Saint Vidicon to the Rescue

by Christopher Stasheff

  As the Hyperion pulled up to the bank, the western gate opened and the T’ai-Pings came charging out. “Form up!” Gordon shouted, and the sergeants repeated the order in Cantonese. The soldiers came off the boats at the double and formed up in ranks and columns.

  The T’ai-Pings, seeing them, formed their line of marching circles and began to lay down a field of fire.

  The sergeants bawled their translation, but Chu-Yi heard Gordon call out the original. “They’re weak from hunger, but you are well fed! Only a little courage and we’ll have them surrendering! Forward—MARCH!”

  Gordon turned his back and set off toward the city at the double. Firing as they went, the Ever-Victorious Army followed him.

  Chu-Yi followed more closely than any, firing, reloading, and firing again until he was close enough to make out the features of the man whose shot would kill Gordon. Levelling his musket, Chu-Yi aimed at the man’s leg and fired.

  He could tell from the way the man fell that he had missed and hit the soldier in the chest. The T’ai-Ping was dead.

  Then the whole world seemed to shift subtly, and Chu-Yi was looking at the man through his musket sights again. Somehow, incredibly, he had another chance to save the fellow’s life. He raised his aim and squeezed off another round.

  Again, the man clutched his chest and fell.

  Again, the world seemed to shift suddenly.

  Again, Chu-Yi raised his aim and fired.

  As the man clutched his chest and fell once more, Chu-Yi realized, with a sense of despair, that he was doomed to repeat the same action forever, and that not even starvation would come to stop him. In desperation, he dropped his aim—but the T-ai-Ping fired, Gordon fell, the world shifted, and somehow Chu-Yi was staring through the sights of his disguised rifle at the same blasted soldier.

  Tony hovered unseen over the battlefield, appalled as he watched men die and saw the blood spreading. It was raw, it was gruesome, it wasn’t at all the way Hollywood would have done it.

  Then he felt the world shift and saw Chu-Yi drop his aim, saw Gordon jolt backward and fall, felt the world shift again. The problem wasn’t with Chu-Yi’s musket, then. In fact, there wasn’t anything on this battlefield that was of a high enough level of technology to attract gremlins.

  But there was a time machine—maybe not here, but behind the events he was watching. Even Tony had learned in world history that Gordon had only been wounded once during the T’ai-Ping Rebellion, and he hadn’t let it keep him from the next battle. Indeed, he had survived to become a hale and hearty old maverick of a general who’d died in the Sudan, facing the Mahdi’s army of desert marauders at Khartoum. What did a computer programmer know about time travel?

  Well, it was an exercise in logic, wasn’t it? Handicapped without a keyboard, without even a piece of paper, Tony tried to trace the sequence of events in his mind: Chu-Yi had killed a T’ai-Ping soldier and Gordon had survived. But somehow, that soldier’s death had wiped out Chu-Yi’s shooting, and the soldier had lived after all, to fire the shot that killed Gordon. But if Gordon had died, then the earlier Chu-Yi who had been watching from the T-ai-Ping side had lived to go ahead in time to become one of Gordon’s soldiers and protect him by shooting the T’ai-Ping—but the soldier’s death had negated Chu-Yi’s actions, and so on around and around in a neat little circle.

  A feedback cycle.

  A logical loop.

  Why?

  Tony flashed over to the T’ai-Ping side as the world wobbled again. He sank into the T’ai-Ping soldier’s head for a few moments, long enough to read his memories and learn his biography.

  His name was Chang Kuo-Feng, and he was a time traveller. Not only that, he was Chu-Yi’s grandson.

  He was one of Dr. Angus’s agents, to be specific. He was stationed in 2047, which was why Chu-Yi had never met him. Kuo-Feng had just finished a scouting trip, living through this section of time to find out whose musket ball had killed Chu-Yi. He had seen the T’ai-Ping soldier shoot and seen Chu-Yi die. Then he had gone back in time a few minutes and tripped the T’ai-Ping before he could fire the musket ball that would have killed Chu-Yi. Instantly Kuo-Feng had fired a wild shot for camouflage—but had unwittingly killed Gordon.

