Norton gave it. She zeroed in. "Got it. There's the severed thread. He—great Heaven!"
"What's the matter?"
"That's Thanatos!"
"Yes, he would have collected the soul."
"Not that. This life—it's the mortal man who assumed the current office of Thanatos, just as you assumed the office of Chronos. He didn't suicide; he killed the prior officeholder. That's how that office changes hands."
"They murder their predecessors?" Norton asked with horror.
"Thanatos deals in death," she said grimly. "Nevertheless, the current Thanatos is a good one—perhaps one of the best. He cares for his clients in a way that others of his office did not; and he did balk Satan in a critical situation, thereby preserving the scheme of the world as we know it. It would be disastrous to allow Satan to eliminate him!"
"I thought Satan couldn't harm other Incarnations!"
She collapsed her network of threads and put one withered hand on his. "Dear boy," Atropos said. "Satan never allows himself to be bound by any law he can circumvent, and he is the ultimate master of circumvention. There are ways and ways."
"But how—?"
"If you take his minion to that nexus and the minion persuades the man named Zane to buy the Lovestone and win the lovely young woman—" Her old eyes seemed to sparkle. "You young men do like lovely young women, don't you! I can't imagine what for." When he did not respond, she resumed making her point. "Then he will indeed be happy. He will have an excellent life. But he will, by the same token, not assume the office of Thanatos. Then Thanatos will not save the Magician's daughter Luna from Satan's mischief, and she will not be on hand to balk him in that most critical political nexus not far hence."
"I don't remember any—"
"It is, I believe, beyond your assumption of the office. Satan thought to use your ignorance to facilitate his ploy. Since you also have not met Thanatos—"
"I met him—before I become Chronos. But his face was a skull; I wouldn't know him in mundane life."
Atropos pondered momentarily. "I think you must meet him formally now—and Luna, too, so that Satan can not again deceive you about them."
Norton's head was spinning. What a disaster he had almost precipitated! The elimination of the Thanatos he had encountered, who had so kindly explained to him about the baby. Thanatos had cared about him; it would have been the crudest irony to remove him from his office in return!
Atropos spun threads in her hands and manipulated them. "This way," she said. "Adjust your time; we'll be entering the normal world."
Norton brought out the Hourglass to turn the sand green. He was surprised to discover that it was already green. That didn't make any difference here in his mansion, but he didn't remember putting the Glass on that setting. "It is ready."
Suddenly they were sliding along cables strung through chaos. Norton's eyes could not follow any one of them to its end; all seemed to extend to infinity. They filled the universe in a multidimensional splay of colored lines. He felt somewhat as a tiny bug might, caught in an endless array of tumbled pickup sticks.
Then the universe firmed again. They were at the entrance to a wealthy estate. "He's visiting her now," Atropos explained. "I dislike interrupting their tryst, but this is important." She knocked on one of the bars of the gate with a wrinkled knuckle.
Immediately two griffins charged to the gate from the other side. They had muscular lions' bodies and fierce eagles' heads and wings. But their savagery abated as they spied Atropos; evidently they had encountered her before. "This is a friend," she told them, much as Excelsia had told the Alicorn. "Show us in."
They turned their beaks toward Norton. Nervously he held up the shining Hourglass. Immediately they relaxed; this, too, they had seen before.
Now Atropos opened the gate, and Norton followed her in. The two griffins paced them, forming an escort. "Actually, neither of us is in any danger; it is to protect the griffins that I introduced you."
"To protect them!"
"Your cloak, as an extension of the Hourglass, will instantly age-to-oblivion anything that attacks you. Only your good will deactivates it." She smiled toothily. "Fortunately for those who might happen to touch you."
Such as Clotho, who had touched him most intimately. He had not realized his misty cloak had such power; it would have been terrible if he had inadvertently aged Clotho to Atropos during their liaison!
They approached the door to the house. It opened. Thanatos stood there, with a comely woman of perhaps forty beside him. "Welcome, Incarnations!" Thanatos said.
