The bass voice said: “Our research indicates that there is one core timeline, the line where time travel was never invented. The whole unwieldy structure of multiple branching time lines and time loops manipulated by the lords of Metachronopolis is a temporary shadow or reflection of that core line into the surrounding chronic ylem. Our chronocosm is temporary and unstable, like the creation of certain virtual particle pairs in base vacuum, which exist for a brief time before they eliminate themselves. But some of us remember the core line. Surely you recall what your life was like before you meddled with time travel.”
I shrugged. “My life wasn't so great.”
“But better than this.”
I shook my head. “I don't need to listen to any more of this. Look, your whole argument is based on the idea that Time Wardens are all some sort of criminals or infantile maniacs. You're basically saying that they will keep meddling and monkeying with the past until they eliminate themselves. I don't buy it. Aren't some of them reasonable? Don't some of them listen to reason?”
“That is always our hope, Mr. Frontino. We would not bother talking to you if we did not have that hope. Here.”
There was a mirrored glitter as he took a card from his robe. Then, with a flick of his gloved fingers, he slid it across the table toward me.
I did not reach for it. “What is this supposed to be?”
“Think of it as the Final Destiny crystal. It is a destiny card attached to the core line. Naturally, you can only use it once. Once you are in the core line, time travel is impossible, and you cannot come out.”
I looked down.
The surface of the card was completely black, with no image at all inside of it.
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt a sensation of immense cold radiating from the dead-black surface.
“No thanks,” I said, leaning slightly backward from the absolutely featureless, dark card. “Go back to being a flatliner with a blind future and irrevocable past? Sorry. Let me out of here. Unless you got something more for me to hear?”
They didn't.
One of them—I think it was a woman—got up and held a candle near a mirrored frame on the far wall. Except it wasn't a mirror; inside the depth, I saw a picture of one of the bridge-top wintergardens near the Museum of Man, high up near the center of the city, shining with golden towers. The picture surged into my imagination…
Another question occurred to me, and so I turned around, but there was only a golden bridge-way behind me. The Anachronists were gone.
28.
“Where are the other Time Wardens?” I asked the mirrored figure on the throne. “Or is elevating me to Wardenship just something you decided all on your lonesome?”
An eerie, bubbling noise like many disjointed voices laughing came from the mirrored mask. “Other Time Wardens? Why should there be other Time Wardens? How would you expect us to govern ourselves?”
That one stumped me. I squinted. “Don't know. I always thought you guys had a leader, or you took a vote or something…”
Again, I heard the weird blurred laughter. “Why should I tolerate to abide by the outcome of any vote, when I could play the scene again and again until the vote came out as I desired? How much less would I brook the commands of a leader! Why should I tolerate any difference of opinion of any kind whatsoever! If I know a man's birthdate, or his mother's, then he exists at my sufferance only for so long as it should please me!”
“Yeah, right. What are these other thrones for, then?”
“They are meant for the other versions of me!”
“Pretty empty now, aren't they?”
A terrible silence hung in the air.
I said slowly, “You're becoming more and more unlikely now, aren't you? There are fewer and fewer alternates because you've eliminated the other possibilities. You've mucked around in the past so much that you've edited yourself out of the cosmos, haven't you? And you couldn't stop meddling in history, even when you knew it was destroying you…”
“You will meddle when you become a Time Warden also. It is our nature. Pick up the cards, brother Time Warden. I command it.”
“And if I say no?”
His stood up, his cloak of mist writhing and billowing around his glinting mirrored armor as he stood. The voices from the mask were blurrier now, shouting: “Then you will die!”
I don't know who fired first, me or the cataphract. The Time Warden threw his mist-cloak up, so that my shots and lines of hissing energy went into the mist, became uncertain, and vanished before they even reached the Time Warden.
Without thinking, I switched to a special program, something small enough and fast enough—a few molecules wide, accelerated to light speed—to make it through the uncertainty mist of the cloak without being affected.
He must have known it was coming. The Time Warden shrugged his cloak open and spread his arms wide, trying to catch my bolt on his chest. He had been ready even before I shot, because he was right in the way, in the exact spot, even before I aimed.
Of course he was manipulating the chronostructure, playing probabilities and possibilities like a musical instrument.
It was not until after my shot was absorbed into the surface of his breastplate that I realized what a fool I had been. Time Warden armor was made of destiny crystal. He could focus it to open into whatever time-space he had energy to reach and redirect the projectile there.
And I knew exactly where and when that bolt would come back into normal space, and who it would shoot.
I had even jumped forward as I was firing, so that I was standing in the spot where, both later and earlier, I would find traces of the body.
Looking over my shoulder, I wondered why the cataphract's million-cycle energy bolts hadn't landed yet.
Of course. Ugly Boy was frozen. A hundred arms of flame and energy, bullets and bolts, were motionless, radiating from him toward me. He had made movement enough to startle my gun into firing, but now he was wrapped in the deep red Doppler-shift of a time stop.
He faded into darker reds and disappeared in a swirl of mist.
