by Ian Wallace
Dio said earnestly, “Pray do.”
“My third possibility is, that the alternate track might cut off and replace the original track before either would attain present germinality. Then the original track, like a cut vine, might perish, while the alternate track would take over. In other words—to make a very plain and intimate analogy, Rourke Mallory: if your formation of RP in the fifties should be aborted by an alternate past-track in the fifties, it might mean that you never formed an RP fleet at all. And in that case, God only knows where you and I and all of us would be now.”
Prolonged silence because of prolonged meditation by five people.
The meaning of my own chilliness a bit ago had now come clear, and I had to inject it. “Things have moved too fast for me to have thought of this before, and I’m not sure I can formulate it. I’ll bypass Rourke and Esther for a moment, they’re complicated cases, and I’ll focus on Dio and me. Less than one day ago, he and I were operating in nineteen fifty-two, perfectly confident that as we moved along we were continually being and creating new events of our own fairly free volitions. Now abruptly we find ourselves alive in two thousand two, with all events in nineteen fifty-two— even future events in 1952—already predetermined because they have already long ago happened. Are we therefore now to imagine that all our prior lives in nineteen fifty-two were in fact fatalistically predetermined and volitionless? Have we just lost our meanings as individuals? Were we in fact programmed robots? And if we should return into nineteen fifty-two—if Rourke and Dio and Esther and I should return into nineteen fifty-two for a rendezvous with Kali—could our action there then possible be creative? Or is it in fact fatalistically predetermined at this very moment? And if the latter—is this trip worth it?"
And then I sat actually trembling.
Clarice Vanderkilt looked at me with iced-cucumber directness. “To extrapolate from your question, Doctor—are we here in two thousand two living new lives? Or do we exist in the past of some already-accomplished future era? Well: if the first is true, we’d better think and operate; and if the second is true, what does it matter? And since we don’t know, we’d better operate on the assumption that the first is true.”
I saw the sense. It rather quieted me, although it left me with many unresolved questions. But I want to move on with the action....
It was then Rourke said quietly, “Thank you, Clarice, I’ve made my decision. I can’t consult this crew or my fleet on this one, it has to be my decision alone even though it may destroy all of us. Captain, please be good enough to activate surface-descent immediately for the Ishtar alone. To minimize Earth-alarm, we’ll touch down about thirteen miles off Nantes and proceed on skimmer-drive to Blois. Do you agree that all things considered, five hours should do it?”
22.
Spectacular indeed, for an earthling who hadn’t yet seen the astronaut beginnings or even the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb, was our 2002 space approach to France. One of the dandy little things in 2002 was a restorative pill which contained no Benzedrine but blessed us with a sludging away of physical fatigue-poisons; our minds needed sleep, but our brains and bodies didn’t know this, and so we could be alert until tonight when preclimactic sleep was scheduled.
As our approach neared, the daylit Earth surface streamed away from us on all sides until mostly one part of Earth lay below us. “France!” I uttered, map-knowing her northwestern and western contours and her main rivers and her southern and eastern mountains. She seemed just below, yet still during minutes we came nearer, and her borders almost everywhere fell away into invisibility; and like a far-aloft special-effect shot in an imaginative film, the west coast of the French midriff including half the Loire moved languidly upward toward us....
The ship’s transparent overhead walnut-halfshells parted and receded into the hull, and skimmers hissed on, and the Ishtar settled into stability a meter above the ocean. Instantly cutting into full-power drive, she blew toward the Loire mouth at hair-tattering velocity.
That was when we went to Rourke’s cabin for a maybe farewell talk with his fleet 50,000 kilometers off Earth.
Having asked his grave captains to activate the entire com system aboard every ship, the commodore conversationally told them:
“Regrettably this cannot be a conclave, it has to be a commodore’s monolog. I will inform you what I am doing, give you interim orders for fleet operations, and finally give you contingency orders in case I do not return.
