The military men may not have liked each other, but they understood that the future of Earth depended on retaking the Outworlds at all costs. National and even ideological disputes could wait, for they were of no consquence.
If humanity in the twentieth century had suddenly lost all use of electrical devices, all civilizations would have fallen and much of the world would have died as surely as it would by nuclear bomb. Their ancestors had gotten along without it, but they had grown up without it and in an economy and culture that had never had it. The knowledge of how to survive in a society without such power had essentially been lost.
In the twenty-third century, this had been taken a step further. The economics and very survival of human civilization depended on what the Outworlds produced and managed. Without the orbital power satellites, without the minerals and miracles of space production, the basis of civilization could not stand. There could be merely a holding action.
The Outworlds, too, understood this, but had expected to come to terms after presenting Earth with a fait accompli. They had not expected, however, to be dealing with a massive multinational military complex, but with the old political leaders they were accustomed to. They had struck too hard and too well.
The military ruthlessly stamped out all opposition, killing millions in the process. Their technological base was dwindling, but hardly exhausted, and they used all they had in the single effort to get back out there at all costs. The Earth became effectively a slave labor camp dedicated to the one goal of retaking space.
The Outworlds, stunned by this, realized that only a massive military defeat would insure their future. Ironically, they also found themselves fighting to free Earth from a form of oppression no past dictator had ever dreamed possible. They had the high ground, and could bombard the Earth almost at will, although the Earth had formidable defenses and took her toll. Still, Earth’s position was hopeless until some formerly Soviet generals happened on the American time-machine project.
The project, in fact, had been shut down for years for lack of funds, but the great store of knowledge was intact, and many of the laws and limitations of time had been worked out. A theoretical plan for the defense of Earth from a possible time war was uncovered.
It had been discovered through instrumentation and unmanned probes that beyond the dawn of human civilization time was far more tolerant. With sufficient power, a computer could be placed far back in time, perhaps to its origins, with no true link to the leading edge at all. With a supporting self-generating power supply, it could monitor time forward, with all its changes, and power at least a small force of time-traveling agents. If need be, much of its output could be diverted in the event of a complete collapse or nuclear war to take the leadership and selected others all the way back to the complex. A few hundred, no more, but it was another way to perhaps preserve humanity, which could then wait it out until enough relative time had elapsed, the leading edge advancing a few centuries, to return to a future Earth in the process of righting itself or finding a new balance.
Such a computer had been sent back, in the golden days of limitless Outworlder power. It could be accessed.
“Then this is that station,” Moosic said wonderingly. “And those things I called gargoyles—Outworlders?”
They looked shocked. “Oh, no,” Lind responded. “This is the base the Outworlders built to counter the time threat. The gargoyles, as you call them, are the products of the same process that created the Outworlders, but changed to produce the perfect soldier—dumb, totally obedient, very tough and strong. This is the Outworlder base, and we’re the enemies of Earth.”
A bit later in the afternoon, he met the woman again. She’d not been there for the initial bull session, and he’d been too curious to inquire, but now that she’d come in from wherever she’d been, he had the feeling she was avoiding direct contact. He dismissed that as crazy and went over to her.
“Hi! I finally get the chance to say thanks for saving my life,” he said cheerfully, sitting down in a chair opposite hers. “How’s that for a good opening line?”
She smiled, but there seemed to be a lot of thinking going on behind those dark eyes. She seemed much younger than he’d remembered her, but, then, he’d been drugged and the light had been poor, and Alfie had a different perspective of what old meant. She sighed, and seemed to decide whatever it was that was troubling her, or at least she put it off for a time. “I’m sorry for not being a little more hospitable,” she responded. “I’m afraid I’ve got a load on my mind and a lot of hard decisions to make. I’ve just had a nasty personal shock.”
“Try being crucified,” he suggested, surprised he could make light of it so soon.
“I have. It’s not very nice. Not much has been nice lately.”
He shrugged, a bit disconcerted by the answer, and made as if to leave. “I don’t want to intrude on what’s none of my business.”
“No, no. Stay, please. I’m still a little new at this myself, and it’s pretty hard to get used to. As soon as you think you’ve found out everything, you find you don’t understand anything at all. This whole business of time is the craziest thing you can think of. Just think of this, for starters—neither of us is a real person.”
“Huh? We both look pretty solid to me.”
“Maybe. But we’re nightsiders. We have no existence outside of this base, outside of the Safe Zone—the time before people. Neither of us has a home to go to anymore.”
He considered that a moment. “I imagine I still do—if I could ever get back to my own time.”
She shook her head. “They haven’t told you yet. Go ask Doc or Herb. I think I understand it, but they’ll explain it better than me.”
He excused himself and found Herb, who told him. Karl Marx had now been killed in 1841, at twenty-three years of age, before he’d even formed any of his ideas, let alone committed them to paper. Thus, the potential theoretician of the Communist movement had also been killed. Without him, competing theories dominated, particularly Bakunism, which is essentially anarchy. The theories of the left remained classical rather than radical. Because there was no Marx, there was no Marxism to inspire Lenin and Trotsky. Instead, they drifted into the more radical anarchy of Bakunin, and went nowhere. Because there was no Lenin and Trotsky there to take firm control, the Russians, when they overthrew the Czar, remained a weak social democracy.
“Because it was a weak democracy dominated by liberal nobles, it did little to really better or modernize the Russian nation,” Herb continued. “Stalin did not rise to power and ruthlessly modernize, mobilize, and arm the nation, building it into a twentieth-century country. There was also an independent Ukraine, so Russia did not have control of its breadbasket or a firm buffer. But Germany still lost World War I, and Hitler still rose to power, only this time there was no strong Soviet state under a firm leader to hold on.” Moosic was reminded that on his own time line Russia nearly lost the war to Germany again: Now it had lost, allowing Germany to put its full might into North Africa and against England. “With the collapse of England,” Herb informed him, “America turned its full attention to the Japanese.”
He blanched. “You mean—because Joseph Stalin didn’t come to power, the U.S. lost World War II?”