The Time Warden had only needed the cataphract to get me to fire, and, out of the whole arsenal of my smartgun, he had only needed that one special projectile—the one with my name on it. With the precision of a master surgeon, he had plucked that one super-bullet out of the hails and streams and storms of weapon-fire pouring out of my gun, and sent just that one merrily on its way to kill me. As predicted.
And this whole heavy-handed approach, breaking into my room at night, pushing me, getting me riled, was all just to make sure I was mad enough to have my smartgun drawn and set on reflex. Very neat. Very nice. And I was the goat for having walked into it with my eyes wide open.
The image of the corpse vanished with the cataphract. They were chessmen no longer needed, and swept off the board. But for some reason, the D'Artagnan body was still around. Perhaps it was remotely teleoperated from inside the Time Warden's armor?
I turned to the Time Warden. “Open your faceplate. You're me, aren't you? That's the way these damn time travel things always work out. I've been trying to think of what could make me change my mind—in the space of a few minutes—to make me want to join up with you and your rotten crew.
“And the only reason I could think of was that the choice was join up or die.
“If I stay flatline, I've just shot myself. The only way out is to create a paradox, change the past. The only people who can change the past are Time Wardens. So therefore the only way to save myself is to become a Time Warden. Q.E.D. So now you've forced my hand. My only question at that point was: why did you bother?
“Why go to such effort to create a Time Warden, a possible rival, a possible enemy? Answer: You had to. Not another Time Warden. The same Time Warden. You had to make me a Time Warden or else you would never come to exist. And, then, once I'm you, I'm stuck. I'll have to play the same crooked tricks on my younger self when it's my turn, or else I'll get edited
out of the time stream and dissolve into the mist myself. Everything is justified. Every step is rationalized away. Because whatever you have to do to survive is okay, isn't it? Necessity excuses everything, you think, right?
“Except…” I said slowly. “Except that it doesn't. The one piece of the machine you need to make all the rest of it work is my cooperation. You've got to assume that I'd do anything, no matter how rotten, just to stay alive; because you are nobody but the version of me who did just that.
“But what if I throw a monkey wrench into the whole works? What if I just stand here and take it? Maybe I deserve to die. I killed a lot of innocent people in my day. I'm sure it won't hurt me any more than it hurt them, and probably a damn sight less, judging from the size of the blast that does me in. Better than I deserve, maybe.
“And it will all be for the same reason, won't it? Killing someone before they commit the crime.
“But I'll die happier than those poor flatliners I killed for you. At least I'll know why I'm dying. And I'll know I'll be taking you to hell with me.”
And I just stood there, a pawn still one square short of the final row.
The blur of voices echoed from the Time Warden's helmet: “Nobly spoken! Nobly spoken but sadly mistaken! You are not so important as that. Not to me, nor, I think, to anyone. I am not you, I am not your son. You are nothing to me. But I! I am everything to you!”
“You're lying. Who are you? This is just a trick to get me to pick up those damn cards. Show me your face.”
He opened the faceplate with a slow gesture.
And there was nothing behind it. Nothing solid.
I saw a horrible blur of half-formed faces, multiple overlays of translucent features, crowned with a weightless, shifting mass of floating hair. The only thing clearly visible was the skull beneath, half-glimpsed through the misty vibrations of face crawling over it. Perhaps the skull-bones had a smaller range of motions, a less-uncertain future, than the rest.
I stepped half-backwards in disgust and shock. Something in the narrow angle of the jawline seemed almost familiar to me. “Iapetus?”
From the mist came many voices. I could see the muscles of the tongue and throat writhing snakelike through translucent layers of throat, the knobby ridges of the neck-vertebrae looking a black tree trunk behind. “So you call me. Fitting, is it not? Father of Epimetheus and Prometheus, past and future! A titan!”
“Who are you?”
“I am the Inventor. The Crystal-Smith. The man who synthesized the first destiny crystal out of the subatomic substance of folded time. The first time traveler. No matter whether you wish it or not, once you are a Time Warden, you must go back to sustain my existence, lest no Time Wardens at all ever will have had existed. I am the First. Upon me, all depends. Perhaps, yes, I created the universe. Certainly my probes into the ultimate dawn of time had sufficient energy to trigger the Big Bang. But you–you are one candidate of many. Many! Your death causes me inconvenience, nothing more. Does it seem so noble now, waiting passively and defiantly to die? No? Then pick up the cards! Pick up your destiny! Become a Time Warden! It must still be a possibility, or else you would not still see me!”
For some reason, at that point, I glanced over at D'Artagnan.
There he stood, still looking calm and amused and aloof, watching us with a remote disinterest, like a scientist observing an experiment in whose outcome he has no particular stake.
Why so calm? I thought this guy was the brain-slave of the Time Warden, or else another version of the Time Warden himself. An earlier version, I supposed, because, as blurred and as uncertain as the smoking skull in front of me was, there didn't seem to be any future versions forthcoming.
Was he looking at his own future dissolving? Or was he…
Or was he not related at all?
Seeing my eyes on him, he nodded politely, and opened his hand, the same hand which, earlier, I had seen blur in a timeshift.
