"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 snakes 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!"
"Sning?" Orlene asked.
"That's what I call him. Contraction of Snake Ring. When you gave him to me, two years hence."
She laughed. "He says it is so! But he seemed to doubt the first thing you said, about the warning. I think he was thinking of something else, not me."
"Well, it doesn't matter now, since we destroyed the amulet."
Her brow furrowed. "He's not so sure." She shrugged. Oh, those little familiar mannerisms! "Well, tell me why you came here, if you're going to meet me anyway in a couple of years. Certainly I wouldn't give you Sning if we weren't close friends." She narrowed her gaze with mock distrust. "Surely you're not going to warn me of your bad intentions!"
Norton started to laugh—and it froze in his throat. What was the distinction between bad intentions and bad results? Now he could tell her the truth—but he found his tongue balking.
If he told her, developed a relationship with her now, married her, and shared her life—ah, such joy in the mere contemplation!—so that the ghost marriage never took place—discounting any paradox, since he was immune—what kind of a life would it be? He was no longer an ordinary man; he was Chronos, living backward, able to relate to ordinary people only by reversing his own life course temporarily. As a normal man, he could have done it; in his present capacity, there was really nothing he could offer her. He had been thinking only of himself, not of her.
"I thought I had something," he said. "I fear I do not."
"Well, what were you going to tell me before you had second thoughts?"
He breathed deeply. She had asked; he should tell. "I—in the near future—when I was still a normal man—I met you and loved you." There; it was out.
"I had gathered as much," she replied. "The way you have been watching me, your possession of my ring, and the way you glow so brightly. It had to be love."
Her candor set him back. "Don't love me!" he blurted. "I was the unwitting cause of your death!"
"My death!"
"It—it's a complicated story. I don't want that to happen—but the alternative I had in mind, of taking you away from that course now—that's no good either. I love you, but I can only hurt you."
"Hurt me? No, you would not do that. The glow—"
"Ask Sning!"
She paused. "My ring says no, you would not hurt me. But your ring says yes, you would."
"They are the same ring—but mine has more experience. Do not associate with me when you meet me in two years. Then perhaps you will have a better life."
"But if you are the one I am fated to love—"
"It's a cursed love!"
She shook her head, perplexed. "You're not making much sense, you know."
"Look at my choices. If I—if we have a relationship in two years, you will have a baby who dies and you will suicide. But if we have a relationship now, when I am Chronos—I live backward! I could associate with you only for perhaps half an hour at a time, beginning now, and each time I met you, you would be younger. Not only would you not remember me, you would soon be too young for—" He spread his hands helplessly.
She nodded. "Now you are making sense, and your ring confirms it. I think I would like you, and probably love you, since you do glow; but to keep meeting you for the first time when I was a teenager, and always having it happen when I was younger—I am not at all sure I could handle that. Though I remember meeting a strange man in a white cloak when I was a child, in a park—"
She shook her head. "It is strange enough talking with you now!"
"Yes. If there were some way I could start with you now and continue forward—but the maximum that could last is about four years, because after that I became Chronos and turned backward, and I can't step physically beyond my living time frame. I could look at you thereafter, but never interact with you, and you would never see me. It's no good; you deserve so much more! I love you and I want what's best for you, and your best life is without me."
Slowly she nodded. "Your ring agrees. I am sorry, but I can't argue with your case."
He sighed. "I—I'm sorry I bothered you. I should have left you entirely alone. Let me go now, and never deal with me again." What a shambles reality had made of his aspiration!
"Here is your ring," she said, returning one of the Snings.
Norton took the little snake and let him curl around his finger. "Are you my Sning?" he inquired. Would it make any real difference if this were the other?
Squeeze.
Probably the two Snings would merge in Norton's present, anyway. "Farewell, Orlene."
She smiled. "I don't usually do this sort of thing. But this once—" She came to him and kissed him.
The sudden contact was ineffably sweet. Norton held himself frozen, knowing that if he let himself go to the slightest degree, he would enfold her in his arms and babble foolishness about somehow making it work, and thereby do her a colossal disservice. But for this timeless instant, his love was back with him, healing the abyss into which his heart had fallen. Orlene lived and, with luck, would pursue her normal, full life. It was better that she do it without him. Believing that, he could bear it.
She broke away and smiled; he recovered his volition and retreated out the door. Before he could change his mind, he changed the sand and quickly phased away.
"Well, I bungled that," he muttered aloud. "But I suppose I just had to
learn the hard way."
Squeeze, squeeze. "No?" But as he pondered the implications, he realized Sning was right. He had not handled it as well as he might have—but perhaps he had given Orlene the key that would save her life, and in the process he had immeasurably improved his own outlook.
Squeeze. "Did you enjoy meeting your other self, Sning?"
Squeeze. Norton smiled as he moved forward through time. "So maybe it was worthwhile after all. Now I am ready to accept the new reality and do my job as Chronos."
Then he remembered the time-space address Satan had given him. He had not kept the parchment on which it was written, but retained the information. He had no intention of helping Satan; the dialogue with Orlene had firmed up the resolve. But his curiosity sharpened. Who was this person who commanded a favor from Satan Himself?
Norton traced down the address. It was not in Kilvarough itself, but in a floating city above it, a traveling shopping center and fair. Flying carpets abounded in its vicinity, and the stores glittered with magic items. Below lay the somber metropolis of Kilvarough, evidently one of the stops on the route of the floating complex. Gypsy cities, they were called.
The time was about twenty years before Norton's "present." He would be a teenager now—and he had no intention of looking himself up. It had been confusing enough with Orlene! He went to the Mess o' Pottage shop and watched it in his normal mode, the reverse of world time, so that no one was aware of him.
A man was inspecting magic stones. He had evidently decided on a large Wealthstone, the kind with a floating six-rayed star. As Norton watched, the man checked a Lovestone and then a Deathstone, then retreated from the store.
Norton jumped ahead to catch the man's recent future, after he bought the Wealthstone. By a series of jumps and pauses, Norton traced the man to his somewhat dingy apartment in Kilvarough. There the man discovered that his stone was not as good as represented; it produced only small change, not riches.
Norton jumped ahead three more hours, checked the man's apartment—and saw his body lying on the floor, blood pooled from a gunshot wound in the head.
So Satan was right. The man had made a bad choice and had therefore taken his own life. He had no future on Earth, literally. Satan planned to give him a better future—and what was wrong with that?
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