by Gerard Klein
“I’m not sleepy,” Corson said. “But I’d like time to think things over.”
“As you like.”
Thereafter for a long while Corson remained silent, sitting on the sand with his elbows on his knees. The sun vanished completely. Stars danced on the water. The air was as warm as his skin. After a little he took off his suit and boots. He did not yet dare to strip completely, but he felt a growing desire to do so, to rush out into the sea and swim away for ever and ever, forgetting about the overlords of war. Tides here must be very weak, with no moon, nothing but the sun to stir the sea.
Then he roused himself and broke the silence. He spoke at first in a rather uncertain voice as though he were alone and feared to disturb the subtle balance of the night or to alert an enemy, then in a tone of greater determination.
“I’m an ambassador,” he said. “Of a strange kind. I used to be a soldier. I’ve traveled in time. I’ve heard the gods of Aergistal. I knew that three dangers threatened Uria—the first a creature like the one that brought me here, but wild; the second a plot hatched by the Old Race of this world against the humans; and the third in the shape of a cavalry commander who sprang from nowhere but whom, according to his own testimony, I called here myself. I’m here to speak on his behalf. And, lastly, I’m an ambassador on my own account. I want to rid Uria of all these dangers, but I lack the means of doing so. I was hoping to find help here, even though Those of Aergistal”—the phrase came naturally to his tongue—“told me not to rely on anybody but myself. Provided I succeed, they promised me, I shall gain my liberty and maybe more than that. But I can see they set me an impossible task.”
“Oh, I know all that,” the man said. “And the task is half accomplished. You haven’t done at all badly, Corson, for a man from the far past.”
“The Monster is caged up,” Corson said, “and the plot has been defeated. But I still have to deal with Veran, the warlord, whose envoy I have the bad luck to be.”
The man burrowed in the sand again. “Perhaps you’d like some more wine,” he murmured politely. “It will help you to relax.”
Corson drank gratefully, then continued. “This Veran literally wants to conquer the universe. He’s asking for weapons, and soldiers or robots. In return he is willing to leave this planet alone. But I don’t trust him. Moreover the Security Office won’t let him do it, and there will be a war. It will take place on Uria, because Veran won’t easily be dislodged.”
“But you are the Security Office,” the man said quietly. “And no war occurred in our past.”
“You mean I—” Corson stammered.
“You’re the Office’s agent for this sector. It’s up to you to prevent the war.”
“It didn’t take place,” Corson said slowly, “because here you are. That means that I succeeded. And the Law of Non-regressive Information has been broken.”
The man was absently pouring sand from one hand to the other. “Yes and no. It’s not that simple. That law is only a special case.”
“Then the future can intervene in the past?”
The man let the sand trickle away between his fingers. “Some interventions have negligible consequences. Others are dangerous. But others still are beneficial, at least from the viewpoint of a privileged observer, like you, or me—or Veran. The control of time somewhat resembles ecology, you know. Imagine a world inhabited by insects, birds, and herbivores. The insects break up the soil and encourage grass to grow, the birds eat the insects and pollinate the plants. The herbivores graze on the plants while their droppings and their dead bodies both feed the insects and manure the soil. That’s the simplest possible ecosystem. You could kill one insect, or a dozen, without worrying, because nothing would happen to speak of. You could kill a flock of birds, or stuff yourself on meat from the herbivores, without unbalancing the system. But suppose you were to kill every insect over a wide enough area—a continent, say. The birds would fly off or die of starvation. The grass would die in a few seasons, and the herbivores would likewise disappear. You’d have a desert. It follows of its own accord if you seriously weaken any link in the chain. There’s a threshold for each point. To you it may appear very high. But . . .
“Well, suppose someone introduced to this imaginary planet some carnivores strong and quick enough to kill the herbivores. At first they would barely be noticeable on the planetary scale. You might scour its plains for years and find no trace of them. But in the long run, not meeting any opposition, they would breed in such numbers that they would reduce the herbivore population. The insects would suffer, then the birds, then the vegetation. The herbivores would be threatened from two sides at once. Then the carnivores in turn would start to die of hunger. If circumstances allowed, a new balance would be struck, quite different from the former and possibly not stable. Then, for one species or another, there would be cycles of plenty and famine. The critical threshold would be much lower than in the first example. Indeed, a single breeding pair of carnivores might be enough to trigger changes whose consequences could not be foreseen. As far as dynamic ecology is concerned, the significant factor is never one of the units in the chain but the totality of them. And the process is incapable of spontaneous reversal. It entrains subtle but decisive side effects. Under the threat from the
carnivores, the herbivores will cultivate speed. The longest legs will save the most lives, and so on.
“To some extent that’s analogous with time travel. But ecological problems are laughably simple compared with those of temporality. You might lay a mountain low or snuff out a star without any serious change in your future. Here and there you might even wipe out a whole civilization with no untoward results from your point of view. On the other hand it might suffice for you to tread on someone’s toe in order to shake your heaven and your earth. Each point in the plenum has its own ecological universe. There is no such thing as absolute history.”
