With a Tangled Skein

by Piers Anthony

  Atropos did a double take. “You’re a living man!”

  Thanatos smiled. “They didn’t tell you? I suppose they didn’t think of it, with all of you changing so rapidly. Yes, all the Incarnations are living people, frozen at the ages when they assumed their offices. We are the temporary Immortals.”

  “You mean I won’t grow older?”

  “Not until you return to mortality—which you will do only by your own choice, unlike me.”

  “You’re different?” There was a lot Niobe had not yet told the other two, owing to the press of time. She kept quiet; this was actually convenient, as she did not have to finesse any questions about herself.

  “I continue until my successor kills me. Then he will assume my office.”

  “But then you’re not immortal!”

  “Oh, I am immortal—until I grow careless. No person or creature can harm me, not even Satan himself, as long as I am careful. The only one who can kill me is my successor—and even he will fail unless I let him. My cloak is invulnerable to natural attack, and my person to supernatural menace. But I cannot step down alive, unlike you.”

  “That must be a horror!” Atropos exclaimed.

  “No, it’s all right. Much better than the suicide I contemplated as a mortal.” At this Clotho perked up, mentally; she knew about that sort of thing.

  “But isn’t your life sterile?” Atropos asked. “No hellraising, no gambling, no women?”

  He laughed. “You don’t think much of young men, do you!”

  “I think a lot of them! I’ve known a few myself, when I was young and sexy. But I know their nature. A man without a woman is hell-bent for trouble.”

  Thanatos smiled. “Well, I have a woman. She’s mortal, but she knows my nature. Her name is Luna Kaftan. I love her and I guarantee she will not die before her time. I can’t marry her, because I have no legal mortal identity; I’m listed as deceased. But I’ll always be with her.”

  Niobe was glad she didn’t have the body now; she would have given herself away. She had forgotten, in these last few hours, that Luna had taken up with Thanatos! As a mortal, she had disapproved; now, suddenly, she approved. This seemed to be a fine young man, committed to his role. He could indeed protect Luna from death itself. That portion of the prophecy had turned out to be much more positive than anticipated.

  But Atropos was learning rapidly. “Suppose I—I never would, mind you—suppose I cut your girl friend’s thread short?”

  Thanatos’ hood was away from his head, but a shadow of the skull seemed to pass across his features, and his skin took on the hue of bone. He was, indeed. Death. “You did that once before—your prior person did. Satan had forced it. I refused to take her. You do not end the lives, you merely schedule them. Only when I take their souls do they actually die. As I took the souls of those twenty-six babies. I had to do it; their bodies were ravaged and they would have suffered had they lived, so I stood aside and let them drift to Heaven. But I am the one in charge of that, and by my decree a dying person can live indefinitely, regardless of his suffering. We Incarnations have to cooperate, or it becomes untenable.”

  Atropos nodded. “I thought it was something like that. We won’t kill any more babies, that’s for sure! Let’s run through it now and make sure we’ve got it right.”

  Clotho took the body and spun more thread. Then Niobe measured it, and Atropos cut it carefully, only once at each end. Then Niobe took it to the Tapestry and laid it in the place where she knew it belonged.

  This time it took. The thread anchored, and extended into the fuzzy future portion of the Tapestry.

  “That’s the way,” Thanatos agreed. He drew his hood back into place. “I must go; I have business elsewhere. If you have doubts about anything, check with me or another Incarnation, and we’ll try to help. Chronos, especially, must work with you closely; he lives backward, so he knows the future, not the past.”

  Thanatos departed, riding into the sky on his pale horse. The three Aspects of Fate collapsed onto the couch. That had been some session!

  But Clotho had a question: if Chronos knew the future, wouldn’t he know about Niobe’s prior experience in office?

  “Not if we don’t tell him—some time in the future,” Niobe said. “I think we had better just forget about my past and carry on in the present. But about Chronos— there may be something else you should know, Clotho.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He—in the past—he has been very close to us. Especially to Clotho.”

