The Thing Itself

by Adam Roberts

  Quite apart from anything else, it would be rude to run off. So si helped the staff clear up the mess. There wasn’t much. The smartglass of the display window was a little singed, behind the broken time machine, but that would heal with time. The machine itself lay there, rather splendid in its ruin: like a baked brie, spilling white goo from its innards. Clearly beyond repair.

  ‘Hooligans,’ was the opinion of one of the three shop assistants. Nobody called them insurgents, and certainly nobody called them terrorists any more. The ‘war’ had never really been a war, in the traditional sense. Quite apart from anything else, everyone knew when it was going to end. Regular people knew because future visitors had told them. Even most anti-Ghosters accepted that there were no more than three more days to go.

  ‘Kids,’ Adonais said. ‘High spirits.’

  ‘They should be forcibly sent back to the Seventeen, Ghost them for a change,’ said one of the shop assistants. Since Ghosting was exactly what the irregulars were campaigning against, this didn’t seem to Adonais like a very logical punishment. The assistant was a hefty individual. Her name badge was a hologram of her own face with words spooling from her lips: ‘You wonnid the best and you godtha best: ALICIA!! How may I help you today?’ Adonais was surprised the manager permitted it. The text came out so far it looked like it might poke the customers in the eye.

  ‘A bit harsh, maybe,’ said Adonais.

  ‘They don’t know the first thing about the Ghosts,’ said the second assistant. ‘My brother-in-law is one. He still visits. Came for lunch last Sunday, in fact.’

  ‘Not to eat though, eh?’ said ALICIA!!

  ‘He stood in front of the telly, didn’t stop us watching.’ They both laughed. ‘My sister’s sad, of course. But their marriage was in trouble long before he went time travelling. Cause and effect, innit.’

  ‘Where shall I send my footage?’ Adonais asked politely. ‘I saw the whole thing, and my video feed is ultra high def.’

  ‘It’s not as if the police are going to do anything,’ was the third assistant’s opinion. ‘They never do. And this afternoon? Three days of the war left? Forget it.’ Her tag was the girl from Harry Potter (Adonais couldn’t remember her name) saying ‘I’m VALZHA and I’m here to help.’

  ‘Boom boom this afternoon,’ said ALICIA!! ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

  That afternoon was the afternoon of the attack. Everybody knew it was coming. Well, not quite everyone: some made a point of insisting that nothing was determined and fixed. Maybe the future Ghosts were lying to them, they said. But so many other things had been accurately predicted, it required a particular stubbornness to stick to that view.

  ‘It’s not a real war,’ said Valzha. ‘Please excuse the inconvenience occasioned by those hooligans, sir.’ She looked Adonais up and down. ‘Madam, eh, sirmadam?’

  ‘No, thank you. Really, I’d be happy to upload my footage.’

  ALICIA!!, looking bored, pinged her the folder and Adonais copied shis footage inside. The three attackers had worn false faces, of course, but maybe the police could pull some identifying factors from their clothes, or modes of moving. ‘Is it all right to … carry on shopping?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Valzah. ‘Please pay no mind to the disturbance. All our goods are available. Except the time machine. Were you shopping for a time machine?’

  ‘No,’ said Adonais.

  ‘They’re not very popular,’ Valzah agreed. ‘A new iPad? A thrinter?’

  ‘I need a new tablet,’ said Adonais.

  ‘Less than an hour to bye-bye financial district,’ said ALICIA!! ‘If you believe the Ghosts.’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ said the other assistant. Her tag said JO.

  ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe the Ghosts,’ said ALICIA!! defensively. ‘Least you can say is they’re right as often as they’re wrong. And anybody can be wrong. I could be wrong, wouldn’t make me a liar. It’s just – you know. Bloody do-gooders.’

  ‘Maybe it’s all a joke to them,’ said Valzah.

  ‘Public service,’ said Jo. ‘They deserve a medal.’

  ‘A translucent medal,’ said Valzah. She chuckled. She dragged her attention back to her customer. ‘What manner of tablet, sirmadam?’

  ‘My old one is an Asus Bio. I’m happy to go with the same model. And,’ Adonais added this latter part tentatively, because she wasn’t fond of confrontation, ‘I’d prefer no honorific.’

