Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (47 page)

“Their children, and grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren,” Gribardsun replied, “will all be born as history recorded, whether or not these people witnessed the meteor today.”

“Not necessarily,” XauXaz said. “You know as well as I that these people are now special. Their children will have special abilities, abilities they may need just to survive. Who is to say you would have survived your jungle upbringing if your great-great-grandfathers were not here today, close to the meteor, being exposed to its heat and energy?”

“You seem to know much about me and my upbringing. But never mind that,” Gribardsun said. “You can’t count on help from one of their descendants—”

“You helped me by sharing the elixir of your blood, so many millennia ago.”

“I had no choice. If I hadn’t, then you would not have been alive to share the elixir with me in 1912.”

“Perhaps someone else, someday, will also have no choice, and will help me,” XauXaz said.

“No, there is more to it than that. What is the real reason behind your intervention here today?”

XauXaz smiled again. He pulled a mother-of-pearl and silver snuff box from a vest pocket. It was inlaid with symbols similar to those on the pocket watch distorter. He took a pinch, snorted, and wiped his nose with a silk handkerchief. He looked at Gribardsun, as if calculating.

Then he spoke.

“The elixir I received from you was much better than that which my friends who are also my enemies had given me. It conferred eternal youth. With the other elixir, I aged, but very, very slowly. And I needed repeated doses of the other elixir. Not so with yours.

“But even your elixir, I have found, was imperfect. Or it worked imperfectly on me.”

“I did warn you that might be the case,” Gribardsun said. “The differences in the plants and herbs thirteen thousand years ago.”

“Indeed, you did warn me,” XauXaz agreed mildly. “And I have had little reason to complain, at least to this point. Your elixir kept me young, while my friends who are also my enemies, with their lesser elixir, continued to age. I would be quite elderly now, had I only taken their lesser elixir. In fact, if you believe in the theory of divergent timelines, then I have—or is it had?—a parallel universe counterpart who indeed continued to age in the very way I describe.

“As it was, I had to pretend to age alongside my friends who are also my enemies, as I should have done if I were using their elixir.

“However, as I said, your elixir has started to fail me. About one hundred years ago—one hundred from my perspective—I came to realize this. I was, at the time, playing the part of a seal-hunting schooner captain named Larsen. I started experiencing blinding, debilitating headaches. Eventually, they proved my undoing and those who served under me revolted.” XauXaz laughed. “You might say the headaches were the ‘death’ of me. It was time to move on and create a new identity anyway. But I instinctively understood that the elixir was failing me.”

“So you thought to find me here?” Gribardsun asked. “You thought to earn my good graces by luring Sir Percy and his guests to the meteor site, in the hopes that I would return the favor and give you another dose? If so, you are sadly misguided.”

XauXaz shook his head and laughed softly. “No, no. I know you have no reason to help me. And no reason to have any love for me—although you should. As I mentioned, I am your grandfather, many times over, and you owe me a genetic debt. But no, I know you will not.”

“You are right,” Gribardsun said simply. “You murdered unnecessarily to create this scenario.”

“What—you, purveyor of the law of the jungle, of kill or be killed? You are judging me for this, of all things?”

“I kill when attacked, to defend myself. And I kill for food, as Nature dictates.”

“You kill to live, which is nothing more than I have done. Those small people who died, you will find if you dig deep into the historical records, actually did die at this time. Although the records were altered by de Winter and his cronies as to the place of death. I have altered nothing; Time unfolded as intended.”

“You are a murderer,” Gribardsun repeated.

“They were
dead already,
you fool.” XauXaz was no longer grinning. “What are their small, piggish lives compared to those who travel in time as we do? Everyone you meet is already dead.”

“Everyone I meet is vibrantly alive.”

“Then why not share your blood elixir with all of them? Make them all immortal?”

Gribardsun stared at him.

“I’ll tell you why,” XauXaz said. “Because you want to
live.
You
can’t
share the elixir with many others, because you
didn’t.
You weren’t born in, didn’t grow up in, a world where the elixir was commonplace. Therefore you didn’t share it around during the long, long life you’ve lived from 12,000
B.C
. until now. Who can say why you didn’t share it? I think it’s because you want to live, and too many other immortals running around could jeopardize that.

“But for whatever reason, whether I’m right or wrong about the reasons, the fact remains that you didn’t share it, and you’re stuck with that.

“And of course,” XauXaz concluded, “I agree with your decision. The elixir should not be shared lightly.”

“Then you know that I will not share the elixir with you again,” Gribardsun said. “I’m glad that it’s failing you now.”

“Perhaps it’s unnecessary to share it with me again,” XauXaz said. “Perhaps it was your genetic legacy, the altered genes you carry as a result of your great-great-grandfathers being exposed to the meteor, which makes the elixir work so perfectly in you.”

A shrewd look swept across his face. “And now I have been exposed to the meteor’s effects as well. Perhaps that alone will have a positive effect on the elixir’s efficacy. Perhaps that’s all I needed.”

“But if not, then you will die,” Gribardsun said flatly.

