The Earther—his hair, a flaming red, had apparently been chemically treated to look even brighter—handed the robot a coin, took the balloon, gave it to the child, and smiled courteously at Ewing.
“Can I help you?”
Ewing returned the smile. “I was out for a walk, and I’m afraid I lost my way. I’d like to get back to the Sirian Consulate. That’s where I’m staying.”
The Earther gaped at him a moment before recovering control. “You walked all the way from the Sirian Consulate to Valloin Municipal Park?”
Ewing realized he had made a major blunder. He reddened and tried to cover up for himself: “No—no, not exactly. I know I took a cab part of the way. But I don’t remember which way I came, and—well—”
“You could take a cab back, couldn’t you?” the young man suggested. “Of course, it’s pretty expensive from here. If you want, take the Number Sixty bus as far as Grand Circle, and transfer there for the downtown undertube line. The Oval Line tube will get you to the Consulate if you change at the Three Hundred Seventy-eighth Street station.”
Ewing waited patiently for the flow of directions to cease. Finally he said, “I guess I’ll take the bus, then. Would it be troubling you too much to show me where I could get it?”
“At the other side of the park, near the big square entrance.”
Ewing squinted. “I’m afraid I don’t see it. Could we walk over there a little way? I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you in any way …”
“Perfectly all right.”
They left the vendor’s booth and started to cross the park. Halfway toward the big entrance, the Earther stopped. Pointing, he said, “It’s right over there. See? You can’t miss it.”
Ewing nodded. “There’s one final thing—”
“Of course.”
“I seem to have lost all my money in an unfortunate accident this morning. I lost my wallet, you see. Could you lend me about a hundred credits?”
“A hundred credits! Now, see here, fellow. I don’t mind giving travel directions, but a hundred credits is a little out of line! Why it won’t cost you more than one credit eighty to get to the Consulate from here.”
“I know,” Ewing said tightly. “But I need the hundred.” He pointed a finger through the fabric of his trouser pocket and said, “There’s a stun-gun in this pocket, and my finger’s on the stud. Suppose you very quietly hand me a hundred credits in small notes, or I’ll be compelled to use the stunner on you. I wouldn’t want to do that.”
The Earther seemed on the verge of tears. He glanced quickly at the boy with the balloon, playing unconcernedly fifteen feet away, and then jerked his head back to face Ewing. Without speaking, he drew out his billfold and counted out the bills. Ewing took them in equal silence and stored them in the pocket where he had kept his wallet, before Firnik had confiscated it.
“I’m really sorry about having to do this,” he told the young Earther. “But I can’t stop to explain, and I need the money. Now I’d like you to take the child by the hand and walk slowly toward that big lake over there, without looking back and without calling for help. The stunner is effective at distances of almost five hundred feet, you know.”
“Help a stranger and this is what you get,” the Earther muttered. “Robbery in broad daylight, in Municipal Park!”
“Go on—move!”
The Earther moved. Ewing watched him long enough to make sure he would keep good faith, then turned and trotted rapidly toward the park entrance. He reached it just as the rounded snout of a Number Sixty bus drew up at the corner. Grinning, Ewing leaped aboard. An immobile robot at the entrance said, “Destination, please?”
“Grand Circle.”
“Nothing and sixty, please.”
Ewing drew a one-credit note from his pocket, placed it in the receiving slot, and waited. A bell rang; a ticket popped forth, and four copper coins jounced into the change slot. He scooped them up and entered the bus. From the window he glanced at the park and caught sight of the little boy’s red balloon; the flame-haired man was next to him, back to the street, staring at the lake. Probably scared stiff, Ewing thought. He felt only momentary regret for what he had done. He needed the money. Firnik had taken all of his money, and his rescuer had unaccountably neglected to furnish him with any.
Grand Circle turned out to be just that—a vast circular wheel of a street, with more than fifteen street-spokes radiating outward from it. A monument of some sort stood in a grass plot at the very center of the wheel.
Ewing dismounted from the bus. Spying a robot directing traffic, he said, “Where can I get the downtown undertube line?”
