Planetary: Mercury, page 7
Circe said, “I am not thinking about that.”
“In any case, the hope is that my little visits will strengthen the hope in them, and give them the fortitude to endure, even if there is no conscious memory of why.”
Circe said, “But obviously I do not have fortitude enough. After I give birth to myself as a baby, the memory of the outrage of myself by myself is obviously too much. So what happens?”
Laetare pointed at the figure on the bed. “Check the helmet circuits. But I think you will find she erased the wedding night and the months spent trying to get pregnant. She went to sleep as mother and will wake up as Nanny. When she opens her eyes, give her the baby and tell her this child is an orphan whose mother died, and who therefore needs a nursemaid.”
“Why would she believe such a lie? There is only one baby on this planet! How could she be any other baby but the baby Tiresias fathers?”
“There is a difference between suspecting, knowing, and recollecting in full detail. She believes the lie to dull the blow. And, or so I hope, she subconsciously remembers the truth, and that lends her strength.”
“What truth?”
“The babe is a changeling.”
“What?”
“I was also the midwife. I swapped babies. I have already taken baby Circe back to Aeaea, and put her in the arms of Persis, our mother, so she can be raised there, and all this we are experiencing now, will later on turn out always to have had been an hallucination or something imposed by the memory helmet. Or this will fade like a dream, and memories of being raised on Aeaea will surface. No one told me the details of what it feels like when the past behind you changes. I am acting on instructions.”
Circe said, “Then who is this in my arms?”
“Your child.”
“What?”
“Your baby. The child you will have with your husband. Her name is Telegenia. The plan is to have a real wedding secretly and be safely pregnant by him a month or so before this fake wedding. Legally, it is not bigamy if you don’t say I do. And when ourself as a June bride chained to the wedding alter sees Tiresias, she won’t say anything like I do. She won’t say anything ladylike at all. Really an ugly scene. Why do I do these things to myself?”
“Who is the baby’s father?”
“You know. Our green-eyed man.”
“His name? What is his name?”
“Trismegistus is your bridegroom. The man you murdered.”
But Laetare was not the one who answered. The newborn baby had its eyes open and blazing. They stared unwinkingly up into the face of Circe, a clear and focused gaze such as no babe so young could have. In a high, thin, pure, clear and dispassionate voice, the child spoke.
The End of Time
Circe shrieked and dropped the child. But, instead of falling, the little infant stood in midair, unsupported, ignoring gravity, and her blankets were like swaying seaweed, wrapping the little body, hems floating.
“We are the Danellians, whom investigators from eons long in our past call the Philosopher-Kings. Ours is the final era of human life.
“No events whatsoever, no matter how radically different from the original, taking place in your time can effect us, any more than temporal meddling with the migrations, hunts and starvations of various tribes of trilobites in the Pre-Cambrian would or could produce any measurable change in the history of land animals, or mammals, or humans. The time between us is too great.
“You understand our motive is not one of simple self-preservation, nor do time paradoxes create any form of damage to the timestream to observers outside the paradox loop. The energies involved always seek the path of least action, which, usually, is to eliminate the time traveler causing the acausal loop. Abuses of time travel are self-canceling, hence self-correcting.
“Those caught within a loop are a different matter.
“We hold it to be proper to advise a chronopath on the brink of self-destruction how to escape the fate he brings on himself, but we never take action ourselves, nor impose on the free will of lesser forms of man.
“Your spirit, although inferior in all ways, selfish, vile, vulgar, corrupt and inchoate, is nonetheless at one with us. You touch infinity, as we do. Even the greatest differences between finite beings shrink to nothing. We neither instruct nor direct, but we will answer. Ask.”
It took Circe a long time to steel her will, and force herself to look the strange, hovering, newborn baby in the eye. Laetare had backed away, too frightened to speak, her gaiety muted, for the moment.
Circe said, “My baby is still in there?”
“Yes. She is sleeping peacefully. Our possession is temporary, and we are careful to avoid any possible neural damage. The praxis of casting one’s mind through time into a target body is known to you. Your lord and husband used a similar effect to cast himself into one of our bodies, far enough in the future that he was, by our grace, able to be immune from the effects of the time paradox you employed in your murder attempt.”
“How? No one can penetrate one of your minds.”
“He is less benighted than others of your race, and possesses sufficient commonality to achieve congruence, with our help.”
“My green-eyed bridegroom is Trismegistus of A.D. Two Hundred Million?”
“Yes.”
“The only man in history to discover the secret of immortality?”
“Yes and no. He learns it from us, as we were taught it. He is rewarded as we were rewarded, for remorseless obedience, ironclad purity, pitiless compassion, and utmost self-abnegation. For we are merely servants ourselves of those coming after, who are wiser than we.”
“You mean sibyls?”
“The word is misleading, but can be used figuratively.”
“But you are the last of human life on Earth. The end of time. There is no one in the future after you to offer you guidance, or tell you of things to come.”
“We are disciples not of our future, but of eternity, which is beyond the end of time. Only from eternity comes immortality. Those who serve eternity are served in turn.”
