The Edge of the Knife

by H. Beam Piper

out and filled it.

  "Any of those chairs," Hauserman said, gesturing toward them.

  They were all arranged to face the desk. He sat down, lighting hispipe. Hauserman nodded approvingly; he was behaving calmly, and didn'tneed being put at ease. They talked at random--at least, Hausermantried to make it seem so--for some time about his work, his book aboutthe French Revolution, current events. He picked his way carefullythrough the conversation, alert for traps which the psychiatrist mightbe laying for him. Finally, Hauserman said:

  "Would you mind telling me just why you felt it advisable to request apsychiatric examination, Professor?"

  "I didn't request it. But when the suggestion was made, by one of myfriends, in reply to some aspersions of my sanity, I agreed to it."

  "Good distinction. And why was your sanity questioned? I won't denythat I had heard of this affair, here, before Mr. Dacre called me,last evening, but I'd like to hear your version of it."

  He went into that, from the original incident in Modern History IV,choosing every word carefully, trying to concentrate on making a goodimpression upon Hauserman, and at the same time finding that more"memories" of the future were beginning to seep past the barrier ofhis consciousness. He tried to dam them back; when he could not, hespoke with greater and greater care lest they leak into his speech.

  "I can't recall the exact manner in which I blundered into it. Thefact that I did make such a blunder was because I was talkingextemporaneously and had wandered ahead of my text. I was trying toshow the results of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the FirstWorld War, and the partition of the Middle East into a loosecollection of Arab states, and the passing of British and otherEuropean spheres of influence following the Second. You know, when youconsider it, the Islamic Caliphate was inevitable; the surprisingthing is that it was created by a man like Khalid...."

  He was talking to gain time, and he suspected that Hauserman knew it.The "memories" were coming into his mind more and more strongly; itwas impossible to suppress them. The period of anarchy followingKhalid's death would be much briefer, and much more violent, than hehad previously thought. Tallal ib'n Khalid would be flying fromEngland even now; perhaps he had already left the plane to take refugeamong the black tents of his father's Bedouins. The revolt at Damascuswould break out before the end of the month; before the end of theyear, the whole of Syria and Lebanon would be in bloody chaos, and theTurkish army would be on the march.

  "Yes. And you allowed yourself to be carried a little beyond thepresent moment, into the future, without realizing it? Is that it?"

  "Something like that," he replied, wide awake to the trap Hausermanhad set, and fearful that it might be a blind, to disguise the realtrap. "History follows certain patterns. I'm not a Toynbean, by anymanner of means, but any historian can see that certain forcesgenerally tend to produce similar effects. For instance, space travelis now a fact; our government has at present a military base on Luna.Within our lifetimes--certainly within the lifetimes of mystudents--there will be explorations and attempts at colonization onMars and Venus. You believe that, Doctor?"

  "Oh, unreservedly. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I did somework on the Philadelphia Project, myself. I'd say that every majorproblem of interplanetary flight had been solved before the firstrobot rocket was landed on Luna."

  "Yes. And when Mars and Venus are colonized, there will be the samehistoric situations, at least in general shape, as arose when theEuropean powers were colonizing the New World, or, for that matter,when the Greek city-states were throwing out colonies across theAegean. That's the sort of thing we call projecting the past into thefuture through the present."

  Hauserman nodded. "But how about the details? Things like theassassination of a specific personage. How can you extrapolate to athing like that?"

  "Well...." More "memories" were coming to the surface; he tried tocrowd them back. "I do my projecting in what you might callfictionalized form; try to fill in the details from imagination. Inthe case of Khalid, I was trying to imagine what would happen if hisinfluence were suddenly removed from Near Eastern and Middle Eastern,affairs. I suppose I constructed an imaginary scene of hisassassination...."

  He went on at length. Mohammed and Noureed were common enough names.The Middle East was full of old U. S. weapons. Stoning was thetraditional method of execution; it diffused responsibility so that noindividual could be singled out for blood-feud vengeance.

