Up The Line

58.

I had now been running around 1105 for quite a while, and I figured it was time to get back to 1204 and let my alter ego know something of what was going on. So I made the shunt down the line and got to the inn at quarter past three on that same long night of Conrad Sauerabend’s disappearance from 1204. My other self was slouched gloomily on his bed, studying the ceiling’s heavy beams.

“Well?” he said. “How goes it?”

“Catastrophic. Come out into the hall.”

“What’s happening?”

“Brace yourself,” I said. “We finally tracked Sauerabend down. He shunted to 1099, and took a cover identity as a tavernkeeper. A year later he married Pulcheria.”

I watched my other self crumble.

“The past has been changed,” I went on. “Leo Ducas married somebody else, Euprepia something, and has two and a half children by her. Pulcheria’s a serving wench in Sauerabend’s tavern. I saw her there. She didn’t know who I was, but she offered to screw me for two bezants. Sauerabend is smuggling goods down the line, and—”

“Don’t tell me any more,” he said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“I haven’t told you the good part yet.”

“There’s a good part?”

“The good part is that we’re going to unhappen all of this. Sam and Metaxas and you are going to trace Sauerabend back from 1105 to the moment of his arrival in 1099, and unarrive him, and shunt him back here into this evening. Thus canceling the whole episode.”

“What happens to us?” my other self asked.

“We discussed that, more or less,” I said vaguely. “We aren’t sure. Apparently we’re both protected by Transit Displacement, so that we’ll continue to exist even if we get Sauerabend back into his proper time flow.”

“But where did we come from? There can’t be creation of something out of nothing! Conservation of mass—”

“One of us was here all along,” I reminded him. “As a matter of fact, I was here all along. I brought you into being by looping back fifty-six seconds into your time-flow.”

“Balls,” he said. “I was in that time-flow all along, doing what I was supposed to do. You came looping in out of nowhere. You’re the goddam paradox, buster.”

“I’ve lived fifty-six seconds longer than you, absolute. Therefore I must have been created first.”

“We were both created in the same instant, on October 11, 2035,” he shot back at me. “The fact that our time lines got snarled because of your faulty thinking has no bearing on which of us is more real than the other. The question is not who’s the real Jud Elliott, but how we’re going to continue to operate without getting in each other’s way.”

“We’ll have to work out a tight schedule,” I said. “One of us working as a Courier while the other one’s hiding out up the line. And the two of us never in the same time at once, up or down the line. But how—”

“I have it,” he said. “We’ll establish a now-time existence in 1105, the way Metaxas has done, only for us it’ll be continuous. There’ll always be one of us pegged to now-time in the early twelfth century as George Markezinis, living in Metaxas’ villa. The other one of us will be functioning as a Courier, and he’ll go through a trip-and-layoff cycle—”

“—taking his layoff anywhen but in the 1105 basis.”

“Right. And when he’s completed the cycle, he’ll go to the villa and pick up the Markezinis identity, and the other one will go down the line and report for Courier duty—”

“—and if we keep everything coordinated, there’s no reason why the Patrol should ever find out about us.”

“Brilliant!”

“And the one who’s being Markezinis,” I finished, “can always be carrying on a full-time affair with Pulcheria, and she’ll never know that we’re taking turns with her.”

“As soon as Pulcheria is herself again.”

“As soon as Pulcheria is herself again,” I agreed.

That was a sobering thought. Our whole giddy plan for alternating our identities was just so much noise until we straightened out the mess Sauerabend had caused.

I checked the time. “You get back to 1105 and help Sam and Metaxas,” I said. “Shunt here again by half past three tonight.”

“Right,” he said, and left.