Rovert Silverberg - Up The Line

“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!”

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, 2035,” 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.

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?”