City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis (21 page)

“There he is,” I said, pulling up the pen on my desk Jack was looking at, and throwing it across the room like a dart. The pen point bounced off the image of Old Jack. Right between the eyes. I wished I had thrown it hard enough to stick right in the middle of the magic picture, and make that satisfying thump and quiver of a bullseye shot. Young Jack was startled, turned his head as the pen flew whistled past his ear, so he was looking straight into the eyes of old Jack.

“So there he is, pal,” I said, drawling my words slowly. "Vow him out of existence.”

“What?”

“All you got to do is vow never to see the girl again, never get close to her. If you don't see her, you can't put your hands on her, can't do anything illegal, can't get violent, can't make any more whoopee. If you can do it, do it now. Mend your character. Be a man. Make that future vanish.”

Jack stood up, a determined look on his face, and turned toward the image.

I looked at my fingernails, noticed they were grimy, got out my switchblade, flicked it open, and picked the grit out from under my nails one at a time. I worked slowly and carefully so as not to cut myself, first the left hand, and, not so easily, the right. All the while I hummed a tuneless tune.

Then I put the knife away and stood up. Jack was still there. So was the image in the magic picture. No mist, no change. Jack was wiping his eyes, as if he had suffered some tremendous strain, staring into the sun, or into his own grave, or maybe he was weeping.

He said in a ragged voice. “It will be different if I am actually looking down at the body. My own body. Killed by me. If I look down, and the body turns to mist, I will know I can change my fate. If I know that if I give in, it will mean death, certain death, if I knew it, then I could be…I could be–”

“Be strong?” I suggested.

“Be normal.”

I stood up, picked up my hat, tossed it in the air, caught it, placed it on my head at a jaunty angle. “All right. I'll take the case. I'll help you kill yourself. You deserve it.”

He wiped his eyes and glared at me. “You have a big mouth for a hired gun.”

“Do I, boss? Tell me how you met this girl again? Your Helen of Troy? Ah, no answer, eh? Well, I'll let that pass. And you'll have to leave your bully boys behind when we go in tomorrow night. I am going to do just what I said I would do, just like last time. Protect the girl from the man who attacked her.”

“What do you mean, 'last time'?”

“Never mind that. Remember the price we agreed on?

“Two cartons of cigarettes? Is that all a human life is worth to you?”

I shrugged. “I take people as they come.”

“How do you sleep at night, Mr. Frontino?”

I pulled out my shoulder holster, shrugged my arms into it, and then walked over to the hatrack for my coat. “I like to smoke before I sleep. Helps me relax. So our deal will work out nicely. Happy ending. You shoo your boys away. I got to lock up. Meet you downstairs, and then you take me to see your girl so we can go over some instructions and set up our little trap for tomorrow night.”

“What do you mean? You think–as soon as tomorrow?”

I looked at the Magic Picture. Sitting behind Don Juan and old Jack was what looked like a headless suit of armor wearing trenchcoat and a slouch hat. With a Frankish axe at one shoulder. A Tin Woodman.

Some sort of mechanical man with no head. So that is what my visitor from yesterday meant.

At that moment, a line of scantily clad girls danced in a bouncing fashion across the bouncing surface of the water, all kicking in unison, laughing and singing.

“He is thirty years in his own past,” I said. “The beauty contest must have been an event whose date he found a way to look up, even in this city where no one has a calendar. I can see why folk remembered it. But he is not a Time Warden, so if he is here, he is not here for long. Maybe he has been here all week, or, more likely, he was given a destiny crystal by a Warden to give him two anchor points, one tomorrow, when the beauty contest festivities end, and one seven days ago. Tonight she has her talent show competition, and he'll certainly go see that. He'll strike tomorrow. I mean, look at those dames! You know what he feels when he sees her. Now imagine not being able to see her for thirty years. Look at that look on your face.”

While he was staring at his older version, I whistled at the magic picture and turned it into a looking glass. Jack saw himself wearing much the same hungry expression as the old man, and he looked ashamed.

Then he turned and marched toward the door, shouting for Blackbeard and his men.