The robot directed him to the undertube station. He transferred at the Three Hundred Seventy-eighth Street station, as his unfortunate acquaintance had advised, and shortly afterward found himself in the midst of a busy shopping district.
He stood thoughtfully in the middle of the arcade for a moment, nudging his memory for the equipment he would need. A privacy mask and a stun-gun; that seemed to be about all.
A weapons shop sign beckoned to him from the distance. He hurried to it, found it open, and stepped through the curtain of energy that served as its door. The proprietor was a wizened little Earther who smiled humbly at him as he entered.
“May I serve you, sir?”
“You may. I’m interested in buying a stun-gun, if you have one for a good price.”
The shopkeeper frowned. “I don’t know if we have any stun-guns in stock. Now let me see … ah, yes!” He reached below the counter and drew forth a dark-blue plastite box. He touched the seal; the box flew open. “Here you are, sir. A lovely model. Only eight credits.”
Ewing took the gun from the little man and examined it. It felt curiously light; he split it open and was surprised to find it was hollow and empty within. He looked up angrily, “Is this a joke? Where’s the force chamber?”
“You mean you want a real gun, sir? I thought you simply were looking for an ornament to complement that fine suit you wear. But—”
“Never mind that. Do you have one of these that actually functions?”
The shopkeeper looked pale, almost sick. But he vanished into the back room and reappeared a moment later with a small gun in his hand. “I happen to have one, sir. A Sirian customer of mine ordered it last month and then unfortunately died. I was about to return it, but if you’re interested it’s yours for ninety credits.”
Ninety credits was almost all the money he had. And he wanted to save some to hand over to the rescued man.
“Too much. I’ll give you sixty.”
“Sir! I—”
“Take sixty,” Ewing said. “I’m a personal friend of Vice-Consul Firnik’s. See him and he’ll make up the difference.”
The Earther eyed him meekly and sighed. “Sixty it is,” he said. “Shall I wrap it?”
“Never mind about that,” Ewing said, pocketing the tiny weapon, case and all, and counting out sixty credits from his slim roll. One item remained. “Do you have privacy masks?”
“Yes, sir. A large assortment.”
“Good. Give me a golden one.”
With trembling hands the shopkeeper produced one. It fit the memory he had of the other reasonably well. “How much?”
“T-ten credits, sir. For you, eight.”
“Take the ten,” Ewing said. He folded the mask, smiled grimly at the terrified shopkeeper, and left. Once he was out on the street, he looked up at a big building-clock and saw the time: 1552.
Suddenly he clapped his hand to his forehead in annoyance: he had forgotten to check the most important fact of all! Hastily he darted back into the weapons shop. The proprietor came to attention, lips quivering. “Y-yes.”
“All I want is some information,” Ewing said. “What day is today?”
“What day? Why—why, Twoday, of course. Twoday, the eleventh.”
Ewing crowed triumphantly. Twoday on the nose! He burst from the store a second time. Catching the arm of a passerby, he sai
d, “Pardon. Can you direct me to the Sirian Consulate?”
“Two blocks north, turn left. Big building. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” Ewing said.
Two blocks north, turn left. A current of excitement bubbled in his heart.
He began to walk briskly toward the Sirian Consulate, hands in his pockets. One clasped the coolness of the stun-gun, the other rested against the privacy mask.
Chapter Eleven
Ewing had to push his way through a good-sized crowd at the Consulate—Sirians all, each of them bound on some private business of his own. Ewing was surprised that there were so many Sirians in Valloin.
The Consulate was a building of imposing dimensions; evidently one of the newest of Valloin’s edifices, its architecture was out of key with that of the surrounding buildings. Clashing planes and tangential faces made the Consulate a startling sight.
Ewing passed through the enormous lobby and turned left to a downramp. He gave only passing thought to the question of how he was going to reach the subterranean dungeon, where at this moment another version of himself was undergoing interrogation. He knew that he had been rescued once, and so it could be repeated.
