The Forest of Time - Hugo Nominated Novella Read online

  “The Forest of Time” is included in the Anthology, The Forest of Time and Other Stories Published by Phoenix Pick

  THE FOREST OF TIME

  Michael Flynn

  Phoenix Pick

  An Imprint of Arc Manor

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  The Forest of Time, copyright © 1987 by Michael Flynn. Originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 1987. The Forest of Time and Other Stores Copyright © 1997, 2011 Michael Flynn. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published by Phoenix Pick

  an imprint of Arc Manor

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  Rockville, MD 20849-0339

  www.ArcManor.com

  ************

  THE FOREST OF TIME

  It was the autumn of the year and the trees were already showing their death-colors. Splashes of orange and red and gold rustled in the canopy overhead. Oberleutnant Rudolf Knecht, Chief Scout of the Army of the Kittatinny, wore the same hues mottled for his uniform as he rode through the forest. A scout’s badge, carefully rusted to dullness, was pinned to his battered campaign cap.

  Knecht swayed easily to the rhythm of his horse’s gait as he picked his way up the trail toward Fox Gap Fortress. He kept a wary eye on the surrounding forest. Periodically, he twisted in the saddle and gazed thoughtfully at the trail where it switchbacked below. There had been no sign of pursuit so far. Knecht believed his presence had gone undetected; but even this close to home, it paid to be careful. The list of those who wanted Knecht dead was a long one; and here, north of the Mountain, it was open season on Pennsylvanians.

  There were few leaves on the forest floor, but the wind gathered them up and hurled them in mad dances. The brown, dry, crisp leaves of death. Forerunners of what was to be. Knecht bowed his head and pulled the jacket collar tighter about his neck.

  Knecht felt the autumn. It was in his heart and in his bones. It was in the news he carried homeward. Bad news even in the best of times, which these were not. Two knick regiments had moved out of the Hudson Valley into the Poconos. They were camped with the yankees. Brothers-in-arms, as if last spring’s fighting had never happened. General Schneider’s fear had come to pass: New York and Wyoming had settled their quarrel and made common cause.

  Common cause. Knecht chewed on his drooping moustache, now more grey than brown. No need to ask the cause. There was little enough that yanks and knicks could agree on, but killing Pennsylvanians was one.

  He remembered that General Schneider was inspecting the fortress line and would probably be waiting for him at Fox Gap. He did not feel the pleasure he usually felt on such occasions. Na, Konrad, meiner Alt, he thought. What will you do now? What a burden I must lay upon your shoulders. God help the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  He pulled in on the reins. There was a break in the trees here and through it he could see the flank of Kittatinny Mountain. A giant’s wall, the ridge ran away, straight and true, becoming bluer and hazier as its forested slopes faded into the distance. Spots of color decorated the sheer face of the Mountain. Fox Gap, directly above him, was hidden by the forest canopy; but Knecht thought he could just make out the fortresses at Wind Gap and Tott Gap.

  As always, the view comforted him. There was no way across the Kittatinny, save through the Gaps. And there was no way through the Gaps.

  Twenty years since anyone has tried, he thought. He kicked at the horse and they resumed their slow progress up the trail. Twenty years ago; and we blew the knick riverboats off the water.

  That had been at Delaware Gap, during the Piney War. Knecht sighed. The Piney War. It seemed such a long time ago. A different world; more innocent, somehow. Or perhaps he had only been younger. He remembered how he had marched away, his uniform new and sharply creased. Adventure was ahead of him, and his father’s anger behind. I am too old for such games, he told himself. I should be sitting by the fire, smoking my pipe, telling stories to my grandchildren.

  He chewed again on his moustache hairs and spit them out. There had never been any children; and now, there never would be. He felt suddenly alone.

  Just as well, he thought. The stories I have to tell are not for the ears of youngsters. What were the stories, really? A crowd of men charged from the trench. Later, some of them came back. What more was there to say? Once, a long time ago, war had been glamorous, with pageantry and uniforms to shame a peacock. Now it was only necessary, and the uniforms were the color of mud.

