Manuel Davis smiled wistfully. "Did find her, Davis Family opted her-daughter, not wife. Still a baby. But not baby when counts! Worked hard to free Luna every day, every hour, every minute, danger don' stop her never. Fourth o' July, 2076, Hazel Meade Davis youngest comrade signing Declaration of Independence. No comrade rated it more!"
Mr. Davis had tears in his eyes. So did I.
Captain Sterling stood up. "Mr. Davis, I am humbly proud to have heard that story. Mr. Campbell, I have enjoyed your hospitality. Colonel Campbell, I hope you decide to fight with us; we need you. And now, if I may be excused, I must leave. As the Galactic Overlord does not take long lunch hours, I must not."
Uncle Jock said, "Shucks, John, you've got to have some R and R now and then. Come go dinosaur hunting with me again. Time spent in the Mesozoic won't affect your quest; the Overlord will never know you're away. That's the greatest beauty of timejumping."
"I would know that I was away. But I do thank you. I enjoyed that hunt." He bowed and left.
Dr. Harshaw said quietly, "There goes real nobility. When at last he destroys the Overlord, he will be erased. He knows it. It doesn't stop him."
"Why must he be erased?" I demanded.
"Eh? Colonel, I know that this is new to you... but you are, or have been, a fabulist yourself, have you not?"
"Still am, as far as I know. Finished a long one and sent it off to my agent just ten days ago. Must get back to work soon- got a wife to support."
"Then you know that, for plot purposes, especially in adventure stories, heroes and villains come in complementary pairs. Each is necessary to the other."
"Yes, but- Look, lay it on the bar. This man who just left is truly the character that Hazel-and her son, Roger Stone- created for their series The Scourge of the SpacewaysT'
"Yes. Hazel and her son created him. Sterling knows it. Look, sir, all of us are fictions, someone's fabulist dreams.
But usually we do not know it. John Sterling knows it, and is strong enough to stand up to it. He knows his role and his destiny; he accepts it."
"He doesn't have to be erased." Dr. Harshaw looked puzzled. "But you are a writer. Uh... a literary writer perhaps? Plotless?"
"Me? I don't know how to write literature; I write stories.
For printout or three-dee or even bound books, but all sorts. Sin, suffer, and repent. Horse opera. Space opera. War. Murder. Spies. Sea stories. Whatever. Hazel and I are going to revive her classic series, with Captain Sterling in the lead role. As always. So what's this noise about 'erasing' him?"
"You are not going to let him destroy the Galactic Overlord? You should, you must, as the Overlord is every bit as evil as Boskone."
"Oh, certainly! First thirteen weeks. Should have happened years back."
"But he couldn't. The series was dropped with both hero and villain still alive. Sterling has been forced to fight only a holding action ever since."
"Oh. Well, we'll fix that. Overlord delenda est!"
"Then what does Sterling do?" I started to answer, suddenly realized that the question was not inquiry but Socratic. For each fine cat, a fine rat. A hero of Sterling's stature must oppose a villain as strong as he is. If we kill off the Overlord, then we must dream up Son of Overlord, with just as many balls, teeth just as long, disposition just as vile, and steam coming out of his ears.
"I don't know. We'll think of something. Age him, maybe, and put him to pasture as commandant of the Star Patrol Academy. Some such. No need to kill him off. A job like that would not require a villain as horrendous as the Overlord." "Wouldn't it?" Harshaw asked quietly. "Uh- Maybe you would like to take over the series?" "Not me. I'm semi-retired. All I have now is The Stone-bender Family, a series strictly for laughs, no substantial villain required. Now I know the truth of the World as Myth I will never again create a real villain... and I thank Klono that I never have, not really, as I have only a limited belief in villainy."
"Well, I can't answer without Hazel anyhow; I'm the junior writer, in charge of punctuation and filling in weather and scenery; she controls plot. So I must change the subject. Uncle Jock, what was this you were saying to Captain Sterling about hunting dinosaurs? One of your jokes? Like the time you sawed off ten square klicks of the Ross Ice Shelf and towed it to Singapore, swimming sidestroke."
