Atropos told Thanatos and Luna of Satan's latest trick—trying to get Thanatos vacated before he even assumed the office. "Because Chronos didn't know—at his beginning," she concluded. "Satan was striking at the outset—and he almost bypassed us all."
"The last shall be first," Luna agreed. "We have been napping in that respect, but it seems that ploy was foiled because Chronos did not take the minion there, and now knows better. Yet my stones indicate that Satan is not through with him, and the issue remains in serious doubt."
How blithely she talked of her own potential defeat or nonexistence! "What can Satan do, now that I am alert?" Norton asked.
"I'm not sure," Luna said. "But there is something."
"It is impossible for any of us to be sure," Atropos said, "when our own history is being changed."
"But I haven't changed any!" Norton protested. "I won't—"
Atropos shook her head. "There is something," she said, repeating Luna's words. She brought forth her threads. "That strange crossing—and now I think it's not coincidental." She concentrated, peering closely at her network. "Can't seem to spot it specifically."
"Satan couldn't have done anything in any past time without Chronos' cooperation," Luna said. "And Chronos has not cooperated—and as he progresses into our past, he'll be increasingly careful, so Satan will have no opportunity to fool him. If Satan hasn't managed anything yet, he'll never have the chance—as well he knows."
Now Thanatos turned his hollow-skull gaze on Norton. Even though Norton knew this was merely the effect of the hood, which the man had drawn close again, it remained disconcerting. "Are you certain Satan's minion did not accompany you to the past?"
"No demon went with me," Norton said. "Unless you mean Sning?" He held up his hand, showing the snake ring.
"He is not of Satan," Thanatos said. "I meant something Satan might have given you, that you accepted. You have to accept it; that is the nature of this. Evil can never touch the person who refuses to accept it. But evil can be subtle. Satan might have concealed the minion's nature and purpose."
"All Satan gave me was a scroll with the address, which I didn't keep—I memorized it—and an amulet to—" Norton stiffened. "Oh, no!"
"The demon!" Luna agreed. "Satan knew you would want to investigate, and once you carried his minion there—"
"How could I have been such a fool!" Norton cried in an agony of conscience. "Sning tried to warn me, but I didn't understand. Satan said it was just a little horn—"
Thanatos nodded. "The horn of a demon." he said. "Do not blame yourself unduly, Chronos; all of us have been deceived by the guiles of the Father of Lies. All of us have learned the hard way. Once he almost convinced me my magic was gone."
"But your life is not changed, Thanatos," Atropos said. "I checked that first; the snarl is not there."
The Deathhead grinned. "Obviously."
"No, I didn't take the horn there," Norton said. His knees felt weak. "I could have eliminated you, Thanatos, without ever realizing! You who were so kind to me when you took the baby! When you took the time to explain. I feel terrible! It was just blind luck that I didn't—"
"You two met before?" Luna asked. "Perhaps, then, it wasn't luck. Paradox may have been brought into play."
"I thought I was immune," Norton said.
"You are. But there are special cases. When did you meet Thanatos—in our time?"
"About a year and a half ago, maybe less. Before I became Chronos. It was partly because of Thanatos that I took the office. I knew, because of him, that it was possible for a good person to function as an Incarnation."
"He is a good person, isn't he?" Luna said, bestowing on Thanatos a momentary gaze of such love and respect that her beauty was intensified. Then she turned back to Norton. "Had you had no connection with Thanatos, you could have eliminated him without consequence to yourself. But you met him and were influenced by him; thus your elimination of him would have constituted a variety of paradox, even though the result occurred later in your own life. He had to be there to talk with you in your normal life—and I know from my own experience why he did it and that a different man in that office would not have done it." She smiled at the Death-figure.
"Well, he noticed my ring—"
"I have a houseful of similar enchantments." She turned and reached to a shelf, picking up a tiny elephant formed from a single blue topaz stone. In her hand the elephant came to life and trumpeted faintly. "He would not have found your ring remarkable."
