City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis (3 page)

Somehow? A time-retardation wave could do it. The relative velocity would change once it left the field. Just another application of the same technology which made my smartgun.

Heck. I could have this done this myself, with a smartgun just like the one I had. I already thought of two different ways to reproduce this effect just with the programs I presently had loaded.

I straightened up and backed away, brushing anachronistic drops of blood off my coat.

After I was done looking at the figure on the throne, I turned and addressed D'Artagnan. “I need to take a reading of the time depth and energy signature of the discharge wave with the sensors in my smartgun. I'm going to draw it nice and slow, so your steel gorilla knows I'm on the level here. That all right with you?”

D'Artagnan spread his hands. “That's fine.”

For the first time, I noticed a slight blur of mist around his fingers as he made the gesture.

He had time-doubled. It looked like a Recursive Alternate Information shift, but I wasn't sure. There was an alternate line out there somewhere where he had done something else with his hand. Maybe he had touched a control or given a hand signal to the cataphract. Or, if it was actually a Recursive Anachronism shift, he might have handed something forward or backward to himself.

Or he might not have done anything at all. With a Parallel Displacement shift, a Time Warden, standing a few seconds away, pacing us, could have handed him something.

I drew my smartgun slowly.

And I was thinking: Why not?

Why the hell not? Hitler's mother-to-be, Klara, age sixteen, looked up at me with eyes as wide and trusting and innocent and hurt as any you'd ever dream of seeing. She hadn't done anything wrong. Maybe she would have said something, but the slug had torn out her throat. She got blood all over my pants and shoes when she fell toward me. It had smelled then much the way it smelled now.

Stalin's mother, Ketevan Geladze, on the other hand, was already pregnant, a pretty blond with a cheerful smile and coke-bottle-bottom-thick eyeglasses, when the Time Wardens decided to abort her future. They had me shoot her in the stomach twice more after she fell, burnt and screaming, just to make sure her helpless baby would be dead.

Why not? They can all make it undone again. Or so they told me.

And then one Time Warden or another took a dislike to the atomic wars of the 2020's. Einstein was a little boy playing with mud-pies in a backyard garden when my misplaced scattershot tore off his arms and legs and left him blind, bleeding, and screaming in pain until I could reprogram and fire a particle beam to put him out of his misery.

When I asked to be allowed to go back and do that assassination again, maybe cleaner, the Time Warden's representative told me that chronoportation should not be used for frivolous reasons. He sternly warned me that paradox weakened the fabric of timespace.

Why not?

I won't even tell you who I had to kill to let a curious Time Warden explore the alternate line where Christianity never rose to dominance in Europe. At least that one was done with a clean shot to the head.

Why not?

If I could set out to kill pregnant women and innocent girls and little boys and the nicest guy I'd ever met, why not set out to kill me?

I looked around to see who I had been (was going to be) talking to, when I was (would be) shot.

Only one of the thrones was occupied. There he was in all his regalia. A Time Warden. His armor was made, not of metal, but of destiny crystal, gleaming like ice. From his shoulders depended a cloak of mist, created from a single thread vibrating backward and forward across several seconds. The cloak of distorted time fell from his shoulders in streamers of vapor, dripped across and down the chair arms where he sat, and hovered in curls around his ankles.

I could not see his face. His crown was projecting a forcefield like a mirrored helmet to protect his head from the radiation of the murderous discharge in front of him.

Clue three: why did the Time Warden's armor have time to react to the assassin's bolt when the victim's smartgun did not? Coincidence? But I didn't believe in coincidences. What people call coincidences are sloppy, makeshift arrangements by the Time Wardens to put frayed or broken timelines back on track.

And I sure as hell didn't believe in Time Wardens any more.

Iapetus leaned past me and opened the window. He paused a moment, allowing me to savor the smell of the high gardens, the deep chime of distant bells, to hear the calls and cries of delight from the winged fliers.

He spoke: “There need be no further interview nor testing. Any Time Warden dissatisfied with your future performance would have already retroactively informed me. The choice is now yours.”