"Perhaps you did not realize," Atropos told him, "that there has been a change. This is the new Chronos."
Thanatos looked at Norton. "You jest, Thread-Cutter! This is the Master of Time I have known twenty years, since he helped me understand my own office."
"Uh—whom you will know," Norton said. "That is—"
Thanatos laughed and took his hand. "Of course, friend! You live backward. So this is when you meet me! Twenty years after I met you."
"Yes," Norton agreed. "But we also met when I was, uh, mortal. You came to collect a baby—"
Thanatos peered at him more closely. "Oh, yes! I remember now! The demon ring! I did not make the connection; you appear different in your robe of office."
"Not more so than you do," Norton said.
They all laughed. "I am hoist in my own petard, as Mars would say." Thanatos drew back his dark hood, and now the features of the customer at the Mess o' Pottage shop emerged. "Well, welcome to the office, old friend!"
Atropos took Norton's arm and drew him toward the other occupant of the house. "And this is Luna Kaftan."
The woman smiled. "I, too, am glad to have you meet me at last, Chronos, though we have been friends all this time. You saved my life, long ago."
"Uh—I'm really not clear what—"
"Of course you don't remember! I had been slain by a dragon, and you turned time back to unslay me."
As he had done for Excelsia. "Uh, good," he said inadequately.
"Come in, friend," Luna said, taking his arm and drawing him to the center of the room. "We realize we owe you explanations. We have grown accustomed to your knowledge, forgetting it needs an origin. You have been an excellent friend to all of us, and it is time for us to clarify things for you."
And clarify they did. Luna, born the daughter of a powerful Magician who had foreseen the first of Satan's current series of efforts to subvert the system, was now a Senator, influential in Congress; it was understood that she would in the near future be instrumental in balking Satan's plan to take over the government and influence the nation and the world enough to swing the total balance toward evil and make him the final victor over God. No one knew exactly what Satan planned to do, but all knew that Luna was the key to stopping it. She had to be protected. There had already been horrendous episodes. But Chronos' role was to be critical, for he alone could literally change history. Everything else that had happened could become invalid, and all their memories and experiences could change—if Chronos did not hold firm against the wiles and guiles of Satan. What Chronos had done—would do—to balk Satan was not clear to any of them; evidently much of it had been erased by changes in reality already. But if he won, they would remain as they were now, ready to defeat Satan.
"But I must have won," he said. "Since you are here!"
Luna shook her head. "No. We are at the moment only a theoretical present; our reality is subject to your action. We sincerely hope you will prevail, but we are largely helpless to assist you in that effort."
Atropos told Thanatos and Luna of Satan's latest trick—trying to get Thanatos vacated before he even assumed the office. "Because Chronos didn't know—at his beginning," she concluded. "Satan was striking at the outset—and he almost bypassed us all."
"The last shall be first," Luna agreed. "We have been napping in that respect, but it seems that ploy was foiled because Chronos did not take the minion there, and now knows bett
er. Yet my stones indicate that Satan is not through with him, and the issue remains in serious doubt."
How blithely she talked of her own potential defeat or nonexistence! "What can Satan do, now that I am alert?" Norton asked.
"I'm not sure," Luna said. "But there is something."
"It is impossible for any of us to be sure," Atropos said, "when our own history is being changed."
"But I haven't changed any!" Norton protested. "I won't—"
Atropos shook her head. "There is something," she said, repeating Luna's words. She brought forth her threads. "That strange crossing—and now I think it's not coincidental." She concentrated, peering closely at her network. "Can't seem to spot it specifically."
"Satan couldn't have done anything in any past time without Chronos' cooperation," Luna said. "And Chronos has not cooperated—and as he progresses into our past, he'll be increasingly careful, so Satan will have no opportunity to fool him. If Satan hasn't managed anything yet, he'll never have the chance—as well he knows."