Norton looked at Thanatos, who did not react. "Then why—?"
Luna took Thanatos' bone-arm, showing no aversion to its form. "Because he saw that you were suffering, and he had compassion. Few in his office have had that quality, and of course Satan doesn't comprehend it." She turned again to Thanatos. "I went with him first because I was required to, but when I grasped his inner nature I loved him. He saved my life—as all the Incarnations have—but I would have loved him anyway."
"That other woman," Norton said. "The one he would have married, had he not become Thanatos instead—she was beautiful and wealthy and good—but so are you! He lost nothing!"
"Nothing!" Thanatos agreed.
"So you could not readily eliminate Thanatos," Luna concluded. "Paradox did help there."
"Not—readily?"
"It is possible," she explained. "Paradox is not absolute for you. You will tend to avoid it, rather than confront it head-on, even when only mortals are involved. Incarnations are much more difficult to change, so paradox is stronger with them. But if you do meet it directly, it can not stop you. So you could have eliminated Thanatos without consequence to yourself, but it would have required a more specific effort."
"I made no effort!" Norton said.
"Yes. So you avoided eliminating him, for a reason Satan was not equipped to understand. Satan's ruse malfunctioned by seeming coincidence. That is the way such things operate; without your will, paradox will not be abused, even when only normal people are involved. What happened to Satan's horn?"
"I visited—the woman I loved," Norton said, abruptly aware that Atropos was merely another form of Clotho, with whom he had so recently made love. "She made me destroy the thing."
"There is the seeming coincidence," Luna said.
Atropos shook her head. "Still, there is something. Did you go anywhere before then?"
"Yes. I visited her when she was a child. And, you know, somewhere along the way part of the horn was lost—"
"Not lost," Luna said. "Departed. The part that was the messenger-demon took off to do its mischief."
"When?" Atropos demanded of Norton.
"When Orlene was ten years old—or maybe seven—that's the first stop I made—call it about fifteen years ago, your time. No, more like seventeen. I entered normal time to chat with her in a park. That could be where it left."
Atropos explored her threads. "Nothing in that period."
"Actually, I paused at a number of places in her life. But I didn't phase in to normal time—"
"Probably that wasn't necessary. The demon could have dropped off while you were traveling." She continued to check. "There does seem to be something eight or nine years ago." She put her old eye close. "Yes, threads I never crossed, in that general range."
"The minion, for sure," Luna said. "It made a change. It couldn't get to the primary target, so took a secondary one. Now we must discover what that is."
"A change in the past, to get rid of you—without touching Thanatos?" Norton asked.
"Or to nullify me," Luna said. "I am the real target, not Thanatos—and in this case I am easier to get at, since I am mortal and you never before interacted with me. In any event, Satan does not care how he gets his way—as long as he does."
"But you are the same—I mean, you haven't changed, have you? Or would you know if you had changed?"
Luna smiled. "I understand your concern, Chronos. But no, I don't believe I have changed—yet. My stones indicate that Good retains the a
dvantage over Evil, and that would not be the case if Satan had his way. Still, mischief is in the making. We should be able to undo it if we act correctly and promptly."
"First we must discover what the damage is," Thanatos said. "Perhaps this is merely a diversion."
"It's oddly minor," Atropos said, still peering in perplexity at her threads. "Nothing significant, really. No one was killed, harmed, or even frightened."
"Keep looking," Luna said. "Satan is devious, but we can be sure he knows how to score."
"I'm afraid I still don't understand," Norton said. "If the demon did something to change the future—our present—why isn't it finished now? And if it isn't, why can't I simply go back to fix it? If Atropos can just pinpoint the moment—"
"It's the three-person limit," Atropos said, still tracing her threads. "An aspect of the paradox resistance." She glanced up to spy Norton's look of bafflement. "Thanatos, you understand it, don't you? Explain it to him, for Chronos certainly has the need to know."