He made his way down, until a sergeant stationed at the foot of the last landing said, “Where are you going?”
“To the lowest level. I have to see Vice-Consul Firnik on urgent business.”
“Firnik’s in conference. He left orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“Quite all right. I have special permission. I happen to know he’s interrogating a prisoner down below, along with Byra Clork, Sergeant Drayl, and Lieutenant Thirsk. I have vital information for him, and I’ll see to it you roast unless I get in there to talk to him.”
The sergeant looked doubtful. “Well …”
Ewing said, “Look—why don’t you go down the hall and check with your immediate superior, if you don’t want to take the responsibility yourself? I’ll wait here.”
The sergeant grinned, pleased to have the burden of decision lifted from his thick shoulders. “Don’t go away,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t worry,” Ewing said.
He watched as the man turned and trudged away. After he had gone three paces, Ewing drew the stunner from his pocket and set it to low intensity. The weapon was palm-size, fashioned from a bit of translucent blue plastic in whose glittering depths could dimly be seen the reaction chamber. Ewing aimed and fired. The sergeant froze.
Quickly, Ewing ran after him, dragged him back his original position, and swung him around so he seemed to be guarding the approach. Then he ducked around him and headed down toward the lower level. Another guard, this one in a lieutenant’s uniform, waited there. Ewing said quickly, “The sergeant sent me down this way. Said I could find the Vice-Consul down here. I have an urgent message for him.”
“Straight down the passageway, second door on your left,” the lieutenant said.
Ewing thanked him and moved on. He paused for a moment outside the indicated door, while donning the privacy mask, and heard sounds from within:
“Good. You have your last chance. Why did the Free World of Corwin decide to send you to Earth?”
“Because of the Klodni,” said a weary voice. The accent was a familiar one, a Corwinite one, but the voice was higher in pitch than Ewing would have expected. It was his own voice. A blur of shock swept through him at the sound. “They came out of Andromeda and—”
“Enough!” came the harsh crop of Firnik’s voice. “Byra, get ready to record. I’m turning on the pick.”
Ewing felt a second ripple of confusion, outside the door. Turning on the pick? Why, then this was the very moment when he had been rescued, two days earlier in his own time-track! In that case, he was now his own predecessor along the time-line, and—he shook his head. Consideration of paradoxes was irrelevant now. Action was called for, not philosophizing.
He put his hand to the door and thrust it open. It gave before his push; he stepped inside, stun-gun gripped tightly in his hand.
The scene was a weird tableau. Firnik, Byra, Drayl, and Thirsk were clustered around a fifth figure who sat limp and unresisting beneath a metal cone. And that fifth figure—
Me!
Firnik looked up in surprise. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“Never mind that,” Ewing snapped. The scene was unrolling with dreamlike clarity, every phase utterly familiar to him. I have been here before, he thought, looking at the limp, tortured body of his earlier self slumped under the mind-pick helmet. “Get away from that machine, Firnik,” he snapped. “I’ve got a stunner here, and I’m itching to use it on you. Over there, against the wall. You, too, Byra. Drayl, unclamp his wrists and get that helmet off him.”
The machinery was pulled back, revealing the unshaven, bleary-eyed face of the other Ewing. The man stared in utter lack of comprehension at the masked figure near the door. The masked Ewing felt a tingle of awe at the sight of himself of Twoday, but he forced himself to remain calm. He crossed the room, keeping the gun trained on the Sirians, and lifted the other Ewing to his feet.
Crisply he ordered Firnik to call the Consulate guard upstairs and arrange for his escape. He listened while the Sirian spoke; then, saying, “This ought to keep you out of circulation for a couple of hours, at least,” he stunned the four Sirians and dragged his other self from the room, out into the corridor, and into a lift.
It was not until Ewing had reached the street level that he allowed any emotional reaction to manifest itself. Sudden trembling swept over him for an instant as he stepped out of the crowded Sirian Consulate lobby, still wearing the privacy mask, and dragged the semi-conscious other Ewing into the street. The muscles in his legs felt rubbery; his throat was dry. But he had succeeded. He had rescued himself from the interrogators, and the script had followed in every detail that one which seemed “earlier” to him but which was, in reality, not earlier at all.
