Times Without Number

by John Brunner

  "If you're wondering whether I am one of the Licentiates whose palm is open to being greased," said Don Miguel coldly, "I assure you I am not."

  "No -- no, of course not!" Distressed, Don Arcimboldo half-rose. "I had no intention of implying . . ."

  "Then shall we change the subject?" Don Miguel deliberately exploited the presumptive insult to let an acid tone enter his voice. "Shall we speak of your collection? Shall we for example discuss the fact that it contains not merely your Saxon and Irish and Norse antiques, but also Moorish, Oriental, and other items I fail to recognise?"

  At a loss, Don Arcimboldo said, "Why, certainly it does, but -- "

  "In short, your taste is more eclectic than I was led to believe." Don Miguel set his glass aside, not looking at the other man directly. "Which makes it surprising that you did not keep the Aztec mask, having bought it. Tell me, why did you give it to the Marquesa, Don Arcimboldo?"

  His host's face darkened. "It is unseemly to pry into such personal matters!"

  "I have no choice. I have a commission to fulfil, under the orders of the Prince of New Castile."

  "Your behaviour is ungracious and unmannerly nonetheless! However, I will answer -- if you'll give me good grounds for requiring the information."

  Don Miguel rose from his chair and walked, glass in hand, towards a display of fine Saxon torcs and belt-buckles in hammered! gold, many of the latter set with garnets. Not looking in Don Arcimboldo's direction, he said, "You must have had a reason for adding so hugely to your debt to Higgins. It can hardly have been a moment's whim which led you almost to double your already long-outstanding obligations."

  There was no immediate reply. When Don Miguel turned away from the antiques he was admiring, he found that Don Arcimboldo had drawn a delicately wrought silver chain from a pouch at his belt, with a little pendant on the bottom of some sort of glittering crystal, and was letting it swing from his fingers as though suddenly very nervous.

  "I suppose you took possession of Higgins's records," he muttered eventually. "But the cold figures give a misleading impression, I assure you. There was no reason for him to doubt my credit. After all, I'm far from being a poor man."

  "Indeed?" said Don Miguel glacially.

  "What do you mean?" Don Arcimboldo flushed and bridled, though the swinging chain did not vary its pendulum-like motion. "Do you think that this place around you is the home of a pauper?"

  "Yes."

  The single sharp word seemed to drain much of the spirit out of Don Arcimboldo. He gave a sigh. "I yield, I yield . . . There is a grain of truth in what you say, for of late my estates in Scotland have not provided me with as much as they used to. Accordingly I will tell you why I gave the mask to the Marquesa. I hoped that she would loan me a sum to rescue me from my temporary -- temporary! -- difficulties."

  The chain went on swinging. There was silence. Don Miguel allowed the silence to stretch. And, after a little while, Don Arcimboldo's self-possession began to fray. He looked first puzzled, then alarmed. When the alarm was acute enough, Don Miguel spoke out.

  "It's no use. Don Arcimboldo! Before coming here I spent a long while in conversation with an inquisitor who is expert in matters of the mind. I have taken an antidote to the sort of thing you gave me in this very good wine. So you cannot lull my brain with your swinging crystal and wheedle me into forgetfulness -- as you served Higgins!"

  The last phrase cracked like the lash of a whip. Don Arcimboldo let fall his hands; white-faced he whimpered, "I swear I do not understand!"

  "Your oath is false. You understand me well. What has happened went like this. The temptation to join fortunate outsiders who have voyaged illegally into the past grew too strong for you to resist, but in order to bribe the corrupt Licentiate who made your journey possible you were compelled to overspend your income. Consequently you ran up a debt with Higgins -- an undignified situation! Doubtless he pestered you for his money, and you feared he might warn the other merchants in the market that you were defaulting on a bill. Presumably -- for you are not at bottom a stupid man -- your original intention in smuggling back the splendid Aztec mask was merely to keep it in secret and gloat over it by yourself. When Higgins became a nuisance, I think you must have considered offering it to him in settlement, and then rejected the idea, knowing his reputation for caution and his habit of checking that the extratemporal objects he was offered had been licensed by my Society. So you hit on a subtler way out of your corner. You deluded him into believing he had bought the mask from someone else.

  "Small wonder he cannot tell the inquisitors from whom! How can one remember a person who did not exist? But you did not manage to get at his clerks, did you? I've spoken to them, and even the clerk who keeps Higgins's stock-list had no record of the mask.

  "Oh, possibly this was intended to lend colour to the hoped-for outcome, the imprisonment of Higgins for trading in temporal contraband. In jail he could scarcely continue to dun you for his money! I deduce this from your action in giving the mask to the Marquesa, who could be relied upon to boast about it within days and draw the attention of someone like myself who would recognise the illegality of its presence here. Whereupon you would play the innocent dupe, and let Higgins suffer the rigours of the law.

  "You acted your role well. Indeed, until you drew that chain from your pouch I still half-doubted my own conclusions. But the inquisitor I talked to this afternoon warned me about such tricks, and now I'm convinced beyond a doubt."

