Rovert Silverberg - Up The Line

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.

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 there 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.”