Can that happen?”
“I guess so. Skellsgard always said there might be a problem if the throat contracted too quickly during an insertion. It looks as if the robot couldn’t handle the injection procedure. Or else it was programmed to find the one solution that would get us out of Paris, even if that meant sacrificing the link, and itself…”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re sliding down a pipe that’s getting shorter all the while, with the closed end catching up with us.”
“That doesn’t sound good to me.”
“It doesn’t sound good to me, either.” Auger tapped a finger against another display. “But these numbers back me up. They show our speed through the hyperweb, with our estimated ETA at Phobos. We’re picking up momentum, shaving hours off our projected journey time.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No. Because it’s nothing that the transport is doing, and it can’t be due to another ship or pile of debris behind us. It must be due to something pretty fundamental happening to the hyperweb. I think it’s the field geometry in the walls, squeezing us forward like a pip. As the crimped end gets nearer and nearer, we’re being pushed along faster and faster by the inclosing walls.” She turned to Floyd. “But the ship isn’t built to handle speeds much faster than this. And I don’t know what will happen when the curvature becomes really severe, and we end up squeezed into the end of the tunnel.”
“Is there anything we can do about it?”
“Not much,” Auger said. “I could fire the steering jets, try to push us away from whatever is following us. But the jets aren’t designed for sustained use. We’d buy a few minutes, maybe half an hour.”
“We’re in a heap of trouble, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Auger said. “And I’m shot and not feeling at my sharpest. But we’ll get out of this, don’t you worry.”
“You sound rather sure of yourself.”
“I didn’t come all this way for nothing,” she said, a frown of determination etched firmly into her forehead. “I’m not going to let a little space-time difficulty spoil my day.”
“Why don’t you get some rest,” Floyd said, “see if you can catch some sleep before things get too bumpy? I think I can just about cope with the ship at the moment.”
“Are you a good driver, Floyd?”
“No,” he said. “I’m a lousy driver. Custine always says I drive like a grandmother on Sunday.”
“Well, that fills me with confidence,” she said, reluctantly releasing control of the ship to Floyd and trying to relax.
Floyd took the joystick, feeling the slight lurch as the ship fell under his control. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the ride already felt rougher. It was as if they had left a smooth stretch of road and were now rumbling over a dirt track. Around the cabin, the fixed instruments and displays appeared slightly blurred. He squinted, but that did nothing to make the view clearer. Somewhere behind the metal panelling of the cabin, something made a shrill, tinny vibrating sound, as if it was about to work loose. Floyd tightened his grip on the joystick, wondering how bad things were going to get before they got better.