  Then he had found himself reliving those few minutes again, but this time, before he could shoot Gordon, pain had exploded in his chest, and the world had faded into darkness.

  Then, suddenly, he was alive again, and men were firing their muskets all around him, and Kuo-Feng realized more clearly than he ever had that he was putting his life on the line. Duty was duty, though, and he had a sentimental attachment to his grandfather, so he had tripped the T’ai-Ping before he could fire the musket ball that would have killed Chu-Yi. Then Kuo-Feng had fired his next wild shot for camouflage—but had unwittingly killed Gordon.

  Then the world had shifted, and Kuo-Feng had felt a tearing pain in his chest, and the world had gone black again . . .

  So why was he on his feet in the midst of men firing muskets again? This time, though, he was dazed enough so that he forgot to trip the T-ai-Ping, and Chu-Yi had fallen with a musket ball in his chest.

  Now, under normal conditions, watching your grandfather die is shortly followed by ceasing to exist—but because Chu-Yi had started a time loop, his descendant had found himself reliving the last few minutes over again. This time he did remember to trip the man next to him, the soldier who was aiming at Chu-Yi, then fired a shot himself to seem innocent, not knowing his musket ball would go through Gordon’s ribs—but Chu-Yi had come back in time to shoot his fellow agent first, not knowing the man was:one of his own band,

  saving his life, and

  his grandson.

  So Kuo-Feng had died before he could shoot Gordon after all—but he also hadn’t been there to trip the soldier whose shot had killed Chu-Yi. So Chu-Yi had died, but having died, he hadn’t been there to shoot Kuo-Feng, who therefore had tripped his fellow soldier, saving Chu-Yi’s life so Chu-Yi could shoot him, thereby signing his own death warrant . . .

  Or, rather, dooming them both to keep living and dying again and again, in that same loop of time—unless Tony could figure out a way to stop the paradox.

  Tony pulled out of the man’s head, dizzy with the circularity of it, trying instead to figure out how to solve the paradox and break the time loop. He knew the basic principle, of course—step outside the terms of the paradox—but how did you do that in this case? It was one thing to do it when you were only solving a puzzle in a classroom—then you could reassign functions—but this paradox was happening in the middle of a battle, and he couldn’t change Chu-Yi’s grandson into someone else’s descendant, nor persuade Doc Angus—he’d never even met the man, and probably never would—to assign a different agent for this job.

  But he could spike Kuo-Feng’s gun.

  He flashed back in time a few minutes, hovered beside Chu-Yi’s grandson long enough to get his bearings, then plunged into the lock mechanism of the musket.

  It was a flintlock, considerably more primitive than the kind of technology Tony was used to working with, but he thought he could grasp the general principles anyway. He started rearranging subatomic particles, stripping electrons off atoms and making them flow through the lock mechanism in a circle.

  Sure enough, a diminutive head popped up, and a gremlkin glared at him over the hammer’s spring. “Begone, mortal! This is my meat, not yours!”

  Tony was only too glad to oblige.

  Kuo-Feng tripped the T’ai-Ping, then pulled his trigger, and the hammer drove the flint into the pan—but the gremlkin had done its work, so the spark made a pretty flash but did absolutely nothing else. Kuo-Feng frowned and looked down at his musket, then shrugged and sprinkled on new priming powder.

  Tony grinned; he’d been pretty sure a flow of electrons would attract a gremlkin. After all, before the invention of electric lights, before the invention of radio, during a time when the only technology using electricity was the telegraph, there had t
o be a huge number of unemployed gremlkins looking for a chance to work mischief. Tony flashed over to the Ever-Victorious Army and saw Chu-Yi hesitate with his rifle levelled, wondering why the T’ai-Ping hadn’t fired at Gordon. When the man did fire, his musket was pointed ten feet away. An American soldier spun about with blood streaming from his thigh and fell.

  Chu-Yi, very confused, lowered his musket. He didn’t know why the time line had changed, but he knew it had and was wary of doing anything to change that change.

