Bearing an Hourglass

by Piers Anthony

  "You know me too well!" he agreed ruefully. He kept allowing himself to be deceived by appearances, when by now he ought to know better. Clotho had those deep eyes of Fate and she was no young or innocent damsel. No, indeed! She was an Incarnation, with all the subtle power that implied. "But all that stopped when I met Orlene. She was the first true love I experienced, and—"

  "Oh, yes, of course—that's still fresh in your mind! How silly of me to forget! It is my position to help you get over that so you can focus without reservation on your office. Very well—we'll take time off to go see your mortal woman."

  "We?"

  "Well, you could take me with you if you chose; it's in your magical power to do so. But I agree: for this, you'd better go alone." She fished in her dark hair and drew forth a single strand. "Here is Orlene's thread. Truncated, as you can see; only a third as long as it should have been. You can, of course, restore the full length, if you wish. The powers of the Incarnations are great, but none are absolute where they overlap those of other Incarnations. Orient your Glass on this, and you'll find her anywhere you choose."

  Norton had been learning the technique of thread orientation. He touched the Hourglass to the thread, then willed the sand blue.

  The mansion vanished. He was zooming along the thread as if riding a cablecar. Events of the world rushed past, glimpsed momentarily. Slow, he thought, and progress eased, the glimpses becoming longer.

  It was Orlene's life he was following, backward. Her individual motions were too rapid for him to focus on, but her surroundings had more staying power. A building she had spent time in—perhaps a school—abruptly vanished. It had been unconstructed, and she moved on to a lesser school, more crowded. Trees around her home slowly shrank, their foliage flickering on and off through the seasons, the deciduous trees becoming suddenly clothed in bright leaves which then faded to green and eventually sucked back into the twigs and branches. The lawn grass kept jumping high, then smoothing down till nearly bald, then being mowed high again. The house became brightly painted, then abruptly turned dull.

  He brought himself to a random halt. He was in a school class, looking at a girl about ten years old. The scene was strange; in a moment he realized this was because he was viewing it backward. He had halted himself, not time, and now was living normally, for him. No one here was aware of him—but if he changed to match the world's time flow, he would become visible, disrupting the scene, so he let it be.

  This was evidently a cooking class, with the teacher demonstrating how to bake a pie by using pyro-magic. Under her reversed guidance, the demonstration pie proceeded from brown to gold and on into pasty white. Norton watched the young Orlene, a pretty girl even at this age. Alas, she was not paying full attention, but was whispering with a female companion in girlish fashion. Her pie would probably be botched.

  He turned the sand red and moved a few years into this Orlene's future, then watched her backward again. This time she was lying on her bed at home, in jeans and a man's shirt—what was there about men's shirts that caused girls to prefer them to their own?—chatting into her holophone. It was a boy in the image, tousle-haired, animated, obviously full of the enthusiasm of the moment. Orlene was now about fifteen, and was assuming much of her adult beauty; he recognized some of her little mannerisms, as yet unperfected. He felt a surge of nostalgia; this girl was in the visible process of becoming the woman he had loved.

  He moved three more years along her life, to her age eighteen. Now she was playing squash with a young man. It was a game that brought the active players into close proximity, since they shared the court as they slammed the ball against the wall, and therefore seemed to be popular for mixed couples. The man was obviously beating her, but the motions of her body as she strove for points were beautiful. The ball rebounded and flew at her, and she swung her racket backward to intersect it, whereupon it flew back from her while she wore a look of expectant concentration. Orlene had matured into a healthy, lovely young woman, and it was sweetly painful for Norton to look at her. Those limbs, that torso, that face with the backward-flying hair—he had known them all intimately, in her present future. Those lips—he had kissed them, years hence. Orlene—he would love her and loved her still.

  He followed her through to the beginning of the game, when she was fresh, clean, unglowing, and ready for anything. She bade hello to her opponent-date and strode backward away from him to the female changing room. Norton hesitated, then decided not to pursue her there; he knew what her body was like, but this was inappropriate peeking.

