Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness

by Mike Allen

  There were only two figures frozen in the moment of the murder scene. One was motionless on a throne, armored in ice and cloaked in mist; his face, a mirror. The other was a tall guy, not so good looking, trench coat scarlet with motionless flame, stylish fedora suspended in mid-air to one side of his head. He was in the middle of getting shot, impaled on an energy-blast.

  Yours truly. Of course. And to think that one of my goals in life had been to leave a good-looking corpse.

  I looked at the blast first.

  It originated off to the left. Near one of the pillars, about shoulder-high, a small puff of mist was frozen. Trailing out from it, motionless, like a worm made of flame, was a line of Cherenkov radiation, and knots and streamers of cloud where the atmosphere couldn’t get out of the way fast enough to avoid being vaporized. Little glowing balls like St. Elmo’s fire dotted the fiery discharge-stream, where ionized oxygen molecules were being turned into ozone. Brighter crooked lines paralleling the discharge-path indicated atoms split by the force of the passing bullet.

  At the other end of the discharge-stream was me, also ending. I looked at myself hanging in mid-air, caught in mid-explosion and mid-death. My smartgun was leaping like salmon trying, too late, to get into my fingers. It hung, frozen, a few inches above my out-flung hand. Not smart enough, this time, it seemed.

  I (the me version of me, that is) stepped through clouds of blood and flying steam to get a closer look at me (the becoming-a-corpse version of me). The exit wound was enormous, as if half my chest and all of my left arm had been drawn in hazy red chalk-smudges by an Impressionist artist.

  The smell was terrible. I know the textbooks say you’re not supposed to be able to smell anything in null-time. But, I figure, that if my eye can move through a cloud of frozen photons and pick up an image, then my nose can move through a cloud of motionless me-molecules and sniff roasted flesh.

  There was no visible entry wound. Of course. The bullet must have been ultra-microscopic, perhaps only a few molecules wide, in order to be small enough to slip through my smartgun’s watchdog web. And it must have been traveling fast enough, a hefty percentage of the speed of light, to be quick enough to get me before my smartgun could react.

  And the bullet was programmed, somehow, to drop velocity and transfer its kinetic energy to my body in a broad, slow shockwave once it struck.

  Somehow? A time-retardation wave could do it. The relative velocity would change once it left the field. Just another application of the same technology which made my smartgun.

  Heck. I could have this done this myself, with a smartgun just like the one I had. I already thought of two ways to reproduce this effect just with the programs I presently had loaded.

  I straightened up and backed away, brushing anachronistic drops of blood off my coat.

  23.

  After I was done looking at the figure on the throne, I turned and said to d’Artagnan, “I need to take a reading of the time depth and energy signature of the discharge wave with the sensors in my smartgun. I’m going to draw it nice and slow, so your steel gorilla knows I’m on the level here. That all right with you?”

  D’Artagnan spread his hands. “That’s fine.”

  For the first time I noticed a slight blur of mist around his fingers as he made the gesture.

  He had time-doubled. It looked like a Recursive Alternate Information shift; but I wasn’t sure. There was an alternate line out there somewhere where he had done something else with his hand. Maybe touched a control or given a hand-signal to the cataphract. Or, if it was actually a Recursive Anachronism shift, he might have handed something forward or backward to himself.

  Or he might not have done anything at all. With a Parallel Displacement shift, a Master of Time, a real one, maintaining position a few seconds away and pacing us, could have handed him something.

  I drew my smartgun slowly.

  25.

  And I was thinking: Why not?

  Why the hell not?

  Hitler’s mother, at sixteen years old, looked up at me with eyes as wide and trusting and innocent and hurt as any you’d ever dream of seeing. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she would have said something, but the slug had torn out her throat. She got blood all over my pants and shoes when she fell toward me. It had smelled then the way it smelled now.

  Stalin’s mother was a sad and overworked washer-woman, living quietly and harming no one when the Masters decided to abort her future. They had me shoot her in the stomach twice more after she fell, burnt and screaming, just to make sure the helpless baby would be dead.

  Why not? They can all make it undone again. So they told me.

  And then one Time Master or another took a dislike to the atomic wars of the 2030s. Einstein was a little boy playing with mud-pies in a backyard garden when my misplaced scattershot tore off his arms and legs and left him blind, bleeding and screaming until I could reprogram and fire a particle beam to put him out of his misery.

  When I asked to be allowed to go back and do that assassination again, the Masters’ representative told me that chronoportation should not be used for frivolous reasons. He sternly warned me that paradox weakened the fabric of timespace.

  Why not?

  I won’t even tell you who I had to kill to let a curious Master of Time explore the alternate line where Christianity never rose to dominance in Europe. At least that one was done with one clean shot to the head.

  Why not?

  If I could set out to kill pregnant women and innocent girls and little boys and the nicest guy I’d ever met, why not set out to kill me?

  22.

  I looked around to see who I had been (was going to be) talking to, when I was (would be) shot.