  “Friendship is good, isn’t it?” the girl asked, perplexed.

  “Lovers.”

  Clotho was silent. Niobe was not sure what was going through her mind, for the three did not share their thoughts when they chose not to.

  “The way I see it,” Atropos said, “this isn’t our mortal body anymore. This body must have been through a lot we don’t know about.”

  “Yes,” Niobe agreed.

  “So maybe it doesn’t matter too much what we do with it, as long as we do our jobs right.”

  Still Clotho didn’t comment. Niobe remembered how difficult this particular aspect of being an Aspect had been for her, at first. Well, an accommodation would be achieved, in time. Time? Chronos!

  They fixed themselves a meal from the available supplies and lay down for a rest. Then they worked out a regular schedule of operations—which Aspect would take what shift, which would be backup, and which would sleep. The body itself was indefatigable; it needed neither rest nor sleep, but the minds within it did.

  Fate, however tenuously, was back in business.

  —11—

  TANGLE

  But next day the axe, figuratively, fell. Niobe was paying a call on Chronos, because she needed his advice and assistance on the placement of specific threads. The Tapestry tended to follow its natural pattern, but left entirely alone it would soon develop rents and tangles as threads got crossed. She had to set the threads properly, and timing as well as placement was essential. For example, when a marriage occurred, the threads of the man and woman intersected—but if the intersection occurred before the mundane ceremony, a new thread could be started before the term of marriage, which could be awkward. Chronos could check such things directly; indeed, he knew the timing of every significant human interaction, though most of the routine was left to his staff. Fate, too, had a staff for the routine, but she could not afford to leave the important matters to underlings.

  But first came the introductions. “I realize that you have known us for some time,” Niobe said. “But from our viewpoint, this is our first encounter. We are all new in our Aspects, in the past few days, and all inexperienced in our duties. So allow us to present ourselves, and for you this will be our parting. I’m sure you will find our precedessors competent.”

  “Ah, is it that time already?” Chronos asked. “I have seen two of you change—”

  “Please, we prefer not to know,” Niobe said quickly.

  “Of course. Let me only say that all three of you have been kind to me in my past, and I have a deep respect for you and shall be sorry to see you go. I hope I get along as well with your replacements.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Niobe said, and flashed through the Clotho and Atropos Aspects for him before returning to Lachesis. “But since none of us go back to that time as Aspects, we have no firsthand information. We’re all new, and we are making embarrassing mistakes.”

  “Yes, I know,” Chronos said sympathetically.

  “Those snippets of threads—twenty-six babies needlessly dead—Thanatos was in a fury!” Niobe said.

  “Oh, pardon. I thought you were referring to the UN incident.”

  “The UN incident?” Niobe asked blankly.

  “But of course that hasn’t happened yet, for you, just as the dead babies haven’t for me. Sorry I mentioned it.”

  If we’re about to blunder again... Atropos thought.

  Ask him about it, Clotho concluded. They had not yet gotten their
shifts down pat, so all three were awake for this interview. They were three quite different individuals, but the disaster of the babies had unified them in their horror.

  “Please don’t apologize,” Niobe said. “We are eager to avoid future blunders. If it is not a violation of your ethics, we would like to know more about it.”

  Chronos smiled. “Incarnations don’t have ethics in that sense; all of us do what we have to do, or we leave our offices. We assist each other whenever asked. After all, as I believe you explained to me, Lachesis, when I first assumed my office twenty years hence, it is our common purpose to balk the machinations of Satan and promote those of God. The UN incident was very simple, but it had phenomenal consequences. It seems that someone sneaked a psychic stink bomb into the United Nations complex in New York. When it detonated, the—”

  “Psychic stink bomb?” Niobe asked. She remembered the time Luna and Orb, as children, had obtained a physical stink bomb, one of the type called “little stinkers,” and set it off in her kitchen. The stench had taken days to clear. Girls would be girls, she knew, but she had made them scrub floor, ceiling, and walls anyway. They had been less mischievous thereafter—but their reputations in school had escalated dramatically for a while.

