Collected Short Fiction, page 380
His way was clear. He would have to step aside. But he would merely be stepping aside for himself, and perhaps there would be no sense of discontinuity after all. He nodded in firm decision.
There was a voicewrite at the room desk. Ewing switched it on and began to dictate:
“Twoday afternoon. To my self of an earlier time—to the man I call Ewing-sub-two, from Ewing-sub-one. Read this with great care, indeed memorize it, and then destroy it utterly.
“You have just been snatched from the hands of the interrogators by what seemed to you miraculous intervention. You must believe that your rescuer was none other than yourself, doubling back along his time-track from two days hence. Since I have already lived through the time that will now unfold for you, let me tell you what is scheduled to take place for you, and let me implore you to save our mutual existence by following my instructions exactly.
“It is now Twoday. Your tired body will sleep around the clock, and you will awaken on Fourday. Shortly after awakening, you will be contacted by Scholar Myreck, who will remind you of your appointment with him and will make arrangements with you to take you to his College in the suburbs. You will go. While you are there, they will reveal to you the fact that they are capable of shifting objects in time—indeed, their building itself is displaced by three microseconds to avoid investigation.
“At this point in my own time-track, I compelled them to send me back in time from Fourday to Twoday, and upon arriving here proceeded to carry out your rescue. My purpose in making this trip was to provide you with this information, which my rescuer neglected to give me. Under no conditions are you to make a backward trip in time! The cycle must end with you.
“When Myreck shows you the machine, you are to express interest but not to request a demonstration. This will automatically create a new past time in which a Ewing-sub-three actually did die under Firnik’s interrogation, while you, Ewing-sub-two, remain in existence, a free agent ready to continue your current operations.
“As for me, I am no longer needed in the plan of events, and so intend to remove myself from the time-stream upon finishing this note. I intend to do this by short-circuiting the energitron booth in the lobby while I am inside it, a fact which you can verify upon awakening by checking the telestat records for Two-day, the eleventh. This action, coupled with your refusal to use Myreck’s machine, will put an end to the multiplicity of existing Ewings and leave you as the sole occupant of the stage. Make the most of your opportunities. I know you are capable of handling the task well, obviously.
“I wish you luck. You’ll need it.
“Yours in—believe me—deepest friendship.
“Ewing-sub-one.”
When he had finished the note, Ewing drew it from the machine and read it through three times, slowly. He folded it, drew from his pocket ten credits—something else his predecessor along the time-track had neglected—and sealed the message and the money in an envelope which he placed on the chair next to the sleeping man’s bed.
Satisfied, he tiptoed from the room, locking the door behind him, and rode down to the hotel lobby. There was no longer any need for the mask, so he discarded it; he had left the stungun upstairs, in case Ewing-sub-two might have need for it.
He picked up a phone in the lobby, dialed Central Communications, and said, “I’d like to send a message to Scholar Myreck, care of College of Abstract Science, General Delivery, City of Valloin Branch Office 86.” It was the dummy address Myreck had given him. “The message is, quote: Baird Ewing has been interrogated and severely beaten by your enemies. At present he is asleep in his hotel room. Call him this afternoon and arrange to help him. Unquote. Now, that message is not to be delivered before Fourday, no later than noon. Is that clear?”
He crossed the lobby to a loitering Earther and said, “Excuse me—could I trouble you for change of a one-credit bill? I’d like to use the energitron booth and I don’t have any coins.”
The Earther changed the bill for him; they exchanged a few pleasant words, and then Ewing headed for the booth, satisfied that he had planted his identity. When the explosion came, there would be a witness to say that a tall man had just entered the booth.
He slipped a half-credit coin into the booth’s admission slot; the energy curtain that was its entrance went light pink long enough for Ewing to step through, and immediately returned to its glossy black opacity afterward. He found himself facing a beam of warm red light.
