Элинор Арнасон: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

Do these phantom beings know that I intend their erasure?

He regrets the destruction of the woman. She had been a fine source of information respecting the entanglements of Theodora, at least insofar as she had known of them. Now, he is thrown back on Procopius’ Secret History , and who knows how reliable that fellow’s gossip is? He might have to risk scouting trips to the crucial nexus, and that always carries a risk of churning up turbulence. Change upon change, until all hope of restoration is lost!

The military man and the inexpressive woman approach and Nagkmur takes an involuntary step back. The white-haired woman looks on. Phantoms, all of them, of no particular consequence, save that they might impede the completion of his mission. The man—he is reluctant to give these phantoms names. Names would make them more real—draws his weapon and the Patrolman’s heart skips a beat. His hand starts toward his own holster.

But the man does not hold the weapon as one preparing to use it, and Nagkmur desists. “How may this one assist?” he asks.

“It would be awkward to explain my presence here,” the man confesses. “There will be investigations, and…” He smiles briefly. “… who knows what they might find when they start poking into things.”

Nagkmur bows and gestures. “Nearest exit, that way.”

But the man is stubborn. “No, they’ll be able to track me down from the slugs they dig out of the headwalker. My service weapon’s ballistics are on file.”

“Perhaps,” Nagkmur suggests, “smoldering carcass of giant alien space invader provide distraction to forensic investigators.”

The expressionless woman speaks. “The fewer puzzles that confront CSU, the better. They will seize on what is familiar. For reasons I can’t get into, it would be best if no one digs too deeply into Colonel Zendahl—or myself.”

Nagkmur shrugs. “Not my problem.”

“But you can help,” the woman insists. “You can take his weapon into the past and switch it with another of the same vintage. I can alter the records to make it appear that the replacement has always been his weapon.”

Nagkmur thinks this will give him an opportunity to depart this nexus not only without opposition, but with their blessing. If he does not come back, what can they do? “Very well,” he says. “I will do it.”

But the white-haired woman says, “I don’t think it would be a good idea to let him go.”

Annie does not hesitate. Moving too swiftly to follow, she places herself between the time patrolman and his vehicle.

But Zendahl is perplexed. “What’s going on?”

“Our time-traveling friend,” Janet says with a nod toward Nagkmur, “plans to wipe out the space-time continuum.”

“What? How do you know that?”

Annie tells him, “Murchison is a mind-reader.” Then to Janet she says, “You answer questions no one has asked.”

What if she reveals our presence to the aborigines?

“I wouldn’t worry, colonel,” Janet tells Zendahl. “One hand washes another. I’d rather you didn’t noise around my peculiar sensitivity, either. But you,” she addresses Annie Troy, “I can’t hear your mind at all.”

“That must mean I don’t have one,” the android concludes. “I’m a machine, an android,” she tells them. “I was built by the Institute for a field beta test.”

“Nonsense,” says Zendahl. “You’re as human as I am.” (And Janet nearly busts a gut.)

“It’s the Turing Fallacy,” Annie explains. “I run a very good simulation of a human being, but a simulation is not the thing itself. You can’t fly from JFK to LAX in a flight simulator.”

Swiftly, Janet explains what she has gleaned from Nagkmur’s thoughts. “But he accidentally… I guess ‘overwrote’ is the right word…. he accidentally overwrote his own history with the one we know and now blames himself for the deaths of all his people. He’s suffering the biggest case of survivor’s guilt in history.”

“Can people who never actually existed actually die?” Annie wonders aloud. The question resonates strangely with her since in a sense she does not exist, either.

It also resonates with Nagkmur, who has finally been pushed over the brink into tears. They course down his cheeks and he covers his face to contain them. They might leave river valleys in their wake, they flow so fiercely. He recalls his honored father, his stern approvals and sterner reprimands. His mother, moon-faced and smiling. His brothers and he running through the backstreets of Dzhokaht, creating and enacting fantasies on the fly. His mentor, Bon Hoyma, who had come from the far future to recruit him into a fraternity that he had not known existed. All dead now. Worse than dead.

He wonders if he can fight his way past the machine-woman, who crouches like a tiger in his path. He faces her, turning his back on the other two.

And a voice from the floor cries, “Don’t leave me here, Sidd!”

Startled by this unexpected plea from an unlooked-for quarter, Nagkmur stares open-mouthed at Stacey. Her blood has clotted, her wounds have knit and her broken bones are realigning even as he watches. What marvel is this? From how far in his own future has she come?

Janet speaks up. “She doesn’t come from the future,” she tells him. “She came from the past. But she took the long way here. She doesn’t die.”

“Self-repair?” muses Annie. There are materials that self-repair cracks while retaining strength, self-healing polymers from Oak Ridge. Raytheon incorporated self-healing into a complex system-on-chip design that enables the chip to sense undesired circuit behaviors and correct them. She supposes that what artifice has contrived, nature might accomplish on its own. “Is there anything that can kill her?”

Janet considers how a machine might test that hypothesis and shudders. “It still hurts,” Janet warns. “She still feels pain.”

But Stacey, too, understands that her secret is now known and while her first impulse is to flee and hide, that of Zendahl is not. And Nagkmur must be dealt with. Janet realizes that all three people present would happily see her dead to preserve their secrets, and Annie Troy could carry out the hit without warning. She takes a step or two backward. “We have to stop him,” she tells the others more shrilly.

“Why should we believe you?” Zendahl asks. “We’ve only your word for his intentions.”

“You could wait until we all cease to exist, but I wouldn’t recommend it. We only had your word for it that the headwalker was hostile.”

“You were in my head. You know it was true.”

But Janet shakes her head. “I only know that you believed it was true. Maybe you were deluded.”

If the Stacey woman is not of his own timeline, Nagkmur thinks, she is just another phantom, albeit a long-lived one. Yet, he has grown accustomed to her presence, and what better companion could he ask for planning the rework on Old Constantinople? He helps her to her feet, thinking that her self-healing abilities would be a useful thing to learn, even if jan’ow were required to extract the secret.

Nagkmur smiles at his enemies, knowing that they are also enemies of one another. He holds his hands in a placating gesture.

The tenth hexagram. Heaven shines down upon the Marsh but the Marsh reflects Heaven imperfectly. Fully aware of the danger on the narrow path ahead, the Superior Man determines to move forward. The future is uncertain, but there are times when a risk must be taken:

You tread upon the tiger’s tail.

Not perceiving you as a threat, the startled tiger does not bite.

Success.

Thunder fills the Heavens. But the Superior Man does not appear intimidating or threatening. Opportunity arises along this course.