  He was not doing this just to be a voyeur. He wanted to rescue the woman he loved from her dreadful fate. Now he knew he could do it; his experience in rescuing himself from the Bem in the Glob had proved that. He was immune from paradox; he could change his own past and those of others without nullifying his present. He did not intend to abuse this power, but he did intend to spare her.

  Where was the best place to act? When was best? Probably before he, Norton, had met her, so he would not have to interfere openly with himself. Would this nullify his association with her? Yes, surely it would—but that would be replaced by a new association, a better one. In fact, he could void the whole ghost marriage and marry her himself.

  But first he had better make sure of his power. He wanted to interact with her in a noncritical period of her life, not to change anything, just to be sure he knew what he was doing. This was no ordinary person; this was Orlene!

  He moved back along the thread to her childhood, to the time when she was seven years old, on her summer vacation after her first year of formal school. Now she was not using a holophone, because that instrument had not yet been commercially developed; the old sonic ones were still extant. Anyway, she was too young for social interchanges with interested boys; she was a wild honey-haired spirit, running through one of the early city rooftop parks. The trees were still in big pots, and ramparts showed; true wilderness was a thing of future parks. A lot of the bad old pollution and messiness remained in the world; soon the political climate would change, greatly facilitating improvement, but it had not happened at this moment.

  She was with a party of children, but strayed from them, skipped happily down a bypath, and got lost. Worried, she gazed at the several bifurcations of the paved path, unsure which to take. Norton, having traveled past her immediate future, knew that she would be lost for a good thirty-five minutes, an eternity at that age, and be in tears before a park attendant rescued her from bewilderment and brought her back to her party. This was the appropriate time to approach her.

  He tuned in to the beginning other isolation and turned the sand green. Now he was in phase with her.

  "Hello, Orlene," he said gently. He was a grown man and she was a child, but he felt almost shy.

  She stopped her nervous ambulation and turned quickly to face him. "Oh—I didn't see you!" she exclaimed. "Who are you, mister, in that funny dress?"

  He was wearing the white robe of his office, of course. "I am—" He hesitated; he hadn't thought this through. He couldn't tell her he was Chronos; she would hardly understand. Neither could he tell her he was her future lover. "A friend."

  "Can you tell me how to get back?"

  "I'll try. I think it's this way." He gestured toward the correct path, and they walked along it.

  "How did you know my name?" Orlene asked brightly.

  "I've seen you in school."

  "Oh, you're a teacher!" she exclaimed, as if it were the most important thing in the world.

  "Well—" But she was already skipping ahead, her piggybraids flouncing.

  I love her even as a child, he thought, surprised and somewhat awed at the extent of his own commitment. He had been, as Clotho had chided him, free with women; this one had chained his soul. He followed after, trying to think of suitable comments to make or questions to ask.

  Then Oriene made a glad little cry. "There they are!" She ran to join her group.

  The adult guide turned at the sound
of her voice. Norton hastily shifted sand and faded out of contemporary view. Oriene was all right; she was an innocent child. She had been spared a bad half hour. He was glad he had been able to do her that small service. But adults were another matter. They would ask the wrong questions.

  So his dialogue with Oriene had amounted to nothing. There had been no meaningful personal interaction.

  No, not entirely true. She would probably forget the stranger in the white dress, but he had discovered the extent of his captivity. Now he knew he needed to rehearse himself better for questions. It had been a good practice session.

  Should he go back those few minutes in time and replay it, trying to effect a more personal contact? He decided not to. He had verified what he wanted to; he could interact with her without wreaking havoc or generating paradox. Now he could proceed with confidence to change her life significantly.