  ‘Say what?’ ALICIA!! responded absently, as she searched for a new Asus Bio from under her counter.

  ‘Quite apart from anything, sirmadam isn’t quite,’ said Adonais, hesitating. Si finished with ‘accurate’, but the word coincided with ALICIA!! sneezing loud enough to make the smartglass vibrate, and so the word was obscured.

  ‘Might I enquire what the problem is with your old slate?’ asked Jo. ‘If we are talking about a warranty upgrade, I might recommend …’

  ‘No, no,’ said Adonais. ‘It’s been out of warranty ages. The thing is, it has a crack in the screen that’s refusing to heal.’

  ‘Sounds like the nanobug has expired. We could replace the bug, but it would be as cheap to buy a new one.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Adonais.

  ‘Here you are, sirmadam,’ said ALICIA!!, turning towards Adonais so that her name tag swept round like a rapier and appeared to bisect shis chest. Adonais thanked the girl, played with the device for a little while. ‘The screen is good,’ si conceded. ‘A nice oily quality to the interface. I’ll take it.’

  ‘To carry out, sirmadam?’

  ‘I’d prefer it be sent,’ said Adonais, poking the delivery address and the payment coding into the shop’s secure folder. ‘And I’d prefer you called me friend.’

  ALICIA!! peered at Adonais, as if seeing shim for the first time. ‘Come again?’

  ‘Instead of sirmadam, which I find stiff, and is not correct in any case.’

  She smiled her shop-assistant smile. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Transaction all authorised, delivery before five this afternoon. Have a pleasant day, sirmadam.’

  A little gush of annoyance went up through Adonais’s chest. Si half-contemplated cancelling the sale and taking shis custom elsewhere. But a sense of proportion returned. The three of them had just been the victims of an armed robbery after all. They were bound to be a little jangled, however blasé they appeared. And at that moment a police drone, like a giant snorting blue-bottle, started tapping at the glass door to be let in. So Si said shis goodbyes and stepped out.

  Snow prettified the cityscape. It was the neatness of it; and neatness appealed to Adonais very much. The clarity of air from which all mist and moisture had been frozen out. Smooth duvets of snow lay over the flat roofs and clung neatly to the sloped ones. The miniature frustrations of the morning disappeared, and gladness swirled inside shim. The streets were almost deserted, of course. A significant portion of the city had vacated prior to the afternoon’s attacks. A few souls, doughty, or in denial, still made their way up and down. Adonais shimself was neither of those things. Si followed the news like anybody else, had pored over the schematics carefully, and was assured the imminent attack was to be concentrated somewhere quite other.

  Still, best be indoors when it all happened. Si started for home, and was walking briskly along the road when a Ghost approached shim. ‘Very sorry to bother you,’ said the Ghost. ‘I’ve been telling everyone on this road. The direction you’re walking is a bad direction. There’s an attack coming – ten minutes, that building there.’ The Ghost raised a translucent arm, and pointed.

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Adonais. ‘I was just in a shop, and some terrorists wrecked the only time machine in stock. And— Are they behind this?’

  The Ghost was a pleasant-faced man, middle-aged, wearing the nondescript trousers and smock of the future people. And, of course, his logo-free, dark-coloured backpack, in which he carried his supplies and time machine. Either fashion was very bland up then,
or else people who opted to time travel deliberately chose low-key couture. Possibly to avoid startling the time-natives. ‘I don’t know about that, I’m afraid. That’s a little fine-grain for my historical brief. But you should know about the attack, I think.’

  ‘Yes, the news has been rather banging on about it. But I thought it was going to be missiles – attacking the financial district?’

  ‘That too. But this building,’ and again he pointed, ‘is I believe a greater danger. Because it is old, you see, and the glass in its many windows hasn’t been replaced with new glass.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘It was built in the 1980s. It isn’t the most structurally sound.’

  ‘A proper military style attack!’ boggled Adonais. ‘Well, we’d better get going. Will you stay here, to warn others? Or come along with me?’

  ‘Would you mind if I accompany you?’ the Ghost said. ‘I don’t wish to impose.

  ‘I had no idea this portion of the city was to be targeted!’ Si ducked shis head and smiled. ‘I would certainly not have come this way at all if I’d realised.’