“At this moment, as your recon screens will have told you, the Ishtar is proceeding up the Loire to Blois. This was my decision based on a new and personally disturbing theory about Kali. With my colleagues here—Inspector Horse, Dr. Vogel, and Mme. d'Illyria—I have reason to consider it unlikely that Kali will blow Earth before the present mission will have reached one or another conclusion.
“With respect to these three colleagues I must insert a plea to all of you, to every members of all our crews. None of you must imagine that Mallory has gone suddenly senile and has out-of-hand favored these three above any of you. All of you have long valued Esther as a peer-colleague. Esther once was married to Dio Horse, and his mental acuity, command ability, and tracking experience would be hard to measure. Lilith Vogel was my friend before many of you were bom, indirectly she shares responsibility for the existence of this fleet, her psychologist’s interest-areas are directly and peculiarly pertinent to the Kali-problem. In our consultations, your Blois-contributions about Kali were indispensable evidence; without them we could not have arrived at the theory on which I am now acting. Nevertheless, these three have had direct experiences with Kali far more intimate and revealing than any of your experiences—even yours, dear Chloris—and their lives like mine have become so tightly interbound with the Kali-problem that they have to be associated with me in immediacy. It remains that all of you are my beloved and incomparable comrades.
“Now:
“We four at Blois are going back together into nineteen fifty-two; this is a new-discovered ability that Horse and I have—you must have inferred it from the presence of Dio and Lilith from nineteen fifty-two. We will confront Kali at what we think was the moment of his birth, and we will do something about this. Afterward, as many of us as possible will return if we can. Further details will have to await the return of one or more of us; if none of us makes it, develop your own mythos and carry on.”
As Rourke had moved through these several themes, the changing expressions on the captain-faces had been enthrall-ing. Right now they were all in one or another condition of extreme disturbance; and I saw a few hands go tentatively up....
“Please, no comments,” Rourke almost begged. “Let me issue orders.
“First, the interim orders. Continue with your space maneuvers, and keep Captain Vanderkilt apprised of developments. Because she is most immediately in contact with me, she is interim fleet-commander. Should you lose contact with her, confer and decide and act. These orders prevail during forty-eight hours from this moment or until one of us four returns to contact you, whichever is sooner.
“Next, the contingency that neither Horse nor I returns, but either Mme. d'Illyria or Dr. Vogel returns. In this case, Captain Vanderkilt or another is to summon a conclave; and after Esther or Lilith has reported to all of you, elect an interim fleet-commander and carry on until you are ready to elect a permanent commander.
“Next, the contingency that Inspector Horse returns but I do not. Please be fully aware that the civilian police-rank of Horse is senior, he has army combat experience as a senior officer, his purview is vast, his insight is deep. He’s also a damned good companion. In the contingency I mentioned, I urge him to take interim command of RP, and I urge you to accept his interim command; what may happen after that depends on the interdynamics among all of you.
“Finally, the contingency that none of us returns. Elect an interim commander, later a permanent commander; carry on; and think of me once in a while.
“In honesty, I must tell you one more thin
g. If I do return, it won’t be for long. I have mosaic virus, apparently induced by Kali. My heir is Horse; please try him before you soberly decide to reject him.
“That’s it, my beloved companions. To understate it— thanks for everything.”
He nodded to Vanderkilt for a corn-cut; but she shook her head and gestured toward the multiple screens.
All captains were on their feet. Some men and women were weeping.
Snarled Chloris, “Oh, damn!” Beginning to weep, she cut visibility. Zeno, frowning hard, stated with definition, “Since you decided it, I’ll buy it; even Horse, if it comes to that.” Perpignan incised, “Acknowledged; agreed.” Volpone affirmed with a silent nod. Teary Mengrovia throated, “Au revoir, tovarisch!” A few of them held stiff; most, in one way or another, affirmed.
Ilya wound it up with a comment of studied intelligence.
“Guru Kali can change the past, but he is selectively mischievous about it. I am confident, Rourke, that you too can change the past, and that you will be judicious, and that you will not be mischievous.”