  There was a sudden noise in the forest to his right. Snapping limbs and a muffled grunt. Knecht started, and chastised himself. A surprised scout is often a dead one as well. He pulled a large bore pistol from his holster and dismounted. The horse, well-trained, held still. Knecht stepped into the forest and crouched behind a tall birch tree. He listened.

  The noise continued. Too much noise, he decided. Perhaps an animal?

  Then he saw the silhouette of a man thrashing through the underbrush, making no attempt at silence. Knecht watched over his gunsight as the man blundered into a stickerbush, cursed, and stopped to pull the burrs from his trousers.

  The utter lack of caution puzzled Knecht. The no-man’s-land between Pennsylvania and the Wyoming was no place for carelessness. The stranger was either very foolish or very confident.

  The fear ran through him like the rush of an icy mountain stream. Perhaps the bait in a trap; something to hold his attention? He jerked round suddenly, looking behind him, straining for the slightest sign.

  But there was nothing save the startled birds and the evening wind.

  Knecht blew his breath out in a gust. His heart was pounding. I am getting too old for this. He felt foolish and his cheeks burned.

  The stranger had reached the trail and stood there brushing himself off. He was short and dark complexioned. On his back he wore a rucksack, connected by wires to a device on his belt. Knecht estimated his age at thirty, but the unkempt hair and beard made him look older.

  The man pulled a paper from his baggy canvas jacket. Even from where he crouched, Knecht could see it was a map, handsomely done in many colors. A stranger with a map on the trail below Fox Gap. Knecht made a decision and stepped forth, cocking his pistol.

  The stranger spun and saw Knecht. Closer up, Knecht could see eyes bloodshot with fatigue. After a nervous glance at the scout’s pistol, the stranger smiled and pointed to the map. “Would you believe it?” he asked in English. “I think I’m lost.”

  Knecht snorted. “I would not believe it,” he answered in the same language. “Put in the air your hands up.”

  The stranger complied without hesitation. Knecht reached out and snatched the map from his hand.

  “That’s a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, isn’t it?” asked his prisoner. “It sure is good to hear English again.”

  Knecht looked at him. He did not understand why that should be good. His own policy when north of the Mountain was to shoot at English voices. He gave quick glances to the map while considering what to do.

  “Are you hunting? I didn’t know it was hunting season.”

  The scout saw no reason to answer that, either. In a way, he was hunting, but he doubted the prisoner had meant it that way.

  “At least you can tell me where in the damn world I am!”

  Knecht was surprised at the angry outburst. Considering who held the pistol on whom, it seemed a rash act at best. He grinned and held up the map. “Naturally, you
know where in the damn world you are. While you have this map, it gives only one possibility. You are the spy, nicht wahr? But, to humor you...” He pointed northward with his chin. “Downtrail is the Wyoming, where your Wilkes-Barre masters your report in vain will await. Uptrail is Festung Fox Gap...and your cell.”

  The prisoner’s shoulders slumped. Knecht looked at the sun. With the prisoner afoot, they should still reach the fort before nightfall. He decided to take the man in for questioning. That would be safer than interrogating him on the spot, Knecht glanced at the map once more. Then he frowned and looked more closely. “United States Geological Survey?” he asked the prisoner. “What are the United States?”

  He did not understand why the prisoner wept.

  There was a storm brewing in the northwest and the wind whipped through Fox Gap, tearing at the uniform blouses of the sentries, making them grab for their caps. In the dark, amid the rain and lightning, at least one man’s grab was too late and his fellows laughed coarsely as he trotted red-faced to retrieve it. It was a small diversion in an otherwise cheerless duty.

  What annoyed Festungskommandant Vonderberge was not that Scout Knecht chose to watch the chase also, but that he chose to do so while halfway through the act of entering Vonderberge’s office. The wind blew a blizzard of paper around the room and Vonderberge’s curses brought Knecht fully into the office, closing the door behind him.