Both Thanatos and Luna chuckled. "Indeed, he explained it to me many years ago, when I was new in office," Thanatos said. He opened his cloak and removed it; with that action, he became a completely ordinary young man, the one called Zane. Twenty years had not aged him at all; evidently Incarnations did not age the way normal people did. That aligned with Norton's observation of the prior Chronos: it had been an adult man, not a newborn baby, who brought the Hourglass. So he himself would probably remain his present physiological age until his term expired. "Chronos was kind to me," Zane continued. "Now I shall be kind to him at his commencement." And he settled down and explained it so that Norton could understand.
The reason no change had occurred in the present was that it had not yet occurred in the past. Whatever the demon of Satan had done was quiescent, evoking no change in the life of any human being. But that was merely a delayed implementation, a literal time bomb that would in due course have its effect on human events. The moment it did, the future from that point on would change, in whatever manner the initial alteration determined. That would surely include Luna; if she were not eliminated as a person, she would certainly be nullified as a force to balk Satan. So they had to locate and nullify that change before it touched the human fabric; only in that manner could they be assured of success.
"But how long—?" Norton asked.
"Atropos is trying to determine that," Thanatos said. "She can trace living threads readily, but inanimate threads are more devious. It could be five more minutes—or five more years."
Norton felt another chill. Time bomb indeed! "Maybe I can go back and destroy the demon before it escapes. It was in my possession, after all."
Thanatos shook his head. "You can not. That is the other aspect of Satan's mischief. The three-person limit prevents you." And he explained about that.
Chronos was the only entity who could travel in time and he was largely immune from paradox—but there were limits. His easiest way was simply to proceed along his natural life course, backward to the date of his birth. It required magical effort to reverse his direction and match that of ordinary people, as he was doing now, more effort to travel through historical time, and more yet to take physical form and act in such a time. But the magic of the Hourglass made it possible, and he could indeed change reality by changing the past. But in such cases, he was there in two persons—himself in his original, normal life, and himself in his return as Chronos. Doubling himself was in his power; it had to be, for him to use his power effectively. But tripling himself was another matter; then he was making a third appearance at a given time, interfering with himself as Chronos, and the potential for paradox magnified exponentially.
No one could interfere with an Incarnation with impunity—not even if that Incarnation was himself. That strained the power of the Hourglass, for it was itself being doubled and was opposing itself. It was theoretically possible for this to occur, but so awkward that it was hardly worthwhile to try. If he did try, most likely he would bounce off and land in a time when there was no duplication, possibly doing incidental mischief in the process. In short, the risks were probably greater than the likely benefits; mischief in time was the most awkward to undo—because of the three-person limit. Chronos could do damage that Chronos could not correct.
"And Satan knew that!" Norton exclaimed. "He knew I could not change my mind once I changed the past—even if it was inadvertent."
"True," Thanatos agreed. "Had you taken the demon to the Mess o' Pottage shop, you would have nullified the best efforts of Atropos and myself, for in such interactions Chronos is more powerful than Thanatos. The rest of us can double only by your action—and we can be rendered nonexistent by your action, too. Only God and Satan, the true Eternals, are exempt from that."
Something about this explanation bothered Norton, but he was not able to pin it down. "Then there is no way to stop what Satan's minion has done?" he asked. "If I can't return to stop the demon—"
"There should be a way," Luna said. "Satan's minions do not endure long apart from him. That demon must have done its deed and expired. If we can identify what he did and nullify it before it impinges on human events, then the victory will be ours. We probably have time, because Satan sought to distract you; he would not have bothered, had the deed been truly irrevocable."
"It was some distraction!" Norton admitted ruefully. "He said he was showing me the nature of his bribe to encourage me to take his minion to the Mess o' Pottage. All the time he knew this was pointless or impossible. He was certainly angry when he learned I'd destroyed the horn, though; he must have thought the mission had been a complete failure."