Now Thanatos turned his hollow-skull gaze on Norton. Even though Norton knew this was merely the effect of the hood, which the man had drawn close again, it remained disconcerting. "Are you certain Satan's minion did not accompany you to the past?"
"No demon went with me," Norton said. "Unless you mean Sning?" He held up his hand, showing the snake ring.
"He is not of Satan," Thanatos said. "I meant something Satan might have given you, that you accepted. You have to accept it; that is the nature of this. Evil can never touch the person who refuses to accept it. But evil can be subtle. Satan might have concealed the minion's nature and purpose."
"All Satan gave me was a scroll with the address, which I didn't keep—I memorized it—and an amulet to—" Norton stiffened. "Oh, no!"
"The demon!" Luna agreed. "Satan knew you would want to investigate, and once you carried his minion there—"
"How could I have been such a fool!" Norton cried in an agony of conscience. "Sning tried to warn me, but I didn't understand. Satan said it was just a little horn—"
Thanatos nodded. "The horn of a demon." he said. "Do not blame yourself unduly, Chronos; all of us have been deceived by the guiles of the Father of Lies. All of us have learned the hard way. Once he almost convinced me my magic was gone."
"But your life is not changed, Thanatos," Atropos said. "I checked that first; the snarl is not there."
The Deathhead grinned. "Obviously."
"No, I didn't take the horn there," Norton said. His knees felt weak. "I could have eliminated you, Thanatos, without ever realizing! You who were so kind to me when you took the baby! When you took the time to explain. I feel terrible! It was just blind luck that I didn't—"
"You two met before?" Luna asked. "Perhaps, then, it wasn't luck. Paradox may have been brought into play."
"I thought I was immune," Norton said.
"You are. But there are special cases. When did you meet Thanatos—in our time?"
"About a year and a half ago, maybe less. Before I became Chronos. It was partly because of Thanatos that I took the office. I knew, because of him, that it was possible for a good person to function as an Incarnation."
"He is a good person, isn't he?" Luna said, bestowing on Thanatos a momentary gaze of such love and respect that her beauty was intensified. Then she turned back to Norton. "Had you had no connection with Thanatos, you could have eliminated him without consequence to yourself. But you met him and were influenced by him; thus your elimination of him would have constituted a variety of paradox, even though the result occurred later in your own life. He had to be there to talk with you in your normal life—and I know from my own experience why he did it and that a different man in that office would not have done it." She smiled at the Death-figure.
"Well, he noticed my ring—"
"I have a houseful of similar enchantments." She turned and reached to a shelf, picking up a tiny elephant formed from a single blue topaz stone. In her hand the elephant came to life and trumpeted faintly. "He would not have found your ring remarkable."
Norton looked at Thanatos, who did not react. "Then why—?"
Luna took Thanatos' bone-arm, showing no aversion to its form. "Because he saw that you were suffering, and he had compassion. Few in his office have had that quality, and of course Satan doesn't comprehend it." She turned again to Thanatos. "I went with him first because I was required to, but when I grasped his inner nature I loved him. He saved my life—as all the Incarnations have—but I would have loved him anyway."
"That other woman," Norton said. "The one he would have married, had he not become Thanatos instead—she was beautiful and wealthy and good—but so are you! He lost nothing!"
"Nothing!" Thanatos agreed.
"So you could not readily eliminate Thanatos," Luna concluded. "Paradox did help there."
"Not—readily?"
"It is possible," she explained. "Paradox is not absolute for you. You will tend to avoid it, rather than confront it head-on, even when only mortals are involved. Incarnations are much more difficult to change, so paradox is stronger with them. But if you do meet it directly, it can not stop you. So you could have eliminated Thanatos without consequence to yourself, but it would have required a more specific effort."
"I made no effort!" Norton said.
"Yes. So you avoided eliminating him, for a reason Satan was not equipped to understand. Satan's ruse malfunctioned by seeming coincidence. That is the way such things operate; without your will, paradox will not be abused, even when only normal people are involved. What happened to Satan's horn?"