“But you cannot be immortal! There is no trace of any human life, yours or any other, after the formation of the Kenorland supercontinent two billion years from now. There is one intelligent species fated to arise once all mammalian life is dead, a Coleopterous race, and a second one after all surface life is burned away, an Arachnid species of superbeings whose each generation consumes the one prior.
“If your race was immortal, there would be traces of you surviving until then and far beyond, age upon age, walking on a world void of life, empty of atmosphere, and still lingering amid the asteroids marking where Earth and Moon slowly fell within Roche’s limit. There are not.”
The dispassionate, silvery voice answered. “Endless temporal existence we possess not, nor crave. Ours is the power to lay down one’s life and to take it up again. We neither age nor grow weary, and our flesh is impassive to wounds, pains, malady, and want. After the solar expansion renders Earth’s surface uninhabitable to us, we will focus the time mirrors to an infinite parallax, and enter eternity.”
“But he is immortal? Trismegistus. He has eternal youth?”
“Not in the version of time currently trapping you. In the original version, yes. Deathless life is our reward to him.”
“Reward for what?”
“Once his heart ceases to seek what the temporal continuum offers, time must lose all power over him. To do this, he must turn as well the hearts of all those who adore and worship him away from the temporal, and toward the eternal.”
“But I heard he was a monster, a tyrant, who slays all time travelers found visiting his era. Is this true?”
“In the version where he never meets and weds his empress, yes. Without a woman to civilize his savage spirit, or lead him to the light, the temptation toward brutality overwhelms him. In the original version, we instructed him in the art of horologistics, the defensive use of the mirrors to hinder trespass, possession, and invasion.”
“Was I the one? Did you say I led him toward the light?”
“Your understanding of our spirit is intuitive and swift. His proves pedestrian, tentative, skeptical, and slow. You inspire him to persist, despite his nature and inclinations, and various practical drawbacks receiving such as we entail. I sense your skepticism.”
“Your words are hard to believe. You make him sound like a sage or gentle mystic. But he killed — that is, he is said to have killed — the time travelers destined to be born in all eras coming after his era. That is why there are no chronopaths among the Biomancers, or the Brains, five million and six million years from now.”
“An untruth. That was you.”
“Me? Why?”
“During that version and period, you sought to be the sole time traveler, and so have none to observe, amend, nor criticize your acts. Slaying the future chronopaths had ramifications backward as well.”
“What ramifications?”
“The great Si-Seneg, as he fled backward through time, seeking the moment of the creation of life on earth, deliberately or accidentally created disciples in his wake. Some he taught. Others discovered fragments of his works or tools left behind in eras where he sojourned. By paradox, these men learned the secret of casting time mirrors before the art was invented.”
“I know. They are called The Twelve. For some reason Australian physicist Nevil Kingston-Brown of A.D. 2500 is never listed, despite that he wrote the first rigorous mathematical treatment on chrono-penumbral reflection effects, and acausal symmetry.”
“He is not counted because he wisely never reduced theory to practice, and steadfastly resisted the temptation to cast a mirror,” the pure, silvery voice of the child intoned. “He was forewarned of the danger in a letter written by Dr. Nathaniel Peaslee in A.D. 1935 and held in a specially constructed vault. Have you other questions about Dr. Kingston-Brown? He is not involved in the ramifications being discussed.”
“No, sorry. Please continue.”
“When the Twelve investigate the future, they learn of the murders, and are deceived. Each fears Trismegistus is seeking his life. Because of this, one and all agree to help you establish the deadly time paradox meant to ensnare and destroy your husband. Your husband is cunning and mighty in the arts of bending time to his will: a fearsome foe. All their combined strength is needed, and long planning.”
“You mean the same twelve I killed and turned into pork roasts and fur coats?”
“Yes. Their hands you used to do the deed.”
“So… so when seventeen-year-old me kills them, she is eliminating all time travelers who know when the deed was done, and silenced the only voices that could have called backward through time to warn the victim beforehand. How horrible.”
“Their lives were not yours to take; but neither are they innocent. For that reason, we will not take extraordinary steps to save your victims.”
“Can this crime be undone? From my viewpoint, it has not happened yet.”
“Since you did not see the bodies, but only heard the deeds reported, yes, it is possible. But the complexity of your temporal paradox would be redoubled, and the subjective years you will spend in suffering would be increased.”
“I will do it, no matter the pain.”
“We are pleased that, unprompted, you have asked this.”
“But will you help me?”
“That remains to be seen. Even with aid such as ours, the task is difficult. For we sent emissaries to each of these twelve, and omens of forewarning, and our wisdom was scorned. To do more, would risk an unlawful imposition on their freedom of the will, more precious to us than life.”
“I do not understand.”
“We do not return where we are not invited, and the call must come from the core of one’s being. Unsummoned, once and only once do our voices visit each soul, whenever he may dwell in history, that learns the secret of uncausality, and the art of altering the past. To each we offer an escape.”
“From what?”
“From himself.”
“What must I do to be saved?”
