Elric let out a roar and began charging up the slope, cherries pelting down on Vale. Mindlessly clutching his basket, Vale staggered and clambered on, keeping his eyes on the one thing not rotating, the threshold of the cellar. He heard the keen of the time-winds but if they buffeted him, he was too fear-ridden to notice in the total cataclysm. One minute it seemed he and Elric walked the sky, with the earth threatening to slam them on the head; the next, the grassy slope had turned to solid ice and they grabbed at burning-cold sheaves of dead grass, or lost their grip in mounds of snow-fluff. Chloe was in the threshold now, calling to them, her eyes wide, like blue beacons, her arms outstretched as if she could somehow stave off the fearsome currents that could lock them away for all eternity into that time stream.
As long as Vale could hear her, as long as he could see her tall figure, an orange wraith by the black basalt safety of the cellar, he was all right. As long as she remained there, they had not slipped into another current of time. They had not shifted.
Elric's can was knocked from his shoulders as he plunged through the doorway. Chloe grabbed the giant Viking as if he were no more than Vale himself. The sight of her making the blubbering warrior scoop up the now doubly precious fruit gave Vale the steadying he needed. He found his second wind, tightened the hold on his basket, and forged on. It got harder, for the slope had altered, a rocky face forming where the upland meadow had been.
"Chloe!" Vale screamed, tortured with the knowledge that she might not help him: that she rarely moved from the cellar and he desperately wished that she would. For him. She loved him best - she always said she did. He was her boy, son of her heart. "Chloe!"
"Throw the basket in," someone yelled in his ear above the shrieking wind. He was seized and thrown, arms flailing in terror that the breathless wind of time might blast him into another stream. Then Chloe's fingers caught his and dragged him, wailing, across the grooved basalt threshold. Someone else yanked him to his feet, propelling him down the corridor until he fetched up hard against the far wall and lay, sobbing, scarcely aware of being kicked, of a heavy foot grinding his fingers into the stone floor. He only knew he was safe, that Chloe had pulled him through the door. The yelling and screaming, the cries and angry shouts, even Elric's roar of outrage and the splat of fist against flesh failed to penetrate his hysterical relief as Vale pressed his cheek against the cold damp stone. It was a bad shift but he was safe, safe, safe!
Suddenly the awful caterwauling of the shift lessened as the iron-banded, studded door thudded into position.
"Boy saw. Boy saw!" Elric was shouting.
"If Vale saw something," Steve's voice cut through Elric's chant, "then, by God, you must have, Chloe. You must have! Who's missing? Who did you jettison this time, you witch? Who did you dump?"
"Burleigh and Travers aren't here," Jean cried, "nor the three new ones....".
"Burleigh and Travers?" Steve's echo hung, a scorn-laden accusation in the supercharged atmosphere.
Muffling his sobs of terror, Vale struggled to a sitting position, trying to focus through tears on the tense knot of dimly seen figures.
"What's bothering you now, Chloe?" Steve demanded in a harsh, bitter voice. "Your magic slipping? Don't your spells work on Nuclear Age minds? Or is it that you can't run philters through a food synthesizer?"
"Thee had best leave off nattering, Steven, and get this fruit to the machine. Happen thee brought any of the fish?"
The icy fear in Vale's chest was dispelled by the calm unruffled tone of Chloe's voice. Why was Steve so angry with her? Even if Vale had cried alarm the moment he saw the first ripple, there would not have been enough time to save Burleigh and his work party. Sudden shifts had happened before. Why didn't Jean stop crying?
"Is food all you can think of, you... you black witch?"
"Shifts can be frightening times for us all. I am not without compassion and true understanding, Steven...."
"Don't try that crap on me anymore, Chloe!"
Vale gasped, for he could see that Steve had Chloe by the arm. Elric, who had slumped to his knees after getting the heavy door closed, stood up, growling. He had been uncongenial to Steve ever since Chloe had taken Steve into the front room.
"Unhand me, Steve!" For all she had neither changed tone or volume, Chloe was to be obeyed. "Vale sweeting, compose thyself. Bring us light. We must salvage the fruit. Ah, Teo-somoli, we shall thank thee for the fish before this shift is over. 'Twill be a long one, I fear."
As much to be out of the tension as to do Chloe's bidding, Vale ducked past Steve, into the front room. The shelf where the power beams were kept was to the right of the door. His hand unerringly closed on the smooth rectangles of plastic. He fumbled slightly for the notched edge of the switch. Light blinded him momentarily. He adjusted the strength down. You so often saw much more in less light. And learned more in total darkness.
