Robert Silverberg - Stepsons of Terra

He had arranged to meet the other Ewing in the refreshment room where he had had his first meeting with Rollun Firnik after landing on Earth. A soft conversational hum droned in the background as Ewing entered. His eyes, as if magnetically drawn, fastened on the tall, conservatively-dressed figure at the table near the rear.

He walked over and sat down, without being asked. The man at the table favored him with a smile—cold, precise, the very sort of smile Ewing himself would have used in this situation. Ewing moistened his lips. He felt dizzy.

He said, “I don’t know quite where to begin. Who are you?”

“I told you. Yourself. I’m Baird Ewing.”

The accent, the tone, the sardonic smile—they all fitted. Ewing felt the room swirl crazily around him. He stared Ievelly at the mirror image on the other side of the table.

“I thought you were dead,” Ewing said. “The note you left me—”

“I didn’t leave any notes,” the other interrupted immediately.

“Hold on, there.” It was a conversation taking place in a world of nightmare. Ewing felt as if he were stifling. “You rescued me from Firnik, didn’t you?”

The other nodded.

“And you took me to the hotel, put me to bed, and wrote me a note explaining things; you finished off by saying you were going downstairs to blow yourself up in an energitron booth—”

Eyes wide in surprise, the other said, “No, not at all! I took you to the hotel and left. I didn’t write any notes, or threaten to commit suicide.”

“You didn’t leave me money? Or a blaster?”

The man across the table shook his head vehemently. Ewing closed his eyes for a moment. “If you didn’t leave me that note, who did?”

“Tell me about this note,” the other said.

Briefly Ewing summarized the contents of the note as well as he could from memory. The other listened, tapping his finger against the table as each point was made. When Ewing was through, the other remained deep in thought, brow furrowed. Finally he said:

“I see it. There were four of us.”

“What?”

“I’ll put it slowly: I’m the first one of us to go through all this. It begins with a closed-circle paradox, the way any time distortion would have to: me, in the torture chamber, and a future me coming back to rescue me. There were four separate splits in die continuum—creating a Ewing who died in Firnik’s torture chamber, a Ewing who rescued the tortured Ewing and left a note and committed suicide, a Ewing who rescued the tortured Ewing and did not commit suicide, and a Ewing who was rescued and did not himself go back to become the rescuer, thereby breaking the chain. Two of these are still alive—the third and the fourth. You and me.” Very quietly Ewing said, “I guess that makes sense, in an impossible sort of way. But that leaves an extra Baird Ewing, doesn’t it? After you carried out the rescue, why did you decide to stay alive?”

The other shrugged. “I couldn’t risk killing myself. I didn’t know what would happen.”

“You did,” Ewing said accusingly. “You knew that the next man in the sequence would stay alive. You could have left him a note, but you didn’t. So he went through the chain, left me a note, and removed himself.”

The other scowled unhappily. “Perhaps he represented a braver facet of us than I do.”

“How could that be? We’re all the same?”

“True.” The other smiled sadly. “But a human being is made of complex stuff. Life isn’t a procession of clear-cut events; it’s a progression from one tough decision to the next. The seeds of my decision were in the proto-Ewing; so were the bases for the suicide. I picked things one way; he picked them the other. And I’m here.”

Ewing realized it was impossible to be angry. The man he faced was himself, and he knew only too well the bundle of inner contradictions, of strengths and weaknesses, that was Baird Ewing—or any human being. This was no time to condemn. But he foresaw grave problems arising.

He said, “What do we do now —both of us?”

“There was a reason why I called you off the ship. And it wasn’t simply that I didn’t want to be left behind on Earth.”

“What was it, then?”

“The time machine Myreck has can save Corwin from the Klodni,” the other Ewing said flatly.

Ewing sat back and let that soak in. “How?”

“I went to see Myreck this morning and he greeted me with open arms. Said he was so glad I had come back for a look at the time machine. That was when I realized you’d been there yesterday and hadn’t gone back on the merry-go-round.” He shook his head. “I was counting on that, you see—on being the only Ewing that actually went forward on the time-track, while all the others went round and round between Fourday and Twoday, chasing themselves. But you broke the sequence and fouled things up.”

“You fouled things up,” Ewing snapped. “You aren’t supposed to be alive.”

“And you aren’t supposed to be existing in Fiveday.”

“This isn’t helping things,” Ewing said more calmly. “You say the Earther time machine can save Corwin. How?”

“I was getting to that. This morning Myreck showed me all the applications of the machine. It can be converted into an exterior-operating scanner—a beam that can be used to hurl objects of any size backward into time.”

“The Klodni fleet,” Ewing said instantly.

“Exactly! we set up the projector on Corwin and wait for the Klodni to arrive—and shoot them back five billion years or so, with no return-trip ticketl”

Ewing smiled. “And I was running away. I was on my way home, while you were finding all this out.”

The other shrugged. “You had no reason to suspect it. You never had a first-hand demonstration of the way the time machine functioned. I did—and I guessed this might be possible. You guessed so, too.”

“Me?”

“Right after Myreck told you he had temporal control, the thought came to you that something like this might be worked out. But you forgot about it. I didn’t.”

It was eerie, Ewing thought, to sit across a table from a man who knew every thought of his, every secret deed, from childhood up to a point three days ago in Absolute Time. After that, of course, their fives diverged as if they were different people.

“What do you suggest we do now?” Ewing asked.

“Go back to Myreck. Team up to get the plans for the device away from him. Then high-tail it back here, get aboard…”

His voice trailed off. Ewing stared blankly at his alter ego and said, “Yes? What then? I’m waiting.”

“It’s—it’s a one-man ship, isn’t it?” the other asked in a thin voice.

“Yes,” Ewing said. “Damned right it is. After we’ve taken the plans, how do we decide who goes back to Corwin and who stays here?”

He knew the other’s anguished frown was mirrored by his own. He felt sick, and knew the other sensed the same unease. He felt the frustration of a man staring into a mirror, trying desperately to make some maneuver that would not be imitated by the imprisoned image.

“We’ll worry about that later,” said the other Ewing uncertainly. “First let’s get the plans from Myreck. Time to settle other problems later.”

They took a robot-operated cab to the suburban district where the College of Abstract Science was located. On the way, Ewing turned to the other and said, “How did you know I was on my way home?”

“I didn’t. As soon as I found out from Myreck both that you existed and that his machine could help Corwin, I got back to the Grand Valloin. I went straight up to your room, but the identity plate didn’t work—and that door was geared to my identity just as much as yours. So I went downstairs, phoned the desk from the lobby, and asked for you. They told me you had checked out and were on your way to the spaceport. So I followed—and got there just in time.”