"Not sidestroke all the way; that's not possible."
"Come off it. Dinosaurs."
"What about dinosaurs? I like to hunt them. I took John Sterling with me once; he got a truly magnificent tyrannosaurus rex. Would you like to try it?"
"Are you serious? Uncle, you know I don't hunt. I don't like to shoot anything that can't shoot back."
"Oho! You misunderstood me, nephew. We don't kill the poor beasties. Killing a dinosaur is about as sporting as shooting a cow. And not as good meat. A dinosaur more than a year old is tough and tasteless. I did try them, years back, when some thought was being given to using dinosaur meat to quench a famine on time line seven. But the logistics were dreadful and, when you come right down to it, there is little justice in killing stupid lizards to feed stupid people; they had earned their famine. But hunting dinosaurs with cameras, that's real fun. It even gets sporting if you go after the big carnivores and happen to flush a bull who is feeling edgy and sexy-it improves your running. Or else. Dickie, there is a spot down about Wichita where I can promise you triceratops, several sorts of pterodactyls, duckbills, thunder lizards, and maybe a male stegosaurus all in one day. Once this caper is over we'll take a day off and do it. What do you say?"
"Is it that easy?"
"With the installed equipment the Mesozoic is no farther away than is THQ or Boondock. Time and space are illusions; the Burroughs irrelevancy gear will plunk you down in the middle of a herd of feeding and fornicating flapdoodles before you can say sixty-five million years."
'The way you phrased that invitation seemed to imply that you assume that I have closed on Task Adam Selene."
"Dickie, the equipment does indeed belong to the Time Corps... and it is expensive, how expensive we don't discuss. It was built to support Plan Long View; its recreational use is incidental. Yes, I implied that. Aren't you going to do it?"
Mannie Davis looked at me, with no expression. Rufo stood up, said loudly, "I've got to mosey along; Star has a chore for me. Thanks and thanks for the last time. Jock. Nice meeting you. Colonel." He left quickly. Harshaw said nothing.
I let out a deep breath. "Uncle, I might do it if Hazel insists. But I'm going to try to talk her out of it. Nothing has been offered me that convinces me that I am wrong about the two options I offered. Either of them is a more sensible approach to recovering the programs and memories that embody Holmes IV or Mike... and I am glad to stipulate that they should be recovered. But my methods are more logical."
Harshaw said, "It is not a matter of logic. Colonel." "It's my neck. Doctor. But in the long run I'll do what Hazel wishes... I think. It's just-" "Just what, Dickie?"
"I hate to go into action with inadequate intelligence! Always have. Uncle, for the past week or ten days-hard to figure it, the way I've bounced around-I've been haunted by unexplained and, well, murderous nonsense. Is the Overlord you talk about after me? Does the fact that I'm mixed up in this account for the endless near misses? Or am I getting paranoid?"
"I don't know. Tell me about them." I started to do so. Shortly Harshaw took out a pocket notebook, started taking notes. I tried to remember all of it: Enrico Schultz and his weird remark about Tolliver and his mention of Walker Evans. His death. If it was his death. Bill. The curious behavior of the management of Golden Rule. Those rolligons and the killers in each. Jefferson Mao. The muggers at the Raffles- "Is that all?"
"Isn't that enough? No, not quite. What cargo was Auntie carrying? How did we get chivvied into flying a heap that durn near killed us? What were Lady Diana and her fat-headed husbands doing away out there in the wilds? If I could afford it I would spend endless money on sherlocks to dig out what was going on, what was truly a
imed at me, what was just my nerves, what was simply coincidence."
Harshaw said, "There are no coincidences. One respect in which World as Myth is far simpler than earlier teleology is the simple fact that there are no accidents, no coincidences."
Uncle Jock said, "Jubal? I don't have the authority." "And I do. Yes." He stood up. "Both of us, I think." My uncle stood up, too. "Dickie boy, you wait right here; we'll be gone five minutes or so. Errand to do."
As they left, Davis stood up, "Excuse, please? Need change arm."
"Sure, Papa Mannie. No, no. Pixel! Beer is not for baby cats."