  He moved back and forth along her life-thread, sampling it here and there, zeroing in on the appropriate region. He traced, somewhat erratically, her life up to the point at which the family of Gawain the Ghost had contacted her and made her the offer she could not refuse. There had been other men in her young life—Norton spied on these passing relationships with a certain voyeuristic jealousy, though he knew from his own prior experience that she had been a virgin bride. Oriene had been looking for Mister Right and had not been able to choose among those who were handsome and stupid, smart but poor, or rich but degenerate. She, like any sensible girl, wanted perfection in a man, and it was hard to come by. Thus she was the perfect candidate for the ghost marriage: attractive, intelligent, pristine, and reasonably ambitious for security and creature comfort.

  There was a period of about three months before Gawain's family came, when Oriene had no romantic attachment. This was ideal for Norton's purpose.

  He located a day when she was home watching a dull holo rerun and phased in. He knew the young woman of twenty would not be even fractionally as accepting as the girl of seven had been, so he planned his approach more carefully. But he planned no deception; that would be the wrong way to start a relationship as important as this.

  He knew she was alone today; that was a major reason he selected this time. Her father was away on a business trip, and her mother was on a shopping spree. So Oriene was minding the house. There would be a good six hours, if he managed it correctly—and if he did not, he would wind it back and try again. That was one huge advantage of his present office: he could replay scenes to correct errors. Of course, he would have to undergo the discomfort of reversing himself also, because he did not want several copies of himself competing for her attention. But with luck he would not make any bad errors, and would not have to run his own line backward for more than a minute or so at a time.

  He phased in outside her house and stepped up to the door. Again he felt something very like stage fright; his pulse was racing. But he kept a rein on himself and held his thumb on the pattern-recognition panel. In a moment Orlene's image appeared on the doorscreen. "Sorry, we aren't buying," she said pertly.

  "I am not a salesman," Norton said. "I am a storyteller." He had cadged many a meal that way in his past life; he had always told good stories that made people welcome him. This was the age of holo entertainment, but there was a special quality to genuine, live, personal narrative that still attracted people. The machines and the spells could never take over entirely!

  "A what?"

  "A storyteller. In this futuristic age, I revert to old-fashioned values. I tell stories by hand. By mouth, I mean."

  "You're selling holotapes?"

  "No tapes. Just myself. Every narration an original! If you care to listen, I will—"

  "Sorry," she said, and the screen blanked. He had blown it. She was, of course, not paying much attention to strangers. This was a sensible attitude for young women alone in houses.

  He overturned the Hourglass and reversed time for himself and her, unwinding the prior sequence. Naturally she would not be aware of this; her life was erased to that extent.

  "You're selling holotapes?" she asked as he resumed forward motion, thirty seconds back.

  "No tapes. Stories. About young women who play pianos with rare skill and squash with lesser skill."

  She hesitated, surprised. He had described her, of course. "What is this?"

  "Stories about people who like picture puzzles," he said. "And walks in parks. And babies."

  She stared at him through the screen. "Who are you, really?"

  "I doubt you would believe that."

  "Try me."

  "I am Chronos—the human Incarnation of Time."

  She laughed. "One for one! I certainly don't believe that!"

  "I can show you tricks with time—"

  "Don't bother, thank you." The screen faded.

  He rolled time back again. "Try me," she said.

  "Your future associate. You will enter into a ghost marriage and—"

  The screen faded.

  He reversed time again. "Try me," she said.

  He held up his left hand. "Sning, show her."

  Sning uncoiled and slid into his palm. "Oh, how cute!" Orlene exclaimed. "I've got one just like it!"

  "You gave me this," Norton said. "It's yours."

  "I did not! I have mine right here!" She paused, then brought up a duplicate snake ring.

  This made Norton pause. Could Sning meet himself?

  Why not? Norton had met himself in the Glob. Sning had probably doubled up that time, too. "Maybe they should meet."

  She put her ring on her finger and paused again, evidently thinking a question at it. After a moment she shrugged and opened the door. "He says you're okay," she said, almost apologetically. Norton entered, feeling somewhat the way he had felt when he first met her, almost three years hence. She was so lovely, and he so ordinary, and he wanted so much from her; how could he make known his ambition?

