Up the Line

  “You’re back?” he said.

  “You bet. And I don’t—”

  He put his hand to his timer and vanished.

  “Wait!” I yelled, waking everybody up. “You can’t do that! It’s impossible! A tourist’s timer doesn’t—”

  My voice trailed away into a foolish-sounding gargle. Sauerabend was gone, time-shunting before my eyes. Yelling at the place where he had been wouldn’t bring him back. The wiliness of the loathsome slob! Fooling with his timer, boasting that he could gimmick it into working for him, somehow shorting the seal and getting access to the control—

  Now I was in a terrible mess of messes. One of my own tourists on the loose with an activated timer, jumping all over anywhen—what a monstrous botch! I was desperate. The Time Patrol was bound to pick him up, of course, before he could commit too many serious timecrimes, but beyond any doubt I’d be censured for letting him get away.

  Unless I could catch him before he left.

  Fifty-six seconds had elapsed since I had jumped here to keep Sauerabend from leaving.

  Without hesitating further, I set my timer back sixty seconds, and shunted. There was Sauerabend again, sitting on his bed. There was my other self, starting across the room toward him. There were the other sleeping tourists, not yet awakened by my shout.

  Okay now. We outnumber him. We’ve got him.

  I launched myself at Sauerabend, meaning to grab his arms and keep him from shunting.

  He turned as soon as I moved. With devilish swiftness he reached down to his timer.

  He shunted. He was gone. I sprawled on his empty bed, numb with shock.

  The other Jud glared at me and said, “Where in hell did you come from?”

  “I’m fifty-six seconds ahead of you. I missed my first chance at collaring him, and jumped back to try a second time.”

  “And missed again, I see.”

  “So I did.”

  “And duplicated us, besides.”

  “At least that part can be fixed,” I said. I checked the time. “In another thirty seconds, you jump back sixty seconds and get yourself into the time-flow.”

  “Like crap I will,” said Jud B.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the point of it? Sauerabend’s going to be gone, or at least on his way. I won’t be able to grab him, will I?”

  “But you’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what I did at that point in the flow.”

  “You had a reason for it,” he said. “You had just missed Sauerabend, and you wanted to jump back a minute and try catching him then. But I haven’t had a chance even to miss him. Besides, why worry about the time-flow? It’s already been changed.”

  He was right. We had run out the fifty-six seconds. Now we were at the point when I had made my first try at blocking Sauerabend’s exit; but Jud B, who presumably was living through the minute I had lived through just prior to Sauerabend’s first disappearance, had lived through that minute in an altogether different way from me. Everything was messed up. I had spawned a duplicate who wouldn’t go away and who had nowhere to go. It was now thirteen minutes to midnight. In another two minutes we’d have a third Jud here—the one who shunted down straight from Pulcheria’s arms to find Sauerabend missing in the first place. He had a destiny of his own: to spend ten minutes in panicky dithering, and then to jump back from one-minute-to-midnight to fourteen-minutes-to-midnight, kicking off the whole process of confusions that culminated in the two of us.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jud B said.

  “Before he comes in.”

  “Right. Because if he sees us, he may never get around to making his shunt back to fourteen minutes to midnight, and that—”

  “—might eliminate you and me from existing.”

  “But where do we go?” he asked.

  “We could jump back to three or four minutes ago, and try to grab Sauerabend together.”

  “No good. We’ll overlap another of us—the one who’s on his way to Pulcheria.”

  “So what? We’ll make him get on his way as soon as we’ve nailed down Sauerabend.”

  “Still no good. Because if we miss Sauerabend again, we’ll induce still another change in the time-flow, and maybe bring on a third one of us. And set up a hall of mirrors effect, banging back and forth until there are a million of us in the room. He’s too quick for us with that timer.”

  “You’re right,” I said, wishing Jud B had gone back when he belonged before it was too late.

  It was now twelve minutes to midnight.

  “We’ve got sixty seconds to clear out. Where do we go?”

  “We don’t go back and try to grab Sauerabend again. That’s definite.”

  “Yes.”