Vale shivered. He didn't want to think about that now. He spotted a twig of three cherries and picked it up. There was bruised fruit all over the floor. Teo-somoli was waddling to- ward the Fooder room, her buckskin skirt gathered before her, showing her knock knees. Fascinated and hopeful, Vale stared until she turned the corner. He wondered what Chloe's...
"Yes, let's save the fruit and give thanks for the fish," Steve was saying now. Of those in the chamber only he and Chloe did neither. "We're one big happy family again, aren't we? Who else was with Burleigh and Travers? Did Grace make it back? She was farthest down the stream."
"No, she stumbled and got pulled back," Peter's choked voice said from the dark.
"We tried, but she was too soon pulled beyond our reach," Samuel added.
"Neatly done, Chloe. Neatly done," Steve said. "All the dissidents have been sloughed. Well, nearly all." Steve strode after Teo-somoli, his boot heels clacking on the stones.
It was a bad shift, a deep one, and Vale tried hard, very hard, not to listen to himself. Deep shifts were always preceded by many flickerings and waverings. Chloe had told him that time and time again, after she realized that he actually could see what only her eyes had been able to discern before. It was such a bad shift that even the cellar rocked under the impact of time distortions.
Elric chanted constantly, but that was better than the girls' hysteria. Couldn't they try to be congenial? Chloe finally dosed them. Vale half hoped that she'd offer him some of the cup, but he was relieved when she didn't.
She sat by him instead, which was infinitely preferable. And when he had to put his hands to his ears against the high whines of time, she pulled his head to her bosom. He wondered fleetingly why Burleigh had called her a "cold bitch." She was so warm and there was always a lingering spicy smell about her, so different from a Mother's astringent purity.
The shift went on and on, with dead still periods that were worse than the roaring currents. Reassured by Chloe's soothing nearness, Vale tried to sleep during the calms. But everyone talked then, trying to break that horrible quiet with the sounds of humanness. Everyone, except Steve and Jean, who had pointedly moved into the unfinished back room: another fact that others tried to ignore. Vale thought it was awfully brave of them, and very uncongenial. Chloe was angry with them. He could feel her body go hard though her hands remained gentle as she stroked his head.
In such times, you ought to be congenial, even if you didn't feel like it. Vale thought. It was your duty to the Dorm in which you lived. And this cellar, with mixed sexes and ages, was still a Dorm situation.
If only he'd been congenial that day, centuries back and across time, he'd be a Guidance Aide by now. That is, if he had turned fourteen. Subjective time was impossible to measure but his body was manifesting certain changes that marked the onset of puberty. At that point of his Born-time, you could be a G.A. and have access to the File Banks. He might even get lucky and have a chance to find out who his dam and sire were from the Dorm Files. Traffer had. Or said he had.
Then Vale, Dorm 143, M-82, had to pull an antisocial and get caught up in a time Shift - without even knowing such a thing existed until it swooped him away from everything familiar and known. But here, Chloe called him "her" boy, son of her heart, and she'd find the perfect time for him, the shift that gave him the best possible chance of making something of himself, instead of being pounded and chipped into a congenial mold. A time shift. Vale hoped wistfully, when he could have a family, a mother and a sister... Though he only thought such blasphemy. Vale shivered with delight. He might even have grandparents, whatever they were. But could they compare - ever - to a Chloe? Grace had said she had had grandparents, and aunts and uncles and cousins.
Well, all those relatives hadn't made her quick and clever. She'd been sobby and clumsy, silly nonconforming behavior. And that's why she'd got caught in the shift, not because Chloe hadn't warned...
The banshee wail of the time-winds rose to make even thought impossible.
They couldn't go out when the shift was completed. Not even to get water. Chloe removed the tiny plug set in the door and hastily bunged it up.
"Inferno," she said in her calm voice and sat down, her hands folded in her lap, as she composed herself to wait again. Vale had kept close to her when he felt that the shift was ending, just to be sure his hunch was accurate. He'd said nothing, of course, and hadn't looked at anyone, trying to keep his face expressionless, but pleasant, the way Chloe did, so no one would guess what he was thinking. And he'd known the shift ended badly. Even before Chloe announced it.