  “It generated an emotional atmosphere that no one could tolerate,” Chronos said, suppressing an illicit smile. “No laughing matter, of course. The United States was expelled from the UN and the headquarters was moved to Moscow—”

  “Moved to Moscow!” Niobe exclaimed indignantly.

  “Well, you see, the international diplomats had some difficulty appreciating the humor of the situation,” Chronos said. “Though I understand that both the Soviet leaders and the American conservatives suffered some private belly laughs. It was of course impossibk to conduct normal business—”

  “Satan’s work!” Niobe cried with dismay. But both Atropos and Clotho were stifling their own amusement.

  “Naturally,” Chronos agreed. “It was amazing how much profit Satan reaped from that simple incident. There was a steady attrition in world harmony and a resurgence of evil. Mars was kept quite busy managing the wars that later developed—”

  “We’ve got to stop it!” Niobe said firmly. Atropos and Clotho settled down enough to agree; this was evidently a major ploy by Satan to generate disharmony.

  “I’m sure the beginnings of the tangle are in your Tapestry,” Chronos said.

  “Let’s take a look.” Niobe had learned how to generate the image of the Tapestry, so that she could place the threads properly. She caused it to manifest now. The pattern seemed to be in order.

  “If you will permit me,” Chronos said. He lifted his Hourglass; the sand changed color, and the Tapestry abruptly slid forward. Niobe kept her face straight despite the amazement of the other two Aspects; she knew that Chronos had the power to affect an image she had generated. The Hourglass was truly the most marvelous of instruments. “Five days hence, your time,” he explained.

  Niobe looked. There was a monstrous tangle that resulted in a distortion of the entire Tapestry. Atropos and Clotho were as appalled as she was; they would never get that back in proper order once it occurred!

  “We’ve got to stop it!” Niobe repeated. “Once it happens, it’s too late; we have to see that it never happens!” Then she glanced at Chronos. “But if we prevent it, and you’ve already seen it happen—”

  “Don’t be concerned. I am immune from paradox. I change events all the time, literally, to put right what goes wrong. I had quite a campaign with Satan, let me assure you, back when I started! I had to traverse eternity itself to get my bearings back. If you change it, you change it, that’s all; I will remember it merely as one of the alternate timelines.”

  “Then we shall,” Niobe said, relieved. “If that bomb goes off in five days, it means we have four days to track down who is to do it, and cut his thread out of the Tapestry before he does, or reroute it. Then the notorious ‘UN incident’ will never happen!”

  “It will never happen,” Chronos agreed.

  “And we will be spared the embarrassment of a major tangle,” Niobe finished. “Obviously this is what Satan set up for us novices to struggle with. Experienced Aspects could handle it, but he doesn’t think we can.”

  “A fair assessment,” Chronos agreed. “Satan is devious in the extreme; one must always be alert for his finesses.”

  “We’ll go home and see what we can do.”

  “Remember,” Chronos said. “If you need the assistance of other Incarnations, simply ask. Any of us will be glad to do what we can, especially knowing that you are presently inexperienced.”

  “We shall,” she agreed and rode her thread away. At the Abode they held a council of war. “That tangle is impenetrable,” Niobe said. “A veritable Gordian Knot. But we know that the cause is simple: someone has to plant that bomb and get away so as not to be contaminated when it goes off. The thread of life of that mortal has to be in our Tapestry, here; all we have to do is locate it and remove it.”

  The others gazed at the Tapestry through her eyes.

  “There are so many threads, so intricately meshed!” Clotho said. “We could search for months and never find the right one!”

  “Needle in a haystack,” Atropos agreed. “Woman, you poked me into a bigger picklement than I knew when you signed me up for Fate! I love it!”

  “Too bad we don’t have a computer,” Clotho said.

  “There’s the Purgatory Computer,” Niobe said. “It should store everything.”

  “Well, get moving, gal!” Atropos said. “I hope you know how to work it, because I sure don’t!”