  He touched the table with his left hand, and Sning slithered off to join the other snake. Apparently duplication of creatures was no problem, though he was sure paradox lurked in the shadows. How far did his immunity extend?

  "May I get you something?" Orlene asked.

  "No, thanks. I think I'd just better tell you what is on my mind." He drew out a chair and sat down at the table.

  She took a chair opposite. "You certainly act as if you know me."

  "Let me show you my nature," he said. "What I have to say will be more credible, once you understand that."

  "Perhaps," she agreed noncommittally. He wondered whether she was inspecting him for glow. Perhaps not; she was looking at him as an intriguing stranger, not as a marriage prospect, so the glow might not be in evidence—if, indeed, he was at this stage a good marriage prospect for her. Of that he could hardly be sure. He loved her, yes-but there was already more to this relationship than love.

  "I am Chronos, the Incarnation of Time." This time she did not retreat; she was intrigued enough to listen. "I can reverse the flow of time, in part or in whole. Here." He fished in his pocket for a pebble he had saved for its pretty form. Technically, he had been robbing the wilderness of Mars, but he did not think that planet would mind. He dropped the red stone on the table. "Note how it falls."

  "Straight down," she said, raising an eyebrow, not sure of his point.

  "I will reverse time for myself, for a moment," he said. He held up the Hourglass, but did not invert it; he wanted only a limited effect. He turned the sand red, then willed the spot-reversal.

  The sand reversed course, flowing from the base to the upper chamber of the Hourglass. A moment later the pebble on the table bounced, then lifted up to join his right hand. Then he turned the sand green, rejoining the normal world time. He had kept the reversal quite limited, so that Orlene had not been affected.

  Orlene grabbed for her snake ring. In her haste she got both of them. One curled around one finger, the other around another. "Is he of Satan?" she asked tersely.

  Norton could not see the little sna
kes squeezing, but knew they were. "Is he really Chronos?" she asked next. And finally: "Then why does he wear an amulet of Satan?"

  Startled, Norton glanced down at the little horn Satan had given him, suspended on its chain. "Satan did give me this," he said. "But I am not his creature. He asked me to do him a favor, and this amulet was to summon him if I needed him." He lifted the horn—and discovered that part of it was missing. There had been a flared rim; now there was only the basic horn. "The rim must have fallen off during a prior phase-in to normal time."

  "Throw it away!" Orlene said.

  Norton removed the chain and set the amulet on the table.

  "If I threw it away here, it would remain in your vicinity. Better to destroy it. Do you have an incinerator?"

  "Flames won't destroy a thing of the Devil!" she said. "I have some holy water." She rose to fetch it. Norton tried not to gaze at her too obviously; she was so lovely, so almost-familiar—yet he had seen her dead, years hence.

  In a moment she returned with a vial. She shook a few drops onto the horn. It blackened and shivered, emitting a noxious stench. The chain wrestled itself around like a live thing, then puffed into a ring of smoke.

  Orlene relaxed. "I don't like Satan," she said.

  "Neither do I," Norton agreed, his conviction strengthening because of hers. "He is the Incarnation of Evil. I am the Incarnation of Time. I suppose I have to associate with him, but I don't really have to do him any favors."

  "Yes," she said. She was about to put away the remaining holy water, then had an afterthought. She brought her left hand up and sprinkled holy water on her knuckles, dousing both snakes.

  Norton jumped. Sning was of demonic origin!

  Nothing happened. Orlene glanced at Norton. Wordlessly, he extended his own left hand, and she sprinkled a few drops on it, too. There was no reaction.

  "Very well," she said. "I accept you as Time. What do you want with me?"

  He wanted his whole life with her! But he couldn't say it.

  Suddenly Norton made a connection. "Sning!" he exclaimed. "You tried to warn me about Satan's amulet, didn't you! You knew it wouldn't help me here!"