1958 Hugo Winner - The Big Time

          This book was a nice change of pace from the war stories I have been reading lately.  Although it takes place during a war, the fighting takes place in the background, and the setting is more like a USO operation than a battlefield.

          The “big time” in the title is the Big Time War – a campaign that is fought all through time, from eons in the past (before there were humans) to far into the future (where the humans may not be quite human anymore). Tactics involve changing events or capturing people from the past to change the future and to take out agents of the other side, say by killing their grandfather before he had children. The two sides in this time war are known as the Spiders and the Snakes.  Nobody knows why they are named thusly, or where or when they come from, or why they are at war.

          The events of the story all take place in the Place, a kind of pocket of stabilized time pinched off from the main timeline. Changes in the main timeline (the “real world”, if you will) do not affect the people in the Place, until they connect back to it via a Door, at which time the “change winds” may come through and rearrange global and personal histories, even to the point of a person fading away if they were never born in the real world. All of this – the stabilized time bubble, the time travel, and the opening and shutting of Doors, among other things – is handled by a device known as the Major Maintainer. A separate device, the Minor Maintainer, manages such things as breathing air, food and water. The Place is divided into a variety of areas: recreation, sleeping, storage, medical. A Museum contains a large variety of curious machines and artworks from across time.

          All of the caretakers in the Place and the time soldiers have, in a sense, died in their reality. At the time of death, they had the choice to join the Big Time or not. Those that chose to join were gathered into a series of Places, and began fighting or supporting the time war.

Greta is the viewpoint character; she is a blend of nurse and entertainer. Her task is to take in foot soldiers from the time war, patch them up and prepare them to return to the time war. Working with her are Sid (from Shakespeare’s time, and nominally in command of the Place), Beauregard (co-pilot and piano player), Maud and Lili (also entertainers), and Doc (a doctor, and a drunk). As the tale begins, three time soldiers are pulled from the main timeline: Erich (from the Third Reich), Bruce (a poet and soldier from World War I), and Mark (from the Roman Empire). They had been sent to St. Petersburg in 1883, to liberate Einstein from the Snake soldiers who had kidnapped him as a baby and were holding him there and then. But the rescue team was ambushed, and barely escaped to be picked up through the Door.

Bruce turns out to be one of Lili’s favorite poets, and a bond of love begins between them. Suddenly, the Major Maintainer signals an emergency unscheduled pickup, which is likely to be dangerous and possibly a Snake trap. They manage to make the rescue, bringing another trio into the Place: Kabysia (“Kaby”, a female soldier from Crete), Ilhilihis (“Illy”, a silvery Lunan from the remote past – imagine a thin, seven-foot octopus with feathery tentacles), and Sevensee (a Venusian satyr from the distant future).

They bring with them a large, heavy trunk, and a tale of woe from a battle in ancient Crete. They were foiled by agents of the Snakes, and had to call for pickup. As they were saved, its Maintainer began to glow and melt, and the operator fell back, dying. The fearful conclusion is that the Snakes have discovered how to find and attack the Places as they move through the Void.

Calling out for rescue again, the Maintainer now destroyed, they waited as their Place slowly closed in around them. The dying operator gasped his mission to Kaby, with the instructions on how to use the trunk. It was to be delivered to Sid’s Place, which was to mount an operation in Alexandria near the end of the Roman Empire. The trunk, it turns out, contains a “tiny” atomic bomb.

Bruce begins a long soliloquy questioning the wisdom of continuing to fight in the Spider-Snakes war: it is destroying them; the Spiders appear to be losing; can they really keep ripping up the fabric of reality and not cause existence to cease entirely? Erich takes up the counter-argument: Bruce is fomenting mutiny; he doesn’t have the experience in the Big Time to make this argument; he’s just a soldier who has fallen in love and now pushes for peace.

Suddenly, a catastrophe is realized: the Master Maintainer is missing! The Place’s ability to move through time and space, and the ability to create Doors to the main timeline, has been lost. The twelve characters are trapped in their bubble, and even the Spiders cannot find them to help.

The consensus is that Bruce and Lili have conspired to hide the Maintainer, creating a love nest safe from the War. Where it has been hidden is another quandary; although trackers prove that it still exists (as does the continued existence of the Place), they cannot find it after searching the entire Place. Doc staggers out of the Museum with a sculpture, but his drunken attempts at communicating are too garbled. Lili makes an impassioned speech for remaining separated, becoming a seed for continuing the human race in this little pocket universe. Erich seizes the moment and punches in the triggering sequence on the bomb, starting the thirty-minute countdown to nuclear explosion, to pressure the thieves into relenting. Kaby takes the Minor Maintainer, and pins the combatants to the floor with high gravity.

Finally, Greta realizes that someone has used the surgical Inverter to turn the Maintainer inside-out, completely changing its appearance, and hidden it in the Museum. Doc, who knows the Museum best, was trying to tell them the sculpture did not belong in the Museum. Greta quietly takes the sculpture into the Surgery area, and un-Inverts it, resulting in its familiar form.

Everyone troops through the curtain into the Surgery (except the passed-out Doc), and Erich takes possession of the Major Maintainer. Sid turns back, when there comes a horrible screech! Apparently a Spider has arrived, and is unhappy that the gravity is set high! Sid takes the Minor Maintainer into the main room adjust the gravity – and as everybody follows him, the ruse is revealed: there is no Spider, and Sid now holds the upper hand. He directs Beau to take the Major Maintainer from Erich, and call for instructions to disarm the bomb. Bruce meanwhile breaks free and disarms the bomb; his actions match the instructions Beau eventually acquires.

Finally, a party breaks out as they wait for the Place to achieve a rendezvous with the Battle of Alexandria. All finally agree that it would be better to pretend none of the recent events happened, that they all should keep quiet and follow orders. At the end, Illy has a quiet conversation with Greta, explaining how they are the latest evolution from Man, fighting through all the possibilities of the universe to determine what truly exists.

I found this book very enjoyable, although sometimes the resolutions seemed a bit too convenient (a WWI soldier is an atomic bomb tech? really?). Nonetheless, an interesting “lifeboat” story.