He straightened his back and looked at me. “The rewards of loyal service to the Time Wardens are many…”

This time around, I didn't say anything to her. I bit back the angry confession which sprang to my lips. There are some things which, once said, can never be taken back.

Instead, I put my hands on her shoulders, and drew her closer. “Babydoll, there's no other woman. There is no one else…” I lied smoothly.

This time, my past didn't catch up with me. I could always outrun it, always stay one jump ahead of the game. I smothered the pang of guilt I felt at the thought as I lowered my head to kiss her.

“…including material rewards, without limit…”

While I was waiting for the croupier, and the manager, and the manager's assistant, to collect my winnings into a large suitcase, I stepped into a telephone booth, with a copy of tomorrow's stock market under my arm, to make a call to my broker.

I yawned while the phone rang. It all seemed so tedious, so safe. Maybe this time around I would walk into the ambush the thugs hired by the manager were planning.

“…as well as the knowledge that you are doing good and useful work to preserve both past historic treasures and the integrity of the timespace continuum…”

The Roman legionary stood there, shaking and sweating, eyes rolling wildly, unable to move, locked in the grip of my paralysis ray. I would have preferred to shoot him, of course, but orders were not to chance future archeologists puzzling over slugs found in one of Caesar's troopers. I could tell the Roman wanted to scream when I pulled his short sword from its scabbard, put the point under the belt of his armor, and pushed.

He fell down the steps of the Library at Alexandria, and I kicked the torch he'd been holding down after him, safely away from the precious scrolls and papyrus.

There was blood splashed all over my coat and trousers.

I was doing good work. Important work. Why did it make me feel sick to my stomach?

A whole squad of legionaries led by a centurion trotted around the corner at a quickstep, shields and pilum in hand. They let out a roar when they saw their dead comrade, and shouted vows of vengeance to their gods. Then they lowered spears, formed ranks, and charged the stairs.

I laughed. Did they expect me to wait around for their vengeance? For the consequences of my actions to catch up with me? They would never catch up.

A twist on the barrel of my smartgun opened the paralysis induction beam to wide-fan. The soldiers fell, and then they waited, helplessly, for me to slaughter them. I tried not to look them in the eyes as I moved from one to the next with their comrade's gladius in my hand.

“…and, since the Time Wardens are all-powerful, no one can oppose them or stop them. They have no enemies…”

When I woke up, I found myself slumped in a heavy, high-backed chair of dark red leather, placed at the end of a long conference table of black walnut. Nine hooded figures sat around the length of the table.

Light came from two high candelabrums, burning real candles and dripping messy wax onto the table surface. The room around me was dim; I had the impression we were in a library. There were no windows, no clocks, nothing like a calendar anywhere in sight. I could hear no noise from outside. It may have been day or night, of any season, of any year.

The robes, likewise, could have been from practically any date or era. They all wore gloves; I saw no rings or jewelry.

“Do not be alarmed,” came a polite tenor from my left. “I know you do not recall this, but you volunteered to have a small part of your recent memory blotted out. It was a condition our anonymity required to make this conversation possible. You wanted to speak with us.”

“And who are you supposed to be?” I asked, straightening up, my fingers pressed against my throbbing temples. “And why the hell did I—you claim—want to speak to you so badly?”

The hooded figure at the other end of the table leaned forward slightly. He had a rumbling, bass voice. “We are the enemies of the Time Wardens, Mr. Frontino…”

I drew my smartgun slowly, so as not to startle D'Artagnan or Ugly Boy in the fancy steel suit. Idiots. They might have stood a chance if Ugly Boy had had enough sense to keep his faceplate down. As it was, I gyro-focused an aiming laser to keep a dot right between his eyes where he couldn't see it, while taking a reading on the energy discharge which killed (was going to kill) me (future-me). I didn't have to actually point the gun barrel at Ugly Boy to shoot him; my gun was pretty damn smart.