The energitron booth was simply a commercial adaptation of the ordinary ion-beam shower; it was a molecular spray that invigorated the body and refreshed the soul, according to the sign outside. Ewing knew it was also a particularly efficient suicide device. A bright enamel strip said:
CAUTION!
THE OPERATOR IS WARNED NOT TO APPROACH THE LIMIT-LINES INSCRIBED IN THE BOOTH OR TO TAMPER WITH THE MECHANISM OF THE ENERGITRON. IT IS HIGHLY DELICATE AND MAY BE DANGEROUS IN UNSKILLED HANDS.
Ewing smiled coldly. With steady hands he reached for the sealed control-box; he smashed it open and twisted the rheostat within sharply upward. The quality of the molecular beam changed; it became fuzzier and crackled.
At the limit-lines of the booth, he knew, an area existed where planes of force existed in delicate imbalance; interposing an arm or a leg in such a place could result in a violent explosion. He moved toward the limit-lines and probed with his hands for the danger area.
A sudden thought struck him: What about my rescuer? He had left him out of the calculations completely. But yet another Ewing-one had existed, one who had not left any notes nor stunguns nor money, and who perhaps had not suicided either. Ewing wondered briefly about him; but then he had no further time for wondering, because a blinding light flashed, and a thunderous wave of force rose from the booth and crushed him in its mighty grip.
CHAPTER XII
EWING WOKE.
He felt groggy, stiff and sore in a hundred places, his forehead throbbing. He rolled over in the bed, clamped a hand to his forehead, and hung on.
What happened to me?
Memories drifted back to him a thread at a time. He remembered discovering Byra in his room, drinking the drugged liquor she gave him, being hustled away to the Sirian Consulate. Blurred days of endless torment, interrogation, a mindpick machine lowered over his unresisting head—
Sudden rescue from an unknown source. Sleep. His memories ended there.
Achingly he crawled from the bed and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked frighteningly haggard. Dark circles ringed his eyes like crayon-marks, and the skin of his face hung loose under his chin, stretched tight elsewhere. He looked worse than he had at the moment of awakening, some days before, aboard the ship.
An envelope lay on a chair by the side of the bed. He frowned, picked it up, fingered it. It was sealed and addressed to him. He opened it. Five two-credit notes came fluttering out, and along with them a note. He stacked the banknotes neatly on the bed, unfolded the note, and sat down to read.
“Twoday afternoon. To my self of an earlier time—to the man I call Ewing-sub-two, from Ewing-sub-one . . .”
Bleary-eyed as he was, he came awake while reading the note. His first reaction was one of anger and incredulity; then he nibbled his nails as he considered certain turns of phrase, certain mannerisms of punctuation. He had a fairly distinctive style of voicewrite dictation. And this was a pretty good copy, or else the real thing.
In which case—
He switched on the housephone and said, “What’s today’s date, please?”
“Fourday, the thirteenth of Fifthmonth.”
“Thanks. How can I get access to the telestat reports for Twoday the eleventh?”
“We could connect you with Records,” the robot suggested.
“Do that,” Ewing said.
He heard the click-click-clack! of shifting relays, and a new robotic voice said, “Records. How may we serve you?”
“I’m interested in the text of a news item that covers an event which took place Twoday afternoon. The short-circuiting of an energitron machine in the lobby of the Grand Valloin Hotel.”
Almost instantly the robot said, “We have your item for you. Shall we read it?”
“Go ahead,” he said in a rasping voice. “Read it.”
“Twoday, 11th Fifthmonth, 3806. Explosion of an energitron booth in the lobby of the Grand Valloin Hotel this afternoon took one life, caused an estimated two hundred thousand credits’ worth of damage, injured three, and disrupted normal hotel service for nearly two hours. The cause of the explosion is believed to have been a successful suicide attempt.
“No body was recovered from the demolished booth, but witnesses recalled having seen a tall man in street clothes entering the booth moments before the explosion. A check of the hotel registry revealed that no residents were missing. Valloin police indicate they will investigate.”