Edward Teach opened the door and held it open politely. Behind Jack's back, Teach met my eye, and gave me an ugly smile of camaraderie. By some unspoken clue, Teach knew I had been hired, and so now I was like him, just more hired muscle, just another cutthroat, and that made his yellow teeth appear in the wild thicket of his pyromaniacal beard. It is the kind of smile the Madame at the cathouse gives to a preacher man when he shows up as a customer.

My conscience was squawking at me like a dim and tinny voice over the wireless under bad atmospheric conditions, telling me what that grin meant, but I had years of practice in not letting myself figure out what I did not want to know. You see, I am smart that way.

The first time I met Jack was the day before, day three thousand and twenty-seven since my being hired (or being abducted, not that is there any difference) by the Masters of Metachronopolis, also called the Time Wardens. I was sitting in the middle of the floor of my office, playing mumbly-peg with the switchblade I'd been given as a reward and a memento for tracking down the Serb. I had a two-pound cardboard carton of ice cream that I had given up trying to finish.

He flung open the door and stood in the doorway. We looked at each other with some surprise.

“Who the Hell are you?” I growled. Normally, I try to say heck, but not when people break in.

“Your secretary is out,” he said.

“I got no secretary. Penny is the ice cream man's daughter. She pretends she's my receptionist when I have an appointment with some chump. Looks more professional that way. Now who, I repeat, the Hell are you, barging in here without knocking? Also, do you want some ice cream? I can't eat it all before it melts and the carton is leaking. And I hate strawberry.”

“Why are you eating it, then?”

“This is my breakfast, lunch and dinner. The icebox is empty and the Anything Maker is broke. And I was hungry. So, who are you? This is last time I'll ask without a gun or a knife or baseball bat and painful but undetectable soft tissue damage being involved in some capacity.”

“I am a chump.”

“What?”

“Your chump. One of your clients. You work for me. Or you will this time tomorrow.”

I sighed. “Is this one of those cases where you hire me to solve a murder, and you end up being the murderer yourself? Or the victim? Or both?”

He looked embarrassed. “Well, to be quite honest–”

I stood up. “That would be a yes. Which means a no. I don't take cases from Time Wardens.”

“I am not a Warden. Not yet. But I have prestige.”

“Enough to time travel just a bit? Just a wee bit?”

“That's right,” he nodded.

“Like being a wee bit pregnant. You can time travel a wee bit at first, but sooner or later you'll end up eating yourself like a snake who swallows his own tail and is not bright enough to know when to stop chewing. Go away. You can commit anachronistic multiple-suicide by yourself without my help.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“I can pay. Two cartons of cigarettes.”

I circled the desk, and sat down in the chair with a sigh, wiped the ice cream off my fingers, straightened my tie, and ran my fingers through my hair. Now I looked like a professional. “In that case, welcome. Please take a seat, Mr, Ah?”

“Kennedy. But you can call me Jack.”

If I had been a dog, my ears would have stood straight up and quivered. “Jack 'Quail Hunter' Kennedy, outlaw and train robber? You were shot to death by half-a-dozen railroad agents and postal inspectors! You were the last! The last great train robber of the Old West!”

“No, that's not me. I'm the President of the United States.”

“President? Well, I guess you won't get shot to death, then. Glad to hear the United States is still around in the future. Now why are you trying to kill yourself and why the hell should I give a damn?”

He pulled out an envelope, passed it to me. “Here are my references. Recognize the handwriting? This is a letter from you to you.”

He sat quietly while I read the letter.

I looked up. “When did I write this?”

“After I shot myself. My older version shot my oldest version. He—the oldest one—just lay there on the floor, and he didn't–he didn't disappear. That means I can't—it means I won't be able—to stop myself. When the time comes. Even though I know I am going to die, I will still walk into it. Walk into it with eyes open!”

I nodded. Time travelers never enter a scene unless they are satisfied with the outcome. “So, then,” I said, “From what it says here, you're not happy with the outcome of shooting yourself, so therefore you are going to hire me tomorrow to go shoot your prophet-self. Walk into it with eyes open, so to speak. Do I detect a modicum of irony here?”

