City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis (17 page)

Behind it, through an open door, I could see the glass door of the shower stall, of the sort you might see in a fancy New York hotel. There was a destiny crystal plate hidden in the glass door. How long ago it had been planted there? The old man could have done it decades in the past, or even centuries. My plan of watching the place from outside had been as futile as Mr. A Square of Flatland trying to sneak up on the Sphere of Spaceland by hiding carefully behind a line.

How come I was still alive? In the same blink it had taken the Tin Man to turn to face me, he could have blinked across the room and chopped my head off, or blinked back four minutes, and attacked me from behind as I ran up the ramp.

Then I realized that the Tin Man had not been given clear instructions. My attack on the door panel had not been an attack on his master. It did not count.

And Jack had been thrown by accident on top of the old man. A human body is not necessarily a lethal weapon. The Tin Man was not smart enough to understand that Jack was strangling the old man. The old man could not speak and order the attack because Jack was crushing his windpipe.

Not that anyone could have heard anything anyway. The most beautiful girl in history was standing in the middle of the room, blond and pink and quivering with fear, naked as a jaybird, round and delicious as a peach.

Actually, she was not a blond, not a natural one anyhow, but she was so perfect in her proportions and poise that I actually took my eyes off the Tin Man—who was certain to kill me—to stare at her. Only for a moment, of course. But if that is the last thing in the life you are to see, what better to stare at? She was screaming loud enough to peel paint off the walls.

Jack shouted: “Now! Frontino! Smash his face! Break his skull! Hit him!”

The Tin Man did not retroactively decapitate me just yet. Maybe it was programmed to regard a baseball bat as equipment for a game and not a deadly weapon.

What did I have to lose? I was dead anyway. I took one last look at the girl to remind myself of what I was fighting for. Then I stepped forward and raised the baseball bat overhead in both hands…

There was a flick of misty nonexistence for a second and then I was in a version of the scene where the Tin Man was standing between me and the old man, and my bat bounced harmlessly off a dark overcoat sleeve covering an upraised arm of gold.

I should explain: I have a hardened memory. It is a rare trait, apparently found, or so I was told, in the remote ancestors of those who will someday be Time Wardens. It allows me to remember if someone changes my past. I can remember both versions as easily as if one were real and one were imaginary. Deja vu is a weaker edition of the same effect. Anyone might have the ability, but if you never cross paths with a time traveler who changes your past, how would you ever know? Most people who are brought to this city have hardened memory in some form, some stronger than others.

So I remembered both the original version where the Tin Man crossed the room by walking slowly until he stood between me and the old man and then blurred backward a few seconds in the time direction as well as the revised version where he appeared in an eyeblink right in front of me.

But I did not remember a version where I smashed in the old man's head. In the original version, the Tin Woodman was simply not moving fast enough to stop me. I stopped me, not him. Jack had learned to one side as he grasped the old man's neck in both hands, to provide me a clear target. Because Jack's hands were pinning the white beard down, I saw the old man's face clearly enough to see what he would have looked like if he were clean-shaven.

Meanwhile, in this version, the Tin Man was between me and the two men on the floor, so I stepped quickly back and raised my bat as if to bunt, hoping to parry the axe if Tin Man swung.

There was a blur of mist around its axe, and my pistol's paradox alarm went off. At the same time I remembered the sensation of the axe biting into my neck from behind and the tingling sensation of my pistol erecting a skintight force nimbus over my body.

You see, my gun was every bit as smart as the Tin Man. It may have been designed by the same Time Warden engineers, for all I knew. The axe rebounded from an invisible collar of force lines that were swirling around my neck.

Suddenly the Tin Man was between me and the door—or, rather the hole—leading out. We were now in a version of the scene where the Tin Man had decided not to take a swing at me. Instead, my baseball bat had been cut in half and the palms of my hands were stinging. So were my eyes. Yes, I teared up. Not from the pain in my hands or the shock in my arms, but because an axe had just smashed through my favorite baseball bat. My Joe DiMaggio bat!