On that, Vanderkilt cut the com. I back-perceived an omission: Rourke hadn’t mentioned that success on this mission might back-cancel the very birth and existence of the RP Fleet. I suspected that the omission had been deliberate and that he felt deep guilt about his failure to confess honestly his unilateral sentence of possible death upon the careers of these his comrades. But when you thought about it, if their careers were back-canceled, they would never know it, having by retroaction never embarked upon those careers. It mattered profoundly to Rourke; but he must have decided that their ignorance wouldn’t in practice matter to any of the others.
23.
We came to rest at a longshore pier just below the chateau; we were not rope-tied to the pier but magnetically fastened there. It was late afternoon, and the pier and the river were languidly alive with homecoming sailors in much smaller skimmer-craft and prop-craft and sail-craft. I became aware that a number of crew people were informally assembling on deck behind us, waiting in awkwardness; I turned to survey them: Captain Vanderkilt was there, and Lieutenant Wozniak, whom I’d met and appreciated, and a lot of others ranging from officers to deckhands. (Commander Duval stayed below, electromagnetically caged.) Rourke behind me: “I’ll have to say goodbye to them.” I stepped away where I could alternately watch him and them; so beyond him did Dio and Esther.
I won’t linger over the farewells, because Rourke didn’t There was a lot of nose-blowing, though; and it crossed my mind that their outgoing concern for Rourke would have been just as unselfishly intent if all had realized that either his failure or his success might mean their own career demise, by tempostructure. Again the question became conscious for me, whether any time era was real, this or any other. And as Rourke walked silently among them, affectionately hugging the men and mouth-kissing the women from Vanderkilt down (with a most hearty buss for Wozniak, whose eyes were streaming), I consulted the eyes of Dio and Esther, and some telepathy told me with certainty that their wonder was like mine....
Rourke had completed the goodbyes, not having missed a crew member, and now he was exchanging a final privacy with the captain; and I had turned from time-eeriness to savor a heart-filling personal world. My affection and admiration for this Rourke Mallory were boundless; and he cared for me, this was evident; and beyond any rational or intuitive doubt, Rourke was the future-not-real continuation of the Burk Halloran whom I had loved passionately and with compassion. But what I now felt or could feel for Rourke, and what he now felt or could feel for me, was not what Burk and I had felt. Far more than mere time had made the difference: his decades of making a splendid life, with me omitted from his assumptions, and his vast maturation, and perhaps my own somewhat-maturation—these had made the difference.
As of 1948, back there in the peony garden under a homed, beardless moon, it was eternally true for me and for Rourke that young Burk and young Lilith needed each other and with full bursting hearts were consummating that mutual need.
But this was 2002, or 1952, or whatever; and Rourke and I, perhaps a little like Rourke and Esther, had become old affectionate trusting friends, who thought together and felt together and could counsel each other and would always be comforted in each other’s presence if Rourke should survive.
Almighty Father, let him survive in some way that will be good for himself and for your purposes.
This is what time is: at any given moment, all the past coexisting and eternal, and all the future a truly indeterminate potential for creativity.
But what if the past is restless? What if the past can be changed?
I say that the events of the past, and their meanings for contemporary humans at the time when they were transpiring, can not be changed! There is no doubt, of course, that future people will change the past as perceived. And I now think it even probable—in view of my own experience which seems to say this—that at a given time an initiate can somehow add to the past, creating alternate time-tracks which may even in some cases affect the future. But such alternate tracks can not eradicate or even influence the original past: its events and feelings dwell as they were forever, and a human who remembers past events and wants to relive them can truly relive them in memory (to the extent that he can cut through brain-blur) as they were then and are always.
Part Seven
1952, AND SOME
OTHER ERAS
24.
In his ship cabin, Rourke: “I brought you first by ship to two-thousand-two Blois in order to simplify the teletemportation problem for our amateur minds.” He had us all join hands and concentrate; with closed eyes, quite easily now we jumpshifted ourselves to a Blois locale in 1952—so easily that I felt no transition and only later thought to tremble at this mystifying methodology which those two men were mastering and toward which we women were possibly contributing power. But then, with deep inward weird, I recognized that mere teletemportation was trivial beside the ultradimensionality that we would face.
