“Is it that easy?”
“With the installed equipment the Mesozoic is no farther away than is THQ or Boondock. Time and space are illusions; the Burroughs irrelevancy gear will plunk you down in the middle of a herd of feeding and fornicating flapdoodles before you can say sixty-five million years.”
“The way you phrased that invitation seemed to imply that you assume that I have closed on Task Adam Selene.”
“Dickie, the equipment does indeed belong to the Time Corps…and it is expensive, how expensive we don’t discuss. It was built to support Plan Long View; its recreational use is incidental. Yes, I implied that. Aren’t you going to do it?”
Mannie Davis looked at me, with no expression. Rufo stood up, said loudly, “I’ve got to mosey along; Star has a chore for me. Thanks and thanks for the last time. Jock. Nice meeting you. Colonel.” He left quickly. Harshaw said nothing.
I let out a deep breath. “Uncle, I might do it if Hazel insists. But I’m going to try to talk her out of it. Nothing has been offered me that convinces me that I am wrong about the two options I offered. Either of them is a more sensible approach to recovering the programs and memories that embody Holmes IV or Mike…and I am glad to stipulate that they should be recovered. But my methods are more logical.”
Harshaw said, “It is not a matter of logic. Colonel.”
“It’s my neck. Doctor. But in the long run I’ll do what Hazel wishes… I think. It’s just—”
“Just what, Dickie?”
“I hate to go into action with inadequate intelligence! Always have. Uncle, for the past week or ten days—hard to figure it, the way I’ve bounced around—I’ve been haunted by unexplained and, well, murderous nonsense. Is the Overlord you talk about after me? Does the fact that I’m mixed up in this account for the endless near misses? Or am I getting paranoid?”
“I don’t know. Tell me about them.”
I started to do so. Shortly Harshaw took out a pocket notebook, started taking notes. I tried to remember all of it: Enrico Schultz and his weird remark about Tolliver and his mention of Walker Evans. His death. If it was his death. Bill. The curious behavior of the management of Golden Rule. Those rolligons and the killers in each. Jefferson Mao. The muggers at the Raffles—
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough? No, not quite. What cargo was Auntie carrying? How did we get chivvied into flying a heap that durn near killed us? What were Lady Diana and her fat-headed husbands doing away out there in the wilds? If I could afford it I would spend endless money on sherlocks to dig out what was going on, what was truly aimed at me, what was just my nerves, what was simply coincidence.”
Harshaw said, “There are no coincidences. One respect in which World as Myth is far simpler than earlier teleology is the simple fact that there are no accidents, no coincidences.”
Uncle Jock said, “Jubal? I don’t have the authority.”
“And I do. Yes.” He stood up. “Both of us, I think.”
My uncle stood up, too. “Dickie boy, you wait right here; we’ll be gone five minutes or so. Errand to do.”
As they left, Davis stood up, “Excuse, please? Need change arm.”
“Sure, Papa Mannie. No, no. Pixel! Beer is not for baby cats.”
They were gone seven minutes by my Sonychron. But not, quite apparently, by their time. Uncle had grown a full beard. Harshaw had a new, pink knife scar across his left cheek. I looked at them. “Ghosts of Christmas past! What happened?”
“Everything. Is there any beer left there? Cissy,” he said, not raising his voice, “could we have some beer? And Jubal and I have not eaten in some time. Hours. Days, maybe.”
“Right away,” Aunt Cissy’s disembodied voice answered. “Dear? I think you ought to take a nap.”
“Later.”
“Just as soon as you have eaten. Forty minutes.”
“Quit nagging me. Could I have tomato soup? For Jubal, too.”
“I’ll fetch soup and more of your picnic. Forty-five minutes until your nap; that’s official. Til says so.”
“Remind me to beat you.”
“Yes, dear. But not today; you’re exhausted.”
