Simon Hawke - Ivanhoe Gambit

"Maybe he will," Bobby said. "Shit, maybe he already has. Maybe he's going back into the past even as we're standing here. Maybe he's going to arrive at some point prior to right now and do us in."

"Then what will happen to us?" Hooker said. "If he pops back in an hour ago and kills us, what will happen to us now? How could we even be here now if he killed us in the past?"

"Hold it right there," said Finn. "Don't start getting bent all out of shape. That's exactly what he wants. Let's talk theory for a moment. Here's how we stand right now: assuming Irving travels back into the past, our past relative to where we are right this very moment, then he might succeed in killing us. If he does that, then the timeline will have been disrupted and there will be a skip in it. There had to be a past for us not to be killed in, otherwise we wouldn't be standing here right now. In the same manner, there has to be a potential future in which Irving can come back to this time to mess things up. From the perspective of the future that we came from, history has not been changed. At least, it hadn't been changed up to the moment that we departed for this time period. We've got to preserve the status quo from which we came. As it stands right now, the timeline from here on is in potential flux. Irving has confronted us with a potential future in which Hooker has been killed. We know that there is no absolute future. There is only an infinite number of possible futures. There has to be a potential future in which Hooker did not know that he was going to die. We have been confronted with that very real possibility. By confronting us with it, Irving has managed to rattle us, which is precisely what he intended. He has also managed to warn us."

"You mean it might still happen," Hooker said.

"It might," said Finn. "What we don't know is this: when this Hooker died," he indicated the corpse, "he might not have known that he was going to die. Meaning, this Hooker might not ever have had the opportunity to see his own corpse."

"On the other hand, maybe he did," said Hooker. "Maybe I did."

"That's right," said Finn. "But we don't know for sure. So you've got a choice to make right now, son. You can either resign yourself to this fate," he pointed at the nearly severed head of the corpse, "or you can determine that you're going to do everything in your power to prevent this from ever happening. And that means you're going to have to watch your back."

Hooker took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. "Yeah," he said. "But when?"

"I don't have all the answers, Corporal."

"Thanks."

"Sarge," he said to Bobby, "why don't you take the boy outside and let him walk around a bit? He doesn't look too steady. Go on, get him out of here."

"Come on, Hooker," Bobby said. "Let's go out and get some air. It's getting a little close in here."

He led Hooker out of the pavilion. Finn stood at the entrance, watching them.

"They can't hear us now, can they?" Lucas said, softly.

Finn turned around and shook his head.

"You know what I'm about to say, don't you?" Lucas said.

"You mean about the paradox?" said Finn.

"What paradox?"

Finn nodded, glumly.

"That corpse doesn't represent a paradox," said Lucas. "At least, not yet. You smoked the kid, Finn."

"I had to. I had no choice. Surely you can see that."

Lucas took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Jesus. What a mess. You know, something sounded wrong while you were talking to him, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I'm still not sure I can follow it through completely, but then I'm just a simple dog soldier. So are you, for that matter. Or are you? You seem pretty well versed in temporal mechanics, even for a veteran with your experience."

"I'm not a mission plant, if that's what you're getting at," said Finn. "What you see is what you get. I'm a lifer, son. I've served a lot of time. I've gone up and down in rank like a yo-yo, mainly because I don't always play it by the rules, but…"

"But?"

"Yes, well, there is a 'but,' Sergeant Major. I volunteered for the Corps. I didn't really have to. I finished in the top three percent of the Service Aptitude batteries. I chose the army anyway and I put in my time."

"Which qualified you for Referee Corps School," said Lucas.

Finn nodded. "I got halfway through before I washed out," he said. "I couldn't handle Econo-political Management and Arbitration. Way over my head. Well, maybe not over my head, but beyond my inclination. I did get through Temporal Physics and Trans-historical Adjustment and Maintenance, though."

"Which should have qualified you for the observers."

"It did," said Finn, nodding. "Only I didn't want it. You may think I'm crazy, but I missed this. Observing's not the same as participating, even though it pays better."

Lucas nodded. "I understand. I can't say I would have done the same thing in your position, but that's beside the point. The point is, you bluffed him. You made him think that we can still do something to get through this thing alive. Only we can't, can we?"

"Not necessarily," said Finn. "We still have a chance. We do. Hooker, I'm afraid, has no chance at all."

"I don't quite follow."

"Okay, I'll make it quick, they might come back at any minute. Time is fluid. The only thing that isn't is our subjective relationship to time. Time is like a river in that respect. Now you can take a boulder, let's say, and drop it in that river. It will create some eddies, but those eddies will have dissipated say, two hundred yards downstream. In order to significantly change the course of the river, or split the timeline, you're going to have to introduce a much more significant factor. Say, divert the river at one point and split it.

Now think of yourself as a molecule of water. Your relationship to that river is totally subjective, depending upon where you are in relation to its flow. If you move with the water to a point beyond which the river has been diverted, before it has been diverted, then that won't affect you. However, if I was to draw a cupful of water from that river, containing your little molecule, and pour you back in at a point upstream of the diversion, then that diversion could affect you."

"So we can't be attacked in our absolute past," said Lucas. "Irving can't kill me yesterday and expect that action to destroy me here today."

"That's right," said Finn. "You can't shoot five feet behind a clay pigeon and expect it to burst. What's happened to us has already happened. That's an absolute. Regardless of what Irving does in the past, it won't affect us right here right now. It will affect the past at a point at which the timeline will be split. From that point on, the future will be an entirely different scenario, depending upon when the timelines eventually rejoin. Irving can only kill us in a parallel timeline if he tries to attack us in our past. The point is, our job is to keep him from creating that parallel timeline. If he does succeed in causing the split, the future will be affected. And there's the danger. That game of Russian roulette the ref was talking about. His fate is sealed in that respect. If we succeed in stopping Irving, assuming that the real Richard Plantagenet is still alive and we can find him, then we have the possibility of our being able to clock back in to Plus Time with Irving, leaving the real Richard to sit on the throne. In that case, he'll have to be conditioned to forget all about Irving's intervention in his life. Not a problem. But then we'll have to clock back in at a point just beyond Irving's having gone back, so as not to create a paradox regarding our own experience. We will have restored the status quo of our own history. However, the possibility of that is almost nonexistent. I'll bet my life on the fact that Irving has killed the real Richard, in order to improve the odds of his success. In that case, we've got to kill Irving and let our ref become Richard, acting in a manner that will preserve our timeline. He will have to die, as Richard, in order to avoid a paradox."