Insofar as psychology is a science, it restricts itself to scientific method—which means, among other things, that it can use only evidence which is materially detectable, and that it can erect a theory only in terms of experimentally testable proposals which describe how anybody’s creation of a given set of conditions will always bring about the same results. That’s tough enough to do with minds which keep changing as they grow, which never seem to duplicate each Other, and which start behaving extralogically as soon as they sense that they are being observed; and that’s why psychology of the higher branches hasn’t become bodaciously scientific. But we keep trying, as scientifically as we can —and this very self-restriction leaves oceans of possibilities untouchable. Many of those possibilities are termed “occult.” It is unscientific to snort that occult phenomena are necessarily always faked or delusive; the scientific thing to say is, that occult phenomena will cease to be occult to the extent that science can get them under controlled study. But that isn’t easy.
Kali was occult. His relationships with Rourke and with Dio were occult In the maimer of confrontation that we vaguely expected, without being able to make our expectations definite, Kali’s existence would be called impossible— or, by an extracareful extra-imaginative scientist, absurdly improbable in terms of present knowledge.
And in this confrontation, which already transcended time between 1952 and 2002 and might (if the Cro-Magnon cave fresco meant anything) whirl us into time depths infinitely past, I now accepted as real the contingent possibility that not only the lives of Rourke and Dio, but even their souls, might perish.
Yet there was no hint of chill in the quiet merriment of Rourke and the hard grin on Dio as we four materialized on June 27, 1952, unromantically in the men’s room of a hotel called Chenaie de Blois. “We’ll hardly be noticed here,” whispered Rourke; and indeed, only one of the two men at the urinals turned briefly to stare, whereafter he returned to his primary concerns. Faintly envying his shot-capability (K
aren Homey would understand this), Esther and I followed our men out into the lobby; and just inside the lavatory door, I couldn’t resist giving a franc to the guardian-woman who stared by turns indifferently at the urinoirs and the lobby and the wall.
Rourke at the desk obtained two communicating rooms, each with a double bed; and since now it was presupper drinking time, he led us to the tavern. After he had apologized for not putting us up in the chateau—“RP owns it in two thousand two but not in nineteen fifty-two”—we all fell into silence, pondering impossibilities.
After a bit of this, Rourke talked. He had dug back into his old logs and had established for certain that the yawl Star of Boston, which he and Randolph had co-owned in 1952, had been tied up here for several days centering on this date. Tomorrow morning Dio and Esther might pose as casual tourists and try getting access to the Star; they would probably meet Randolph, and they could take it from there; whereafter Rourke and I could follow them aboard, and Rourke would take it from there. ...
Dio said hard, “But how about Halloran?”
He had fingered, of course, the time-paradox that all of us had carefully avoided fingering. And it set us into a deep wine-brood. For of course, Rourke Mallory was Halloran fifty years older, come back here into a time when Halloran had not yet changed his name and was present fifty years younger. And that would have to mean, not merely a Mallory-Kali confrontation, but with infinite additional difficulty, a Mallory-Halloran confrontation, and their confrontation with a Kali who might still be part of Halloran....
Rourke, rallying, responded with a wry smile. “My answer to that horrible possibility is, everything about our presence in nineteen fifty-two is a time-paradox, affecting lives in a small way, from the w.c. guardian-woman to the desk clerk and the gargons in tavern and dining room and so on. And I haven’t yet figured out how we can breathe here, when all the air molecules are fifty years dead. On the other hand, Dio and Lilith were thriving in this era a day or so ago. Maybe all eras, once they are born out of prior eras and have maturated, are time-parallel and lose causal interrelationship, and people who know how can do a tourism back-and-forth among them. But if that’s true, what are we doing here now? For a neutralization of Kali here-now would then have no causal effect on Kali in 2002. I choose to believe that we are here-now in nineteen fifty-two, and that what we do here-now has meaning for two thousand two and maybe for indefinite eras after that-Let’s go in to supper.”