“Very well.” Uncle Jock turned to me. “Let’s see, what’ll you have first? Those rolligons? Your friend Hendrik Schultz handled that one; you can be sure it’s thorough. He has turned out to be an ichiban field investigator. You can forget paranoia on that one, Dickie—two opponents, the Time Lords and the Scene Changers…and both of them after you as well as each other. You have a charmed life, son—born to be hanged.”
“What do you mean?—Time Lords and Scene Changers? And why me?”
“May not be their own names for themselves. The Lords and the Changers are groups doing the sort of thing the Circle does…but we don’t see eye to eye with them. Dickie, you don’t think that in all the universes to the Number of the Beast or more, we of the Circle would be the only ones to catch on to the truth and attempt to do something about it, do you?”
“I don’t know anything about it, one way or another.”
“Colonel,” put in Dr. Harshaw, “a major shortcoming of World as Myth lies in the fact that we contend with…and often lose to…three sorts of antagonists: villains by design such as the Galactic Overlord, and groups like us but with different intentions—bad in our opinion, perhaps good in theirs—and the third and most powerful, the myth makers themselves—such as Homer and Twain and Shakespeare and Baum and Swift and their colleagues in the pantheon. But not those I have named. Their bodies have died; they live on by the immortal corpus of myth each has created…which does not change and therefore does not imperil us.
“But there are living myth makers, every one of them dangerous, every one of them casually uncaring as he revises a myth and erases a character.” Harshaw smiled grimly. “The only way one can live with the knowledge is to realize first that it is the only game in town and second that it does not hurt. Erasure. Being X’d out of the story.”
“How do you know that it doesn’t hurt?”
“Because I refuse to entertain any other theory! Shall we get on with our report?”
“Dickie boy, you asked, ‘Why me?’ For the same reason Jubal and I left a pleasant lunch to work our tails off and to set many others to arduous and dangerous investigation in several time lines. Because of Task Adam Selene and your key part in it. Near as we can tell, the Time Lords want to kidnap Mike while the Scene Changers want to destroy him. But both groups want you dead; you’re a menace to their plans.”
“But at that time I had not even heard of Mike the Computer.”
“Best time to kill you, wouldn’t you say? Cissy, you are not only beautiful, you are pleasant to have around. Besides your hidden talents. Just put it down; we’ll serve ourselves.”
“Blagueur et gros menteur. You still must nap. Message from Til. You are not to come to the dinner table until you shave off that beard.”
“Tell that baggage that I will starve before I will be henpecked.”
“Yes, sir. And I feel the same way she does about it.”
“Peace, woman.”
“So I volunteer to shave you. And to cut your hair.”
“I accept.”
“Right after your nap.”
“Begone. Jubal, did you have any of this jellied salad? It is something Til does exceptionally well…although all three of my owners are fine cooks.”
“Will you put that in writing?”
“I told you to disappear. Jubal, living with three women takes fortitude.”
“I know. I did so, for many years. Fortitude plus angelic disposition. And a taste for lazy living. But a group marriage, such as our Long Family, combines the advantages of bachelorhood, monogamy, and polygamy, with the drawbacks of none.”
“I won’t argue it but I’ll stick with my three Graces as long as they’ll let me hang around. Now let’s see—Enrico Schultz. No such character.”
“So?” I answered. “He made some horrid
stains on my tablecloth.”
“So he had another name. But you knew that. Best hypothesis makes him a member of the same gang as your friend Bill…who was a smiling villain if one ever smiled, as well as a consummate actor. We call them The Revisionists. Motivation had to be Adam Selene. Not Walker Evans.”
“Why did he mention Walker Evans?”
“To shake you up, maybe. Dickie, I didn’t know about General Evans until you brought the matter up, since that debacle is still in my future. My normal future. I can see how it weighs on your mind. Will weigh on your mind. Remember, I didn’t know that you had been invalided out of the Andorran Contract Crusaders until you told me.