He shook his head. “It's not that simple.”

“It never is.”

“And there is this girl.”

“There always is.” I shrugged. “So how did you get back here and what do you want from me? You're a double-dipper? I mean you came from your own future into your personal past?”

“Yes. No. I mean I did come back, or I will, but I'm not the me who did. I just talked to him. To me.”

“Start from the beginning.”

“A time traveler came to me. He wore a hood and I could not see his face. I sent my men away, and he shows me that he is me, myself from the future. He tells me this story, of the version of me from tomorrow, my tomorrow, hiring you to help me kill the older me. He said the story does not have a happy ending.”

“Stories involving time travel never do.”

“He said after he killed the old man, and he did not dissolve, he realized that retaliation was not enough. I would still turn into him, despite seeing the future with my own eyes. The self-murder did not fix anything. It was empty. The version of me in the future is still committing the crime, and the version of Norma Jean who exists now was still… attacked last week. I don't want revenge. I want to change the past. To stop the rape from ever happening.”

I said, “Put a pistol in your mouth and pull the trigger. Bang. Old you is gone. No future.”

He shook his head. “Suicide is a sin.”

I blinked at that. People are odd. “So is cheating on your wife,” I said blandly. “And hiring a hit man. Not to mention a few other things I could name.”

He said, “I won't pull the trigger on myself. I just won't.”

“But stepping in front of another version of you who you know will kill you, that's okay? It's the same as stepping in front of a speeding locomotive. And it is still you killing you.”

“It's different. Future me is not me now.”

“So it's not you, you don't give a damn? Never mind that. I don't need the excuses, just the facts. So how did you get back here?”

“I didn't. I am the version from here and now. I just have not come to see you at your office yet.”

I blinked again. Hate this city. I can never keep track of who is which and when is now. “Start from the beginning again. And this time, from the beginning beginning.”

“It's easier if I start at the end and work backwards.”

“I usually do it that way myself,” I admitted. “Go ahead. How does the story end?”

“The oldest version of me is the bad one. The attacker. The tomorrow version of me, you might say the middle one, comes to see you, hires you, and the next day the two of you go to stop the oldest version of me in the room where I keep Norma Jean. Middle me shoots the old me, but old me does not turn into mist. That means the rape still will happen, and that I will still turn into him. Turn into the evil old bastard. Even seeing my own dead body was not enough! So what is enough? There was a shower stall in the suite, and it was actually a door through time. It is set to three points. One is thirty years from now, where old me-to-be is squire to the Time Wardens, and is set to be elevated to be a Warden. Soon. The second anchor point is set the day after tomorrow, in the evening, when old me comes to repeat his crime. Tomorrow is when middle me, vendetta-me, comes and hires you to exact revenge on old me. You go with him, but he pulls the trigger. But then the body does not disappear, as he expected. He asked you for help. You wrote that letter, and sent him into the hidden destiny glass in the shower, so he goes ahead thirty years, where he is a Time Warden, and has access to all their machinery, all their powers. Are you following this?”

I nodded. “I've had practice. Around here you hear a lot of stories like this. So what happens next? Middle Jack finds you five days ago, the Young Jack, and explains what is about to happen?”

He smiled his charming smile. “No. The time traveler who came to me is not from our timeline at all. He is the me I should have been, the one who never committed any crimes in the first place, any of them. The better version of me. An innocent Jack. The one I want to make real.”

That struck me as suspicious. “I've never heard of anything like that.”

“That does not mean it is not true. Listen. Innocent Jack told me the plan. There is a moment in time where old me is not protected by this body guard thing, some sort of mechanical man with no head. You ran out of the door with me, and the bodyguard followed us, trying to stay in the way between you and me.”

“Makes sense. Old Jack has to protect Middle Jack from being killed, or else Old Jack gets erased.”

“This guard, whatever it is, Innocent Jack told me said it had a five-minute time range. If it is kept away from old me for five minutes, then there is the time where old me can be killed. Oh, and this is the important point: you have to shoot the bathroom!”