  Knecht surveyed the destruction. Vonderberge shook his head. He looked at Knecht. “These bits of paper,” he said. “These orders and memoranda and requisitions, they are the nerve messages of the Army. A thousand messages a day cross my desk, Rudi; and not a one of them but deals with matters of the greatest military import.” He clucked sadly. “Our enemies need not defeat us in the field. They need only sabotage our filing system and we are lost.” He rose from his desk and knelt, gathering up papers. “Come, Rudi, quickly. Let us set things aright, else the Commonwealth is lost!”

  Knecht snorted. Vonderberge was mocking him with this elaborate ridicule. In his short time at Fox Gap, Knecht had encountered the Kommandant’s strange humor several times. Someone had once told him that Vonderberge had always dreamed of becoming a scientist, but that his father had pressured him into following the family’s military tradition. As a result, his command style was somewhat unorthodox.

  Na, we all arrive by different paths, Knecht thought. I joined to spite my father. It startled him to recall that his father had been dead for many years and that they had never become reconciled.

  Knecht stooped and helped collect the scattered documents. Because he was a scout, however, he glanced at their contents as he did so; and as he absorbed their meaning, he read more and collected less.

  One sheet in particular held his attention. When he looked up from it, he saw Vonderberge waiting patiently behind his desk. He was leaning back in a swivel chair, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a knowing smile on the Kommandant’s thin aristocratic face.

  “Is this all...” Knecht began.

  “Ach, nein,” the Kommandant answered. “There is much, much more. However,” he added pointedly, “it is no longer in order.”

  “But, this is from the prisoner, Nando Kelly?”

  “Hernando is the name; not Herr Nando. It is Spanish, I believe.” Vonderberge clucked sadly over the documents and began setting them in order.

  Knecht stood over the desk. “But this is crazy stuff!” He waved the sheet in his hand. Vonderberge grabbed for it vainly. Knecht did not notice. “The man must be crazy!” he said.

  Vonderberge paused and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Crazy?” he repeated. “So says the Hexmajor. He can support his opinion with many fine words and a degree from Franklin University. I am but a simple soldier, a servant of the Commonwealth, and cannot state my own diagnosis in so impressive a manner. On what basis, Rudi, do you say he is crazy?”

  Knecht sputtered. “If it is not crazy to believe in countries that do not exist, I do not know what is. I have looked on all our world maps and have found no United States, not even in deepest Asia.”

  Vonderberge smiled broadly. He leaned back again, clasping his hands behind his neck. “Oh, I know where the United States are,” he announced smugly.

  Knecht made a face. “Tell me then, O Servant of the Commonwealth.”

  Vonderberge chuckled. “If you can possibly remember so far back as your childhood history lessons, you may recall something of the Fourth Pennamite War.”

  Knecht groaned. The Pennamite Wars. He could never remember which was which. Both Connecticut and Pennsylvania had claimed the Wyoming Valley and had fought over it several times, a consequence of the English king’s cavalier attitude toward land titles. The fourth one? Let’s see...1769, 1771, 1775...

  “No,” he said finally. “I know nothing at all of the time between 1784 and 1792. I never heard of Brigadier Wadsworth and the Siege of Forty-Fort, or how General Washington and his Virginia militia were mowed down in the crossfire.”

  “Then you must also be ignorant,” continued the Kommandant, “of the fact that the same Congress that sent the General to stop the fighting was also working on a plan to unify the thirteen independent states. Now what do you suppose the name of that union was to be?”

  Knecht snorted. “I would be a great fool if I did not say ‘The United States.’”

  Vonderberge clapped. “Right, indeed, Rudi. Right, indeed. Dickinson was president of the Congress, you know.”

  Knecht was surprised. “Dickinson? John Dickinson, our first Chancellor?”