  "You have no idea how disturbed I was when the whole thing happened,exactly as I had described it," he continued. "And worst of all, tome, was this Intelligence officer showing up; I thought I was reallyin for it!"

  "Then you've never really believed that you had real knowledge of thefuture?"

  "I'm beginning to, since I've been talking to these Psionics andParapsychology people," he laughed. It sounded, he hoped, like anatural and unaffected laugh. "They seem to be convinced that Ihave."

  There would be an Eastern-inspired uprising in Azerbaijan by themiddle of the next year; before autumn, the Indian Communists wouldmake their fatal attempt to seize East Pakistan. The Thirty Days' Warwould be the immediate result. By that time, the Lunar Base would becompleted and ready; the enemy missiles would be aimed primarily atthe rocketports from which it was supplied. Delivered without warning,it should have succeeded--except that every rocketport had its secretduplicate and triplicate. That was Operation Triple Cross; no wonderMajor Cutler had been so startled at the words, last evening. Theenemy would be utterly overwhelmed under the rain of missiles fromacross space, but until the moon-rockets began to fall, the UnitedStates would suffer grievously.

  "Honestly, though, I feel sorry for my friend Fitch," he added. "He'sgoing to be frightfully let down when some more of my allegedprophecies misfire on him. But I really haven't been deliberatelydeceiving him."

  And Blanley College was at the center of one of the areas which wouldreceive the worst of the thermonuclear hell to come. And it would be alittle under a year....

  "And that's all there is to it!" Hauserman exclaimed, annoyance in hisvoice. "I'm amazed that this man Whitburn allowed a thing like this toassume the proportions it did. I must say that I seem to have gottenthe story about this business in a very garbled form indeed." Helaughed shortly. "I came here convinced that you were mentallyunbalanced. I hope you won't take that the wrong way, Professor," hehastened to add. "In my profession, anything can be expected. A goodpsychiatrist can never afford to forget how sharp and fine is theknife-edge."

  "The knife-edge!" The words startled him. He had been thinking, atthat moment, of the knife-edge, slicing moment after momentrelentlessly away from the future, into the past, at each slice comingcloser and closer to the moment when the missiles of the Eastern Axiswould fall. "I didn't know they still resorted to surgery, in mentalcases," he added, trying to cover his break.

  "Oh, no; all that sort of thing is as irrevocably discarded as thewhips and shackles of Bedlam. I meant another kind of knife-edge; thethin, almost invisible, line which separates sanity from non-sanity.From madness, to use a deplorable lay expression." Hauserman litanother cigarette. "Most minds are a lot closer to it than theirowners suspect, too. In fact, Professor, I was so convinced that yourshad passed over it that I brought with me a commitment form, made outall but my signature, for you." He took it from his pocket and laid iton the desk. "The modern equivalent of the _lettre-de-cachet_, Isuppose the author of a book on the French Revolution would call it. Iwas all ready to certify you as mentally unsound, and commit you toNorthern State Mental Hospital."

  Chalmers sat erect in his chair. He knew where that was; on the otherside of the mountains, in the one part of the state completelyuntouched by the H-bombs of the Thirty Days' War. Why, the townoutside which the hospital stood had been a military headquartersduring the period immediately after the bombings, and the center fromwhich all the rescue work in the state had been directed.

  "And you thought you could commit me to Northern State!" he demanded,laughing scornfully, a
nd this time he didn't try to make the laughsound natural and unaffected. "You--confine _me_, anywhere? Confine apoor old history professor's body, yes, but that isn't me. I'muniversal; I exist in all space-time. When this old body I'm wearingnow was writing that book on the French Revolution, I was in Paris,watching it happen, from the fall of the Bastile to the NinthThermidor. I was in Basra, and saw that crazed tool of the Axis shootdown Khalid ib'n Hussein--and the professor talked about it a monthbefore it happened. I have seen empires rise and stretch from star tostar across the Galaxy, and crumble and fall. I have seen...."

  Doctor Hauserman