Shadows Out of Time

Relleum and his comrade slid aside to let Pmurt precede them into the…courtroom is not exactly what it was, but that will have to do. Three more cones waited behind a table suitable to their height. Weapons at the ready — they could agonize or kill, depending on the need — Relleum and the other three guards followed the prisoner inside (approximations again, but good enough to give the gist).

The central judge, an individual whose especially rugose hide showed great age, was called Sirica. Pointing a claw at Pmurt, she said, “You understand what you have done and why it has condemned you.”

“I do,” Pmurt said, not without pride.

As if he had not spoken, Sirica continued, “What may be a puzzlement to you as it is to us is why you did what you did. We know you have a habit of haunting the basalt towers and the trap doors of the Old Ones.” The judges shuddered at the unwholesomeness of such activities. Those places roused almost superstitious dread in most of the Great Race. Not in Pmurt. He reveled in doing what others would not or perhaps could not.

He had had to invent the notion of fraud ex nihilo, for instance. The Great Race commonly told the truth, and took for granted that everything it heard would likewise be true. His crimes going unsuspected — indeed, all but unimagined — he got away with them for a very long time. He had begun to believe he would get away with them forever. In that, however, he proved mistaken, as his presence here showed.

Sirica said, “From your resources, we have made what recompense we could to those you misled. Now we come down to punishing you for your wrongdoing. Imprisonment here would be pointless. One of us is as tranquil anywhere as anywhere else. One of us not addicted to the lure of forbidden places, I should say.”

Pmurt did not reply. He had hoped they would simply incarcerate him. He had mental resources aplenty to wait out any term of confinement.

“Instead, we shall send your spirit hundreds of millions of years into the future,” Sirica told him. “You will serve your term of exile trapped in the degenerate body and tiny brain of a mere human being. You deserve no better.”

Involuntarily, Pmurt’s claws opened and closed in dismay. He had not dreamt they would do anything so horrid to him. He had met human spirits swapped for other members of the Great Race who explored that far-future time with scholarly interest. Humans impressed him less than any other of Earth’s future intelligent races. Sirica and her fellow judges likely knew that. They were harder and crueler than Pmurt had guessed they would be.

“I wish to appeal,” Pmurt said.

“There is no appeal,” Sirica said flatly. “Relleum, carry out the sentence.”

“I gladly obey,” Relleum answered, and aimed his weapon at Pmurt. Only it was no weapon, not in the ordinary sense of the word. It was a temporal transposer. Pmurt recognized it too late even to begin to flinch as the transposer’s tip glowed green.

He woke in darkness, and lying down. For one of his former shape, that would have been disastrous if not impossible. He took stock of his new body. It told him this peculiar posture was pleasant enough. It also told him he had been asleep, and should sleep again. Far more than the Great Race, humans were slaves to their animal natures.

Another human creature lay on the sleeping furniture — the bed — beside him. Some cue (scent, perhaps) told him it was a female. He stayed where he was, uncertain of customs. Before very long, light slid in through the window curtains. The female sat up and glanced over to him. He thought she was hideous, but his body let him know she was attractive for one of her kind.

When she saw his eyes were open, she nodded to him and said, “Good morning, Donald.”

“Good morning,” he echoed. He was relieved to recognize the sounds of English. He had learned the language from the writings of the creature that called itself Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee and from conversation with one or two other temporal exiles. What he learned, of course, he did not forget.

“Good you are up,” the female said. “We go to Arkham soon for the hotel opening, remember?”

“I do remember,” Pmurt said: his first lie in this new body. That animal part of him declared it needed nourishment. “Food first, though. Breakfast.” Finding the right word pleased him absurdly.

The female — another term was woman—spoke into a small implement of hydrocarbon-based plastic. “They will bring it, and the paper.” She got out of bed and went into another room. After hydraulic noises, she returned.

A moment later, Donald — he couldn’t very well call himself Pmurt any more — realized he had certain hydraulic needs of his own. He went into that room himself. As the woman had, he closed the door. His body put one foot in front of the other on automatic pilot, as it were. He knew he would soon get the hang of walking, but for now it seemed a strange and insecure way to move.