Vestiges of Time

by Richard C. Meredith

  He withdrew in pain and confusion. He found it hard to believe that the huddled figure was himself, was Eric Mathers, another parallel of the man he had been. But it was. It was.

  Across the darkness again, seeking still another pinpoint of luminance, another fragment of consciousness in the emptiness.

  Touching. Contacting . . .

  *The big blond man was dressed conservatively, his clothing unsuited for his frame, the cravat around his neck loosened. Under his coat and his shirt, his shoulders slumped and his back bent; it was as if he were trying to diminish his size, to appear smaller than he actually was, as if he did not wish to bring attention to himself, which was true.

  *He stood behind a lectern, this man named Thimbron Parnassos, and behind him was a large map of North Ionia, labeled in Greek characters. Before him

  was a room filled with students, and he was lecturing to them in a variant of the Greek language about the period of troubles in North Ionia, the time, nearly two decades before, when a handful of anarchists and misguided students had risen in revolt against the lawfully established government, and how the government had ruthlessly but righteously put down the revolt, how all sedition in North Ionia had been done away with, and how the governor, in his wisdom, had established what Professor Parnassos could not call a “police state” but which was exactly that.

  *Thimbron Parnassos, professor of post-Hellenic history, did not mention the fact that his own father had been among those rebels. Of course, all that was in the files of the Astefee—the secret police—and had caused him many an uneasy moment. But, of course, the police knew that he, Professor Parnassos, was a loyal subject of the state, had rejected his father, had denied any allegiance to the older man’s involvement in rebellion, and even had been instrumental in helping to arrest the group of which his father had been a mem- _ ber. Over the years since adolescence he had proved himself loyal, dependable, and trustworthy, never one to say a word out of line.

  *But still he had nightmares sometimes, and there was a portion of himself he could not trust. One day, he knew, that mad side of himself would break free, would reveal itself, and then the Astefee would come for him. . . .*

  Repelled, he withdrew, pulled back into darkness.

  Were they all Uke this? All the versions of Eric Mathers/Thimbron Parnassos? Were all the rest of him traitors?

  Farther and farther back he pulled, across the darkness, across the Timelines, back toward the Earth of the BrathelLanza and the Underground and the laboratories that held the forms of Eric Mathers and his

  336 replicates that were the source of the response patterns that were himself.

  And as he came back and drifted into' the corporeal bodies, he thought he was beginning to understand exactly what the Shadowy Man really was. Who he was. And what he had to do.

  16

  A Shadow Visits

  Through 674 now-opened eyes he saw 337 different scenes. One of them was a mnemonic-recording chamber, brightly lighted, in which lay the body of a dead technician named MaLarba and the living form of Eric Mathers, still strapped into a reclining chair, the body still incapacitated by drugs. The other 336 views were essentially the same: looking out through murky fluids that were in constant motion before the eyes, looking out of the transparent encanter cylinders, across a spaceman aisle, to another cylinder in which floated the naked form of a young boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, whose eyes were now open, who looked out of his own cylinder into his own eyes, and in the eyes that looked and in the eyes that looked back was a strange, uncertain, excited, and very curious consciousness.

  Carefully now he forced 672 eyelids to close, shutting off the nearly identical scenes they saw. Finally he saw only one scene. That of the recording room. He commanded the single pair of eyes through which he looked to move. Reluctantly they did.

  Nothing appeared to have changed in the room. It was exactly as he remembered it. There was no indication that the drug had worn off the body that called itself Eric Mathers. Nor was there indication that corruption had begun to dissolve the body that had been MaLarba. Yet it seemed that days, even weeks, had gone by. There should have been signs of something. Time could not have stopped. Could it?

  Leftward the eyes moved, seeking the chronometer and the digits in its face that displayed the passage of

  132

  time. The eyes stopped, and the composite mind of the senior and his replicates considered the data.

  The chronometer read 12:09.31.

  Five minutes. Less than five minutes. How was it possible?

  Or had a full twenty-four or a full forty-eight hours passed?

  No, that was not possible.

  Although it seemed that he had been roving through paratime for days, for weeks, and before that more days or weeks integrating himself, it had been less than five minutes since he had come in contact with the first of the replicates and begun his expansion, his creation.

  Only minutes . . .

  Or was it that his composite mind now had command of chronological time as well as parallel time, of vertical time as well as horizontal time? Had he actually spent days—or years—in his own creation and in his quest, and then returned from out of time to place his consciousness in this particular present, less than five minutes after his beginning? Or did he perhaps exist in a unique sort of chronological time, a subtime, so to speak, which progressed toward the future in a linear fashion, but at a different rate?

  Could these things be so? And if so . . .

  The Shadowy Man could command time. The Tromas had said so.

  And I . . .

  For a while he rested, in real time, feeling the breathing of the body of Eric Mathers, hearing the swish- swish-swish of air circulating through the room, the hiss of tape across recording heads above and behind him, seeing the digits that represented seconds clicking one after another across the chronometer’s face.

  When the chronometer read 12:11:17 he began to withdraw from the body, to fully reintegrate himself, to divorce himself from all the corporeal bodies. He was going to try an experiment.