The robot paused and said, “That’s all there is. Do you wish a permanent copy? Should we search the files for subsequent information pertinent to the matter?”
“No,” Ewing said. “No, no thanks.” He severed the contact and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
It could still be a prank, of course. He had been asleep several days, long enough for the prankster to learn of the explosion and incorporate the incident retroactively in the note. But Occam’s Razor made hash of the hoax theory; there were too many inexplicable circumstances and unmotivated actions involved. Assuming that a prior Ewing had doubled in time to carry out the rescue and leave the note was vastly simpler a hypothesis, granting the one major improbability of timetravel.
There would be one fairly definite proof, though. Ewing found a small blue stungun lying on his dresser, and studied it thoughtfully.
According to the note, Scholar Myreck would call him soon after he had awakened.
Very well, Ewing thought. I’ll wait for Myreck to call.
AN HOUR LATER he was sitting in a relaxing lounger in a salon in the College of Abstract Science, feeling the pain of Firnik’s torture leaving him under the ministrations of Myreck’s expert fingers. Music welled around him, fascinating ancient music—Beethoven, Myreck had said. He sipped at his drink.
It was all quite incredible to him: the call from Myreck, the trip across Valloin in the domed car, the miraculous building three microseconds out of phase with the rest of the city, and above all the fact that the note in his room was indubitably true. These Earthers had the secret of time travel, and, though none of them was aware of the fact, they had “already” sent Baird Ewing back through time at least once from a point along the time-stream that still lay ahead, this afternoon of Fourday.
He realized his responsibility, tremendous already, was even greater now. A man had given up his life for him, and though no actual life had ended, it seemed to Ewing that a part of him he had never known had died.
The conversation moved smoothly along. The Earthers, alert, curious little men, wanted to know about the Klodni menace, and whether the people of Corwin would be able to defeat them when the attack came. Ewing told them the truth: that they would try, but there was not much hope of success.
And then Myreck introduced a new theme: the possibility of arranging transportation for the members of the College to Corwin, where at least they would be safer than on an Earth dominated by Sirius IV.
It seemed a doubtful proposition to Ewing. He explained to the visibly disappointed Earthers what a vast enterprise it would be to transport them, and how few ships Corwin had available for the purpose. He touched on the necessary delays the negotiations would involve.
He saw the hurt looks on their faces; there was no help for it, he thought. Earth had her enemies, and Corwin her own. Corwin faced destruction, Earth mere occupation. Corwin needed help more urgently.
He felt a depressing cloud of futility settle around him. He had accomplished nothing on Earth, found no possible solution for Corwin’s problem, not even succeeded in helping these Earthers.
He had failed. Whatever bold plan had been in the mind of the dead Ewing who had left him the note did not hold a corresponding position in his own mind. That Ewing, clearly, had seen some solution for Corwin, some way in which the planet could be defended against the Klodni. But he had said nothing about it in his note.
Some experience he had had, perhaps, while traveling back in time; something that had happened to him in those two extra days he had lived, that might have given him a clue to the resolution of the dilemma—
Ewing felt a tempting thought: perhaps I should make the trip back in time yet again, rescue the Ewing I find there, dictate the note to him once again, and add to it whatever information was missing—
No. He squelched the idea firmly and totally. Another trip through time was out of the question. He had a chance to end the cycle now, and cut himself loose from Earth. It was the sensible thing to do. Return to Corwin, prepare for the attack, defend his home and country when the time came to do so—that was the only intelligent thing to do now. It was futile to continue to search Earth for a nonexistent super-weapon.
The conversation straggled to a dull stop. He and the Earthers had little left to say to each other.
Myreck said, “Let us change the subject, shall we? This talk of fleeing and destruction depresses me.”
“I agree,” Ewing said.
The music-disk ended. Myreck rose, removed it from the player, and popped it back into the file. He said, “We have a fine collection of other Earth ancients. Mozart, Bach, Vurris—”
Myreck played Bach—a piece called the Goldberg Variations, for a twangy, not unpleasant-sounding instrument called the harpsichord.