These were the times Vale hated most of all: the wait between shifts, with the water getting foul, the air fouler, and the Fooder slabs thinner and thinner... as well as people's tempers. This time, though, Chloe, didn't insist that they work on enlarging the back chamber. They didn't need it now. Vale reflected, not with so many gone. He fell to wondering what time stream had swirled away Burleigh and Travers and Grace and the others. A natural one, or a warring one? It was amazing how Chloe could tell from just looking into the valley. Maybe she'd meant to leave Burleigh and Travers, even Grace, in that lovely era, with cherries in the trees and fish in the stream, rabbits jumping about in the woods and singing birds.
Burleigh had been in the cellar when Vale arrived. He'd been in the front room with Chloe for a long time... until Steve had come, if Vale remembered rightly.
But Burleigh had been from a high-tech time. He hadn't been much good with his hands, being used to servo-mechs, until Chloe made Fateri teach him how to trap small game. Everyone had to help in the cellar. Particularly when they got to a good time with cherries and rabbits.
Some times there wasn't even any fish, just grass and trees, or rock, glazed and dead.
Why had Steve accused Chloe of ditching them? She never told anyone when she was going to leave them. She'd question everyone thoroughly when they first arrived. It was exciting to get a newcomer and listen to the weird tales they told about their times. Vale had often wondered if they were really telling the truth of just suffering from desynchronization. Some of the eras hadn't seemed too bad to Vale. Like Steve's. And some of the times they'd like to live in sounded far worse - to Vale - than what they'd come from. Maybe that's why Elric had stayed with them so long: he wanted a time of much battling and sailing, brawling and drinking. There wasn't any such asocial behavior in Vale's time, with what drone sea-miners and a congenial society of nations. Still, Chloe said that, in the cellar, they crisscrossed the time sea, like a suspended weight, hitting different arcs of its circle as it swung back and forth, around and around.
Vale wondered what time Chloe had come from. She'd never say, only smile. And when would he make the final shift in to his proper time?
The second one did not seem to be as long a shift, fortunately, for Steve had turned very uncongenial, and Jean kept crying and wouldn't drink the sleep inducer that Chloe offered everyone.
And it was winter, cruel, cold, with snow clogging the cellar entrance. There was a settlement at the river, a good-sized one with buildings spread out in concentric circles. No vehicles were visible, no smoke. In fact, no activity at all could be seen in the field glasses and Steve turned them up to their highest power.
"There is life," Chloe said. "And we must have water and provender. We shall wait upon the darkness and then thee shall forage in the settlement, Steven."
"Oh?"
At such an impudent rejoinder, Chloe gave Steve a sharp and penetrating look. Her large blue eyes were steady, with that inner fieriness that scared Vale more than her most icy voice.
"Thee will go, Steven, and, because thee does not trust me, thee may take Vale with thee. Bring the boy back safely! If harm befalls him..."
All Vale could understand was that he was going to be allowed to go on a search party, and he could barely contain his jubilation. He'd begged and begged to be able to go but Chloe had never permitted him beyond the range of her naked eye.
"We'd better use protective suits, Chloe," Steve was saying. "The layout down there, the buildings themselves suggest a high-level technology. Converted heat... which we could do with."
"Our requirements are not technological, Steven," Chloe interrupted sharply, her eyes locking with Steve's. "Thee will remember that. We become far too dependent on the gimcracks and novelties of passing ages."
"The food synthesizer? The air purifiers? The clothes we stand up in?" Steve mocked her.
"Aye, all of them," she answered him in her steady voice, and she turned abruptly and reentered the cellar.
"I can really come, Steve?" Vale demanded.
"Oh, Steve, don't go!" On his other side, Jean was pulling urgently at his arm.
Steve laughed and hugged her. Vale wondered that he was so permissive with such a weepy girl. "I'm in no danger as long as their heir apparent is with me."
Jean stared at Vale so hard, so coldly, the oddest expression on her face, that Vale backed away. All the joy of the raiding was replaced by a distasteful confusion he couldn't understand.
"Yes, very apparent since this last change."
Then Chloe returned to say that there was time before dark to trap, if they could, or gather evergreen limbs for a good sustaining meal before dark. Teo-somoli was sent to the pool. She chopped a hole in the ice and stolidly settled down to fish. Elric, using one of the big cans like a shovel, began to fill the cisterns with water.
"If you'd just let us get a pump, Chloe," Peter argued again, "we could always tap the stream." "Thee knows full well that only water kept safely in the cellar is free of the contaminations of time," Chloe answered and in such a way that Peter did not persist.