  There were now within his mind vague bits and pieces of data, odd and long-forgotten remembrances, sensations he had collected during the time of his own existence as the composite mind. He thought he knew what to do, how to do it, but he was yet uncertain— and there is no way I can put into words these feelings and hunches he felt then. Again: there are no words in any language; it is an experience beyond the finite concepts of finite beings. But he did it.

  Into the psionic darkness again, searching, seeking, finding . . .

  A bright point of awareness, of consciousness, similar to the others he had encountered, yet also different, far more familiar than they had been, a stronger sense of kinship. Here was another Eric Mathers, another Eric Mathers there in the Underground, a conscious, living, breathing Eric Mathers who was terribly similar to the Eric Mathers who was now a part of the composite resonance pattern.

  He did not actually touch that mind. That was not his plan, to enter into a second- or third-level resonance. He was going to try to do something else, something wild, fantastic—impossible, perhaps; yet, if he could do it. . .

  Focusing all his attention on that spot of light that was the consciousness of an Eric Mathers, he began to formulate within himself the position of that spot of light in time and in space, at least four frameworks of reference, at least four sets of coordinates: and he saw that it was a roving, wandering, three-dimensional tube of light passing through space/time from a direction that could be labeled past toward a direction that could be labeled future. He narrowed his references. Selected a space/time. Again he focused his attention, isolated one particular fragment of space/time, and propelled himself toward it.

  Frozen time. Frozen space. A universe stopped dead in its tracks. Almost. Now he could do it.

  In spatial frameworks he selected a spot a few feet from where the consciousness was located. He moved toward that position, into it, proj
ecting something of himself into the particular tiny fragment of all con- tinuua, all-space, all-time. He focused and focused again, grasping molecules of air, photons of light, adjusting them, bending them, twisting them, altering them, making out of them something that had not been there before. Not a significant thing, perhaps. No great alteration of the matter/energy of that place/ time. But enough.

  Some portion of himself was in the same room with the other consciousness. He could now see, or do something akin to seeing, and he sensed a series of overlapping images broken from bits of the high end of the electromagnetic spectrum: an infrared image here, a yellow one there, an ultraviolet one at another place. And he sensed the twisting of the fabric of the universe, minor though it was, and the aura of power, the crackling of something not unlike electrical tension that filled the small concrete room. And he was aware of how he, this force he projected, would appear to the room’s physical occupant: hazy, smoky, wraithlike, a shadowy form with the figure of a man, no more than that.

  And he saw this: A small room with damp concrete walls; moisture; a dimly glowing strip of light ran across the ceiling; a cot was the only .article of furniture in the room; Eric Mathers, aka HarkosNor, dressed in a robe that was an appropriate costume for the city of VarKhohs of NakrehVatee, sat on the cot, a pained expression on his face, a lump on the back of his head; the medicine given him by RyoNa had begun to do its work, but all the pain was not yet gone.

  The presence he had created out of light and air waited for Mathers to become aware of it, of him.

  Then Mathers was aware of the forces at play within

  the room; he looked up toward the center point of those forces and saw the shape forming in the air.

  There was silence in the room for long, dragging moments. He knew that Mathers was waiting for him to speak. He would do so; he thought he knew how. Grasping molecules of air, he took them in hand and set them to vibrating, to pulsing at carefully determined frequencies and amplitudes, to forming waves in the air that passed from his focal point toward that of Mathers. Yes, this seemed to be the right way. The sounds he created were: “Well, Eric, I hope you’re not feeling too badly now.”

  The Erie Mathers who sat in the room and awaited the coming of RyoNa’s “very important people” looked a little puzzled but not totally surprised. “I’m okay,” he said at last. “I was afraid the Tromas had destroyed you back in KHL-000.”

  He could not suppress his feelings. That was his future of which Mathers spoke, something he was yet to encounter. But to Mathers, this Eric Mathers, it was something that had occurred some months in the past. Involuntarily he chuckled; the air carried his chuckle in waves across the room. How could he ever explain this to Mathers? “Damn,” he made the air say more expertly, focusing the sounds across the room, sounds identical with those the vocal cords and mouth and lips and tongue of Eric Mathers would have made, “this could get confusing.”

  “What do you mean?” Mathers asked, still puzzled. “What you’re talking about is in your past, you see,” he made the air say, “but it’s in my future. It hasn’t happened to me yet, so I don’t know the outcome of our fight with the Krithian ladies any more than you do.” He wanted to tell Mathers a great deal more, but he knew he dared not.

  “I see,” Mathers said.

  “I hope you do, though I’m not positive I do. As I said, it could get confusing.” It already was, but per

  haps he was beginning to understand more and more of it.

  “Yeah.” Mathers grunted, that was all he did in way of reply.

  He created sounds again: “Your head’s not hurting now, and don’t worry, you don’t have a concussion. The lump will go away in a few days.”

  “That’s comforting,” Mathers replied grudgingly, unhappily.

  More sounds he created, projected across the room: “And I suggest that the best thing for you will be to cooperate with the members of the BrathelLanza when they come to visit you.”

  “The what?” Mathers asked.