  Niobe got moving. She entered the Purgatory front office and asked for time with the Computer. Computers had not been widely used during her term as Clotho, but Purgatory was evidently keeping up with the times. She had not had a lot of experience, but understood the general principle.

  Fortunately, this one was user-friendly. GREETINGS, FATE, its screen flashed when she turned it on. HOW MAY I INFORM YOU?

  She started to punch the keys, awkwardly. SIMPLY SPEAK TO ME, the screen advised.

  Oh. “I need to figure out a tangle,” Niobe said. “I’m new at this, and—”

  IS THERE A KEY THREAD?

  “Yes. But I need to locate it—and there are millions to choose from.”

  CONDUCT A GLOBAL SEARCH. WHAT ARE YOUR DEFINING CRITERIA?

  “Well, it’s some person who will visit the United Nations complex in New York, on or before a particular date.”

  PROVIDE THE DATE.

  Niobe provided it. The screen became a blur of lines, then cleared. THREE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED, FIFTY-SIX THREADS REMAIN.

  Well, that was progress. “Can we get it down to a smaller number—such as half a dozen?”

  PROVIDE FURTHER DEFINITION.

  Niobe pondered. The other Aspects helped. Just how big is that contraption—a psychic stink bomb? Atropos thought.

  “The person will have to carry in a psychic stink bomb potent enough to foul the entire complex,” Niobe said. “If you happen to know how big such a package would be—”

  The screen flickered. If Niobe hadn’t known better, she would have suspected that the machine was laughing. A PSYCHIC STINK BOMB? The flickering became more pronounced.

  “Yes. Someone is going to leave it to detonate in the UN complex, and America will be expelled from the UN and the headquarters will move to Moscow.”

  TO MOSCOW? Now jags of yellow showed at the edges of the screen, and wiggly music sounded in the background.

  “Now don’t shake off your stand,” Niobe cautioned it, annoyed. “All I need to know is—”

  With a seeming effort, the computer got itself under control. ONE THOUSAND, EIGHT HUNDRED, FOURTEEN THREADS REMAIN.

  Still too many. Maybe motive, Clotho suggested. Does it know who might want to humiliate the UN?

  “Can you eliminate the threads of those who might have no reason to dislike the UN?”

/>   The screen flickered again, and the words STINK BOMB showed fleetingly, as if an illicit thought were passing through the machine’s random access memory. Then it settled down again. SEVEN HUNDRED, EIGHTY-THREE THREADS REMAIN.

  Still way too high! Get practical, woman, Atropos thought. Ask how many have access to such a bomb. They can’t be a dime a dozen.

  “Eliminate those who have no reasonable access to such a bomb,” Niobe said.

  FOUR THREADS REMAIN.

  Jackpot! Atropos thought. One day to a thread! Never thought all my time running down vandals would pay off like this!

  Evidently grandmothers did learn useful skills in the ghetto! Atropos had been the one to recognize opportunity as a defining characteristic.

  “Please identify those four threads,” Niobe said, relieved.

  Four names appeared on the screen. Niobe made a note of them. “Thank you. Computer,” she said.

  YOU ARE WELCOME, FATE, the screen said. Then, just before it switched off, the words STINK BOMB flickered once more. The machine seemed unable to clear that concept from its banks. The devices of Purgatory seemed to have more personality than those of the mortal realm.

  You’ve got to admit that ol’ Satan has a certain sense of humor, Atropos thought.

  “Yes, I’m sure he’s laughing as he humiliates us,” Niobe agreed shortly. Mirth was indeed a characteristic of the Father of Lies.

  Back at the Abode, they reviewed the four threads. “We may do better if we approach our own kind,” Clotho suggested. “To ascertain whether they are guilty or innocent.”

  “We don’t want to snip any innocent threads,” Atropos agreed.

  Niobe sighed. “True. We don’t want to make a mistake. Very well, I will verify one of the white ones today.” She looked at the two white threads. One was for an old man, the other for a middle-aged woman who—

  “Great balls of fire!” Atropos exclaimed. “She’s a Satanist!”