“Anyhow—All of the ‘Friends of Walker Evans’ are dead except you and one who went to the Asteroids and can’t be found. This is as of July tenth, 2188, eleven years forward. Unless you want to talk to any alive on some date not quite so forward.”
“Can’t see any reason to.”
“So it seemed to us. Now Walker Evans himself. Lazarus handled this…and a spot of world-changing, partly to show you what can be done. No attempt was made to revise the battle. It would be difficult, in 2177, to revise a battle in 2178 without utterly changing your life. Either kill you that year, or not lose your leg and you stay in the service—yes, I now know about your leg although it’s forward from here. Either way, you don’t go to Golden Rule, you don’t marry Hazel…and we aren’t sitting here, talking about it. World-changing is touchy, Dickie—best done in homeopathic doses.
“Lazarus has two messages for you. He says that you should feel no personal guilt over that debacle. To do so would be as silly as a subordinate of Custer feeling guilty over Little Big Horn…to which he adds that Custer was a far more brilliant general than Evans ever was. Lazarus speaks as one who has held every rank from private to commander in chief, in experience spread over many centuries and seventeen wars.
“That’s the first message. The second is this: Tell your nephew that, yes, it horrifies nice people. But it happens. Only those who go out beyond the end of street lights and of pavements know how such things can happen. He says that he is certain that Walker Evans would not hold it against you. Dickie, what’s he talking about?”
“Had he wanted you to know, he would have told you.”
“Reasonable. Was General Evans a man of good taste?”
“What?” I stared at my uncle—then answered reluctantly: “Well, no, I would not say so. I found him tough and a bit stringy.”
“Now we have it out in the open—”
“Yes, damn you!”
“—and I can tell you the rest, the world-changing. A field operative hid a couple of ration packs under the General’s body. When you moved the body, you found them…and it was just enough that none of the Friends of Walker Evans ever reached that degree of hunger necessary to overcome the taboo. So it never happened.”
“Then why do I remember it?”
“Do you?”
“Why—”
“You remember finding jettisoned field rations under the body. And how good you felt!”
“Uncle, this is crazy.”
“That’s world-changing. For a time, you have a memory. Then a faded memory of a memory. Then nothing. It never happened, Dickie. You went through one hell of an ordeal and lost a leg. But you did not eat your commanding officer.”
Uncle went on, “Jubal, what do we have left that’s important? Dickie, you can’t expect to have all your questions answered; no man can expect that. Mmm, oh, yes, those diseases—You had two of them; the rest was hype. You were cured in about three days; then they kept you in a controlled-memory field and put a new leg on you…and did something else. Haven’t you felt better lately? Brisk? More energetic?”
“Well…yes. But it dates from the day I married Hazel, not from Boondock.”
“Both, probably. During the month they had you available Dr. Ishtar gave you a booster. I learned that they shifted you from the rejuvenation clinic to the hospital just the day before they let you wake up. Oh, they really swindled you, boy; they gave you a new leg and made you thirty years younger. I think you ought to sue them.”
“Oh, knock it off. How about that heat bomb? More hype?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Not decided, just the time tick spiked. The thing is—”
Harshaw intervened. “Richard, we think now that we may be able to finish Task Adam Selene before a heat bomb would be necessary. There are some plans. So the heat bombing right now is in the status of Schrödinger’s Cat. The outcome depends on Task Adam Selene. And vice versa. We’ll see.”
“These plans—You’re assuming that I’ll come around.”
“No. We’re assuming that you won’t.”
“Humm… If you are assuming that I won’t, why are you two bothering to tell me all this?”
Uncle said in a tired voice, “Dickie boy, thousands and thousands of man-hours have gone into satisfying your childish demand to have the veil lifted from the unknown. You think we are simply going to burn the results? Sit back down and pay attention. Mmm, stay out of Luna City and Golden Rule after June of 2188; there are warrants out for you for eight murders.”
“Eight! Who?”