The script was due to diverge from its “earlier” pattern soon, Ewing realized grimly. But he preferred not to think of the dark necessity that awaited him until the proper time came.
He spied a cab, one of those rare ones not robot-operated, and hailed it. Pushing his companion inside he said, “Take us to the Grand Valloin Hotel, please.”
“Looks like your friend’s really been on a binge,” the driver said. “Don’t remember the last time I saw a man looking so used up.”
“He’s had a rough time of it,” Ewing said, watching his other self lapse off into unconsciousness.
It cost five of his remaining eighteen credits to make the trip from the Consulate to the hotel. Quickly, Ewing got his man through the hotel lobby and upstairs into Room 4113. The other—Ewing-sub-two, Ewing was calling him now—immediately toppled face-down onto the bed. Ewing stared curiously at Ewing-sub-two, studying the battered, puffy-eyed face of the man who was himself two days earlier. He set about the job of undressing him, depilating him, cleaning him up. He dragged him into the shower and thrust him under the ion-beam; then, satisfied, he put the exhausted man to bed. Within seconds, he had lost his consciousness.
Ewing took a deep breath. So far the script had been followed; but here, it had to change.
He realized he had several choices. He could walk out of the hotel room and leave Ewing-sub-two to his own devices, in which case, in the normal flow of events, Ewing-sub-two would awaken, be taken to Myreck’s, request to see the time machine, and in due course travel back to this day to become Ewing-sub-one, rescuing a new Ewing-sub-two. But that path left too many unanswered and unanswerable questions. What became of the surplus Ewing-sub-ones? In every swing of the time-cycle, another would be created—to meet what fate? It was hopelessly paradoxical.
But there was a way paradox could be avoided. Ewing thought. A way of breaking the chain of cycles that threated to keep infinite Ewings moving on a treadmill forever. But it took a brave man to make that change.
He stared in the
mirror. Do I dare? he wondered.
He thought of his wife and child, and of all he had struggled for since coming to Earth. I’m superfluous, he thought. The man on the bed was the man in whose hands destiny lay. Ewing-sub-one, the rescuer, was merely a supernumerary, an extra man, a displaced spoke in the wheel of time.
I have no right to remain alive, Ewing-sub-one admitted to himself. His face, in the mirror, was unquivering, unafraid. He nodded; then, he smiled.
His way was clear. He would have to step aside. But he would merely be stepping aside for himself, and perhaps there would be no sense of discontinuity after all. He nodded in the firm decision.
There was a voicewrite at the room desk; Ewing switched it on, waited a moment as he arranged his thought, and then began to dictate:
“Twoday afternoon. To my self of an earlier time—to the man I call Ewing-sub-two, from Ewing-sub-one. Read this with great care, indeed memorize it, and then destroy it utterly.
“You have just been snatched from the hands of the interrogators by what seemed to you miraculous intervention. You must believe that your rescuer was none other than yourself, doubling back along his time-track from two days hence. Since I have already lived through the time that will now unfold for you, let me tell you what is scheduled to take place for you, and let me implore you to save our mutual existence by following my instructions exactly.
“It is now Twoday. Your tired body will sleep around the clock, and you will awaken on Fourday. Shortly after awakening, you will be contacted by Scholar Myreck, who will remind you of your appointment with him and will make arrangements with you to take you to his College in the suburbs. You will go. While you are there, they will reveal to you the fact that they are capable of shifting objects in time—indeed, their building itself is displaced by three microseconds to avoid investigation.
“At this point in my own time-track, I compelled them to send me back in time from Fourday to Twoday, and upon arriving here proceeded to carry out your rescue. My purpose in making this trip was to provide you with this information, which my rescuer neglected to give me. Under no conditions are you to make a backward trip in time! The cycle must end with you.
The Chalice of Death: Three Novels of Mystery in Space Page 32