They were gone seven minutes by my Sonychron. But not, quite apparently, by their time. Uncle had grown a full beard. Harshaw had a new, pink knife scar across his left cheek. I looked at them. "Ghosts of Christmas past! What happened?"
"Everything. Is there any beer left there? Cissy," he said, not raising his voice, "could we have some beer? And Jubal and I have not eaten in some time. Hours. Days, maybe."
"Right away," Aunt Cissy's disembodied voice answered. "Dear? I think you ought to take a nap."
"Later."
"Just as soon as you have eaten. Forty minutes."
"Quit nagging me. Could I have tomato soup? For Jubal, too."
"I'll fetch soup and more of your picnic. Forty-five minutes until your nap; that's official. Til says so."
"Remind me to beat you."
"Yes, dear. But not today; you're exhausted."
"Very well." Uncle Jock turned to me. "Let's see, what'U you have first? Those rolligons? Your friend Hendrik Schultz handled that one; you can be sure it's thorough. He has turned out to be an ichiban field investigator. You can forget paranoia on that one, Dickie-two opponents, the Time Lords and the Scene Changers... and both of them after you as well as each other. You have a charmed life, son-bom to be hanged."
"What do you mean?-Time Lords and Scene Changers? And why me?"
"May not be their own names for themselves. The Lords and the Changers are groups doing the sort of thing the Circle does... but we don't see eye to eye with them. Dickie, you don't think that in all the universes to the Number of the Beast or more, we of the Circle would be the only ones to catch on to the truth and attempt to do something about it, do you?"
"I don't know anything about it, one way or another."
"Colonel," put in Dr. Harshaw, "a major shortcoming of World as Myth lies in the fact that we contend with... and often lose to... three sorts of antagonists: villains by design such as the Galactic Oveiiord, and groups like us but with different intentions-bad in our opinion, perhaps good in theirs-and the third and most powerful, the myth makers themselves-such as Homer and Twain and Shakespeare and Baum and Swift and their colleagues in the pantheon. But not those I have named. Their bodies have died; they live on by the immortal corpus of myth each has created... which does not change and therefore does not imperil us.
"But there are living myth makers, every one of them dangerous, every one of them casually uncaring as he revises a myth and erases a character." Harshaw smiled grimly. "The only way one can live with the knowledge is to realize first that it is the only game in town and second that it does not hurt. Erasure. Being X'd out of the story."
"How do you know that it doesn't hurt?"
"Because I refuse to entertain any other theory! Shall we get on with our report?"
"Dickie boy, you asked, 'Why me?' For the same reason Jubal and I left a pleasant lunch to work our tails off and to set many others to arduous and dangerous investigation in several time lines. Because of Task Adam Selene and your key part in it. Near as we can tell, the Time Lords want to kidnap Mike while the Scene Changers want to destroy him. But both groups want you dead; you're a menace to their plans."
"But at that time I had not even heard of Mike the Computer."
"Best time to kill you, wouldn't you say? Cissy, you are not only beautiful, you are pleasant to have around. Besides your hidden talents. Just put it down; we'll serve ourselves."
"Blagueur et gros menteur. You still must nap. Message from Til. You are not to come to the dinner table until you shave off that beard."
'Tell that baggage that I will starve before I will be henpecked."
"Yes, sir. And I feel the same way she does about it."
"Peace, woman."
"So I volunteer to shave you. And to cut your hair."
"I accept."
"Right after your nap."
"Begone. Jubal, did you have any of this jellied salad? It is something Til does exceptionally well... although all three of my owners are fine cooks."
"Will you put that in writing?"
"I told you to disappear. Jubal, living with three women takes fortitude."
"I know. I did so, for many years. Fortitude plus angelic disposition. And a taste for lazy living. But a group marriage, such as our Long Family, combines the advantages of bachelorhood, monogamy, and polygamy, with the drawbacks of none."
"I won't argue it but I'll stick with my three Graces as long as they'll let me hang around. Now let's see- Enrico Schultz. No such character."
"So?" I answered. "He made some horrid stains on my tablecloth."
