And I launched myself at him in blind fury.
And I drove my fists into his belly, and sent him reeling backward toward the wall.
And he looked at me strangely, and caught his breath, and came toward me and picked me up and dropped me. And picked me up and dropped me. And picked me up a third time, but Metaxas made him put me down.
Sam said gently, “It’s true that I am a black nigger bastard, but was it really necessary to say so that loudly?”
Metaxas said, “Give him some wine, somebody. I think he’s going off his head.”
I said, seizing control of myself somehow, “Sam, I didn’t mean to call you names, but it absolutely cannot be the case that Conrad Sauerabend is living under the name of Heracles Photis.”
“Why not?”
“Because—because—”
“I saw him myself,” Sam said. “I had wine in his tavern no more than five hours ago. He’s big and fat and red-faced, and thinks a great deal of himself. And he’s got this little hot-ass Byzantine wife, maybe sixteen, seventeen years old, who waits on table in the place, and waves her boobies at the customers, and I bet sells her tail in the upstairs rooms—”
“All right,” I said in a dead man’s voice. “You win. The wife’s name is Pulcheria.”
Metaxas made a choking sound.
Sam said, “I didn’t ask about her name.”
“She’s seventeen years old, and she comes from the Botaniates family,” I went on, “which is one of the important Byzantine families, and only Buddha knows what she’s doing married to Heracles Photis Conrad Sauerabend. And the past has been changed, Sam, because up until a few weeks ago on my now-time basis she was the wife of Leo Ducas and lived in a palace near the imperial palace, and it happened that I was having a love affair with her, and it also happens that until the past got changed she and Leo Ducas were my great-great-multi-great-grandparents, and it seems to have happened that a very stinking coincidence has taken place, which I don’t comprehend the details of at all, except that I’m probably a nonperson now and there’s no such individual as Pulcheria Ducas. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go into a quiet corner and cut my throat.”
“This isn’t happening,” said Sam. “This is all a bad dream.”
57.
But, of course, it wasn’t. It was as real as any other event in this fluid and changeable cosmos.
The three of us drank a great deal of wine, and Sam gave me some of the other details. How he had asked about in the neighborhood concerning Sauerabend/Photis, and had been told that the man had arrived mysteriously from some other part of the country, about the year 1099. How the regulars at his tavern disliked him, but came to the place just to get a view of his beautiful wife. How there was general suspicion that he was engaged in some kind of illegal activity.
“He excused himself,” Sam said, “and told us that he had to go across to Galata to do some marketing. But Kolettis followed him and found that he didn’t go marketing at all. He went into some kind of warehouse on the Galata side, and apparently he disappeared. Kolettis went in after him and couldn’t find him anywhere. He must have time-jumped, Kolettis assumed. Then this Photis reappeared, maybe half an hour later, and took the ferry back into Constantinople.”
“Timecrime,” Metaxas suggested. “He’s engaged in smuggling.”
“That’s what I think,” said Sam. “He’s using the early twelfth century as a base of operations, under this cover identity of Photis, and he’s running artifacts or gold coins or something like that down the line to now-time.”
“How did he get mixed up with the girl, though?” Metaxas asked.
Sam shrugged. “That part isn’t clear yet. But now that we’ve found him, we can trace him back up the line until we find the point of his arrival. And see exactly what he’s been up to.”
I groaned. “How are we ever going to restore the proper sequence of events?”
Metaxas said, “We’ve got to locate the precise moment to which he made his jump out of your tour. Then we station ourselves there, catch him as soon as he materializes, take away that trick timer of his, and bring him back to 1204. That extricates him from the time-flow right where he came in, and puts him back into your 1204 trip where he belongs.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said. “But it isn’t. What about all the changes that have been made in the past? His five years of marriage to Pulcheria Botaniates—”
“Nonevents,” said Sam. “As soon as we whisk Sauerabend from 1099 or whenever back into 1204, his marriage to this Pulcheria is automatically deleted, right? The time-flow resumes its unedited shape, and she marries whoever she was supposed to marry—”
“Leo Ducas,” I said. “My ancestor.”