  “The very same. Being a Pennsylvanian, I suppose the yankee settlers thought he was plotting something by dispatching the supposedly neutral Virginians....Well, of course, with Washington dead, and old Franklin incapacitated by a stroke at the news, the whole thing fell apart. Maryland never did sign the Articles of Confederation; and as the fighting among the states grew worse—over the Wyoming, over Vermont, over Chesapeake fishing rights, over the western lands—the others seceded also. All that Adams and the radicals salvaged was their New England Confederation; and even that was almost lost during Shay’s Rebellion and General Lincoln’s coup....”

  Knecht interrupted. “So this almost-was United States was nothing more than a wartime alliance to throw the English out. It was stillborn in the 1780s. Yet Kelly’s map is dated this year.”

  “Ja, the map,” mused Vonderberge, as if to himself. “It is finely drawn, is it not? And the physical details—the mountains and streams—are astonishingly accurate. Only the man-made details are bizarre. Roads and dams that are not there. A great open space called an ‘airport.’ Towns that are three times their actual size. Did you see how large Easton is shown to be?”

  Knecht shrugged. “A hoax.”

  “Such an elaborate hoax? To what purpose?”

  “To fool us. He is a spy. If messages can be coded, why not maps?”

  “Ah. You say he is a spy. The Hexmajor says he is mad and the map is the complex working out of a system of delusions. I say...” He picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk and handed them to Knecht. “I say you should read Kelly’s notebook.”

  The scout glanced at the typewritten pages. “These are transcripts,” he pointed out. “They were done on the machine in your office. I recognize the broken stem on the r’s.” He made it a statement.

  Vonderberge threw his head back and laughed, slapping the arm of the chair. “Subtlety does not become you, Rudi,” he said looking at him. “Yes, they are transcripts. General Schneider has the originals. When I showed the journal to him, he wanted to read it himself. I made copies of the more interesting entries.”

  Knecht kept his face neutral. “You, and the General, and the Hexmajor. Ach! Kelly is my prisoner. I have yet to interview him. I gave you his possessions for safekeeping, not for distribution.”

  “Oh, don’t be so official, Rudi. What are we, Prussians? You were resting, I was bored, and the journal was here. Go ahead. Read it now.” Vonderberge waved an invit
ing hand.

  Knecht frowned and picked up the stack. The first few pages were filled with equations. Strange formulae full of inverted A’s and backward E’s. Knecht formed the words under his breath. “...twelve dimensional open manifold...Janatpour hypospace...oscillatory time...” He shook his head. “Nonsense,” he muttered.

  He turned the page and came to a text:

  I am embarking on a great adventure. Does that sound grandiose? Very well, let it. Grandiose ideas deserve grandiose expression. Tomorrow, I make my first long range Jump. Sharon claims that it is too soon for such a field test, but she is too cautious. I’ve engineered the equipment. I know what it can do. Triple redundancy on critical circuits. Molecular foam memory. I am a certified reliability engineer, after all. The short Jumps were all successful. So what could go wrong?

  My sweet Rosa says that it is dangerous. And what can I answer? It is dangerous. But when has anything perfectly safe been worth the doing? The equipment is as safe as I can make it. I tried to explain about hazard analysis and fault trees to Rosa last night, but she only cried and held me tighter.

  She promised to be in the lab a week from tomorrow when I make my return Jump. A week away from Rosa. A week to study a whole new universe. Madre de Dios! A week can be both a moment and an eternity.

  Knecht chewed his moustache. The next page was titled “Jump #1” followed by a string of twelve “coordinate settings.” Then there were many pages which Knecht skimmed, detailing a world that never was. In it, the prehistoric Indians had not exterminated the Ice Age big game. Instead, they had tamed the horse, the elephant, and the camel and used the animal power to keep pace technologically with the Old World. Great civilizations arose in the river valleys of the Colorado and Rio Grande, and mighty empires spread across the Caribbean. Vikings were in Vinland at the same time the Iroquois were discovering Ireland. By the present day there were colonies on Mars.