But he could grumble as they plowed and slithered down the slope to the edge of the forest.
"What makes her the authority?"
"Her witch's bones," Steve replied, his eyes gleaming.
"She is not a witch," Vale said. "The concept of a witch is the product of a superstitious, untutored society, ignorant of scientific lore, too primitive to relate cause and effect...."
"Out of the mouths of babes," Steve laughed back at Vale, and tousled his hair in the teasing way the boy both resented and sought.
"He's a babe no longer," Samuel said maliciously, "for look you, there were many changes these past shifts."
Vale shot Samuel a resentful look. The man had no right to be uncongenial just because he'd come upon Vale in the jakes when he was... Vale squirmed around to hide his fiery face.
"It happens to all of us, Vale," Steve said, and, although his voice was kind, his eyes were very thoughtful. "Chloe's not a witch. She does have some knowledge or skill denied us which enables her to perceive shifts. However, I defer to the rationale of your Born-time. There are no witches. But... Chloe..."
"I can see shifts." Vale glared at Samuel and Jean.
Steve gave him another long deep look. "Yes, you do. If..."
"If, if, if." Peter muttered bitterly.
"If Vale really can," Jean said, gasping the words out as she trudged through the snow, "we could all get out in a good time."
"What is your good time, Jean of the City?" Steve asked, extending a helping hand to her. His whole face had changed. Vale noticed, when he looked at Jean.
"My own time," Jean said with such uncharacteristic firmness that they all stopped and stared at her. She glared back. "And I know how good it was. Now!"
"By m'bones, the gel's a realist," Samuel said. "But, could we trust the lad to be captain of our fate, fellow voyagers? Vale, since you are rehearsed in one mystery, have you become versed enough in the others Chloe practices to recognize a truly congenial time?"
"Congenial time?" Vale repeated the phrase in astonishment. Samuel wasn't the least bit congenial.
"Young Vale... vale, that's Latin for farewell... and farewell we ought to say to that bitch of time's hell, or is it hell's time? And we ought to take the lad with us when we run to save him his virginity. Otherwise he'll soon miss it. She hungers for a mate as she fishes in the sea of time, with chance her bait and arrant flattery her line."
"Shut up, Samuel. Let's get this chore done!" Steve said, for they'd reached the forest now.
Samuel leaned against the nearest tree, panting from the double exertion of talk and walk. Samuel rarely said so much.
"Why fool with these?" he demanded, "when there's a fine good town, with solid rib-clinging victuals..."
"We don't know that," Steve interrupted him. "We'd better be sure of some food first."
"But if we're going to raid the town at dark," Peter said, grumbling as he stripped off boughs, "I don't see why we have to fool with vegetation. The synthesizer's still half-full. I checked it myself."
Steve turned and frowned at Peter. "Good point, boy. Good point." He went right back to cutting but he didn't say anything, even after they got back to the cellar with their harvest. He said nothing until they were getting ready for the raid, when Chloe told them which buildings to investigate.
"Been shifted here before, Chloe?" he asked then, staring at her with hard eyes.
"I could not say," Chloe replied without hesitation. "The type of structure and the form of the settlement are familiar. But then all times begin to have similarities to one who has circled the present for centuries."
"How long have you been here, Chloe? Who ensorcelled you?"
Chloe met Steve's hard glare.
"I chose my fate."
"So you prefer us to think."
"The shift may not hold long. Be sharp-eyed. Vale. Warn the others the instant thee sees a ripple. I'd not risk it but we must have more protein. I like not the patterns of these past few shifts. Try either the first or second building to the left of the center..."
"Shouldn't I remember to check for breaker boxes or eye circuits?" Steve asked mockingly.
Chloe gave him a long studied look. "Thee knows well how to approach a strange place, Steven, else thee would not have returned so often."
Samuel chuckled.
"Will I return from this one, Chloe?"
She gave him a longer stare. "In the fullness of time."
Then she stepped aside to let them pass. When Vale surreptitiously touched a fold of her dress for good luck, she caught his hand.
"Stay close to Elric and Fateri, Vale," she whispered, and made as if to kiss his cheek. Then, as both realized their eyes were level, she drew in her breath with a hiss, and stepped back. All the long trek down to the rivers, Fateri and Steve took turns checking on the settlement through the binoculars.
"How long ago was the snow, Fateri?" Steve asked once.
The breed jammed his fist through the crust, fingered the snow. "Three-four days."
"Any sign of people?"