  Don Arcimboldo cast the silver chain violently to the floor. "It's a pack of lies!" he shouted. "This nonsense will never convince anyone but a fool like you!"

  "I'm prepared to take that risk," Don Miguel said stonily. He slid his sword from its scabbard and presented its point to the other's chest. "Don Arcimboldo Ruiz, by the authority in me vested of the Society of Time I arrest you on charges of temporal contraband and desire you to go with me to face trial. You may have met one corrupt Licentiate, Don Arcimboldo -- but learn from this that some of us take our rules seriously. After all, we are meddling with the very fabric of the universe."

  VIII

  The vacant space between the crystal pillars hummed faintly; those present in the hall shifted on their chairs, wiping their faces now and then. It was always warm in the neighbourhood of the pillars when a traveller was about to return from a voyage into time.

  The Prince of New Castile seemed worse affected by the heat than were his colleagues, and grunted and muttered to himself. Abruptly he could not stand it any longer, and snapped his fingers at an attentive aide nearby.

  "Wine!" he barked. "The heat is terrible!"

  "Yes, your highness," said the aide alertly. "And for the General Officers as well?"

  Red Bear moved his long Indian face once in a gesture of acceptance, but Father Ramón did not stir. After a pause, the Prince waved at the aide to hurry up.

  "Think you it is well done, Father?" he snapped.

  Father Ramón seemed to come back to the present from a private voyage into the elsewhen. He sketched a brief smile, turning to the Prince.

  "As well done as we may do," he parried. "At least we know that the golden mask is being restored; whether the restoration itself was wise, we can only guess."

  Red Bear snorted. "If you had doubts about the wisdom of putting the thing back, why give me so much trouble over it?"

  "We must always doubt our own wisdom," said Father Ramón peaceably. He raised a hand towards the crystal pillars. "I think the moment is at hand -- the humming grows louder."

  The technicians on duty around the time-hall had tensed to their positions. Now, suddenly, there was a clap like thunder and a smell of raw heat, and in the space between the pillars a shape appeared: a curious shape of iron and silver bars, that seemed to glow for a moment as energy washed out of their substance in the process of their rotation back to normal-dimensionality.

  In the middle of the frame, a man's form was seen to collapse.

  Father Ramón jerked to hi
s feet. "Be swift!" he ordered the technicians. "Help him -- come on, move!"

  The technicians darted forward, some to dismantle the frame of metal bars, others to help Don Miguel to his feet and lead him to a couch that stood waiting. Slaves hastened to fetch restoratives and basins of clean warm water.

  A bare half-hour had elapsed in the hall since the moment they had dispatched their emissary to the past. But it was plain that for him much time had gone by. His skin was burnt by sun to the colour of leather, and his eyes were red and inflamed with dust. The General Officers gathered anxiously about his couch, wondering how gravely he had suffered.

  Not especially, it transpired. For, having accepted a sip or two of stimulating cordial, he brushed aside further attentions and managed to sit up. He passed his tongue over sunchapped lips and spoke in a thick slow voice.

  "It is done," he said, and looked about him as though not yet convinced of his return to the familiar world. His mind was still whirling with the memory of the great city of Texcoco burning in tropic daylight, as his body was still clad only in the breech-clout of an Indian of that time. The slaves had begun to wash away the painted symbols from his cheeks, but had completed only half their task; the division of his face summed up the way he was still poised between two realities.

  The General Officers breathed a sigh of relief. Red Bear said harshly, "You are certain?"

  "Absolutely. I found the workshop of Hungry Dog without trouble, at the very time he was working on the mask. When it was complete, it waited in his house for the festival at which it was to be dedicated with sacrifices to the great god Tezcatlipoca. I contrived to see it on a number of occasions prior to the date of the festival. And the last day before, a man came into the shop and stole the mask."

  "Was it Don Arcimboldo?" demanded the Prince.

  "Presumably. Perhaps."

  "Aren't you certain?" The Prince leaned forward angrily, but Father Ramón laid a hand restrainingly on his arm.

  "Our brother Navarro has done well," he said.

  "How so, if he cannot prove who the thief was?" the Prince countered, blinking.

  "Why, he had at all costs to avoid the risk of being seen by Don Arcimboldo. Had they met, Don Arcimboldo might have recognised him when they met at the Marquesa's. This did not happen. Therefore it was correct not to confront him."

  "So I reasoned," said Don Miguel, resting his chin wearily in his hands. "Accordingly, when I saw the mask was gone, I simply replaced it -- I mean I replaced it with the version I'd brought from now. I stayed long enough to ensure that it was dedicated at the festival as planned, and . . . here I am."

  The Prince grunted. "It's all in order now, you think, Father Ramón?"

  "As far as we can tell."

  "Good! Then I must go back to New Castile. Had it not been for this delay I'd planned to leave Londres days ago. Red Bear, I charge you with attending to the rest of the details. Good day!"

  He gave curt nods to his colleagues and departed from the time-hall with cloak flying and aides trotting at his heels. After a thoughtful pause, Red Bear moved away from Don Miguel's couch to supervise the dismantling of the time apparatus, and Father Ramón remained alone.