  Tony grinned, rising above the battle to watch grandfather and grandson for a few minutes until the T’ai-Ping line broke and the soldiers ran for cover. Kuo-Feng plunged into a thicket of bulrushes and never came out—but he did step out of a time machine in 2047. Chu-Yi, ostensibly chasing fleeing enemies, dashed into another clump—and promptly disappeared, back to the time lab in the mid-1950s.

  That left only a horrible scene of men hunting down other men. Tony’s stomach churned, and he gratefully shot back to Father Vidicon.

  As the ruby tunnel formed around him again, he wished he could be in Doc Angus’s time lab to hear Chu-Yi trying to make sense of the events. But Gordon had lived, that was all that mattered to history—and Chu-Yi and his grandson were out of the time-loop trap, and that was all that mattered to Tony. Sure, it would be nice if they knew what he had done and could thank him for it, but this was definitely one case in which the work would have to be its own reward.

  “You’ve taken her on twenty dates,” Father Vidicon said, “first Saturday nights, then Friday nights too, and now you’re seeing each other on Sunday afternoons and one or two other evenings into the bargain.”

  “Those aren’t really dates,” Tony protested, “just hanging around together—and they don’t always end with going back to her apartment. I mean, well, they do, but most of the time just to drop her off.”

  “I’m glad that petting hasn’t become a required part of your agenda,” Father Vidicon said. “When it becomes obligatory, it can start becoming boring. But you’re together that often, your relationship’s been growing through five months, and you wonder that she expects it to become more intimate?”

  “I’m ready to propose,” Tony objected.

  “But she’s not ready to accept.” Father Vidicon shook his head with a sigh. “Your generation! Expecting the final intimacy as a step toward marriage rather than the culmination of a courtship! But the young woman does have some right to expect a deepening of the relationship. It won’t remain static forever, you know. It can’t—it has to grow or wither, like everything else that lives. Besides, it would be very imprudent for her to tie herself to you for life and have you turn out to be a lackadaisical lover. Much though it grieves me to say it, your generation does seem to have grown to expect a trial marriage.”

  “You’re not saying I should have sex with her!”

  “Of course not—no priest would ever say that. I am, however, trying to understand her viewpoint.” He lifted his head, turning to look at his protégé. “Perhaps it’s time to fish or cut bait, Tony. If you’re going to insist on being steadfast in virtue, as indeed you should, perhaps you should free her to seek out another.”

  The thrill of horror that froze Tony amazed him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d begun to count on Sandy being part of his life.

  Chapter 12

  “You need distraction,” Father Vidicon advised, “and I have a plea that needs answering.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tony asked, immediately interested, then was amazed at his eagerness. Maybe he did need a break from worrying over his future with Sandy. “Who’s in trouble how?”

  “A company of actors,” Father Vidicon said. “They’re on the road, touring a comedy through the Midwest, and things are going wrong—inexplicably, I might add.”

  “Of course,” Tony said. “If they were explainable, they’d fix them instead of calling on you.”

  “You are learning this business,” St. Vidicon said, with an amused smile. “Go unsnarl them, Tony, would you?”

  Sometimes you get a bad feeling about a show. I mean, you aren’t even on the road when you realize things are going to go wrong—little things, nothing huge or life-threatening, but so many of them that it’s going to take the gloss off every performance and make everybody miserable. The electrician will miss a cue or two, nothing that the audience will notice but enough to give the actors a bad feeling; an actor will get confused and repeat a sequence of lines; a stagehand will leave the stairs six inches out of true, and they’ll trip the unwary actor and leave a gap between two “flats,” two fake walls, that the audience won’t see but will bother another actor on a level so low that he won’t even realize it—or a spotlight will come crashing down in the middle of a performance.

  Now, that requires two mistakes—neither terribly hard to make, especially considering that, when you’re touring, the crew have to hang lights all over again every time we come to a new town, which is every week and sometimes twice. The good side of such a routine is that they get to know the light plot so well that they could hang the lights in their sleep. The bad part is that is that they sometimes come perilously close to doing exactly that. After all, they have to take down the lights after one performance and drive hundreds of miles overnight to a new city where they have to hang the lights all over again, which doesn’t give them much time in bed—they nap in the truck and are sometimes pretty groggy when they start climbing ladders again.