“Foreswear your ambition, accept your life of penance, and, when the time is full, humble yourself before your lord and husband, seek his forgiveness.”
“What must I do here and now?”
“Resume your duties as flower girl, live your life as currently mapped out. The time loop will break once the version of you called Tiresias is no longer envious of the dignity due a bridegroom by his bride, whom she is meant to love, to honor, and to obey.
“In that hour, the superstructure of falsehoods underpinning his psychology and yours will break, leaving you without recourse. Only then will you listen as we listen, and hear strong and beautiful imperatives we hear, issuing from beyond the walls of time.
“His male body will reject the female soul possessing it, and the soul will wake again into the female form long left abandoned. She will delight to discover herself young, fertile and fair, and a maiden still: but not for sake of vanity shall she rejoice, but for sake of your beloved for whom your beauty is a gift.
“Then you will resume your duties and your disguise as Nanny, but it will be your own true daughter you shall raise, not yourself.
“Thereafter, painstaking care must be taken to maintain the outward appearance of the established events in the child’s life known to future and past versions of yourself, so as to deceive them as to the child’s identity. The secret of how to suborn the mirrors and all other servants your husband shall reveal, to allow such deceptions to be promulgated.”
“Promulgated? For how long?”
“Not long as we count time. Twenty years and one. Once she reaches the age of majority, it is your daughter who will unwind the paradox trapping your husband, and free him. Not just his shadow, but his body and blood and untrammeled mind will return from our era to yours. From him you shall ask mercy. He is given power over you to spare or punish.”
“Why would he forgive me? I murdered him.”
“Even such as we are do not understand forgiveness, nor explain its mysteries. We are from a time indescribably more advanced than yours, but we are still inside time. Forgiveness is from outside. Yet there is no doubt he will forgive, if you truly turn your heart.”
“No doubt? Why so sure?”
“Three reasons. First, because, even from the day he wed you, he knew and was wary of your wrathful spirit, your ugly pride. He is a cautious man, subtle and meticulous, as time travelers are wont to be. He established a sequence of events, like a deadman switch, designed to obliterate you retroactively throughout all time if ever he were slain by you. Nonetheless, at the last moment of his life, he aborted that sequence, and prevented the deadman switch from firing, even though he well knew your hands were sopped in his blood.
“Second, he gives the locket to you in token of his love.
“Third, it is by his plea to us on your behalf that we are come to show you the path of escape.”
“But that path — you tell me the path leads through —” Her voiced grew shrill and failed her. Circe swallowed, and spoke in a lower tone. “Leads through hell. To become a murderess? To commit incest with myself? To be violated, and then to become a violator? And after, nothing but cynical despair, believing nothing, being nothing!
“And I needs must erase my memory to maintain the deception, and so will have no ray of hope, however slim, to see any purpose or point to my pain! It is too horrible!”
“Nonetheless, such is the penalty you, in your folly, have drawn upon yourself. You yourself did and will do the unspeakable deeds that chastise you so severely. We would have been more merciful.”
And with this, the baby closed its eyes, sank down, and, with no more noise than a thistledown falling, landed neatly in the crib next to the bed where Nanny slept.
The Onset of Eternity
Circe looked toward Laetare. “What should I do?”
Laetare no longer was lighthearted. Here feet no longer danced, nor her eyes. Her face was tense with fear, humility and awe and other emotions Circe had never seen on any face of her own, old or young.
Laetare said, “You are in my future. Whatever you decide happens to me when it is my turn to play out this scene.”
“Can I really willingly subject myself to an unwilling marriage bed?”
Laetare seemed to gather herself, and force a small smile. “Well, actually…”
“You are going to say it is not rape if I consent to it, aren’t you? Well, shut your mouth. You seem pretty nonchalant about this — this — I do not even know what to call it! — planned incest with myself against my will. It is the most horrible thing I have ever heard!”
“You keep saying horrible, as if it is something being done to you. You should say wicked, as if it is something you deliberated, decided, and did. And besides,” a note of protest entered her voice. “You don’t know what I was going to say. I will erase it from myself before I turn into you.”
“What were you going to say, then?”
Laetare spread her hands. “Trismegistus is a powerful, masterful, lordly man who needs a tough little woman to be his wife. An empress. A little bit of trauma and turmoil will surely add some steel to our spine, and knock some damned sense into our selfish little head. For a wife that murdered her husband by retroactively erasing him from time, I think we are getting off very lightly.”
Circe was silent for a long while, looking at her child sleeping in the crib.
Circe said, “If I suffer all this, she gets born? And she will be herself, not me? What was her name again?”
“Telegenia, daughter of Trismegistus. Your other children are Agrius, Phaunos, Nausinöos and the youngest is Lavinia. Three boys, two girls.”
As suddenly as a plunge into a river of icewater, her doubts fled. Strangely enough, Circe found that, even though dark questions still clouded her wits, her heart was clear and bright.
Circe said, “Well, I think I am going to need a stiff drink to steel myself. Wasn’t it your idea that I should get drunk before doing this?”