  “BrathelLanza. You’ll find out what it is in due time. For now, cooperate with them as fully as possible, for from cooperating with them will come answers to the questions you want to ask of me, and a means of action.”

  “A means of action?” Mathers asked stupidly.

  “Yes, a means of action, the action that will bring . . How much could he tell him? How much had he been told when he was Eric Mathers? “Well, you’ll see.” He could not repress another chuckle he created. There was some degree of humor in the situation. Mathers would see it. When he got here himself. In time.

  He had said all he could. He had told Mathers enough. Now Mathers would do the rest of it himself. Mathers would do what had to be done so that the proper sequence of events would take place, so that months in the “future” Mathers would find himself in the recording studio when the police raided the Underground, so that he would be left alone and, with the aid of sense-altering drugs and mnemonic amplification, he would be forced to establish rapport and then resonance with the replicates and . . .

  And the Shadowy Man would be bom.

  The Shadowy Man withdrew from the damp cell that contained Eric Mathers, withdrew into the blackness that is both outside space and time and is the very stuff upon which they are built.

  For moments during which the word “time” was a meaningless noise, the Shadowy Man hung suspended, thinking, understanding, knowing. There it was. All laid out before him. There were things he would have to do. Within himself he chuckled, remembered words spoken by the Tromas of KHL-000, words that had seemed like madness to the Eric Mathers who had heard them, words that now the Shadowy Man understood.

  The Tromas had said: “What we see is some great power behind this Shadowy Man, some great power that may not yet have even come into existence, that is reaching back through time to alter events—perhaps it is altering events in order to bring itself into existence.”

  The Tromas had said: “This is a universe of probabilities, Eric. Probabilities. Higher orders and lower orders of probability. It is a universe in which the future can reach back into the past in order to increase its probability. Lower orders of probability can become, through their own manipulation, higher orders of probability. This is so. Kriths know that.”

  The Tromas had said: “This power is reaching back in time, we believe, in order to manipulate you and those you come in contact with toward some dark future end that is involved with, in some way we do not yet fathom, the possible destruction of the entire Krithian race!”

  The Tromas had said: “Your Shadowy Man is trying to kill us, Eric.”

  Yes, the Tromas had known, had understood.

  Now he did too. He knew what he must do: bring about the past as he knew it, had experienced it as Eric Mathers, to force the past to bring about the

  present, to force the past to create the Shadowy Man so that he could . . . undo other pasts.

  There are no paradoxes in time, he told himself. It is just that no one before me has had any conception of what it is. Though the Tromas do have a glimmering, I have a little more than that.

  He set out to do what he knew he would have to do> to assure his own creation. ..,

  17

  Downtime

  Through a universe that earlier had seemed to be a blackness but now did not seem so black, for now he could discern in it more and more detail, various shades of blackness and innumerable fragments of light, pinpoints and glows of three-dimensional light as they had made/did make/would make their way through time and space; a void that was the very stuff of which continuua are made. Moving in it, through it, was everything that ever had been, everything that ever would be, everything that ever might have been.

  The Shadowy Man moved himself, his awareness, his consciousness backward in time, outward in paratime, searching for a particular point in the multidimensional matrices of time and space and paratime, searching, finding. . . .

  A plush villa outside a French town named Beau- gen
cy on Timeline RTGB-307, the early morning of 6 April 1972.

  During the night the Kriths had sent a contingent of their own Timeliners and local British forces up the River Loire toward the villa presently inhabited by Imperial Count Albert von Heinen and his wife. Under cover of darkness and a surprise British attack, the Timeliners were to capture Von Heinen and his American wife and return them to the Kriths for questioning.

  All had gone well enough at first. The Timeliner mercenaries had captured Von Heinen, though only after wounding him, and had gotten his wife without injuring her. But a paratime craft of strange design and capabilities had moved against them, had forced

  them into a pitched battle that required retreat back to RTGB-307 and the villa.

  Now there was gunfire in the distance, the rapid sounds of automatic weapons, the slower noises of semiautomatic ones, the sound of a remote intemal- combustion engine dwindling in the distance. Some of the Timeliners had escaped, and in doing so had drawn away the unknown attackers.

  As the light of dawn spread across the villa and the stables behind it, figures were moving toward the stables in which there were no horses now, but three staff motorcars of the army of the Holy Roman Empire, brightly polished and immaculately clean, ready for instant use by the officers should they be needed.

  One of the figures was a tall blond man in British uniform, who staggered slightly under the weight of the wounded man he carried. There was a determined, half-angry expression on his face, and now and again he glanced at the woman who accompanied him.

  Dressed only in a heavy robe, she was a fair-haired woman of medium height, an attractive woman whose green eyes flashed anger and hatred, who glanced at the blond man with bitter lines around her eyes and mouth. She was doing as he told her, but reluctantly.

  The man in the British uniform stopped just short of the stables, lowered the wounded man to the ground, ordered the woman to stay with him, and went into the stables to investigate. After a few moments of searching, he found the three motorcars, each decked out with the flag of a Feldmarschall of the Imperial Army. He smiled to himself for a moment before going back to where the woman and the wounded man waited.