"Okay," Dave said. "So, what do we do? How can I help?"
Dave's rented house was small, having only two bedrooms, but he was willing to give up both of them and sleep on the couch. When I protested, he said he usually collapsed there anyway after working into the wee hours. There was only one bed, which Carl and Lori insisted that Darla and I have; they made do with layers of blankets and pillows piled on the floor in the spare bedroom. We were set for a prolonged stay. Ordinarily, Dave said, he didn't suffer house guests for more than three nights, but he was willing to put us up, and put up with us, for as long as was required.
"However long it takes to resolve the spatiotemporal crisis," he told us, "you're welcome to stay. What, I'm going to throw out time travelers from the twenty-fifth century?"
"Twenty-second," I corrected him.
"Right, that was Buck Rogers."
Trouble was, our presence would undoubtedly disrupt his work routine. He wrote for a living, and he needed to put in a full day's work every day, including weekends. It behooved us, then, to find something to do during daylight hours, which would entail going out, which would necessitate our getting some acceptably conventional clothes. Dave came through for us again. He lent us money, enough to buy something decent for all of us at a discount clothing outlet. I told Dave that I could pay him back in gold. Carl insisted that he'd make good on the loan.
Once we'd solved the costume problem, we cast about for something to keep us occupied. Going to the local beach was out. Carl's double would be there.
"I was a beach bum, I admit it," he said. "But I know what beaches I used to hang out at. I never went to Malibu. Didn't like the kids who hung out there. Bel Air types with Corvettes and Lotus Fords and Porsches. We can go there, and my double wouldn't show up in a million eons."
Earth… summer… 1964…
It was a bright and colorful and happy time, a flux of seaspray and sunlight and rock music tinny and loud from a portable radio. The images come quickly to me, along with the sounds and smells: the reek of gasoline exhaust and suntan lotion and hot dogs sizzling on the grill at the concession stand; the endless beach carpeted with seminude bodies baking in nonionizing radiation, and the roar of the ocean, rolling in and out as it has done on this planet, this home of humankind, for five billion years. Darla and I stretched out on towels beside the bright surf and let Earth's sun warm on our backs. We dozed, and the flux convolved about us. We were lost in time and didn't particularly want to be found.
… summer, 1964. It was a time of blaring news reports over the radio and TV… the Russians, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia. An election year, the Republicans nominating somebody named Goldwater, whom I had never heard of, to run against the incumbent, Johnson, whom I had barely heard of. (Hadn't there been another President Johnson, in the earlier part of the century? Or had it been another century entirely?) It was a time when the world had fallen under the spell of four young men from Britain with domed haircuts who played their electrified instruments enthusiastically, if not well, singing songs with a steady beat and charmingly simple lyrics…
We had some time to bask in the sun and absorb some of the backdrop of this time and place, but we had some thinking to do as well; rather, I had it to do. At night we sat around with Dave and talked, filling him in on more details concerning our adventures in the world of the future and the worlds of the Skyway, including our journey outside the known mazes — the Outworlds: Splash, Talltree, the planets of the Nogon — the chase through the Garage Planet of the Roadbugs, the wonders of Microcosmos, and other tales.
"This Culmination business," Dave said, sitting with us on lawn chairs out on a little porch off one side of the house. "Mind-boggling. From what you told me, this… thing will come into being approximately ten billion years in the future. Yet, you're dealing with it now. And you're dealing with it on a planet that you say exists back at the beginning of the universe, ten billion years ago."
"Near the beginning, anyway," I said. "Within a few billion years of the Big Bang, or whatever happened back then. Yes, that's the way it was explained to us. The Culmination transcends time. Once it was created, it became eternal." I took a sip of my gin and tonic. "There's a possible scientific explanation for it. If we think of it strictly on a physical plane, maybe the Culmination is nothing but an instantaneous communications device, one that makes possible the transmission of information faster than the speed of light."
"Relativity," Dave said, nodding. "I've read a dozen books about it written for the layman. The way I understand it, if you send a message that's faster than light, you send it back through time."
"Yeah," I said. "If there was an instantaneous communications device operating at a point in the far future of the universe, and if it were powerful enough, it would broadcast throughout time, and any capable receiver existing in the past would be able to pick it up."
"I think I understand," Dave said, "but something as grandiose as the Culmination… I mean, it's hard to think of it as nothing more than a souped-up radio."
"Right, but that may be the only handy way to think of it. Otherwise, the concept gets mystical and slippery."
"Well, seems, to me it's got to get mystically slippery at some point. It sounds like what they did was create God."
"Or some approximation of Him… or it."
Dave whistled softly. "Mind-numbing. Way out. There're no words for it." He took a long drink of beer, looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "I still can't grasp why the Culmination built the Skyway."
"From what we can guess, it exists as a means to bring potential candidates to a central place for processing into the Culmination," Darla said.
"I understand," Dave said, "but why do they need candidates? Why do they need minds for the Culmination?"
"That's what we don't know," I said. "We've some clues, but nothing like an answer. And we don't know exactly what joining the Culmination entails. Do you get zapped into a computer? Get transmuted into pure energy? Or what?"
"Maybe you just die," Dave suggested.
I chewed over the current paradox situation. Something had to be done, and soon. I talked it over with Arthur. "Arthur, do you know any reason why Prime would abduct Carl and set him loose on the Skyway?"
"No. The notion is totally ridiculous. Prime would never do such a thing."
"Why not?"
"Why not?" Arthur laughed derisively. "Why in the name of all that's holy in the universe would he?"
"I dunno. You tell me."
"Well, I can't. It makes absolutely no sense that Prime would travel ten billion light-years to a jerkwater planet and kidnap a human being-not a very bright one, at that-give him that bizarre vehicle, and set him off on the Skyway to cause all sorts of trouble. You think of Prime as a god, don't you?"
"A demigod, maybe."
"Demigod, shmemigod. Okay. The gods-or the demigods, if you will-may be inscrutable, but they sure aren't stupid! I mean, they don't go around doing idiotic things just to pass the time."
"Then who abducted Carl?"
"I think you know the answer."
I did. However, I had a hell of a time convincing Carl. "Carl, let me explain it one more time…."
Carl covered his head with a beach towel, turned over on his stomach, and shoved his face into the sand. "I'm going bananas," he said in a muffled voice.
"It's crazy, but that's the only way it works."
"I'm going to have myself committed. None of this is real."
"It probably isn't. Look, your double-the you of a year ago-is down there in Santa Monica living the life of a typical teenager of his era. In a few weeks, he's going to be abducted by a flying saucer and taken one hundred and fifty years into the future and set loose in a strange world. That happened to you. Now it has to happen to him, on the same day in history that it actually happened. Prime isn't going to be around to do the deed. We have the ship, the only one of its kind in existence: Do you understand it now?"