  ‘I know some travellers have been spreading disinformation,’ said the Ghost. ‘I’m sorry to say it, and can only apologise for my fellow travellers.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’ Adonais asked.

  ‘There’s a not-very coherent philosophy behind it, I believe,’ said the Ghost. ‘To do with reinserting uncertainty into the timeline. But it’s junk. It’s nonsense. Gracious!’ he added, consulting his watch. ‘We really have to move away from the target.’

  They started back up the street, Adonais casting occasional Lot’s-wife glances over shis shoulder at the building. It looked deserted: an ugly twentieth-century box of metal and glass with a Mondrian pattern of green, yellow and red lines across its main façade.

  ‘Attar,’ said the Ghost.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘My name.’

  ‘Oh I see! I’m Adonais. When are you from, Attar?’

  ‘Twenty sixty-nine,’ he replied. ‘And thank you kindly for asking.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Adonais replied, pleased at his courtesy.

  ‘And thank you,’ the Ghost added, ‘for not immediately trying to touch me. You’ve no idea how tiresome that becomes.’

  ‘Adonais,’ si said. ‘It’s my whole name. I shan’t offer you my hand to shake, after what you’ve just said.’

  ‘Wonderful to meet you, Adonais,’ said Attar. ‘And I don’t in the least mind shaking your hand. If you’re sure it won’t freak you out?’

  Si smiled, and they shook. It was the first time that Adonais had ever physically touched a Ghost, and it was exactly as si had read about and seen on the TV: a weirdly fluid, slightly chilly contact. Si knew that, if si pushed, si could force shis hand right through his half-present, half-absent limb. But that would be rude, and he was enough there for shim to be able to act as if this were a perfectly ordinary handshake.

  ‘So can you tell me when I’m going to die?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know that,’ said the Ghost. ‘Though if you’re too close to that building when the drones attack, there’s a chance it could be this afternoon.’

  Si laughed at this. There was something very charming about this particular future-man. It had to do with his courtesy, of course; and the patent fact of his being ready to sacrifice himself to time travel to warn people like shim – people from before he was even born, judging by his evident youth – away from danger. But it was also the arrangement of his features. Was it shallow of shim to be attracted to something so transient? If so, then so. Perhaps the literal transience of his out-of-time-ness layered just the right piquancy of pathos over his more obvious charms. It was all, si reminded shimself, irrelevant. Still, it was pleasant to daydream.

  ‘Cause and effect,’ said Attar. ‘Some, up in my time, wonder if the military attack on the city was enabled by so many people having vacated the space. The question is: were the city fully populous, maybe the attack would be called off?’

  ‘I think that unlikely,’ Adonais replied. ‘We know the war will be over in three days. I mean, the anti-Ghosters sometimes claim they don’t believe that, that the future is unwritten and so on. But, really: that’s all rhetoric. Surely they know. So the attack is not a standard strategic assault, hoping to tip an uncertain balance one way or the other. It’s pure show.’

  ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ said Attar, and his handsome face looked fully distraught. ‘I’m afraid I can hear the drone.’ Adonais put shis head to one side. There was a buzzing noise.

  ‘I’ve miscalculated the timings shockingly,’ said Attar.

  ‘The building’s a long way from us,’ Adonais replied. But si couldn’t keep the anxiety from shis voice. Si reached out, carefully, and brushed his semi-permeable arm with shis hand. ‘I’m sure we’ll be—’

  Events cut shim off. The military drone hurtled low over their heads, and shot towards the building, pulling its horrible noise after it like a comet’s tail. A hundred or so flechettes dropped from its belly, the line of them unzipping in the air and threading away towards the target on spurts of smoke like tentacles. Adonais couldn’t stop staring. Instants later an office block, a cliff-face of fragile twentieth-century window panes, sublimed into a puff-cloud of glass-dust and shards. The sound came a moment later, a deadened thwunk noise, like a gigantic bowling ball dropped on to a hard surface, and then a skin-crawling hissing sound, as antique glass misted into the air.

  It was probably half a kilometre away, but the cloud of glass particles was billowing along the road towards them, so Adonis called to Attar to run, and together they sprinted up, round the corner, and finally in at a public library, pushing past the small knot of people who had come out on to the main building’s steps to see what all the noise was.

