The Fury Out of Time by Biggle Jr. Lloyd

Author:Biggle Jr., Lloyd [Biggle Jr., Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: alien, Science Fiction, future, sci-fi, time travel
ISBN: 9781434441195
Publisher: Ingram Distribution
Published: 2012-09-12T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Karvel reclined on the exquisite, billowy softness of a sausage-shaped lounge, and looked up through a transparent bubble at the alleged planet Earth—alleged because the gleaming globe in the sky bore no more than a hazy resemblance to the Earth that he knew. The continents were twisted and distorted, bloated where they should have been narrow, constricted where they should have been broad. The seas had swallowed them in great gulps, and regurgitated them where no land belonged. The first glance moved Karvel almost to tears. It was like returning home after a brief absence, and finding everything that one loved altered beyond recognition.

Or like glancing into a mirror and confronting a total stranger. He wondered if he should call himself the first of his generation to reach the moon—or the last.

The Overseer laughed softly as he occupied the adjacent lounge. “Do you enjoy the view?”

“Yes,” Karvel said, “and no. The Earth has changed so much that I hardly recognize it.”

“There is no lovelier planet in the galaxy,” the Overseer said. “To me it is always a majestic sight—an old, old world, its resources exhausted, its people ridiculously backward, yet scudding about in this obscure corner of space quite as nonchalantly as if the universe pivoted upon it In an oblique sense the universe does, you know. Earth is undeniably the birthplace of man. Tradition holds that for a long time men everywhere dreamed of returning to it, but those who did found themselves distressed even as you are distressed, and perhaps cruelly disappointed as well, for the reality was to their dreams as an insignificant grain of truth is to an enormous husk of legend. The dream and the legend were eminently more satisfying than the reality and the truth, and so eventually men stopped coming. I don’t really know if I love the old planet for what it is, or for what it once was, but I remain here, and decline loftier and less vexing appointments, and look at that lovely light in the sky whenever the cares of my office permit.”

Karvel grunted noncommittally. The cares of the Overseer’s office impressed him not at all. He had seen the luxurious moon headquarters, with its outrageously-sized female contingent that he instantly and indignantly labeled a harem. He thought he understood why the Overseer was so frequently unavailable, and why the claims of Earth’s cities went long unheeded.

He had formulated his own succinct appraisal of the Overseer’s character. The man possessed a genius for words that rendered the threadbare Earth language rich and vitally expressive. He prated poetry and oozed good fellowship, and whenever he intoned, “My friend. . .,” Karvel had to suppress the urge to reach behind him and discover where the knife had been buried.

The Overseer meant to make some nefarious use of Karvel, as soon as he could invent one that he deemed sufficiently profitable. Karvel felt certain of that, and he had no intention of waiting around long enough to find out what it would be.

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