“How can you foresee which?” Corson demanded.
“It can be calculated. It also depends partly on intuition, and partly on experience. And it’s best to look at things from as far away as possible in the future. It’s always more comfortable to consider the various ways that might have led to this present than to try to build one which will lead to a desirable future. That’s why Those of Aergistal enter communion with us.”
He indicated the two women.
“But they can’t tell us everything. They can’t create timequakes that might erase them. They are at the ultimate end of time. For them history is almost absolute, almost complete. Besides, we have to work out our own destinies, even though they must take their places as part of a grander scheme.”
“I understand,” Corson said. “I too have the impression of being a pawn. At first I imagined I had free will. But the more I see of the game, the more I realize I’ve been pushed from one square of the board to another.” He hesitated. “I even thought you might be running the game.”
The man shook his head. “You were wrong. It is not we who have devised this plan.”
“But you do know what has been happening.”
“To some extent. For us, though, you’re a wild factor. You appeared at the appointed moment to resolve a crisis. We have always thought of you as the author of the plan.”
“Me?” Corson exclaimed.
“You and none other.”
“But I haven’t even finished formulating my plan!”
“You have time ahead of you,” the man said.
“But it’s already been put into effect.” “That means it will exist.”
“And if I fail?” Corson countered.
“You’ll know nothing about it. Nor shall we.”
At long last one of the women moved. She rolled over, sat up, noticed Corson, and smiled. She was about thirty. He did not recognize her. Her expression was absent, as though from overlong use of her inward sight.
“I can hardly believe it,” she said. “The famous Corson here among us!”
“I have as yet no
reason to be famous,” Corson said curtly.
“Don’t be rude to him, Selma,” the man interjected. “He has a long way to go still, and he’s a little upset.”
“Oh, I’m not going to bite him,” Selma said.
“And,” the man concluded, “we all need him.”
“How far have you got?” Selma asked Corson.
“Well, I came here as an envoy, and—”
But she cut him short. “I know that. I heard you talking to Cid. But how far have you thought things through?”
“I can neutralize Veran by not sending him this message that everyone claims I sent. But to be candid I wouldn’t know how to draft it and still less how to get it to him.”
“That’s a simple matter of creodes,” Selma said. “I’ll arrange it whenever you like. And I think that Those of Aergistal will agree to relay it for us.”
“Suppose you don’t send it,” said the man who had just been referred to as Cid. “Who will deal with the Monster and the Prince of Uria? A solution must be sought elsewhere. Veran forms part of the plan. You can’t eliminate him so easily.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Corson admitted. “And I even suspect it may be because I ran across him at Aergistal that I thought of making use of him. But I’m not sure yet. It’s an idea that won’t occur to me until much later.”
“He’s making a lot of progress for a primitive,” Selma said.
Cid frowned. “Corson is not primitive. Besides, he has been to Aergistal. He hasn’t made do with communion.”
“True,” Selma said. “I was forgetting.” Annoyed, she jumped up and ran toward the water.
Corson mused aloud, “Then who is to deal with Veran?”
“You,” Cid replied.
“I can’t attack him. I can’t even plan an action against him.” He
touched his security collar, and added as faint hope sprang up in his mind, “Can you take this thing off me?”
“No. Veran hails from our future. His technology is in advance of ours.”
“So there’s no way out.”
“Wrong. There must be a solution. Otherwise you would not be here. There exists at least one line of probability—one creode— according to which you’ve carried out the plan. I don’t know if you’ve grasped all the implications yet, Corson, but your future depends on you in the most literal sense.”
“I rather had the impression I depend on it.”
“Another way of saying the same thing. You see, for a long time men have wondered about the problem of continuity of existence. Was a man the same on waking as when he went to sleep the night before? Might not sleep be a complete break? Why did certain ideas and memories vanish altogether from consciousness, only to turn up again later on? Was there a unity, or a mere juxtaposition of existences? One day somebody stumbled on the truth. Since his beginnings man had lived in ignorance of the greater part of himself, his unconscious mind. Nowadays we are asking ourselves almost the same questions in almost the same terms. How are possibilities related to one another? What connects the past, present, and future of one’s existence? Does childhood determine maturity, or the other way around? We don’t yet comprehend our own essential nature, Corson, and we shall not do so for a long while yet. But we have to live with what we do know.”
Selma came back toward them, her body running with streams of water.
“Corson, you should sleep,” Cid advised. “You’re tired. May you foresee your future in your dreams.”
“I’ll try,” Corson said. “I promise you, I will try.”
And he let himself slump to the sand.
He became aware of a presence beside him. He opened his eyes and at once closed them again, blinded by the sun high overhead. He turned over and tried to doze off again, but two insistent noises prevented him, the hiss of the surf and the sound of light breathing. He looked again and saw sand at the level of his cheek, sand on which the wind had raised miniature dunes that it was now leveling again. He awoke completely and sat up. A girl was kneeling at his side, dressed in a short red tunic.
"Antonella!” he exclaimed.
