The Time Dweller

It gave him satisfaction.

Then he rode up to where Pepin lay and looked down at him. Pepin was not badly hurt, he was even beginning to stir on the ground. The Hooknosed Wanderer saw that he was a Moonite by his dress. He wondered where Pepin had got the piercer and torch which lay near him.

He dismounted and helped the Moonite to his feet. Pepin rubbed his head and looked rather nervously at the Hooknosed Wanderer.

'I fell down,' he said.

'Just so,' said the Hooknosed Wanderer. ' Where is your spaceship? Has it crashed nearby?'

'I have no spaceship,' Pepin explained, 'I was journeying from Barbart, where I landed some seven weeks ago, to Lanjis Liho, which I am told lies close to the shores of the sea.'

'You were foolish to go on foot,' said the Wanderer. ' It is still a long way.'

He continued eagerly: ' But you must guest with me and we will talk about Moon. I should be happy to add to my knowledge.'

Pepin's head was aching. He was glad that this odd stranger had come upon him. He agreed willingly and even tried to help the Wanderer raise his tent.

When the tent was finally erected and the Wanderer's goods distributed about it, Pepin and he went inside.

The Wanderer offered him leg-fish and salt-water, but Pepin refused politely and swallowed his own food.

Then he told the Wanderer of his coming from Moon to Earth, of his stay in Barbart, of his frustration and disappointment, and of his ambition. The Wanderer listened, asking questions that showed he was more interested in Moon than Pepin.

Listlessly, Pepin replied to these questions and then asked one of his own.

'What do you know of Lanjis Liho, sir?'

'Everything but the most recent events,' said the Wanderer with a smile.' Lanjis Liho is very ancient and has its origin in an experimental village where a philosopher tried to educate people to regard Time as they regard Matter - something that can be moved through, manipulated and so on. From this, the Chronarchy was formed and it became traditional in Lanjis Liho to investigate Time and little else. Perhaps by mutation, perhaps by the awakening of some power we have always possessed, a race of people exist in Lanjis Liho who can move themselves through Time! 'I had the good fortune to know the young man who first discovered this talent within himself and trained others in its use.

A man called the Scar-faced Brooder-he is the present Chronarch.'

'He can travel into the past?'

'And future, so I hear. Once the chronopathic talent is released in Man, he can move through Time at will.'

'But the past,' said Pepin excitedly. ' We can journey back to Earth's Golden Age and not worry about natural death or artificial living. We can do things!'

'Um,' said the Wanderer. ' I share your love for the past, Pepin Hunchback - my tent is full of antiques I have excavated -but is it possible to return to the past? Would not that act change the future-for there is no record in our history of men from the future settling in the past?'

Pepin nodded.' It is a mystery - yet surely one man, who did not admit he was from the future, could settle in the past?'

The Hooknosed Wanderer smiled.' I see what you mean.'

'I realize now,' said Pepin seriously, ' that I have little in common with either my own people or the folk of Earth. My only hope is to return to the past where I shall find the things I need to exist fully. I am a man out of. my time.'

'You are not the first. Earth's ancient history is full of such men.'

'But I shall be the first, perhaps able to find the Age which most suits him.'

'Perhaps,' said the Hooknosed Wanderer dubiously. 'But your wishes are scarcely constructive.'

'Are they not? What, then, has this Earth to offer mankind? We on Moon live an artificial life, turning year by year into machines less perfect than those which support us. And you here accept death passively - are only concerned with the business of facing extinction " well"! My race will not be human within a century - yours will not exist. Are we to perish? Are the values of humanity to perish-have the strivings of the last million years been pointless? Is there no escape from Earth's evening? I will not accept that!'

'You are not logical, my friend,' smiled the Wanderer.' You take the least positive line of all-by refusing to face the future -by your desire to return to the past. How will that benefit the rest of us?'

Pepin clutched his head. ' Ah,' he murmured.' Ah… '

The Hooknosed Wanderer continued. 'I have no wish to survive the evening. You have seen something of the horrors which will multiply as Earth's evening turns to night.'

Pepin did not reply. He had become inarticulate with emotion.

The Hooknosed Wanderer took him outside and pointed into the east. ' That way lies Lanjis Liho and her chronopaths,' he said.' I pity you, Pepin, for I think you will find no solution to your problem - and it is your problem, not humanity's.'

Pepin limped from weariness as well as deformity. He limped along a beach. It was morning and the dull, red sun was rising slowly from the sea as he moved down the dark shore towards Lanjis Liho. It was cold.

Grey-brown mist hung over the sea and drifted towards the bleak landscape that was dominated by the solid black outline of cliffs to his right. The brown beach glistened with patches of hard salt and the salt-sluggish sea was motionless, for there was no longer a nearby moon to move it.

Pepin still considered his conversation with the strange Wanderer. Was this the end of Earth, or merely one phase in a cycle? Night must come-but would it be followed by a new day? If so, then perhaps the future was attractive. Yet the Earth had slowly destroyed the greater part of the human race.

Would the rest die before the new morning? Suddenly, Pepin slipped into a pool of thick water. He floundered in the clinging stuff, dragging himself back by clutching a spur of hardened salt, but the salt wouldn't bear his weight and he fell into the pool again. Finally he crawled back to dry land. Everything was crumbling or changing.

He continued along the shore more carefully. Leg-fish scuttled away as he approached. They sought the deeper shadow of the crags of rock which rose from the beach like jagged teeth, corroded by wind-borne salt. They hid and were silent and the whole shore was quiet. Pepin Hunchback found no peace of mind here, but the solitude seemed to absorb his tangled thoughts and eased his brain a little.

The disc of the sun took a long time to rise above the horizon, and brought little light with it, and even less warmth. He paused and turned to stare over the sea which changed from black to brown as the sun came up. He sighed and looked at the sun which caught his face in its dull glow and stained it a deep pink, bringing a look of radiance to his native pallor.

Later, he heard a sound which he first took to be the squawking of fighting leg-fish. Then he recognized it as a human voice.

Without moving his head, he listened more intently.

Then he turned.

A tiny figure sat a seal on the cliff above. Jutting upwards from it like a lance was the barrel of a long piercer. The figure was half-shadowed by the ruin of an ancient watch-tower and, as he looked, jerked at the reins impatiently, disappeared into the whole shadow and was gone.

Pepin frowned and wondered if this could be an enemy. He readied his own piercer.

Now the rider had descended the cliff and was nearing him.

He heard the distant thwack of the beast's fins against the damp beach. He levelled the gun.

The rider was a woman. A woman from out of his books.

She was tall, long-legged, with the collar of her seal-leather jacket raised to frame her sharp-jawed face. Her brown hair drifted over it and flew behind. One hand, protected by a loosefitting glove, clutched the pommel of her high, silicon saddle.