The formation readings did not surprise me. The energy signature was exactly the same as that generated by the gun held in my hand. It was not the same make or model, it was the exact same gun.

Of course. Obviously. I was going to shoot myself.

Means I could see. What about opportunity?

The time-depth reading on the spot of mist from which the murder-discharge radiated did surprise me. It was a matter of a few seconds, plus or minus. Something was going to make me shoot me in a moment or so from now.

That left only motive. And I couldn't imagine any motive, at first.

But then I thought: Why not? Why the hell not?

I swung my barrel to cover D'Artagnan.

“OK, fancy boy,” I snapped. “Charade's over. Do I need to shoot you to make the real Time Warden show up?”

“You think I am not a Time Warden?”

I shook my head. I could have explained that I hadn't seen him chronoshift but once, and that, since he wasn't wearing a Time Warden's mist cloak, such shifts would have been obvious. A Time Warden who did not have other selves as bodyguards? Who lived through all his time lines in blind, first-time, unedited scenes? A Time Warden who didn't time travel? But all I said was: “You talk too much to be a Time Warden.”

“You may as well put your gun away, Mr. Frontino, or I will have my…” he nodded toward the cataphract and his sentence choked to a halt. He saw the aiming dot punctuating Ugly Boy's face.

“I don't know if you can see my settings from there,” I said.

He nodded carefully. “Your deadman switch is on.”

“And the change-in-energy detector. Any weapons go off near me, and my Unlimited friend here goes off and keeps going off long after I'm dead. Well? Well? I want some answers!”

The cataphract's launch-harness unfolded from his back like the legs of a preying mantis opening. Tubes longer than bazookas pointed at me. He raised his hand toward me. With sharp metallic clashes of noise, barrels came out of the weapon housings of his gauntleted forearms. I was standing close enough that I could hear the throbbing hum of his power-core cycling up to full-battle mode. The mouths of his weapons were so close to my face that I could smell ozone and hot metal.

My nape hairs and armpits prickled. I could feel my heartbeat pulsing in my temples; my face felt hot. Standing at ground zero, at the point-blank firing focus of a mobile Heavy Assault Battery, really doesn't do a man's nerves much good.

“Well?” I said, not taking my eyes from D'Artagnan. “Things are going to start getting sloppy!”

Even D'Artagnan looked surprised when the frozen image of the Time Warden on the throne stood up and raised his hand. Of course the time-stop had meant nothing to him. He had merely been sitting still, faking it.

“Enough!” His voice rang with multiple echoes, as if a crowd of people were speaking in not-quite-perfect unison. “You have passed our test, Frontino. You were brought here to assume the rights, powers and perquisites of a Time Warden. You may assume your rightful place at my side. There is no need for a coronation ceremony. Here I give the reality of power.”

With a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed a packet of destiny cards at my feet. The pack fell open as it struck the marble floor. Shining mirrored cards fell open, glittering.

These were the real things. The glassy depths held images from history, ages past and future, eras unguessed. There were castles, landscapes, battlefields, towers, all the cities and kingdoms of the world.

The final row lay before me. All I had to do was stoop over and pick them up. If I just bent a little, it could all be mine. Me, pulling the strings for once. Me, the puppet-master, not the puppet. No longer a pawn.

I stood at the window, watching the golden city of glory with eyes of awe. I asked Iapetus. “I still have some questions. May I ask?”

“Certainly, Mr. Frontino.”

“How can it be possible? Time travel, I mean? What happens to cause-and-effect?”

Iapetus' smile was sinister and cold. “Cause-and-effect is a delusion of little minds. A cultural prejudice. The ancient wisdom of the prescientific ages recognized that the workings of the universe were held in the hands of unguessable powers. They called them gods instead of Time Wardens. But it is all one.”

I asked: “So what happens if you kill your grandfather?”

“Nothing truly exists,” explained Iapetus impatiently. “Except as a range of uncertain probabilities. Normally this uncertainty is confined to the sub-atomic level, creating the illusions of solid matter, life, and causality.