"We were lucky," Luna said. "We could have been lost before we had a chance to fight back. But that secondary mission can still destroy us. How is it coming, Atropos?"
"I have almost pinpointed the time and place," Atropos said. "But not the deed. I only know that when it manifests, it will give Satan the victory. My threads have tension on them that threatens haywire shifting. I need to comprehend it further."
Norton's mind had been running back over his recent experiences with Satan. The globular cluster, the Magic Lantern Cloud, and his adventures there—suddenly the thing that had bothered him came clear. He had doubled himself in those adventures, rescuing himself from the Bem and saving Excelsia from the Alicorn. It had been not only possible but easy. How, then, could the three person limit be such a formidable force? Did it exist at all?
"Gaea," Luna said.
"I will take Atropos to her," Thanatos said, rising and resuming his cloak.
"Take us all," Luna said. "Chronos must meet her, too."
"Gaea—another Incarnation?" Norton asked. It seemed to him he had heard that name before; Gawain the Ghost had said—
"The Green Mother," Luna explained. "Nature."
Yes, that was it; Gaea had changed the baby for Gawain and thereby had caused terrible mischief. The memory of that banished Norton's three-person speculation from his attention; he wanted to meet this powerful yet fallible entity.
The four of them walked out to the estate parking lot, paced by the guardian griffins. They were certainly beautiful animals! Beside the parking lot there was a small, verdant pasture. A handsome stallion of pale hue grazed there.
"Mortis," Thanatos called.
The pale horse perked up his ears and trotted over. He was a truly splendid animal, with a sleek hide and firm muscles; had he had wings and a horn, he could have passed for another Alicorn. This was, Norton remembered, the Death horse—the steed who carried Thanatos to his appointments.
"We need transportation for four—to the Green Mother," Thanatos said to the horse.
Mortis stepped onto the pavement—and shifted into the form of a pale limousine. Norton gaped. "That—but that's a machine!" he protested.
Thanatos drew his cloak about him more tightly; as the hood closed, the skull-face manifested with its gruesome grin. "Mortis is an excellent steed—but perhaps no more remarkable than you
r little ring." He opened a door for the ladies.
Squeeze. Sning liked that comparison. He was another creature who converted from living to dead, or vice versa.
Norton walked around the car, noting that the tag in back said, MORTIS. And he had thought the Alicorn was remarkable! When magic and science were one, such miracles were commonplace. He opened a door and climbed in.
He found himself in the back seat beside Clotho. She shrugged at his startled glance. "I want to be presentable for Ge," she explained.
Of course. Fate changed bodies the way others changed clothes. This made it seem like a double date, for Thanatos and Luna were companions, while he and Clotho—well, what did it matter? His old existence as a mortal was behind him.
The car started smoothly, driving itself. It turned about—and abruptly it was zooming through space and matter. The world was rushing past in a smear of color. Then this slowed, and they were driving into the gate of a truly sumptuous estate with luxuriant trees of many varieties and a sparkling lake. It was the kind of place that could charge tourists for visits.
A huge shape loomed in the sky ahead. Norton peered through the windshield. "That—that's a—"
"A roc," Luna said calmly. "The largest of birds. Ge has made her estate into a preserve for rare and magical creatures. It's hard to imagine how she salvaged the rocs."
The roc swooped toward them, its wings seeming to span the whole horizon. It pounced on the car, its monstrous talons poking into the windows and vents, and picked up the vehicle together with its occupants as if this were no more than a mouse. In moments they were dangling high in the air.
One talon was near Norton's face, projecting from the top of the window to the ceiling of the car. The talon was like fine blue steel, an inch in diameter at the window and tapering to a needle point. What a bird!
Luna turned to Thanatos, unruffled. "Ge is testing us," she remarked. "Perhaps you had better perform a token, just to reassure her."
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