"So he had another name. But you knew that. Best hypothesis makes him a member of the same gang as your friend Bill... who was a smiling villain if one ever smiled, as well as a consummate actor. We call them The Revisionists. Motivation had to be Adam Selene. Not Walker Evans."
"Why did he mention Walker Evans?"
'To shake you up, maybe. Dickie, I didn't know about General Evans until you brought the matter up, since that debacle is still in my future. My normal future. I can see how it weighs on your mind. Will weigh on your mind. Remember, I didn't know that you had been invalided out of the Andorran Contract Crusaders until you told me.
"Anyhow- All of the 'Friends of Walker Evans' are dead except you and one who went to the Asteroids and can't be found. This is as of July tenth, 2188, eleven years forward. Unless you want to talk to any alive on some date not quite so forward."
"Can't see any reason to."
"So it seemed to us. Now Walker Evans himself. Lazarus handled this... and a spot of world-changing, partly to show you what can be done. No attempt was made to revise the battle. It would be difficult, in 2177, to revise a battle in 2178 without utterly changing your life. Either kill you that year, or not lose your leg and you stay in the service-yes, I now know about your leg although it's forward from here. Either way, you don't go to Golden Rule, you don't marry Hazel... and we aren't sitting here, talking about it. World-changing is touchy, Dickie-best done in homeopathic doses.
"Lazarus has two messages for you. He says that you should feel no personal guilt over that debacle. To do so would be as silly as a subordinate of Custer feeling guilty over Little Big Horn... to which he adds that Custer was a far more brilliant general than Evans ever was. Lazarus speaks as one who has held every rank from private to commander in chief, in experience spread over many centuries and seventeen wars.
"That's the first message. The second is this: Tell your nephew that, yes, it horrifies nice people. But it happens. Only those who go out beyond the end of street lights and of pavements know how such things can happen. He says that he is certain that Walker Evans would not hold it against you. Dickie, what's he talking about?"
"Had he wanted you to know, he would have told you." "Reasonable. Was General Evans a man of good taste?" "What?" I stared at my uncle-then answered reluctantly:
"Well, no, I would not say so. I found him tough and a bit stringy."
"Now we have it out in the open1-"
"Yes, damn you!" "-and I can tell you the rest, the world-changing. A field operative hid a couple of ration packs under the General's body. When you moved the body, you found them... and it was just enough that none of the Friends of Walker Evans ever reached that degree of hunger necessary to overcome the taboo. So it never happened."
"Then why do I remember it?" "Do you?"
"W
hy-" "You remember finding jettisoned field rations under the body. And how good you felt!"
"Uncle, this is crazy."
"That's world-changing. For a time, you have a memory. Then a faded memory of a memory. Then nothing. It never happened, Dickie. You went through one hell of an ordeal and lost a leg. But you did not eat your commanding officer."
Uncle went on, "Jubal, what do we have left that's important? Dickie, you can't expect to have all your questions answered; no man can expect that. Mmm, oh, yes, those diseases- You had two of them; the rest was hype. You were cured in about three days; then they kept you in a controlled-memory field and put a new leg on you... and did something else. Haven't you felt better lately? Brisk? More energetic?"
"Well... yes. But it dates from the day I married Hazel, not from Boondock."
"Both, probably. During the month they had you available Dr. Ishtar gave you a booster. I learned that they shifted you from the rejuvenation clinic to the hospital just the day before they let you wake up. Oh, they really swindled you, boy; they gave you a new leg and made you thirty years younger. I think you ought to sue them."
"Oh, knock it off. How about that heat bomb? More hype?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Not decided, just the time tick spiked. The thing is-"
Harshaw intervened. "Richard, we think now that we may be able to finish Task Adam Selene before a heat bomb would be necessary. There are some plans. So the heat bombing right now is in the status of Schrodinger's Cat. The outcome depends on Task Adam Selene. And vice versa. We'll see."
"These plans- You're assuming that I'll come around."
"No. We're assuming that you won't."
"Humm... If you are assuming that I won't, why are you two bothering to tell me all this?"
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