Vestiges of Time (28 page)

the Kriths, a note to my previous self and to Sally, which would read something like this:

“Dear Eric and Sally,

“If you read this note you will have escaped from the Tromas and have found the refuge I selected for you.” I would write “I,” though perhaps it would have been more honest to write “he” or “the Shadowy Man.” “You’re safe here as long as you wish to stay.” Which was true within certain limits.

Still using the first-person singular, I would go on to say:

“I know you’re curious about your means of transportation from KHL-000 to here, and I would explain it to you if I could, but none of us has the proper mathematical background to really understand it.” Which was very true. I certainly didn’t understand it. “I could tell you it’s a ‘parachronal convolution,’ but what would that explain? Labeling something doesn’t necessarily define it.

“This skudder, from some decades into the future, as you two have been reckoning time, is yours. It’s fully provisioned and ready to take you wherever you might wish to go, spatially or paratemporally. You may use it when you will.

“Some miles to the west of here you will find a village. It is an outpost of a kingdom barely out of the Bronze Age, though its inhabitants are friendly and pleasant people. You.will find yourselves welcome there, though don’t be too surprised if you’re treated as something a bit more special than a pair of naked wanderers. They’re expecting a couple of exiled godlings. Try to act the part.

“In time you’re a few weeks downtime from our recent conflict with the Tromas. In the past, as you see it.

“In space, you’re still in North America, the Florida peninsula.

“In paratime, well, you’re one hell of a long way to

the T-East, far beyond the Line the Kriths call KHL- 000. It’s as safe a place as any you can hope for, but try not to be disturbed by the oddness of some of the things you find here. There are some aspects of the evolutionary process that have worked out differently here.”

I’ll say! Ten-foot-tall mushrooms and fat unicorns!

But I would scribble on, and finally conclude with something like:

“As for advice, I can give you none, as much as I would like to.” That was true.

“The future is yours to do with as you wish.

“I think.” And that was a kind of truth too.

“Yours”—and I would sign my own name—“Eric Mathers.”

That’s the note I would write, but first I had a couple of other things to do.

From the skudder’s locker I got several packages of provisions, took them to a place near the stream, and placed them in a small, neat pile where they were sure to be found by the two I knew were coming. If some animal didn’t get them first. But I was certain they’d be waiting for Eric and Sally when they got there. I remembered them having been.

Then, feeling much better than I could remember having felt in a long, long time, I set out toward the west, where there was supposed to be—would be! I’d been there—a village that would give Eric and Sally a warm reception.

And as I walked I thought about the things that the Shadowy Man had experienced, the inexplicable paradoxes of a probabilistic universe. Nothing really
was.
Everything was just
might be.
Maybe that was a hell of a way to run a railroad, but it did keep things interesting.

And I wondered what the universe would be like
afterward,
when there were no Kriths or Timeliners or Paratimers to foul things up even worse than human

beings fouled things up. Things might not be so bad. Maybe . . .

And I made a few plans of my own. After I got finished at the village and wrote my note, then I’d go off by myself for a while, do a little wandering, see the country, maybe finally get my mind together and try to understand a little of it. Then, in a few months, in late April, I’d go back to Sally and tell her what had happened. To her I’d have been gone only a few days; to me it would be more than a year.

Then . . .

Well, I wasn’t certain then. I’d come back to her in April 1972, and the reorganization of the universe wasn’t scheduled to happen until March 1973. We’d have almost a year to do whatever we wanted, to eat and make love and sing songs and recite poems and tell stories and make love ... to dream and wish and hope and . . .

And wonder about 4 March 1973.

That day would come eventually.

We’d have to face it.

The Shadowy Man hadn’t been certain what would happen to us, so neither could I be. Maybe there was a chance for us, way oS here in the sidelines. Maybe, somehow, when the universe reordered itself, it would miss us. Maybe we could go on and have those babies after all, and be the godlings the people here thought us to be. There would be a lot of things we could do to help these people: introduce them to the concept of sanitation, tell them their world wasn’t the center of the universe and help them develop this world’s first constitutional monarchy. There was a lot we could do. Like the poor Timeliners used to say of themselves: they have a lot of history in front of them.

But maybe it wouldn’t work out that way.

I wasn’t going to be frightened about it. And I wouldn’t let Sally be frightened either. Even if we did

wink out of existence, come next March, it had been one hell of a life.

I wouldn’t have missed it.

And as I walked toward the village, I actually felt happy.

What the hell!

I began to whistle.

And once I glanced over my shoulder in a nondirection that I imagined to be the Temporal-West and the Lines of Men, and I yelled to them:

“Good luck, you silly bastards. You’re going to need it. I won’t be there to help.”