  Only one of the thrones was occupied. There he was in all his regalia. A Master of Eternity. His armor was made, not of metal, but of destiny crystal, gleaming like ice. From his shoulders depended a cloak of mist, created, allegedly, from a single thread vibrating backward and forward across several seconds. This cloak of distorted time fell from his shoulders in streamers of vapor, dripped across and down the chair arms where he sat, and hovered in curls around his ankles.

  I could not see his face. His crown was projecting a forcefield like a mirrored helmet to protect his head from the radiation of the murderous discharge in front of him.

  Clue three: why did the Master’s armor have time to react to the assassin’s bolt when the victim’s smartgun did not? Coincidence? But I didn’t believe in coincidences. What people call coincidences are arrangements by the Masters of Time as sloppy make-shifts to put broken timelines back on track.

  And I sure as hell didn’t believe in Masters any more.

  5.

  Iapetus leaned past me and opened the window. He paused a moment, allowing me to savor the smell of the high gardens, the deep chime of distant bells, to hear the calls and cries of delight from the winged fliers.

  He spoke: “There needs be no further interview nor testing. Any Master dissatisfied with your future performance would have already retroactively informed me. The choice is now yours.”

  He straightened, looking me in the eye, smiling, and saying: “The rewards of loyal service to the Masters of Eternity are many…”

  1(a).

  I didn’t say anything to her, this time. I bit back the angry confession which sprang to my lips. There are some things which, once said, can never be taken back.

  Instead, I put my hands on her shoulders, and drew her closer. “Baby-doll, there’s no other woman. There just is no one else…” I lied smoothly.

  This time, my past didn’t catch up with me. I could always outrun it, always stay one jump ahead of the game.

  I smothered the pang of guilt I felt at the thought as I lowered my head to kiss her.

  6.

  “…including material rewards, without limit…”

  10.

  While I was waiting for the croupier, and the manager, and the manager’s assistant, to collect my win
nings into a large suitcase, I stepped into a telephone booth, with a copy of tomorrow’s stock market under my arm, to make a call to my broker.

  I yawned while the phone rang. It all seemed so tedious, so safe. Maybe this time around I would walk into the ambush the thugs hired by the manager were planning.

  7.

  “…as well as the knowledge that you are doing good and useful work to preserve both past historic treasures and the integrity of the time-space continuum…”

  11.

  The Roman legionnaire stood there, shaking and sweating, eyes rolling wildly, unable to move, numb in the grip of my paralysis ray. I would have preferred to shoot him, of course, but orders were not to chance future archeologists puzzling over slugs found in one of Caesar’s troopers. I could tell he wanted to scream when I pulled his short-sword from its scabbard, put the point under the belt of his armor, pushed.

  He fell down the steps of the Library at Alexandria, and I kicked the torch he had held down after him, safely away from the precious scrolls and papyrus.

  There was blood splashed all over my coat and trousers.

  I was doing good work. Why did it make me feel sick to my stomach?

  A half a score of legionnaires trotted around the corner at a quickstep, shield and pilum in hand, led by a decurion. They let out a roar when they saw their dead comrade, and shouted vows of vengeance to their gods. Then they lowered spears, formed ranks, and charged the stairs.

  I laughed. Did they expect me to wait around for their vengeance? For the consequences of my actions to catch up with me? They would never catch up.

  A twist on the barrel of my smartgun opened the paralysis induction beam to wide-fan. They fell and waited, helplessly, for me to slaughter them. I tried not to look them in the eyes as I moved from one to the next with a knife.

  8.

  “…and, since the Masters of Eternity are all-powerful, no one can oppose them or stop them. They have no enemies …”

  13.

  When I woke up, I was slumped in a heavy, high-backed chair of dark red leather, at the end of a long conference table of black walnut. Nine hooded figures sat around the length of the table.

  Light came from two high candelabrums, burning real candles and dripping messy wax like stalactites down their sides. The room around me was dim; I had the impression it might be a library. There were no windows, no clocks, nothing in view like a calendar. I could hear no noise from outside. It may have been day or night of any season, any year.

  The robes, likewise, could have been from practically any date or era. They all wore gloves; I saw no rings or jewelry.

  “Do not be alarmed,” came a polite tenor from my left. “I know you do not recall this, but you volunteered to have a small part of your recent memory blotted out. It was a condition our anonymity required to make this conversation possible. You wanted to speak with us.”

  “And who are you supposed to be?” I asked, straightening up, my fingers pressed against my throbbing temples. “And why the hell did I—you claim—want to speak to you so badly?”

  The hooded figure at the other end of the table leaned forward slightly. He had a rumbling, bass voice: “We are the eternal enemies of the Master of Eternity, Mr. Frontino … ”

  24.

  I drew my smartgun slowly, so as not to startle d’Artagnan or Ugly Boy in the fancy steel suit. Idiots. They might have stood a chance if Ugly Boy had had enough sense to keep his faceplate down. As it was, I gyro-focused an aiming laser to keep a dot right between his eyes where he couldn’t see it, while taking a reading on the energy discharge which killed (was going to kill) me (future-me). I didn’t have to point the gun-barrel at Ugly Boy to do it; my gun was pretty damn smart.