He held up a destiny card in his fingers. It twinkled like black ice when he turned it over and over in his fingers, toying with it, making sure I saw it.
Then, with a smile, he tossed the card so it tinkled to the floor to one side of the pile the Time Warden had thrown.
It was entirely black with no images at all in its depths. There they lay. On the one hand was a pile of flashing white cards, glittering like diamonds, with all the kingdoms of all the ages shimmering in their frozen hearts. On the other hand lay a single blank black card.
I looked up at the Time Warden. There was nothing but a trickle of mist hovering in the blind sockets of his eyes. His hair was floating weightlessly. He was already caught up in the mist, already falling through the endless end, cut off from reality, more dead than a ghost.
His voices: “I do not hear a response!”
Many other candidates, huhn? I didn't see anyone else around but me. So I spoke up: “If I were a nice guy, I'd wish you to go to hell. That'd be warmer than where you're going.”
Even up to the last moment, he did not seem to recognize that what was happening to him was irrevocable. He kept shouting at me, and there were dozens of other voices shouting slightly different versions of the same sentences in a cacophany. "It matters not! I have always relied on the weakness of mankind to do my work for me! They will always want to elude the burden of reality! I promise them action without reaction, motion without consequences! Everything done can be undone again! And... as soon as I am whole again... I will go back... not recruit you... this time... different... Destroy you! ... I will never die... I can never die... Destroy you all! My power is endless... I...”
He went on like that for a moment, talking over himself, ranting about how great he was and stuff. And whatever his last words were supposed to be, they trailed off into a pathetic whisper of garbled noise as his lower jaw dissolved. Silence fell. His helmet was filled with only mists and shadows. Then, nothing.
Empty armor clattered to the floor, full of hollow noises and echoes.
While he had been ranting, I had stooped over and picked up the Final Destiny card. Maybe that was the turning point. Maybe once it was in my hand, the percentage chance that I would change my mind and become a Time Warden finally wound down to zero.
“He made me a Paradox Man," I said, straightening and turning. "Am I going to fade away too, now that he never did that?”
“No.” D'Artagnan answered me and smiled. “It's much more likely that you'll be shot. That bullet manifests itself soon, and you know your smartgun's shields can't deflect it. The bullet's hunter-seeker program will chase you however you try to dodge. Better use the black card.”
“You're one of the anti-Time Wardens?”
“Of course.” He reached up and pried the false skull-box off his neck. It was only the back half of a box, held against his neck with a traction field, or maybe just epoxy. When he tossed it aside it clattered on the floor, hollow, with a noise that sounded like cheap plastic.
“And him? He's not the real Inventor, is he?”
“There is no Inventor. Time travel cannot be invented–how could it be? Illogical things cannot be discovered through the orderly process of science. He's just the first man who went back in time and gave the original set of destiny crystals to his younger self, who then went back and gave them to himself again, in turn. We suspect that he was no more the first than any of the others. He was just a little more ruthless about tracking down and eliminating the competition. But there was never a first inventor. Time travel, by its very nature, can have no cause. It is spontaneously created in the flux of nothingness surrounding the core timeline, and, if men do not seek to exploit it, it vanishes just as spontaneously.”
“But–isn't there some way, any way at all, to put time travel to a good use?” This was the question that I had wanted to ask them before, but hadn't thought to ask in time. “Like–what if everyone had it? If we made everyone into Time Wardens, they could…”
“You are assuming they all would not immediately go t
o war? That they would have some sort of covenant or civilized process to handle differences of opinion?”
“Sure.”
“But such a covenant could exist if, and only if, they all abided by an agreement not to interfere with each other's pasts, correct?”
“I guess.”
“And that would require that they could not change even their own pasts in any particular which might ever affect another person, correct? Since every event affects every other, the range of these prohibitions would have to include all external events, no matter how small or private. And, to enforce this agreement, they might have to resort to an amnesia block, not unlike the one we gave you the night you visited us in our headquarters. This block would make all their memories of alternate timelines seem like daydreams, but all memories of the future appear to be forethought, good judgment, or even prophecy. Correct?”
“I suppose so.”
“Can you think of any other fair way of doing it?”
“Not off-hand.”
“But, my good man–what else do you think the core timeline is? It is the alternate where everyone has the great and omnipotent gift of being a time traveler, but everyone has volunteered to foreswear and forget that selfish and self-defeating power. It is the world where hope is possible.”
“And if someone refused to volunteer?”
“That is always a possibility. But one would hope the warning would reach him in time.”
“But if you know better, I mean really know better, then why not?”
“Why not what? Coerce their choice? Force the future to come out as planned?" He nodded toward the icy thrones of the Time Wardens. All were now empty.
Beyond the line of desolate thrones, I saw the wide vista of emptiness. There was no land and no sea. All was dark blue sky above, and below a floor of wrinkled white, which was the tops of mist banks smothering the globe from pole to pole. The whole world was a void.
“The Time Wardens, knowing the future, really knew better than the men they treated like pawns. Ask them how it worked out,” D'Artagnan said sardonically.