“Leo Ducas, yes,” Sam went on. “And for everybody in Byzantium, this whole Heracles Photis episode will never have happened. The only ones who’ll know about it are us, because we’re subject to Transit Displacement.”
“What about the artifacts Sauerabend’s been smuggling to now-time?” I asked.
Sam said, “They won’t be there. They won’t ever have been smuggled. And his fences down there won’t have any recollection of having received them, either. The fabric of time will have been restored, and the Patrol won’t be the wiser for it, and—”
“You’re overlooking one little item,” I said.
“Which is?”
“In the course of these shenanigans I generated an extra Jud Elliott. Where does he go?”
“Christ,” Sam said. “I forgot about him!”
58.
I had now been running around 1105 for quite a while, and I figured it was time to get back to 1204 and let my alter ego know something of what was going on. So I made the shunt down the line and got to the inn at quarter past three on that same long night of Conrad Sauerabend’s disappearance from 1204. My other self was slouched gloomily on his bed, studying the ceiling’s heavy beams.
“Well?” he said. “How goes it?”
“Catastrophic. Come out into the hall.”
“What’s happening?”
“Brace yourself,” I said. “We finally tracked Sauerabend down. He shunted to 1099, and took a cover identity as a tavernkeeper. A year later he married Pulcheria.”
I watched my other self crumble.
“The past has been changed,” I went on. “Leo Ducas married somebody else, Euprepia something, and has two and a half children by her. Pulcheria’s a serving wench in Sauerabend’s tavern. I saw her there. She didn’t know who I was, but she offered to screw me for two bezants. Sauerabend is smuggling goods down the line, and—”
“Don’t tell me any more,” he said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“I haven’t told you the good part yet.”
“There’s a good part?”
“The good part is that we’re going to unhappen all of this. Sam and Metaxas and you are going to trace Sauerabend back from 1105 to the moment of his arrival in 1099, and unarrive him, and shunt him back here into this evening. Thus canceling the whole episode.”
“What happens to us?” my other self asked.
“We discussed that, more or less,” I said vaguely. “We aren’t sure. Apparently we’re both protected by Transit Displacement, so that we’ll continue to exist even if we get Sauerabend back into his proper time flow.”
“But where did we come from? There can’t be creation of something out of nothing! Conservation of mass—”
“One of us was here all along,” I reminded him. “As a matter of fact, I was here all along. I brought you into being by looping back fifty-six seconds into your time-flow.”
“Balls,” he said. “I was in that time-flow all along, doing what I was supposed to do. You came looping in out of nowhere. You’re the goddam paradox, buster.”
“I’ve lived fifty-six seconds longer than you, absolute. Therefore I must have been created first.”
“We were both created in the same instant, on October 11, 20
35,” he shot back at me. “The fact that our time lines got snarled because of your faulty thinking has no bearing on which of us is more real than the other. The question is not who’s the real Jud Elliott, but how we’re going to continue to operate without getting in each other’s way.”
“We’ll have to work out a tight schedule,” I said. “One of us working as a Courier while the other one’s hiding out up the line. And the two of us never in the same time at once, up or down the line. But how—”
“I have it,” he said. “We’ll establish a now-time existence in 1105, the way Metaxas has done, only for us it’ll be continuous. There’ll always be one of us pegged to now-time in the early twelfth century as George Markezinis, living in Metaxas’ villa. The other one of us will be functioning as a Courier, and he’ll go through a trip-and-layoff cycle—”
“—taking his layoff anywhen but in the 1105 basis.”
“Right. And when he’s completed the cycle, he’ll go to the villa and pick up the Markezinis identity, and the other one will go down the line and report for Courier duty—”
“—and if we keep everything coordinated, there’s no reason why the Patrol should ever find out about us.”
“Brilliant!”