"George Corson,” she said in a disbelieving voice.
He swept the beach with his gaze. Cid, Selma, and the other woman were nowhere in sight. And the girl—Antonella—had risen and taken a few steps back, as though embarrassed at having been caught staring at him.
“You know me?” he demanded.
“I never saw you before. But I’ve heard about you. You’re the man who has to save Uria.”
He looked her over more closely. The fact that she was clad while the others went naked suggested that she must come from a period when the life-style had not attained the ultimate simplicity preferred by the members of the Council. She was younger than he remembered her, almost a teenager. He could not tell how many
years had passed for her between their two meetings. For him it had been a matter of only a few months.
He recalled the other Antonella perfectly. How weird to meet someone you had shared all sorts of adventures with, but who did not know you yet! It was like being confronted with someone who had lost his memory.
“Have you been in a war?” she asked in a voice that mingled disapproval with curiosity.
“Yes. It was—unpleasant.”
She pondered. “I want to ask . . . But I don’t know if I can.”
“Go ahead.”
Flushing, she said, “Have you killed anybody yet, Mr. Corson?” What a nasty kid!
“No. I was a kind of engineer. I never personally stabbed or strangled anyone, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
With seeming satisfaction she said, “I was sure you couldn’t have!” “But I did press the buttons,” Corson said fiercely.
She didn’t understand that, apparently. At a loss, she felt in her tunic and produced a little case which he recognized. “Would you like some smoke?” she inquired.
“No thanks,” he said, although his mouth watered. “I haven’t smoked for a long time.”
“It’s real tobacco, not a synthetic,” she insisted. “I know they used it in your time . . . didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did. But I gave it up.”
“Same as everybody around here. I’m the only one who still does smoke.”
But she laid the case aside.
How could I have fallen in love with someone like this? Corson wondered. She seems so shallow, so hollow! Oh, it must be a matter of age and circumstances . . . When did I begin to fall in love with her?
He searched his memory, and episodes from the adventure they had shared came to the surface like bubbles of gas escaping from the depths of a marsh. Aergistal, the balloon, the recruiting officer, the mausoleum world, the escape, the brief stay at Veran’s camp . . . No, before all that. Long before. He struggled to work it out. It was when he kissed her. No, just before he did that. He remembered thinking she was the sexiest woman he had ever met in his life. And she had not made that impression on him at first glance.
He had fallen in love with her the moment that bright flash had sparked from her igniter. He had detected the hypnotic trick and believed she wanted to make him talk. But what she wanted was to make him fall for her. She had succeeded. No wonder she had given such a mocking answer when he asked why she had not precogged the failure of her trick. Was this a regular custom at Dyoto? He felt anger surge in him for a moment, then calmed down. Since the dawn of time women had set snares for men. It was one of the facts of human existence, and one couldn’t blame them.
He thought: I should have left her to rot in Veran’s camp and learn that men have tricks of their own! But he would not have done that. It was in the camp that he had genuinely come to love her, when she kept such a cool head, and still more on the mausoleum planet, when she had shown herself both human and terrified.
Besides, he had no choice. He would snatch her—and himself— from Veran’s grasp. He would set down a bag of provisions on a blue road. So far, his part was scripted. He c
ould not avoid that without creating a timequake in his past. But afterward? When he had sent the message, would he still have to furnish the recruits and the equipment demanded by Veran, the fugitive from Aergistal?
It made no sense. Why should the other Corson, after their escape, have led them to the mausoleum world? Was that a compulsory stopover, the site of some kind of temporal interchange?
But Corson was coming to know the paths of time well, and he was fairly certain nothing of the kind existed. When he carried out his rescue operation he could just as well bring the escapees here to this beach where the Council was based and leave for Aergistal by himself if his stay there proved to be indispensable. He knew that it was. He had changed at Aergistal. And he had learned much which was necessary to the success of his plans.
He recalled the metal plate laid so conspicuously on the ration bag before the mausoleum door. At the time its message had seemed unclear to him. Searching the pockets of his suit, he found the plate was there even though he had changed clothes many times. Sheer habit must have made him transfer it from one outfit to another.
Part of the text had been erased, although the letters appeared to be deeply incised in the metal.
EVEN EMPTY WRAPPINGS CAN STILL BE USEFUL. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO MAKE WAR. REMEMBER THAT.
He whistled softly between his teeth. Just suppose “empty wrappings” meant the undead women in the mausoleum!
He had wondered whether they might be endowed with artificial personalities and used like robots. He had even thought they might be plastoids until he realized they were too perfectly detailed. They had been alive. Now they were dead, even though the slow activity of their bodies might make one assume the contrary. He had estimated there might be a million of them even in the small part of the mausoleum he had seen. They represented a formidable potential army, numerous enough to match the maddest ambitions of Veran. Bar one thing—they were women. The colonel had judged it necessary to tighten discipline when Antonella entered his camp. He trusted his men only up to a certain point. He did not expect them to betray him for money or by ambition. But there were biological imperatives he dared not infringe.