Robert Silverberg - The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve

In the morning she said, “I still feel operatic. I’ll go to Bayreuth tonight—the premiere of Götterdämmerung.”

Despising himself, he said, “A capital idea. I’ll accompany you.”

She looked disconcerted. “But music bores you!”

“A flaw in my character. Time I began to remedy it.”

The fitful panic in Ilsabet’s eyes gave way to cool and chilling calmness. “Another time, dear love. I prize my solitude. I’ll make this little trip without you.”

It was all plain to him. Gone now the open sharing; now there were secret rendezvous and an unwanted third player of their game. He could not bear it. In anguish he made his own arrangements and jaunted to Bayreuth in thick red wig and curling beard, and there she was, seated beside Stavanger in the Festspielhaus as the subterranean orchestra launched into the first notes. Reichenbach did not remain for the performance.

Stavanger now crossed their path openly and with great frequency. They met him at the siege of Constantinople, at the San Francisco earthquake, and at a fete at Versailles. This was more than coincidence, and Reichenbach said so to Ilsabet. “I suggested he follow some of our itinerary,” she admitted. “He’s a lonely man, jaunting alone. And quite charming. But of course if you dislike him, we can simply vanish without telling him where we’re going, and he’ll never find us again.”

A disarming tactic, Reichenbach thought. It was impossible for her to admit to him that she and Stavanger were lovers, for there was too much substance to their affair; so instead she pretended he was a pitiful forlorn wanderer in need of company. Reichenbach was outraged. Fidelity was not part of his unspoken compact with her, and she was free to slip off to any era she chose for a tryst with Stavanger. But that she chose to conceal what was going on was deplorable, and that she was finding pretexts to drag Stavanger along on their travels, puncturing the privacy of their own rapport for the sake of a few smug stolen glances, was impermissible. Reichenbach was convinced now that Ilsabet and Stavanger were co-temporals, though he knew he had no rational basis for that idea; it simply seemed right to him, a final torment, the two of them now laying the groundwork for a realtime relationship that excluded him. Whether or not that was true, it was unbearable. Reichenbach was astounded by the intensity of his jealous fury. Yet it was a true emotion and one he would not attempt to repress. The joy he had known with Ilsabet had been unique, and Stavanger had tainted it.

He found himself searching for ways to dispose of his rival.

Merely whirling Ilsabet off elsewhen would achieve nothing. She would find ways of catching up with her paramour somewhen along the line. And if Ilsabet and Stavanger were co-temporal, and she and Reichenbach were not—no, no, Stavanger had to be expunged. Reichenbach, a stable and temperate man, had never imagined himself capable of such criminality; a bit of elitist regulation-bending was all he had ever allowed himself. But he had never been faced with the loss of an Ilsabet before, either.

In Borgia, Italy, Reichenbach hired a Florentine prisoner to do Stavanger in with a dram of nightshade. But the villain pocketed Reichenbach’s down payment and disappeared without a care for the ducats due him on completion of the job. In the chaotic aftermath of the Ides of March, Reichenbach attempted to finger Stavanger as one of Caesar’s murderers, but no one paid attention. Nor did he have luck denouncing him to the Inquisition one afternoon in 1485 in Torquemada’s Castile, though even the most perfunctory questioning would have given sufficient proof of Stavanger’s alliance with diabolical powers. Perhaps it would be necessary, Reichenbach concluded morosely, to deal with Stavanger with his own hands, repellent though that alternative was.

Not only was it repellent, it could be dangerous. He was without experience at serious crime, and Stavanger, cold-eyed and suave, promised to be a formidable adversary: Reichenbach needed an ally, an adviser, a collaborator. But who? While he and Ilsabet were making the circuit of the Seven Wonders, he puzzled over it, from Ephesus to Halicarnassus, to Gizeh, and as they stood in the shadow of the Colossus of Rhodes, the answer came to him. There was only one person he could trust sufficiently, and that person was himself.

To Ilsabet he said, “Do you know where I want to go next?”

“We still have the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at—”

“No, I’m not talking about the Seven Wonders tour. I want to go back to Sarajevo, Ilsabet.”

“Sarajevo? Whatever for?”

“A sentimental pilgrimage, love, to the place of our first meeting.”

“But Sarajevo was a bore. And—”

“We could make it exciting. Consider: our earlier selves would already be there. We would watch them meet, find each other well matched, become lovers. Here for months we’ve been touring the great events of history, when we’re neglecting a chance to witness our own personal greatest event.” He smiled wickedly. “And there are other possibilities. We could introduce ourselves to them. Hint at the joys that lie ahead of them. Perhaps even seduce them, eh? A nice kinky quirky business that would be. And—”

“No,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

“You find the idea improper? Morally offensive?”

“Don’t be an idiot. I find it dangerous.”

“How so?”

“We aren’t supposed to reenter a time-span where we’re already present. There must be some good reason for that. The rules—”

“The rules,” he said, “are made by timid old sods who’ve never moved beyond the terminator in their lives. The rules are meant to guide us, not to control us. The rules are meant to be broken by those who are smart enough to avoid the consequences.”

She stared somberly at him a long while. “And are you?”

“I think I am.”

“Yes. A shrewd man, a superior man, a member of the elite corps that lives on the far side of society’s bell-shaped curve. Eh? Doing as you please throughout life. Holding yourself above all restraints. Rich enough and lucky enough to be able to jaunt anywhen you like and behave like a little god.”

“You live the same way, I believe.”

“In general, yes. But I still won’t go with you to Sarajevo.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what will happen to me if I do. Kinky and quirky it may be to pile into bed with our other selves, but something about the idea troubles me, and I dislike needless risk. Do you believe you understand paradox theory fully?”

“Does anybody?”

“Exactly. It isn’t smart to—”

“Paradoxes are much overrated, don’t you think? We’re in the fluid zone, Ilsabet. Anything goes, this side of the terminator. If I were you I wouldn’t worry about—”

“I am me. I worry. If I were you, I’d worry more. Take your Sarajevo trip without me.”

He saw she was adamant, and dropped the issue. Indeed, he saw it would be much simpler to make the journey alone. They went on from Rhodes to the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, where they spent four happy days untroubled by the shadow of Stavanger; it was the finest time they had had together since Carthage. Then Ilsabet announced she felt the need for another brief solo musicological jaunt—to Mantua in 1607 for Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Reichenbach offered no objection. The instant she was gone, he set his timer for the twenty-eighth of June, 1914, Sarajevo in Bosnia, 10:27 A.M.

In his Babylonian costume he knew he looked ridiculous or even insane, but it was too chancy to have gone to the halfway house for proper preparation, and he planned to stay here only a few minutes. Moments after he materialized in the narrow cobble-paved alleyway, his younger self appeared, decked out elegantly in natty Edwardian finery. He registered only the most brief quiver of amazement at the sight of another Reichenbach already there.