I wanted to swear, but there was a very, very attractive lady in the room. I shouted at the old man. “I should have killed you! Smashed your damn—sorry—
darned
skull into pieces!”

Why hadn't I? Because I had seen his face. And no, it wasn't my face, if that is what you are thinking.

At that moment, the girl stopped screaming. She grabbed the towel around her head, and tucked it not very effectively around her abundant curve as she called out to Jack in a whisper of horror. “That is the man who attacked me last week. It's him! Mr. President! Won't you help me? Don't let him hurt me again!” She sounded as innocent as a lamb and as breathless as a bride caught up in the rapture of her first nuptial night. A hard combination to pull off.

What a voice! I promised myself never to wash my ears again.

Jack said: “Run, Norma Jean! Run!”

The girl turned to the broken wall which had once held the door out, but the Tin Man stood in the way.

Jack's grip had slackened. The old man managed to gasp out a word. “P-protect!”

The command was enough. The world blinked. The Tin Man was helping the Old Man sit up and Jack had been flung like a rag doll all the way across the coffee table. He hit the far wall with a noise like a gong. He had not been decapitated. That explained a lot. The Tin Man must have known that killing Jack would create a paradox.

I saw Aaron Burr's gun lying right at my feet. I stooped, picked it up, and looked at it. My pistol automatically scans and analyzes potential threats, and it can insert into my memory-chain the memory of having had given me a read out.

Aaron Burr was a cheat. The inside of the flintlock had been replaced with newer technology and contained a magazine of real bullets complete with sabot and primer caps, cleverly hidden in the stock, and a rifled barrel. The bullets were made of a smart metal designed to deform on impact, so that anyone digging open the wound later would find nothing but a pistol ball. The thing even had microminiaturized ranging and aiming circuits. I'd always wondered how Hamilton lost that duel. He was the better shot, and had won each time the Time Wardens made the two weary, ever-resurrected men replay that fatal scene.

I tossed the dueling pistol to the girl. “Don't point it at the old man until five minutes from now, after I lure the Tin Man away. There is a timer in the action. When it rings, shoot him. Twice in the chest, once in the head. Hold it in both hands, with your arms straight. Just take a breath, let it out, and squeeze the trigger slowly.”

She said, “I am not sure I can… do that. I couldn't even butcher chickens back home.”

Of course. If Helen of Troy were the kind of dame who could shoot a man without turning green, would she be abducted even once? Some girls are born girlish. You cannot blame them. Much.

“Ma'am, this is the man who attacked you, isn't it?” I spoke in my coldest voice.

Her lips quivered and she did not answer.

The old man had climbed to his knees. He looked up and looked at her with such hunger that it sickened me. His voice was strong for an old guy, but his words were weary. “Life is a broad way and a banquet when you are young, and every sunrise is promises and hopes. When you are old, life is narrow and crooked and cramped, and all your friends are dead, and you have no tomorrow to talk about, and all you have is your memories.”

The old man tried to rise to his feet but he was too weak. He groped for his cane, with a hand that looked like a blind albino spider crawling, but it was out of reach. So the old man continued to kneel, the Tin Man's metal hands holding him up.

His laugh was a cracked wheezing sound like an accordion with a hole in it. “But if you are friends with a Time Warden, then your memories are not out of your reach, are they? Why resist temptation, if the the powers that rule eternity give you your dearest, darkest heart's desire?”

The girl shivered. The girl shivered. "That's his voice. He talked a lot in my ear. He's a talker. It's him. Why do I have to kill him? Why not you? What are men for? What good are you?”

There were wisps of mist clinging to the corners of the chamber, now. Too many paradoxes, too many versions. There had already been at least half a dozen time splits here already.

I said to her, “Just think of what it felt like when he attacked you, and how nothing seemed safe or normal or human to you afterward. Squeeze the trigger slowly. He'll get shot.”

The time splits so far were not enough to account for this much mist. There had to be at least one more source of paradox here. I turned my eyes left and right, but did not see anything out of place. I took a step forward, picked up the Old Man's walking stick, and chucked it through the bathroom doorway. I did not hear it ring against the crystal panel of the shower stall door, nor clatter against the ceramic tile. Bingo. A polarized silence field, like my own. Sound could enter the bathroom, but not leave. A useful thing to bring to a place where there is a secret entrance, because no one will hear you as you arrive.