“And the one who’s being Markezinis,” I finished, “can always be carrying on a full-time affair with Pulcheria, and she’ll never know that we’re taking turns with her.”
“As soon as Pulcheria is herself again.”
“As soon as Pulcheria is herself again,” I agreed.
That was a sobering thought. Our whole giddy plan for alternating our identities was just so much noise until we straightened out the mess Sauerabend had caused.
I checked the time. “You get back to 1105 and help Sam and Metaxas,” I said. “Shunt here again by half past three tonight.”
“Right,” he said, and left.
59.
He came back on time, looking disgusted, and said, “We’re all waiting for you on August 9, 1100, by the land wall back of Blachernae, about a hundred meters to the right of the first gate.”
“What’s the story?”
“Go and see for yourself. It makes me sick to think about it. Go, and do what has to be done, and then this filthy lunacy will be over. Go on. Jump up and join us there.”
“What time of day?” I asked.
He pondered a moment. “Twenty past noon, I’d say.”
I went out of the inn and walked to the land wall, and set my timer with care, and jumped. The transition from late-night darkness to midday brightness left me blinded for an instant; when I stopped blinking I found myself standing before a grim-faced trio: Sam, Metaxas—and Jud B.
“Jesus,” I said, “Don’t tell me we’ve committed another duplication!”
“This time it’s only the Paradox of Temporal Accumulation,” my alter ego said. “Nothing serious.”
I was too muddled to reason it through. “But if we’re both here, who’s watching our tourists down in 1204?”
“Idiot,” he said fiercely, “think four-dimensionally! How can you be so stupid if you’re identical to me? Look, I jumped here from one point in that night in 1204, and you jumped from another point fifteen minutes away. When we go back, we each go to our proper starting point in the sequence. I’m due to arrive at half past three, and you aren’t supposed to be there until quarter to four, but that doesn’t mean that neither of us is there right now. Or all these others of us.”
I looked around. I saw at least five groups of Metaxas-Sam-me arranged in a wide arc near the wall. Obviously they had been monitoring this time point closely, making repeated short-run shunts to check on the sequence of events, and the Cumulative Paradox was building up a multitude of them.
“Even so,” I said dimly, “it somehow seems that I’m not correctly perceiving the linear chain of—”
“Stuff the linear chain of!” the other Jud snarled at me. “Will you look over there? There, on the far side of the gate!”
He pointed.
I looked.
I saw a gray-haired woman in simple clothes. I recognized her as a somewhat younger version of the woman whom I had seen escorting Pulcheria Ducas into the shop of sweets and spices that day, seemingly so long ago, five years down the line in 1105. The duenna was propped up against the city wall, giggling to herself. Her eyes were closed.
A short distance from her was a girl of about twelve, who could only have been Pulcheria’s younger self. The resemblance was unmistakable. This girl still had a child’s unformed features, and her breasts were only gentle bumps under her tunic, but the raw materials of Pulcheria’s beauty were there.
Next to the girl was Conrad Sauerabend, in Byzantine lower-middle-class clothes.
Sauerabend was cooing in the girl’s ear. He was dangling before her face a little twenty-first century gimcrack, a gyroscopic pendant or something like that. His other hand was under her tunic and visibly groping in the vicinity of her thighs. Pulcheria was frowning, but yet she wasn’t making any move to get the hand out of her crotch. She seemed a little uncertain about what Sauerabend was up to, but she was altogether fascinated by the toy, and perhaps didn’t mind the wandering fingers, either.
Metaxas said, “He’s been living in Constantinople for a little less than a year, and commuting frequently to 2059 to drop off marketable artifacts. He’s been coming by the wall every day to watch the little girl and her duenna take their noontime stroll. The girl is Pulcheria Botaniates, and that’s the Botaniates palace just over there. About half an hour ago Sauerabend came along and saw the two of them. He gave the duenna a floater and she’s been up high ever since. Then he sat down next to the girl and began to charm her. He’s really very slick with little girls.”
