Up The Line

52.

Dajani had just returned from a survey of the city in 630-650, with no luck at all. He was tired and irritated, and he obviously wasn’t happy about spending his layoff searching for somebody else’s runaway tourist.

He put out my sentimental glow in a hurry. I tried to foist on him my gratitude speech, and he said sourly, “Skip the grease job. I’m doing this because it’ll reflect badly on my capabilities as an instructor if the Patrol finds out what kind of anthropoid I let loose as a Courier. It’s my own hide I’m protecting.”

There was a nasty moment of silence. A lot of shuffling of feet and clearing of throats took place.

“That’s not very gratifying to hear,” I said to Dajani.

Buonocore said, “Don’t let him upset you, kid. Like I told you, any Courier’s tourist is likely to gimmick his timer, and—”

“I don’t refer to the loss of the tourist,” said Dajani testily. “I refer to the fact that this idiot managed to duplicate himself while trying to edit the mistake!” He gargled wine. “I forgive him for the one, but not for the other.”

“The duplication is pretty ugly,” Buonocore admitted.

“It’s a serious thing,” said Kolettis.

“Bad karma,” Sam said. “No telling how we’ll cover that one up.”

“I can’t remember a case to match,” declared Pappas.

“A messy miscalculation,” Plastiras commented.

“Look,” I said, “the duplication was an accident. I was so much in a sweat to find Sauerabend that I didn’t stop to calculate the implications of—”

“We understand,” Sam said.

“It’s a natural error, when you’re under pressure,” said Jeff Monroe.

“Could have happened to anyone,” Buonocore told me.

“A shame. A damned shame,” murmured Pappas.

I started to feel less like an important member of a close-knit fraternity, and more like a pitied halfwit nephew who can’t help leaving little puddles of mess wherever he goes. The halfwit’s uncles were trying to clean up a particularly messy mess for him, and trying to keep the halfwit serene so he wouldn’t make a worse mess.

When I realized what the real attitude of these men toward me was, I felt like calling in the Time Patrol, confessing my timecrimes, and requesting eradication. My soul shriveled. My manhood withered. I, the copulator with empresses, the seducer of secluded noblewomen, the maker of smalltalk with emperors, I, the last of the Ducases, I, the strider across millennia, I, the brilliant Courier in the style of Metaxas, I… I, to these veteran Couriers here, was simply an upright mass of perambulating dreck. A faex that walks like a man. Which is the singular of faeces. Which is to say, a shit.