  “But we must locate him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he could be anywhen at all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then two of us aren’t enough. We’ve got to get help.”

  “Metaxas.”

  “Yes. And maybe Sam.”

  “Yes. And how about Capistrano?”

  “Is he available?”

  “Who knows? We’ll try. And Buonocore. And Jeff Monroe. This is a crisis!”

  “Yes,” I said. “Listen, we’ve only got ten seconds now. Come on with me!”

  We rushed out of the room and down the back way, missing the arrival of the eleven-minutes-to-midnight Jud by a few seconds. We crouched in a dark alcove under the stairs, thinking about the Jud who was two flights up discovering the absence of Sauerabend. I said, “This is going to call for teamwork. You shunt up the line to 1105, find Metaxas, and explain what’s happened. Then call in reinforcements and get everybody busy tracing the time-line for Sauerabend.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to stay right here,” I said. “Until one minute to midnight. At that point the fellow upstairs is going to shunt back a little less than thirteen minutes to look for Sauerabend—”

  “—leaving his people unguarded—”

  “—yes, and somebody’s got to stay with them, so I’ll go back upstairs as soon as he leaves, and slip back into the main Jud Elliott identity as their Courier. And I’ll stay there, proceeding on a normal basis, until I hear from you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Get going, then.”

  He got going. I huddled down in a little heap, shaking with fright. It all hit me in one mighty reaction. Sauerabend was gone, and I had spawned an alter ego by the Paradox of Duplication, and in the space of one evening I had committed more timecrimes than I could name, and—

  I felt like crying.

  I didn’t realize it, but the mess was only beginning.

  50.

  At one minute to midnight I pulled myself together and went upstairs to take over the job of being the authentic Jud Elliott. As I entered the room I allowed myself the naive hope that I’d find everything restored to the right path, with Sauerabend in his bed again. Let it have been fixed retroactively, I prayed. But Sauerabend wasn’t in the room.

  Did that mean that he’d never be found?

  Not necessarily. Maybe, to avoid further tangles, he’d be returned to our tour slightly down the line, say in the early hours of the night, or just before dawn.

  Or maybe he’d be restored to the point he jumped from—thirteen minutes or so before midnight—but I somehow wouldn’t become aware of his return, through some mysterious working of the Paradox of Transit Displacement, holding me outside the whole system.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t even want to know. I just wanted Conrad Sauerabend located and put back in his proper position in time, before the Patrol realized what was up and let me have it.

  Sleep was out of the question. Miserably I slumped on the edge of my bed, getting up now and then to check on my tour people. The Gostamans slept on. The Hagginses slept on. Palmyra and Bilbo and Miss Pistil slept on.

  At half-past two in the morning the
re was a light knock at the door. I leaped up and yanked it open.

  Another Jud Elliott stood there.

  “Who are you?” I asked morosely.

  “The same one who was here before. The one who went for help. There aren’t any more of us now, are there?”

  “I don’t think so.” I stepped out into the hall with him. “Well? What’s been going on?”

  He was grimy and unshaven. “I’ve been gone for a week. We’ve searched all up and down the line.”

  “Who has?”

  “Well, I went to Metaxas first, in 1105, just as you said. He’s terribly concerned for our sake. What he did, first of all, was to put all his servants to work, checking to see if anybody answering to Sauerabend’s description could be found in or around 1105.”

  “It can’t hurt, I guess.”

  “It’s worth trying,” my twin agreed. “Next, Metaxas went down to now-time and phoned Sam, who came flying in from New Orleans and brought Sid Buonocore with him. Metaxas also alerted Kolettis, Gompers, Plastiras, Pappas—all the Byzantium Couriers, the whole staff. Because of discontinuity problems, we’re not notifying anyone who’s on an earlier now-time basis than December 2059, but that still gives us a big posse. What we’re doing now, what we’ve been doing for the past week, is simply moving around, year by year, hunting for Sauerabend, asking questions in the marketplace, sniffing for clues. I’ve been at it eighteen, twenty hours a day. So have all the others. It’s wonderful, how loyal they are!”

  “It certainly is,” I said. “What are the chances of finding him, though?”