“It’s his hobby,” I said.
“Watch what happens now,” said Metaxas.
Sauerabend and Pulcheria rose and walked toward the gate in the wall. We faded back into the shadows to remain unobserved. Most of our paradoxical duplicates had disappeared, evidently shunting to other positions along the line to monitor the events. We watched as the fat man and the lovely little girl strolled through the gate, into the countryside just beyond the city boundary.
I started to follow.
“Wait,” said Sam. “See who’s coming now? That’s Pulcheria’s older brother Andronicus.”
A young man, perhaps eighteen, was approaching. He halted and stared in broad disbelief at the giggling duenna. We saw him rush toward her, shake her, yank her to her feet. The woman tumbled down again, helpless.
“Where’s Pulcheria?” he roared. “Where is she?”
The duenna laughed.
Young Botaniates, desperate, rushed about the deserted sunbaked street, yelling for his maiden sister. Then he hurried through the gate.
“We follow him,” Metaxas said. Several other groups of us were already outside the gate, I discovered when we got there. Andronicus Botaniates ran hither and thither. I heard the sound of girlish laughter coming from, seemingly, the wall itself.
Andronicus heard it too. There was a breach in the wall, a shallow cavelike opening at ground level, perhaps five meters deep. He ran toward it. We ran toward it too, jostling with a mob that consisted entirely of our duplicated selves. There must have been fifteen of us—five of each.
Andronicus entered the breach in the wall and let out a terrible howl. A moment later I peered in.
Pulcheria, naked, her tunic down near her ankles, stood in the classic position of modesty, with one hand flung across her budding breasts and the other spread over her loins. Next to her was Sauerabend, with his clothes open. He had his tool out and ready for business. I suppose he had been in the process of maneuvering Pulcheria into a suitable position when the interruption came.
“Outrage!” cried Andronicus. “Foulness! Seduction of a virgin maiden! I call you all to witness! Look at this, this monstrosity, this criminal deed!”
And he caught Sauerabend by one hand and his sister by the other
, and tugged them both out into the open.
“Bear witness!” he bellowed. We got out of the way before Sauerabend could recognize us, although I think he was too terrified to see anyone. Pitiful Pulcheria, trying to hide all of herself at once, was huddled into a ball at her brother’s feet; but he kept pulling her up, exposing her, crying, “Look at the little whore! Look at her! Look, look, look!”
And a considerable crowd came to look.
We moved to one side. I felt like throwing up. That vile molester of children, that Humbert of stockbrokers—exposing his swollen red thing to Pulcheria, involving her in this scandal—
Now Andronicus had drawn his sword and was trying to kill either Sauerabend or Pulcheria or both. But the onlookers prevented him, bearing him to the ground and taking away his weapon. Pulcheria, in frantic dismay at having her nakedness exposed to such a multitude, grabbed a dagger from someone else and attempted to kill herself, but was stopped in time; finally an old man threw his cloak about her. All was confusion.
Metaxas said calmly, “We followed the rest of the sequence from here before you arrived, then doubled back to wait for you. Here’s what happened: The girl was engaged to Leo Ducas, but of course it was impossible for him to marry her after half of Byzantium had seen her naked like this. Besides, she was considered tainted, even though Sauerabend didn’t actually have time to get into her. The marriage was called off. Her family, blaming her for letting Sauerabend charm her into taking off her clothes, disowned her. Meanwhile, Sauerabend was given the choice of marrying the girl he dishonored, or suffering the usual penalty.”
“Which was?”
“Castration,” said Metaxas. “And so, as Heracles Photis, Sauerabend married her, changing the pattern of history at least to the extent of depriving you of your proper ancestral line. Which we’re now going to correct.”
“Not me,” said Jud B. “I’ve seen all I can stand. I’m going back to 1204. I’m due there at half past three in the morning to tell this guy to come back here and watch things.”
“But—” I said.