  Still, for a spotlight to fall means that the electrician not only forgot to tighten the clamp that holds it to the pipe over the stage, but also forgot to fasten the safety chain—a piece of steel cable that loops around the pipe and the yoke, the spotlight’s “handle.” Mind you, I’m not saying it can’t happen, as the gouge in the floor of the theater in Indianapolis will attest. Fortunately, the spotlight fell two feet away from Lon as he was sternly lecturing the young roommates. Unfortunately, it threw him off for the rest of the performance. Worse, he couldn’t even chew out the lighting crew because they were union—IATSE—and he was Actors’ Equity. He couldn’t complain to the director, either, because she was back in New York.

  He could, however, complain to the stage manager, which he did, loudly and at great length, with the whole cast joining in, and when I’d finally managed to calm them down, I had to go talk to the union shop steward. Of course, my union is Actors’ Equity, as is theirs, but I’m one of the rare ones who has his IATSE card, too. Even without it, union rules allowed me to “communicate” with the IATSE shop steward about making sure his people got enough sleep.

  “Enough sleep?” Joe gave me a hoarse laugh. “We’d just driven eight hours, put up the set and hung the lights, then managed a two-hour nap while you guys were rehearsing, and I’m supposed to make sure they get enough sleep?”

  I felt as though I could walk under a canary with plenty of headroom. “Yeah, I know, Joe,” I said, “but we’re gonna be here for two days. Maybe your folks could catch up on the Zs?”

  “Which we intend to do,” Joe said, “if some smartalecky stage manager doesn’t keep us up all night with asinine gripes.”

  He said it without rancor; he knew I had to complain to him because the actors had complained to me, and he knew I knew why his crew hadn’t been as careful as they might have been if they’d been fully conscious.

  “Sometimes the stage manager has to pay lip service to trying to keep the show in shape.”

  “Yeah, I know, kid.” Joe gave me a commiserating slap on the shoulder. “It ain’t the world’s easiest job for any of us. At least you’re a grown-up.”

  I appreciated that. At thirty-two, it was nice to think I had finally come into adulthood. On the other hand, I no longer felt young. To Joe I was still a kid, of course—he was in his fifties. “Sometimes I do kinda feel like the chaperone on the high school Washington trip,” I admitted.

  “Don’t we both!” Joe rolled his eyes. “Only way I can still make it through setups is because I let them dri
ve.”

  I knew he had rigged a sort of bed in the scene truck—a slab of foam in the “loft” over the cab. “We better not let them unwind too long,” I said. “Right now, they need sleep more than beer.”

  Joe bristled. “You talking about your kids or mine?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “ ’Scuse me—I gotta get down to the bar and see which actress Al and Will are going to fight over tonight.”

  “Good luck, kid.” Joe grinned. “I’d rather be chief electrician than stage manager any day.”

  Stage manager? I don’t manage the stage, I manage the people!

  I made sure everything was ship-shape backstage—picked up a few props and put them back on the table, made notes to warn Lon and Arlene that once more leaving their pipe and gun, respectively, in their dressing rooms instead of on the prop table would result in a fine, then checked to make sure the ghost light was on—really the job of the local IATSE crew, but it could be one of my actors who became the ghost if it hadn’t been left on and he or she tried to cross the stage in the dark. People have fallen through trapdoors carelessly left open, walked off the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit, and tripped over props and hit their heads on stage pegs, so I made sure the single work light was lit to let the ghosts of old actors know they were welcome to come back—and headed off toward the nearest tavern to join the kindergarten set.

  On this tour, by some fluke, everyone was under thirty, even the actress playing the mother—Arlene may have been twenty-five, but she had the right facial shape and the right build so that she could play older. When she wasn’t made up to look fifty, of course, her figure seemed voluptuous, not matronly, and her face looked slumberous and seductive, but onstage I could have sworn she was ready to sit in with my grand-mother’s bridge club. Only part of it was makeup, of course—the gal could really act. Character actors generally can. Ingenues, juveniles, and leads can at least look the part.