  “Well, we assume that he hasn’t left the Constantinople area, although there’s nothing to prevent him from going down the line to 2059, hopping off to Vienna or Moscow, and vanishing up the line again. All we can do is plug away. If he doesn’t turn up in Byzantine, we’ll check Turkish, and then pre-Byzantine, and then we’ll pass the word to now-time so Couriers on other runs can watch for him, and—”

  He sagged. He was exhausted.

  “Look,” I said, “you’ve got to get some rest. Why don’t you go back to 1105 and settle down at Metaxas’ place for a few days? Then come back here when you’re rested, and let me join the search. We can alternate that way indefinitely. Meanwhile, let’s keep this night in 1204 as our reference point. Whenever you jump to me, jump to this night, so we don’t lose contact. It may take us a couple of lifetimes, but we’ll get Sauerabend back into the group before morning comes.”

  “Right.”

  “All clear, then? You spend a few days at the villa resting up, and come back here half an hour from now. And then I’ll go.”

  “Clear,” he said, and went down to the street to jump.

  I returned to the room and resumed my melancholy vigil. At three in the morning, Jud B was back, looking like a new man. He had shaved, taken a bath or two, changed his clothes, obviously had had plenty of sleep. “Three days of rest at Metaxas’ place,” he said. “Magnifique!”

  “You look great. Too great. You didn’t, perhaps, sneak off to fool around with Pulcheria?”

  “The thought didn’t occur to me. But what if I had? You bastard, are you warning me to leave her alone?”

  I said, “You don’t have any right to—”

  “I’m you, remember? You can’t be jealous of yourself.”

  “I guess you can’t,” I said. “Stupid of me.”

  “Stupider of me,” he said. “I should have dropped in on her while I was there.”

  “Well, now it’s my turn. I’ll put in some time on searching, then stop at the villa for rest and recuperation, and maybe have some fun with our beloved. You won’t object to that, will you?”

  “Fair’s fair,” he sighed. “She’s yours as much as she’s mine.”

  “Correct. When I’ve taken care of everything, I’ll get back here at—let’s see—quarter past three tonight. Got it?”

  We synchronized our timetables for the 1105 end of the line to avoid discontinuities; I didn’t want to get there while he was still there, or, worse, before he had ever arrived. Then I left the inn and shunted up the line. In 1105 I hired a chariot and was taken out to the villa on a golden autumn day.

  Metaxas, bleary-eyed and stubble-faced, greeted me at the porch by asking, “Which one are you, A or B?”

  “A. B’s taking over for me at the inn in 1204. How’s the search going?”

  “Lousy,” said Metaxas. “But don’t give up hope. We’re with you all the way. Come inside and meet some old friends.”

  51.

  I said to them, “I’m sorry as hell to be putting you through all this trouble.”

  The men I respected most in the world laughed and grinned and chuckled and spat and said, “Shucks, ’t’ain’t nothin’.”

  They were frayed and grimy. They had been working hard and fruitlessly for me, and it showed. I wanted to hug all of them at once. Black Sambo, and plastic-faced Jeff Monroe, and shifty-eyed Sid Buonocore. Pappas, Kolettis, Plastiras. They had rigged a chart to mark off the places where they hadn’t found Conrad Sauerabend. The chart had a lot of marks on it.

  Sam said, “Don’t worry, boy. We’ll track him down.”

  “I feel so awful, making you give up free time—”

  “It could have happened to any one of us,” Sam said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Sauerabend gimmicked his timer behind your back, didn’t he? How could you have prevented it?” Sam grinned. “We got to help you out. We don’t know when same’ll happen to us.”

  “All for one,” said Madison Jefferson Monroe. “One for all.”

  “You think you’re the first Courier to have a customer skip out?” Sid Buonocore asked. “Don’t be a craphead! Those timers can be rigged for manual use by anyone who understands Benchley Effect theory.”

  “They never told me—”

  “They don’t like to advertise it. But it happens. Five, six times a year, somebody takes a private time-trip behind his Courier’s back.”

  I said, “What happens to the Courier?”