  The formation readings did not surprise me. The energy signature was the same as that generated by the gun held in my hand. Not the same make or model, the exact same gun.

  Of course. Obviously. I was going to shoot myself.

  Means I could see; what about opportunity?

  The time-depth reading on the spot of mist from which the murder-discharge radiated did surprise me. It was a matter of a few minutes, positive or negative. Something was going to make me shoot me in a moment or so from now.

  And that left only motive. And I couldn’t imagine any motive, at first.

  But then I thought: Why not? Why the hell not?

  26.

  I swung my barrel to cover d’Artagnan.

  “OK, fancy boy,” I snapped. “Charade’s over. Do I need to shoot you to make the real Master show up?”

  “You think I am not a Time Master?”

  I shook my head. I could have explained that I hadn’t seen him chronoshift but once, and that, since he wasn’t wearing a mist cloak like a proper Master of Eternity, such shifts would have been obvious. A Master who did not have other-selves as bodyguards? Who lived through all his time lines in blind, first-timer, unedited scenes? A time traveler who didn’t time travel? But all I said was: “You talk too much to be a Master.”

  “You might as well put your gun away, Mr. Frontino, or I will have my …” he nodded toward the cataphract and his sentence choked to a halt. He saw the aiming dot punctuating Ugly Boy’s face.

  “I don’t know if you can see my settings from there,” I said.

  He nodded carefully. “Your deadman switch is on.”

  “And the change-in-energy detector. Any weapons go off near me, and my Unlimited friend here goes off and keep on going long after I’m dead. Well? Well? I want some answers!”

  The cataphract’s launch-harness unfolded from his back like the legs of a praying mantis opening. Tubes longer than bazookas pointed at me. He raised his hand toward me. With sharp metallic clashes of noise, barrels came out of the weapon-housings of the fore-arms of his vambraces. I was standing close enough that I could hear the throbbing hum of his power-core cycling up to full battle-mode. The mouths of his weapons were so close to my face that I could smell ozone and hot metal.

  My nape hairs and armpits prickled. I could feel my heartbeat pulsing in my temples; my face felt hot. Standing at ground zero, at the point-blank firing focus of a mobile Heavy Assault Battery, really doesn’t do a man’s nerves much good.

  “Well?” I said, not taking my eyes from d’Artagnan. “Things are going to start getting sloppy!”

  Even d’Artagnan looked surprised when the frozen image of the Master on the throne stood up and raised a hand. Of course the time-stop had meant nothing to him. He had merely been sitting still, faking it.

  “Enough!” His voice rang with multiple echoes, as if a crowd of people were speaking in not-quite-perfect unison. “You have sufficiently passed our test, Frontino. You were brought here to assume the rights, powers, and perquisites of a Master of Eternity. You may assume your rightful place at my side. There is no need for a coronation ceremony. Here I give the reality of power.”

  With a casual toss, he threw a packet of destiny cards at my feet. A full pack: every iris into every epoch Metachronopolitan time-engines ever reached, no doubt. The pack fell open as it struck the marble floor. Shining mirrored cards fell open, glittering.

  Like my smartgun, the crystal surfaces were merely the here-now interface connected through higher dimensions to the gigantic chronoportation machinery which filled all the golden towers. Rumor said the whole city of Metachronopolis, from stratosphere to misty sea, the gold substance of the towers, the crystal windows, was one titanic time-distortion engine.

  These were the real things. The glassy depth held images from history, ages past and future, eras unguessed: castles, landscapes, battlefields, towers, all the cities and kingdoms of the world.

  All I had to do was stoop over and pick them up. If I just bent a little, it could all be mine. Me, pulling the strings for once; the puppet-master, not the puppet. Not the pawn.

  9.

  I stood at the window, watching the golden city of glory with eyes of awe. I asked Iapetus, “I still have some questions. Ma
y I ask …?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Frontino.”

  “How can it be possible? Time travel, I mean? What happens to cause and effect?”

  Iapetus’ smile was sinister and cold. “Cause-and-effect is a delusion of little minds. A cultural prejudice. The ancient wisdom of the prescientific ages recognized that the workings of the universe were in the hands of unguessable powers. They called them gods instead of calling them the Masters of Metachronopolis. But it is all one.”

  I asked: “So what happens if you kill your grandfather?”

  “Nothing truly exists,” explained Iapetus impatiently, “Except as a range of uncertain probabilities. Normally this uncertainty is confined to the subatomic level, creating the illusion of solid matter, life, causality.

  “If you killed a remote ancestor,” he continued, “the uncertainty of the events springing from that would increase, since your likelihood of existing in your present constitution would decrease. You might possibly survive having a remote ancestor killed; there is a small chance that some of your genes and elements might pop into existence without any cause; certain subatomic particles do it; it is unlikely that trillions of particles would leap together spontaneously to form you, but it might happen. Killing your father is remotely unlikely, however; the uncertainty there would become macroscopic. Visible to the naked eye.”

  “Visible as what?”