  "How do you feel, my son?" he asked eventually.

  "I begin to recover," said Don Miguel, and accepted another sip of the cordial. "My hurts are more in my mind than in my body. I was witness to a sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca less than a day ago, and I still feel nauseated."

  "Understandably," the Jesuit said with sympathy.

  Don Miguel sat up on the couch with his arms linked around his shins and set his chin on his knees, staring into nowhere. After a pause he said, "You know, Father, it sometimes makes me wonder what blindness we also may be guilty of."

  "Explain further," the Jesuit invited.

  "Well . . . Well, what I mean is this. I recall the Marquesa saying to me how much she admires the goldwork and featherwork of the Aztecs, and it's true: their artistry was magnificent. Yet for all their art, their masonry, their social discipline, the people I've just been among were savages, habituated to sacrificing men by the score in the most cruel manner. For all that they understood the motion of the stars and planets, they never used the wheel except to move children's toy animals. In some ways, unquestionably, we're superior. And yet we may have our blind spots too. Although Borromeo showed us how we might rotate the dimensions of substances so that the world becomes flat and we can voyage back into time, although we live in an orderly world rid of much of the horror of war -- nonetheless, one cannot but wonder whether we too are wasting on children's toys marvels that later ages will put to use."

  "Yes," said Father Ramón, following with his eyes the movement of the technicians taking apart the framework of iron and silver. And then he repeated more slowly, "Ye-es . . ."

  "What is perhaps worse still," continued Don Miguel, "is the knowledge that we -- unworthy as we are -- have the power to re-shape history! So far we have managed to confine that power to a nucleus of reliable individuals. But out of a thousand or so Licentiates, if thirty have already proved corruptible -- why, our greed and carelessness could wreck history back to the moment of Creation!"

  Father Ramón seemed to draw himself together inside his habit. He said, "We are gifted with free will, my son. It is unquestionably a very heavy burden."

  Suddenly incredulous, Don Miguel twisted around on the couch and stared at him. "But . . . ! Father, how could this never have occurred to me before? With time-travel, would it not be possible for agents of evil to plot journeys back into time, with the intention of undoing the good consequences of the acts of others? Would it not even be possible for such persons to deliberately corrupt the great men of the past?"

  "You are astute," said Father Ramón after a second's debate with himself. "It has indeed been conjectured that the influence of evil which we discern in our history may be the working out of just such interference as you suggest. Some theorists have even argued that the fall of the angels hurled from heaven may have been a plunge through time, rather than through space. But this is the deepest of all theological questions today."

  It occurred to Don Miguel that he ought perhaps to be surprised at carrying on this casual conversation with one of the august General Officers of the Society, especially with this Jesuit whose reputation was that of an aloof philosopher inhabiting the rarefied regions of advanced metaphysics. Yet he seemed singularly approachable -- far more so than, say, Red Bear.

  He ventured, "I myself do not see how such a question could be answered at all."

  "You mean the question as to whether the good results of human actions could be wiped out by temporal interference? Good, of course, cannot be destroyed, and it is heretical to maintain that it can."

  The edge of reproof on the Jesuit's voice cut Don Miguel's self-assurance to ribbons. He said humbly, "In that case it was foolish of me to voice my speculation."

  "Paradoxically, it was the reverse of foolish. It showed rather unusual insight." Father Ramón rose, seeming to reach a decision. "When you are rested, my son, visit me in my private office. I think you deserve some information you have not yet been given."

  IX

  Father Ramón's office was perfectly bare; there was no ornament bar an ivory crucifix and a candle, not even the usual portrait of St. Ignatius. It contained only bookcases, a desk and two chairs, one hard, one soft. The Jesuit was himself sitting in the hard one when Don Miguel entered, and indicated that the other was for his visitor. Sitting down uncertainly, Don Miguel wondered what information he was to be made privy to.

  Father Ramón offered him tobacco and a pipe, which he refused, and then leaned back, putting his fingertips together.

  "Consider what makes an act of free will free," he said.

  The suddenness of the question took Don Miguel aback. He muttered a confused answer which Father Ramón ignored.

  "No, it consists in this: that all the possible outcomes be fulfilled."

  " What?"
>
  "Precisely that. If there is free will -- and we hold a priori that there is -- all opportunities for decision must conclude in just so many ways as there are alternatives. Thus to kill and not to kill and merely to wound more or less severely -- all these must follow upon a choice between them."

  "But I don't understand! There -- there is no room for that to be true!"

  "No?" The other sketched his habitual faint smile. "Then approach it from a concrete instance. You go into the past. You abstract a crucial object -- shall we say a bullet from a gun aimed by an assassin at a king? A king may change history by living or dying. Would you thereupon return to the same present as the one you left?"

  "No, of course not," said Don Miguel, and heard his voice shaking.

  "But knowledge is indestructible, isn't it? The knowledge, for example, of how to construct time apparatus! So is there any reason why, from that alternative historical outcome, you shouldn't return to replace the bullet? The king dies -- again , so to speak. And the present to which you return after restoring the status quo . . . is the original present."