  “If the Time Patrol finds out? They fire him,” said Buonocore bleakly. “What we try to do is cover for each other, before the Patrol moves in. It’s a bitch of a job, but we got to do it. I mean, if you don’t look after one of your own when he’s in trouble, who in hell will look after you?”

  “Besides,” said Sam, “it makes us feel like heroes.”

  I studied the chart. They had looked for Sauerabend pretty thoroughly in early Byzantium—Constantine through the second Theodosius—and they had checked out the final two centuries with equal care. Searching the middle had so far been a matter of random investigations. Sam, Buonocore, and Monroe were coming off search duty now and were going to rest; Kolettis, Plastiris, and Pappas were getting ready to go out, and they were planning strategy.

  Everybody went on being very nice to me during the discussion of ways to catch Sauerabend. I felt a real sentimental glow of warmth for them. My comrades in adversity. My companions. My colleagues. The Time Musketeers. My heart expanded. I made a little speech telling them how grateful I was for all their help. They looked embarrassed and told me once again that it was a simple matter of good fellowship, the golden rule in action.

  The door opened and a dusty figure stumbled in, wearing anachronistic sunglasses. Najeeb Dajani, my old tutor! He scowled, slumped down on a chair, and gestured impatiently to nobody in particular, hoping for wine.

  Kolettis handed him wine. Dajani poured some of it into his hand and used it to wash the dust from his sunglasses. Then he gulped the rest.

  “Mr. Dajani!” I cried. “I didn’t know they had called you in too! Listen, I want to thank you for helping—”

  “You stupid prick,” said Dajani quietly. “How did I ever let you get your Courier license?”

  52.

  Dajani had just returned from a survey of the city in 630–650, with no luck at all. He was tired and irritated, and he obviously wasn’t ha
ppy about spending his layoff searching for somebody else’s runaway tourist.

  He put out my sentimental glow in a hurry. I tried to foist on him my gratitude speech, and he said sourly, “Skip the grease job. I’m doing this because it’ll reflect badly on my capabilities as an instructor if the Patrol finds out what kind of anthropoid I let loose as a Courier. It’s my own hide I’m protecting.”

  There was a nasty moment of silence. A lot of shuffling of feet and clearing of throats took place.

  “That’s not very gratifying to hear,” I said to Dajani.

  Buonocore said, “Don’t let him upset you, kid. Like I told you, any Courier’s tourist is likely to gimmick his timer, and—”

  “I don’t refer to the loss of the tourist,” said Dajani testily. “I refer to the fact that this idiot managed to duplicate himself while trying to edit the mistake!” He gargled wine. “I forgive him for the one, but not for the other.”

  “The duplication is pretty ugly,” Buonocore admitted.

  “It’s a serious thing,” said Kolettis.

  “Bad karma,” Sam said. “No telling how we’ll cover that one up.”

  “I can’t remember a case to match,” declared Pappas.

  “A messy miscalculation,” Plastiras commented.

  “Look,” I said, “the duplication was an accident. I was so much in a sweat to find Sauerabend that I didn’t stop to calculate the implications of—”

  “We understand,” Sam said.

  “It’s a natural error, when you’re under pressure,” said Jeff Monroe.

  “Could have happened to anyone,” Buonocore told me.

  “A shame. A damned shame,” murmured Pappas.

  I started to feel less like an important member of a close-knit fraternity, and more like a pitied halfwit nephew who can’t help leaving little puddles of mess wherever he goes. The halfwit’s uncles were trying to clean up a particularly messy mess for him, and trying to keep the halfwit serene so he wouldn’t make a worse mess.

  When I realized what the real attitude of these men toward me was, I felt like calling in the Time Patrol, confessing my timecrimes, and requesting eradication. My soul shriveled. My manhood withered. I, the copulator with empresses, the seducer of secluded noblewomen, the maker of smalltalk with emperors, I, the last of the Ducases, I, the strider across millennia, I, the brilliant Courier in the style of Metaxas, I…I, to these veteran Couriers here, was simply an upright mass of perambulating dreck. A faex that walks like a man. Which is the singular of faeces. Which is to say, a shit.