Time and Again

XLVI

Eva Armour rose from the table on the patio and held out both her hands in greeting. Sutton pulled her close to him, planted a kiss on her upturned face.

"That," he said, "is for the million times I have thought of you."

She laughed at him, suddenly gay and happy.

"But, Ash, a million times!"

"Tangled time," said Herkimer. "He's been away ten years."

"Oh," said Eva. "Oh, Ash, how horrible!"

He grinned at her. "Not too horrible. I had ten years of rest. Ten years of peace and quiet. Working on a farm, you know. It was a little rough at first, but I was actually sorry when I had to leave."

He held a chair for her, took one for himself between her and Herkimer.

They ate…ham and eggs, toast and marmalade, strong, black coffee. It was pleasant on the patio. In the trees above them birds quarreled amiably. In the clover at the edge of the bricks and stones that formed the paving, bees hummed among the blossoms.

"How do you like my place, Ash?" asked Eva.

"It's wonderful," he said, and then, as if the two ideas might be connected in some way, he said, "I saw Trevor yesterday. He took me to the mountaintop and showed me the universe."

Eva drew in her breath sharply, and Sutton looked up quickly from his plate. Herkimer was waiting, with drawn face, with fork poised in midair, halfway to his mouth.

"What's the matter with you two?" he asked. "Don't you trust me?"

And even as he asked the question, he answered it for himself. Of course, they wouldn't trust him. For he was human and he could betray them. He could twist destiny so that it was a thing for the human race alone. And there was no way in which they could be sure that he would not do this.

"Ash," said Eva, "you refused to…"

"I left Trevor with an idea that I would be back to talk it over. Nothing that I said or did. He just believes I will. Told me to go out and beat my head against the wall some more."

"You have thought about it, sir?" asked Herkimer.

Sutton shook his head. "No. Not too much. I haven't sat down and mulled it over, if that is what you mean. It would have its points if you were merely human. Sometimes I frankly wonder how much of the human there may be left in me."

"How much of it do you know, Ash,?" Eva asked, speaking softly.

Sutton scrubbed a hand across his forehead. "Most of it, I think. I know about the war in time and how and why it's being fought. I know about myself. I have two bodies and two minds, or at least substitute bodies and minds. I know some of the things that I can do. There may be other abilities I do not know about. One grows into them. Each new thing comes hard."

"We couldn't tell you," Eva said. "It would have been so simple if we could have told you. But, to start with, you would not have believed the things we told you. And, when dealing with time, one interferes as little as possible. Just enough to turn an event in the right direction.

"I tried to warn you. Remember, Ash? As near as I could come to warning."

He nodded. "After I killed Benton in the Zag House. You told me you had studied me for twenty years."

"And remember, I was the little girl in the checkered apron. When you were fishing…"

He looked at her in surprise. "You knew about that? It wasn't just part of the Zag dream?"

"Identification," said Herkimer. "So that you could identify her as a friend, as someone you had known before and who was close to you. So that you would accept her as a friend."

"But it was a dream."

"A Zag dream," said Herkimer. "The Zag is one of us. His race will benefit if destiny can stand for everyone and not the human race alone."

Sutton said, "Trevor is too confident. Not just pretending to be confident, but really confident. I keep coming back to that crack he made. 'Go out,' he said, 'and butt your head some more.' "

"He's counting on you as a human being," Eva said.

Sutton shook his head. "I can't think that's it. He must have some scheme up his sleeve, some maneuver that we won't be able to check."

Herkimer spoke slowly. "I don't like that, sir. The war's not going too well as it is. If we had to win, we'd be lost right now."

"If we had to win? I don't understand…"

"We don't have to win, sir," said Herkimer. "All we have to do is fight a holding action, prevent the Revisionists from destroying the book as you will write it. From the very first we have not tried to change a thing. We've tried to keep them from being changed."

Sutton nodded. "On his part, Trevor has to win decisively. He must smash the original text, either prevent it from being written as I mean to write it or discredit it so thoroughly that not even an android will believe it."

"You're right, sir," Herkimer told him. "Unless he can do that the humans cannot claim destiny for their own, cannot make other life believe that destiny is reserved for the human race alone."

"And that is all he wants," said Eva. "Not the destiny itself, for no human can have the faith in destiny that, say, for example, an android can. To Trevor it is merely a matter of propaganda…to make the human race believe so completely that it is destined that it will not rest until it holds the universe."

"So long," said Herkimer, "as we can keep him from doing that we claim that we are winning. But the issue is so finely balanced that a new approach by either side would score heavily. A new weapon could be a factor that would mean victory or defeat."

"I have a weapon," Sutton said. "A made-to-order weapon that would beat them…but there's no way that it can be used."

Neither of them asked the question, but he saw it on their faces and he answered it.

"There's only one such weapon. Only one gun. You can't fight a war with just one gun."

Feet pounded around the corner of the house and when they turned they saw an android running toward them across the patio. Dust stained his clothing and his face was red from running. He came to a stop and faced them, clutching at the table's edge. "They tried to stop me," he panted, the words coming out in gushes. "The place is surrounded…"

"Andrew, you fool," snapped Herkimer. "What do you mean by coming running in like this? They will know…"

"They've found out about the Cradle," Andrew gasped. "They…"

Herkimer came erect in one swift motion. The chair on which he had been sitting tipped over with the violence of his rising and his face was suddenly so white that the identification tattoo on his forehead stood out with a startling clearness.

"They know where…"

Andrew shook his head. "Not where. They just found out about it. Just now. We still have time…"

"We'll call in all the ships," said Herkimer. "We'll have to pull all the guards off the crisis points…"

"But you can't," gasped Eva. "That's exactly what they would want you to do. That is all that is stopping them…"

"We have to," Herkimer said grimly. "There's no choice. If they destroy the Cradle…"

"Herkimer," said Eva, and there was a deadly calm in her unhurried words. "The mark!"

Andrew swung to face her, then took a backward step. Herkimer's hand flashed underneath his coat and Andrew turned to run, heading for the low wall that rimmed the patio.

The knife in Herkimer's hand flashed in the sun and was suddenly a spinning wheel that tracked the running android. It caught him before he reached the wall and he went down into a heap of huddled clothing.

The knife, Sutton saw, was neatly buried in his neck.