"I visited—the woman I loved," Norton said, abruptly aware that Atropos was merely another form of Clotho, with whom he had so recently made love. "She made me destroy the thing."
"There is the seeming coincidence," Luna said.
Atropos shook her head. "Still, there is something. Did you go anywhere before then?"
"Yes. I visited her when she was a child. And, you know, somewhere along the way part of the horn was lost—"
"Not lost," Luna said. "Departed. The part that was the messenger-demon took off to do its mischief."
"When?" Atropos demanded of Norton.
"When Orlene was ten years old—or maybe seven—that's the first stop I made—call it about fifteen years ago, your time. No, more like seventeen. I entered normal time to chat with her in a park. That could be where it left."
Atropos explored her threads. "Nothing in that period."
"Actually, I paused at a number of places in her life. But I didn't phase in to normal time—"
"Probably that wasn't necessary. The demon could have dropped off while you were traveling." She continued to check. "There does seem to be something eight or nine years ago." She put her old eye close. "Yes, threads I never crossed, in that general range."
"The minion, for sure," Luna said. "It made a change. It couldn't get to the primary target, so took a secondary one. Now we must discover what that is."
"A change in the past, to get rid of you—without touching Thanatos?" Norton asked.
"Or to nullify me," Luna said. "I am the real target, not Thanatos—and in this case I am easier to get at, since I am mortal and you never before interacted with me. In any event, Satan does not care how he gets his way—as long as he does."
"But you are the same—I mean, you haven't changed, have you? Or would you know if you had changed?"
Luna smiled. "I understand your concern, Chronos. But no, I don't believe I have changed—yet. My stones indicate that Good retains the advantage over Evil, and that would not be the case if Satan had his way. Still, mischief is in the making. We should be able to undo it if we act correctly and promptly."
"First we must discover what the damage is," Thanatos said. "Perhaps this is merely a diversion."
"It's oddly minor," Atropos said, still peering in perplexity at her threads. "Nothing significant, really. No one was killed, harmed, or even frightened."
> "Keep looking," Luna said. "Satan is devious, but we can be sure he knows how to score."
"I'm afraid I still don't understand," Norton said. "If the demon did something to change the future—our present—why isn't it finished now? And if it isn't, why can't I simply go back to fix it? If Atropos can just pinpoint the moment—"
"It's the three-person limit," Atropos said, still tracing her threads. "An aspect of the paradox resistance." She glanced up to spy Norton's look of bafflement. "Thanatos, you understand it, don't you? Explain it to him, for Chronos certainly has the need to know."
Both Thanatos and Luna chuckled. "Indeed, he explained it to me many years ago, when I was new in office," Thanatos said. He opened his cloak and removed it; with that action, he became a completely ordinary young man, the one called Zane. Twenty years had not aged him at all; evidently Incarnations did not age the way normal people did. That aligned with Norton's observation of the prior Chronos: it had been an adult man, not a newborn baby, who brought the Hourglass. So he himself would probably remain his present physiological age until his term expired. "Chronos was kind to me," Zane continued. "Now I shall be kind to him at his commencement." And he settled down and explained it so that Norton could understand.
The reason no change had occurred in the present was that it had not yet occurred in the past. Whatever the demon of Satan had done was quiescent, evoking no change in the life of any human being. But that was merely a delayed implementation, a literal time bomb that would in due course have its effect on human events. The moment it did, the future from that point on would change, in whatever manner the initial alteration determined. That would surely include Luna; if she were not eliminated as a person, she would certainly be nullified as a force to balk Satan. So they had to locate and nullify that change before it touched the human fabric; only in that manner could they be assured of success.
"But how long—?" Norton asked.
"Atropos is trying to determine that," Thanatos said. "She can trace living threads readily, but inanimate threads are more devious. It could be five more minutes—or five more years."