Several of the Scholars were particularly interested in music old and new, and insisted on expounding their special theories. Ewing, at another time, might have been an eager participant in the discussion; now, he listened out of politeness only, paying little attention to what was said. He was trying to recall the text of the note he had read and destroyed earlier in the day. They would show him their time machine. He was to refuse the demonstration. That would cause the necessary alterations in time past, to fit the design intended by Ewing-sub-one.
Whatever that had been, Ewing thought.
The afternoon slipped by. At length Myreck said, “We also have done much work in temporal theory, you know. Our machines are in the lower levels of the building. If you are interested—”
“No!” Ewing said, so suddenly and so harshly it was almost a shout. In a more modulated tone he went on, “I mean—no, thanks. I’ll have to beg off on that. It’s getting quite late, and I’m sure I’d find the time machines so fascinating I’d overstay my visit.”
“But we are anxious to have you spend as much time with us as you can,” Myreck protested. “If you want to see the machines—”
“No,” Ewing reiterated forcefully. “I’m afraid I must leave.”
“In that case, we will drive you to your hotel.”
This must be the point of divergence, Ewing thought, as the Earthers showed him to the door and performed the operations that made it possible to pass back into phase with the world of Fournight the Thirteenth outside. My predecessor never got back out of this building. He doubled into Twonight instead. The cycle is broken.
He entered the car, and it pulled away from the street. He looked back, at the empty lot that was not empty.
“Some day you must examine our machines,” Myreck said.
“Yes—yes, of course,” Ewing replied vaguely.
But tomorrow I’ll be on my way back to Corwin, he thought. I guess I’ll never see your machines.
He realized that by his actions this afternoon he had brought a new chain of events into existence; he had reached back into Twoday and, by not rescuing Firnik’s prisoner, had created a Ewing-sub-three who had been mind-picked by the Sirian and who presumably had died two days before. Thus Firnik believed Ewing was dead, no doubt. He would be surprised tomorrow when a ghost requisitioned the ship in storage at Valloin Spaceport and blasted off for Corwin.
Ewing frowned, trying to work out the intricacies of the problem. Well, it didn’t matter, he thought. The step had been taken.
For better or for worse, the time-track had been altered.
CHAPTER XIII
EWING checked out of the Grand Valloin Hotel the next afternoon. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that the management had awarded him that week’s free rent; otherwise, thanks to the kidnapping, he would never have been able to settle up. He had only ten credits, and those were gifts from his phantom rescuer, now dead. The bill came to more than a hundred.
He strolled through the sumptuous lobby, past the light-fountain, past the relaxing-chairs, past the somewhat battered area of the energitron booth, where robots were busily replastering and repainting the damage. It was nearly as good as new. By the end of the day, there would scarcely be an indication that a man had died violently there only three days before.
He passed several Sirians on his way through the lobby to the front street, but he felt oddly calm all the same. So far as Rollun Firnik and the others were concerned, the Corwinite Baird Ewing had died under torture last Twoday. Anyone resembling him did so strictly by coincidence. He walked boldly through the cluster of Sirians and out onto the street level.
Ewing boarded the limousine that the hotel used for transporting its patrons to and from the nearby spaceport, and looked around for his final glance at the Grand Valloin Hotel. He felt tired and a little sad at leaving Earth; there were so many reminders of past glories here, so many signs of present decay.
He pondered the timetravel question for a moment. Obviously the Earther machine—among all its other paradoxical qualities—was able to create matter where none had existed before. It had drawn from somewhere the various Ewing bodies, of which at least two and possibly more had existed simultaneously. And it seemed that once a new body was drawn from the fabric of time, it remained in existence, coterminous with its fellows. Otherwise, Ewing thought, my refusal to go back and carry out the rescue would have snuffed me out. It didn’t. It merely ended the life of that “Ewing” in the torturechamber on Twoday.