“Mmm, Tolliver, Enrico Schultz, Johnson, Oswald Progant, Rasmussen—”
“Rasmussen!”
“Do you know him?”
“I wore his fez for ten minutes; I never laid eyes on him.”
“Let’s not waste time on these murder charges. All they mean is that someone is out to get you, both in L-City and in Golden Rule. With three timejumping groups after you, that’s not surprising. You want them cleared up; they can be cleared up later. If needed. If you don’t just go to Tertius and forget it. Oh, yes—those code groups. Not a message, just a prop to get you to open that door. But you didn’t let yourself be killed quietly the way you were supposed to. Dickie, you’re a troublemaker.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry.”
“Any more questions?”
“Go take your nap.”
“Not yet. Jubal. Now?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Harshaw got up and left.
“Dickie.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“She loves you, boy; she really does. God knows why. But that does not mean that she will tell you the truth or always act in your interest. Be warned.”
“Uncle Jock, it never does any good to warn a man about his wife. Would you accept any advice from me about Cissy?”
“Of course not. But I’m older than you are and much more experienced.”
“Answer me.”
“Let’s change the subject instead. You don’t like Lazarus Long.”
I grinned at him. “Uncle, the only thing that persuades me that he might be as old as he is reputed to be is that it would take more than one ordinary lifetime to grow as cantankerous and generally difficult as he is. He rubs me the wrong way every time. And the bastard makes it worse by putting me under obligations to him. This foot—From a clone of his—did you know that? And that dustup you heard about this morning. Lazarus shot that bloke what’s-his-name who tried to kill me. But Captain Sterling and Commander Smith did, too, and probably quicker. Or maybe not. Either way I had to thank all three of them. Damn it, I’d like to save his life just once to balance the books. The bastard.”
“No way to talk, Dickie. Abby would have trounced you.”
“So she would have. I take it back.”
“Besides—Your own parents never were married.”
“So I’ve often been told. Colorfully.”
“I mean it literally. Your mother was my favorite sister. Much younger than I. Pretty child. I taught her to walk. Played with her when she was growing up, spoiled her every way I could. So, naturally, when she was in what used to be called ‘trouble’ she came to her big brother. And to your Aunt Abby. Dickie, it was not that your father wasn’t around; it was that your grandfather disliked him, disliked him as intensely as—well, as you dislike Lazarus Long.
/> “I don’t mean Mr. Ames. You got his name but he met and married Wendy after you were born. And we took you and raised you. Your mother was going to come for you, after a year—she said Ames deserved that much—but she didn’t live that long. So Abby was your mother in every way but biology.”
“Uncle, Aunt Abby was the best mother a boy could want. Look, those peach switchings were good for me. I know it.”
“I’m pleased to hear you say so. Dickie, I love all your aunts…but there will never be another Abby. Hazel reminds me of her. Dickie, have you made up your mind?”
“Uncle, I’ll fight it all the way. How can I okay letting my bride risk a caper that she stands only a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of alive? Especially when nobody has even tried to show me why my ways aren’t better?”
“Just asking. The mathematicians are testing another team—since you’re unwilling. We’ll see. Your father was stubborn and your grandfather was stubborn; it’s no surprise that you are stubborn. Your grandfather—my father—said flatly that he would rather have a bastard in the family than Lazarus Long. So he had one. You. And Lazarus went away and never knew about you.
“Not surprising that you and your father don’t get along; you’re too much alike. And now he’s going to take your place, on the team for Task Adam Selene.”
XXX
“Our revels now are ended.”
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 1564-1616
Dying isn’t difficult. Even a baby kitten can do it.
I’m sitting with my back to the wall in the old computer room of the Warden’s Complex in Luna. Pixel is cradled in my left arm. Hazel is on the floor, by us. I’m not sure Pixel is dead. He may be asleep. But I am not going to disturb him to find out; he’s a badly hurt baby at best.