  It was exciting, in fact. Adonais was laughing with the exhilaration of it all; and Attar was grinning like a kid. Soon enough the librarian asked Attar to leave. Adonais apologised on shis society’s part, but Attar took it in good grace. ‘If it’s a municipal regulation, then that’s that. She has to uphold the regulations after all.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said Adonais, looking stern.

  Outside, a frost of broken glass was layered over the snow-cleared tarmac, and people were crunching over it, or just standing and gawking. Drones buzzed past, all going in the direction of the ruined building; and Adonais counted three larger land vehicles zumming past. The pavements hadn’t been cleared of snow, and here the glass had left a pitted landscape of myriad indentations like an inverted star map.

  Much further away, a series of deep, resonant clangs, like the tolling of a Millennium-Dome-sized bell, shuddered through the air. Then: distant crackling sounds that, inappropriately, made Adonais think of popcorn. ‘The main attack,’ said Attar.

  ‘Would you like to come back to my apartment?’ Adonais asked and, as soon as si did, blushed. ‘It’s not an invitation I extend to many, male or female,’ si added. ‘I value my privacy. I like an ordered life. And I am not usually so … forward, I promise you … but—’ Si stopped. ‘You doubtless have somewhere to go.’

  ‘No. I believe there are hostels south of the river that will let rooms to my kind. But I haven’t made reservations. Not yet.’

  ‘Then come!’ Si felt a wash of excitement and pleasure, and when Attar smiled, the lower half of his face whiter (because the pavement was sort of showing through) and the upper half darker (where the road behind was half visible) it made shim laugh.

  They walked back to the flat. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ si told him. ‘Hotels and such. It’s not you. It’s the people who hate you.’ Was hate too thoughtless a word? Upsetting? Si modified: ‘Who have taken against you, for ideological reasons. They just don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘It’s perfectly understandable,’ he replied. ‘I do understand.’

  ‘At twenty sixty-nine you’re right at the outside limit. Surely you can’t have any Ghosts, up
then.’

  ‘Well, there are plenty of returnees. But you’re right, that’s not the same. We don’t really have future people, the way you do. I mean, some people go back from, say, December to February, if there’s something particular they need to go back for. So the beginning of the year has some Ghosts. But again, not the same as you. We’re certainly not overrun by strangers as you guys are.’

  Adonais boggled at travelling from December to February. ‘Why would somebody go so short a time?’

  ‘Bereavement is one reason,’ he said, looking serious. Adonais wondered if loss of that kind was the reason Attar had abandoned his own time.

  ‘And do they …’ Si tried to think of a diplomatic way of phrasing this. ‘Do any better? With the fading? I mean, just going back a few months, rather than thirty full years?’

  He shook his head. ‘How far back you travel has no impact on that. It’s travelling at all. Once you’re decoupled from the original temporal embedding, quantum decay starts to fade you. I’ve heard of cases where people went back literally seconds, and it still happens. They’re not as faded, of course. But once Ghosting has begun, it can’t be reversed.’

  ‘Quantum,’ said Adonais. ‘It’s one of those veil-of-unknowing words, isn’t it? Except to experts I suppose.’

  ‘It’s not obscure,’ said Attar. ‘Just the fact of a person going back in time, well, it alters the timeline. At a quantum level. And then every time there’s a decision point, different yous split off, and the core you is diluted. The theory used to be that there are trillions of such decision points every millisecond, one for every atomic interaction.’ He snorted a laugh. ‘If that were true, I’d disappear at once in a puff of existential evaporation! Luckily for me, it’s a much slower process. Quantum decision points tend to clump together, in ways the scientists don’t entirely understand. But it’s the physical barrier at my time – it’s why twenty sixty-nine is a limit point. They sent probes further up-time, but they all just vanished. There’s some hazy data brought back, I believe, but nothing very useful. Ten years up-time is a storm of decision points, and it erodes them away to nothing. Since anyone travelling forward would have to pass through those ten years, it stops all travel. Perhaps these sixty-two years – I mean, from the original Seventeen, up to my time – are an anomaly. They’ve been, somehow, swept relatively clean of decision points. After my time the points are so thick no time traveller can survive. I don’t know, though.’