Rovert Silverberg - Up The Line

The pretty little girl and the watchful duenna came into view.

My heart ached with love for young Pulcheria, and I ached in other places as well, out of lust for the Pulcheria who would be, the Pulcheria whom I had known.

The pretty little girl and the unsuspecting duenna, keeping close together, strolled past us.

Conrad Sauerabend/Heracles Photis appeared. Discordant sounds in the orchestra; twirling of mustaches; hisses. He studied the girl and the woman. He patted his bulging belly. He drew forth a snubby little floater and checked its snout. Leering enthusiastically, he came forward, planning to thrust the floater against the duenna’s arm and, by giving her an hour of the giggling highs, to gain unimpeded access to the little girl.

Metaxas nodded to Sam.

Sam nodded to me.

We approached Sauerabend on a slanting path of approach.

“Now!” said Metaxas, and we went into action.

Huge black Sam lunged forward and clasped his right forearm across Sauerabend’s throat. Metaxas seized Sauerabend’s left wrist and bent his entire arm backward, far from the controls of the timer that could whiz him from our grasp. Simultaneously, I caught Sauerabend’s right arm, jerking it up and back and forcing him to drop the floater. This entire maneuver occupied perhaps an eighth of a second and resulted in the effective immobilization of Sauerabend. The duenna, meanwhile, had wisely fled with Pulcheria at the sight of this unseemly struggle.

Sam now reached under Sauerabend’s clothing and deprived him of his gimmicked timer.

Then we released him. Sauerabend, who undoubtedly thought that he had been set upon by bandits, saw me and grunted a couple of shocked monosyllables.

I said, “You thought you were pretty clever, didn’t you?”

He grunted some more.

I said, “Gimmicking your timer, slipping away, thinking you could set up in business for yourself as a smuggler. Eh? You didn’t believe we’d catch you?”

I didn’t tell him of the weeks of hard work that we had put in. I didn’t tell him of the timecrimes we ourselves had committed for the sake of detecting him — the paradoxes we had left strewn all up and down the line, the needless duplications of ourselves. I didn’t tell him that we had just pinched six years of his life as a Byzantine tavernkeeper into a pocket universe that, so far as he was concerned, had no existence whatever. Nor did I tell him of the chain of events that had made him the husband of Pulcheria Botaniates in that pinched-off universe, depriving me of my proper ancestry. All of those things had now unhappened. There now would be no tavernkeeper named Heracles Photis selling meat and drink to the Byzantines of the years 1100-1105.

Metaxas produced a spare timer, ungimmicked, that he had carried for the purpose.

“Put it on,” he said.

Sullenly, Sauerabend donned it.

I said, “We’re going back to 1204, more or less to the time you set out from. And then we’re going to finish our tour and go back down the line to 2059. And God help you if you cause any more trouble for me, Sauerabend. I won’t report you for timecrime, because I’m a merciful man, even though an unauthorized shunt like yours is very definitely a criminal act; but if you do anything whatever that displeases me in the slightest between now and the moment I’m rid of you, I’ll make you roast for it. Clear?”

He nodded bleakly.

To Sam and Metaxas I said, “I can handle this from here on. Thanks for everything. I can’t possibly tell you—”

“Don’t try,” said Metaxas, and together they shunted down the line.

I set Sauerabend’s new timer and my own, and drew forth my pitch-pipe. “Here we go,” I said, and we shunted into 1204.

At quarter to four on that very familiar night in 1204 I went once more up the stairs of the inn, this time with Sauerabend. Jud B paced restlessly just within the door of the room. He brightened at the sight of my captive. Sauerabend looked puzzled at the presence of two of me, but he didn’t dare say anything.

“Get inside,” I said to him. “And don’t monkey with your goddam timer or you’ll suffer for it.”

Sauerabend went in.

I said to Jud B, “The nightmare’s over. We grabbed him, took away his timer, put a regulation one on him, and here he is. The whole operation took just exactly four hours, right?”

“Plus who remembers how many weeks of running up and down the line.”

“No matter now. We got him back. We start from scratch.”

“And there’s now an extra one of us,” Jud B pointed out. “Do we work that little deal of taking turns?”

“We do. One of us stays with these clowns, takes them on down to 1453 as scheduled, and back to the twenty-first century. The other one of us goes to Metaxas’ villa. Want to flip a coin?”

“Why not?” He pulled a bezant of Alexius I from his pouch, and let me inspect it for kosherness. It was okay: a standing figure of Alexius on the obverse, an image of Christ enthroned on the reverse. We stipulated that Alexius was heads and Jesus was tails. Then I flipped the coin high, caught it with a quick snap of my hand, and clapped it down on the back of my other hand. I knew, from the feel of the concave coin’s edge against my skin, that it had landed heads up.

“Tails,” said the other Jud.

“Tough luck, amigo.” I showed him the coin. He grimaced and took it back from me.

Gloomily he said, “I’ve got three or four days left with this tour, right? Then two weeks of layoff, which I can’t spend in 1105. That means you can expect to see me showing up at Metaxas’ place in seventeen, eighteen days absolute.”

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“During which time you’ll make it like crazy with Pulcheria.”

“Naturally.”

“Give her one for me,” he said, and went into the room.

Downstairs, I slouched against a pillar and spent half an hour rechecking all of my comings and goings of this hectic night, to make sure I’d land in 1105 at a non-discontinuous point. The last thing I needed now was to miscalculate and show up there at a time prior to the whole Sauerabend caper, thereby finding a Metaxas to whom the entire thing was, well, Greek.

I did my calculations.

I shunted.

I wended my way once more to the lovely villa.

Everything had worked out perfectly. Metaxas embraced me in joy.

“The time-flow is intact again,” he said. “I’ve been back from 1100 only a couple of hours, but that was enough to check up on things. Leo Ducas’ wife is named Pulcheria. Someone named Angelus runs the tavern Sauerabend owned. Nobody here remembers a thing about anything. You’re safe.”

“I can’t tell you how much I—”

“Skip it, will you?”

“I suppose. Where’s Sam?”

“Down the line. He had to go back to work. And I’m about to do the same,” Metaxas said. “My layoff’s over, and there’s a tour waiting for me in the middle of December, 2059. So I’ll be gone about two weeks, and then I’ll be back here on—” He considered it. “—on October 18, 1105. What about you?”

“I stay here until October 22.” I said. “Then my alter ego will be finished with his post-tour layoff and will replace me here, while I go down the line to take out my next tour.”

“Is that how you’re going to work it? Turns?”

“It’s the only way.”

“You’re probably right,” said Metaxas, but I wasn’t.

Metaxas took his leave, and I took a bath. And then, really relaxed for the first time in what seemed like several geological epochs, I contemplated my immediate future.

First, a nap. Then a meal. And then a journey into town to call on Pulcheria, who would be restored to her rightful place in the Ducas household, and unaware of the strange metamorphosis that had temporarily come over her destinies.