The old man sneered wearily. “I won't. Be shot, I mean. An automaton from the Fortieth Century is my bodyguard. No bullet can hit me.”

Without bothering to answer, I turned and pointed at the bathroom door. The Tin Man was stupid. Its master's only escape was not on its automatic defense list. I got the shot off before the old man could say another word. Another shape of momentary non-being flicked into non-existence, but I had tuned it to affect the shower door and nothing else. I did not break the mirror or smash the toilet or harm anyone hiding in the bathtub. The shower door-shaped square of nothing collapsed like a popped balloon, but thanks to the silence field, this time there was no imploding clap of thunder. The old man, from his position in the bedroom, probably did not even know that I had fired, or at what.

None of my weapons could hurt a destiny crystal, of course. But the bathroom shower door, utterly unhurt, was now drifting somewhere in the mists between the time lines, beyond the reach of anyone.

The mist closes off all destiny crystal. The crystal is just an anchor point for a conduit, like a miniature spacetime continuum, that the Wardens erect between two points up and down the time stream. Or, rather, the time delta, since there are many branching paths. When destiny crystal is adjusted for photons, you can see images. Crystal ball stuff. Open it a little more, you can get sounds and smells and maybe reach an arm through. Open all the way, and it is a door.

But you cannot open them in the mist. The mist is what happens when you have too many low probability events, causeless effects or effectless causes, all piled up in one spot. Reality there is weak. There is nothing to to which the anchor point can be attached.

With the glass door gone, I was no longer worried about the old man sending any later-time version of himself, or a dozen versions of Tin Man, once a year on his birthday to relive the happy moment when he saw my head chopped off. And now there was no escape for him.

Experimentally, I pointed my pistol at the old man and pulled the trigger. My shot tore the black trenchcoat and bounced off the golden chestplate of the Tin Man, who blinked in the way as if he had always been standing there. Again, my neck and neck bones ached from the hardened memory of the decapitation that retroactively took place, and from the choking sensation of my nimbus retroactively blocking the blow.

The old man said, “Mister Frontino, you do not survive the evening. I've looked ahead. I have seen you fall. I have already won. Game, set and match!” He smirked at me. “You are about to run. Leaving me alone with her.”

I smirked right back. He was a good smirker, but I was better. “But did you watch after that?”

He looked shocked. “What do you take me for? A voyeur?”

Jack shouted at me, “What are you doing? Shoot him! He is not a Time Warden! He can die! Shoot him!”

Much to his surprise, I pointed my pistol at Jack.

“This is your last chance, Mr. K.! Give up the girl. Swear her off, now and forever and back through your past, and one of the three of you can walk out of here alive!”

The old man burst out laughing. “You've got to be kidding,” he wheezed.

He had a point. I mean, the girl was right here, the all-time winner of history's beauty contest. I could smell her fresh from the shower, and even with all that was going on, I could not get my mind off her. That was just from seeing her for a minute or so. I did not have years of her burned into my life and memory. Would I be willing to give up the girl with the face that launched a thousand ships if she had once been mine?

The answer came with the next blur of mist. Another decision point. But the old man had not vanished. No one was giving up anything. Instead there was another remembered sensation of pain at my neck. That confirmed it for me. The old man was protecting Jack too.

I pulled the trigger. The Tin Man blinked in between me and Jack, and the ricochet set the couch on fire. Then there was another blur, and in this version the Tin Man caught the ricochet in the cupped palm of its gauntlets as it rebounded from its chest armor. It could stop me from hurting anything, directly or indirectly.

“Run, Jack,” I told him quietly. “Run to Babylon.”

Jack turned and leaped through the hole in the wall where the door had been. The Tin Man was not programmed to stop him. But when I followed and shot Jack in the back, well, there had to be a version where Tin Man blinked in the way and deflected my bolt with his axe.