Up The Line

“Put it on,” he said.

Sullenly, Sauerabend do

I said, “We’re going back to 1204, more or less to the time you set out from. And then we’re going to finish our tour and go back down the line to 2059. And God help you if you cause any more trouble for me, Sauerabend. I won’t report you for timecrime, because I’m a merciful man, even though an unauthorized shunt like yours is very definitely a criminal act; but if you do anything whatever that displeases me in the slightest between now and the moment I’m rid of you, I’ll make you roast for it. Clear?”

He nodded bleakly.

To Sam and Metaxas I said, “I can handle this from here on. Thanks for everything. I can’t possibly tell you—”

“Don’t try,” said Metaxas, and together they shunted down the line.

I set Sauerabend’s new timer and my own, and drew forth my pitch-pipe. “Here we go,” I said, and we shunted into 1204.

61.

At quarter to four on that very familiar night in 1204 I went once more up the stairs of the i

“Get inside,” I said to him. “And don’t monkey with your goddam timer or you’ll suffer for it.”

Sauerabend went in.

I said to Jud B, “The nightmare’s over. We grabbed him, took away his timer, put a regulation one on him, and here he is. The whole operation took just exactly four hours, right?”

“Plus who remembers how many weeks of ru

“No matter now. We got him back. We start from scratch.”

“And there’s now an extra one of us,” Jud B pointed out. “Do we work that little deal of taking turns?”

“We do. One of us stays with these clowns, takes them on down to 1453 as scheduled, and back to the twenty-first century. The other one of us goes to Metaxas’ villa. Want to flip a coin?”

“Why not?” He pulled a bezant of Alexius I from his pouch, and let me inspect it for kosherness. It was okay: a standing figure of Alexius on the obverse, an image of Christ enthroned on the reverse. We stipulated that Alexius was heads and Jesus was tails. Then I flipped the coin high, caught it with a quick snap of my hand, and clapped it down on the back of my other hand. I knew, from the feel of the concave coin’s edge against my skin, that it had landed heads up.

“Tails,” said the other Jud.

“Tough luck, amigo.” I showed him the coin. He grimaced and took it back from me.

Gloomily he said, “I’ve got three or four days left with this tour, right? Then two weeks of layoff, which I can’t spend in 1105. That means you can expect to see me showing up at Metaxas’ place in seventeen, eighteen days absolute.”

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“During which time you’ll make it like crazy with Pulcheria.”

“Naturally.”

“Give her one for me,” he said, and went into the room.

Downstairs, I slouched against a pillar and spent half an hour rechecking all of my comings and goings of this hectic night, to make sure I’d land in 1105 at a non-discontinuous point. The last thing I needed now was to miscalculate and show up there at a time prior to the whole Sauerabend caper, thereby finding a Metaxas to whom the entire thing was, well, Greek.

I did my calculations.

I shunted.

I wended my way once more to the lovely villa.

Everything had worked out perfectly. Metaxas embraced me in joy.

“The time-flow is intact again,” he said. “I’ve been back from 1100 only a couple of hours, but that was enough to check up on things. Leo Ducas’ wife is named Pulcheria. Someone named Angelus runs the tavern Sauerabend owned. Nobody here remembers a thing about anything. You’re safe.”

“I can’t tell you how much I—”

“Skip it, will you?”

“I suppose. Where’s Sam?”

“Down the line. He had to go back to work. And I’m about to do the same,” Metaxas said. “My layoff’s over, and there’s a tour waiting for me in the middle of December, 2059. So I’ll be gone about two weeks, and then I’ll be back here on—” He considered it. “—on October 18, 1105. What about you?”

“I stay here until October 22.” I said. “Then my alter ego will be finished with his post-tour layoff and will replace me here, while I go down the line to take out my next tour.”

“Is that how you’re going to work it? Turns?”

“It’s the only way.”

“You’re probably right,” said Metaxas, but I wasn’t.

62.

Metaxas took his leave, and I took a bath. And then, really relaxed for the first time in what seemed like several geological epochs, I contemplated my immediate future.

First, a nap. Then a meal. And then a journey into town to call on Pulcheria, who would be restored to her rightful place in the Ducas household, and unaware of the strange metamorphosis that had temporarily come over her destinies.

We’d make love, and I’d come back to the villa, and in the morning I’d go into town again, and afterward—

Then I stopped hatching further plans, because Sam appeared unexpectedly and smashed everything.

He was wearing a Byzantine cloak, but it was just a hasty prop, for I could see his ordinary down-the-line clothes on underneath. He looked harried and upset.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

“A favor to you,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I said I’m here as a favor to you. And I’m not going to stay long, because I don’t want the Time Patrol after me too.”

“Is the Time Patrol after me?”

“You bet your white ass it is!” he yelled. “Get your things together and clear out of here, fast! You’ve got to hide, maybe three, four thousand years back, somewhere. Hurry it up!”

He began collecting a few stray possessions of mine scattered about the room. I caught hold of him and said, “Will you tell me what’s going on? Sit down and stop acting like a maniac. You come in here at a million kilometers an hour and—”

“All right,” he said. “All right. I’ll spell it all out for you, and if I get arrested too, so be it. I’m stained with sin. I deserve to be arrested. And—”

“Sam—”

“All right,” he said again. He closed his eyes a moment. “My now-time basis,” he said hollowly, “is December 25, 2059. Merry Christmas. Several days ago on my time-level, your other self brought your current tour back from Byzantium. Including Sauerabend and all the rest of them. Do you know what happened to your other self the instant he arrived in 2059?”

“The Time Patrol arrested him?”

“Worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“He vanished, Jud. He became a nonperson. He ceased ever to have existed.”

I had to laugh. “The cocksure bastard! I told him that I was the real one and that he was just some kind of phantom, but he wouldn’t listen! Well, I can’t say that I’m sorry to see—”

“No, Jud,” Sam said sadly. “He was every bit as real as you, when he was back here up the line. And you’re every bit as unreal as he is now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re a nonperson, Jud, same as he is. You have retroactively ceased to exist. I’m sorry. You never happened. And it’s our fault as much as yours. We moved so fast that we slipped up on one small detail.”

He looked frighteningly somber. But how else are you supposed to look, when you come to tell somebody that he’s not only dead but never was born?

“What happened, Sam? What detail?”

“It’s like this, Jud. You know, when we took Sauerabend’s gimmicked timer away, we got him another one. Metaxas keeps a few smuggled spares around — that tricky bastard has everything.”

“So?”

“Its serial number, naturally, was different from the number of the timer Sauerabend started his tour with. Normally, nobody notices something like that, but when this tour checked back in, it just happened that the check-in man was a stickler for the rules, and he examined serial numbers. And saw there was a substitution, and yelled for the Patrol.”