Up The Line

“Oh,” I said weakly.

“They questioned Sauerabend,” Sam said, “and of course he was cagey, more to protect himself than you. And since he couldn’t give any explanation of the switch, the Patrol got authorization to run a recheck on the entire tour he had just taken.”

“Oh-oh.”

“They monitored it from every angle. They saw you leave your group, they saw Sauerabend skip out the moment you were gone, they saw you and me and Metaxas catch him and bring him back to that night in 1204.”

“So all three of us are in trouble?”

Sam shook his head. “Metaxas has pull. So have I. We wiggled out of it on a sympathy line, that we were just trying to help a buddy in trouble. It took all the strings we could pull. But we couldn’t do a thing for you, Jud. The Patrol is out for your head. They looked in on that little routine in 1204 by which you duplicated yourself, and they began to realize that you were guilty not only of negligence in letting Sauerabend get away from you in the first place, but also of various paradoxes caused in your unlawful attempts to correct the situation. The charges against you were so serious that we couldn’t get them dropped, and we tried, man, we tried. The Patrol thereupon took action against you.”

“What kind of action?” I asked in a dead man’s voice.

“You were removed from your tour on that evening in 1204 two hours prior to your original shunt to 1105 for your tryst with Pulcheria. Another Courier replaced you in 1204; you were plucked from the time-flow and brought down the line to stand trial in 2059 for assorted timecrimes.”

“Therefore—”

“Therefore,” Sam swept on, “you never did slip away to 1105 to pay that call on Pulcheria. Your whole love affair with Pulcheria has become a nonevent, and if you were to visit her now, you’d find that she has no recollection of having slept with you. Next: since you didn’t go to 1105, you obviously didn’t return to 1204 and find Sauerabend missing, and anyway Sauerabend had never been part of your tour group. And thus there was no need for you to make that fifty-six-second shunt up the line which created the duplication. Neither you nor Jud B ever came into being, since the existence of both of you dates from a point later than your visit to Pulcheria, and you never made that visit, having been plucked out of the time-flow before you got a chance to do it. You and Jud B are nonpersons and always have been. You happen to be protected by the Paradox of Transit Displacement, as long as you stay up the line; Jud B ceased to be protected the moment he returned to now-time, and disappeared irretrievably. Got that?”

Shivering, I said, “Sam, what’s happening to that other Jud, the — the — the real Jud? The one they plucked, the one they’ve got down there in 2059?”

“He’s in custody, awaiting trial on timecrime charges.”

“What about me?”

“If the Patrol ever finds you, you’ll be brought to now-time and thus automatically obliterated. But the Patrol doesn’t know where you are. If I you stay in Byzantium, sooner or later you’ll be discovered, and that’ll be the end for you. When I found all this out, I shot back here to warn you. Hide in prehistory. Get away into some period earlier than the founding of the old Greek Byzantium — earlier than 700B.C., I guess. You can manage there. We’ll bring you books, tools, whatever you need. There’ll be people of some sort, nomads, maybe — anyway, company. You’ll be like a god to them. They’ll worship you, they’ll bring you a woman a day. It’s your only chance, Jud.”

“I don’t want to be a prehistoric god! I want to be able to go down the line again! And to see Pulcheria! And—”

“There’s no chance of any of that,” Sam said, and his words came down like the blade of a guillotine. “You don’t exist. It’s suicide for you ever to try to go down the line. And if you go anywhere near Pulcheria, the Patrol will catch you and take you down the line. Hide or die, Jud. Hide or die.”

“But I’m real, Sam! I do exist!”

“Only the Jud Elliott who’s currently in custody in 2059 exists. You’re a residual phenomenon, a paradox product, nothing more. I love you all the same, boy, and that’s why I’ve risked my own black hide to help you, but you aren’t real. Believe me. Believe me. You’re your own ghost. Pack up and clear out!”

63.

I’ve been here for three and a half months now. By the calendar I keep, the date is March 15, 3060 B.P. I’m living a thousand years before Christ, more or less.

It’s not a bad life. The people here are subsistence farmers, maybe remnants of the old Hittite empire; the Greek colonists won’t be getting here for another three centuries. I’m starting to learn the language; it’s Indo-European and I pick it up fast. As Sam predicted, I’m a god. They wanted to kill me when I showed up, but I did a few tricks with my timer, shunting right before their eyes, and now they don’t dare offend me. I try to be a kindly god, though. Right now I’m helping spring to arrive. I went down to the shore of what will someday be called the Bosphorus and delivered a long prayer, in English, for good weather. The locals loved it.

They give me all the women I want. The first night they gave me the chief’s daughter, and since then I’ve rotated pretty well through the whole nubile population of the village. I imagine they’ll want me to marry someone eventually, but I want to complete the inspection first. The women don’t smell too good, but some of them are impressively passionate.

I’m terribly lonely.

Sam has been here three times, Metaxas twice. The others don’t come. I don’t blame them; the risks are great. My two loyal friends have brought me floaters, books, a laser, a big box of music cubes, and plenty of other things that are going to perplex the tails off some archaeologists eventually.

I said to Sam, “Bring me Pulcheria, just for a visit.”

“I can’t,” he said. And he’s right. It would have to be a kidnapping, and there might be repercussions, leading to Time Patrol troubles for Sam and obliteration for me.

I miss Pulcheria ferociously. You know, I had sex with her only that one night, though it seems as if I knew her much better than that. I wish now that I’d had her in the tavern, while she was Pulcheria Photis, too.

My beloved. My wicked great-great-multi-great-grandmother. Never to see you again! Never to touch your smooth skin, your — no, I won’t torture myself. I’ll try to forget you. Hah!

I console myself, when not busy in my duties as a deity, by dictating my memoirs. Everything now is recorded, all the details of how I maneuvered myself into this terrible fix. A cautionary tale: from promising young man to absolute nonperson in sixty-two brief chapters. I’ll keep on writing too, now and then. I’ll tell what it’s like to be a Hittite god. Let’s see, tomorrow we’ll have the spring fertility festival, and the ten fairest maidens of the village will come to the god’s house so that we—

Pulcheria!

Why am I here so far from you, Pulcheria?

I have too much time to think about you, here.

I also have too much time to think unpleasant thoughts about my ultimate fate. I doubt that the Time Patrol will find me here. But there’s another possibility.

The Patrol knows that I’m hiding somewhere up the line, protected by displacement.

The Patrol wants to smoke me out and abolish me, because I’m a filthy spawn of paradox.

And it’s in the power of the Patrol to do it. Suppose they retroactively discharge Jud Elliott from the Time Service prior to the time he set out on his ill-starred last trip? If Jud Elliott never ever got to Byzantium that time at all, the probability of my existence reaches the zero point, and I no longer am protected by the Paradox of Transit Displacement. The Law of Lesser Paradoxes prevails. Out I go — poof!