“If not,” said XauXaz, “then perchance a descendant, or descendants, of those down there digging up that celestial stone will provide what I need to unlock the secret of the perfect elixir. Their genes themselves may help me derive, or distill, the formula.

“They’ll be brilliant, of course. The geniuses flourishing from the event we just witnessed will be unmatched in the annals of history. Perhaps one of them will beat me to creating the perfect elixir. Many of them have tried—or will try. Most of their elixirs are imperfect to one degree or another, but intriguing nonetheless.

“For instance, the Royal Jelly treatment requires several elements which were difficult to obtain—including a shard of the very meteor we just watched plummet from the sky.”

Gribardsun tensed and XauXaz laughed. “Not to worry. I’d be pleased to grab a piece of it now, but history says I didn’t. So I won’t try. I did try once, however, and ended up jousting with Sherlock Holmes over it in 1917, and again a few years later when he caught up with me.

“Then, of course, there’s the nefarious Mastermind from the Far East—the grandson of the 3rd Duke of Greystoke, there—who’s reputed to have an ‘Oil of Life.’ A very dangerous man, and he has a large organization at his command. I’ve skirmished with him once or twice, and may yet take him on directly.” XauXaz smiled wistfully. “It might almost be a fair fight.

“But it’s another of these geniuses—I think you know him, my own grandson, James Clarke Wildman—in whom I place the most hope. In fact, it was in my guise as a German Baron that I clashed with him, near the end of the Great War, and opened his mind to the possibility of an elixir—among other things. Wildman and his wife have not been seen publicly for many years, but I have reason to believe he may be as young as he ever was.”

Gribardsun’s gray eyes had narrowed during this recitation. XauXaz was oversharing. Why? Perhaps the fellow immortal was lonely, and this had been the first chance in millennia to unburden himself.

More likely he was simply a sociopath.

XauXaz’s next words bore this out. “If one of them succeeds in developing the elixir before I do, I’ll crush them and take it, of course.

“You know,” XauXaz’s voice lowered to a mock-confidential whisper, as if sharing secrets among treasured friends, “it’s not only time travel that makes everyone dead to people like you and me. It’s the elixir. Once you’re immortal, you’re walking among the dead. Kill them as they clutch and scrabble for their piggish lives. Love them, hurt them, do whatever you want to them. It just doesn’t matter if you help them along to
Niflheimr,
because sooner or later—mostly sooner—they die anyway and there you are still breathing. And you are consequently more alive than they ever can be.”

“Enough,” Gribardsun said. “You’ve done what you came here to do, and your incessant talk is tiresome.”

“Yes, I did what needed to be done. Did you know, John,” XauXaz said slyly, “that
you
needed to be here, at Wold Newton, as well as I did? Even when you were young, very young, you had special qualities. Your own British Secret Service was quite interested in you. You exhibited instances of what their scientists called the ‘human magnetic moment.’”

XauXaz went silent and stared at Gribardsun, a trace of mockery in his protean eyes.

“Say what you have to say or begone,” Gribardsun said. “I have no more patience for your serpentine gamesmanship.”

XauXaz continued to regard him, as a scientist would regard an interesting specimen. Then he shrugged, as if in acquiescence.

“What an amazing chain of events we’ve witnessed here today,” he said. “Do you suppose the meteor would have fallen,
right here in this particular spot,
if you hadn’t been
right here
as well to guide it?”

Then—XauXaz was gone, the only sign of his passing an inrush of air filling the vacuum of space he had occupied.

Gribardsun peered over the ridge, and watched the men and women below, watched his own past and future being made, watched as the history of all humanity took a great leap forward.

XauXaz was tired.

He didn’t tire easily, but time travel tended to take it out of him. Much as modern humans who flitted over time zones in a matter of hours suffered from jet-lag, he suffered from distorter-lag.

He had discovered the Capellean distorter in the 1930s. The following decade, he had modified it to suppress the telltale “clangings,” if and when he so desired. He recalled with fondness how his impossible comings and goings had baffled the Gray Man of Ice during their clashes.

Just this year, prompted by rumors of similar advances with other distorters, he had succeeded in improving the device to also serve as a time distorter.

And thus he was finally able to scratch the itch that had been festering at him for over two hundred and fifty years, since it had first begun plaguing him in 1720.

XauXaz had become aware of the existence of the parallel universe in 1720 when the Shrassk entity tapped into his mind. He had learned that the other world had been created tens of thousands of years ago when one universe had split into two, as a cell divides.

Since he had been alive when the universe divided, he, and everyone else living at the time, was also divided. The only others from that time still alive now were his allies-enemies in the Nine, Anana and Iwaldi, and so they too existed in both universes.

Since 1720, he had known that he had a living counterpart, an exact twin in another world.

This he could not bear.

It drove him mad, madder than even twenty thousand, or twenty-five thousand, or more, years of life had driven him.

He had to kill his Other.

For XauXaz, a decision made was a decision implemented, a
fait accompli,
even two hundred and fifty-two years after making that decision. He could afford to take the long view.

With the distorter—now a time distorter—he traveled back to 1720, the earliest time he could access the other world. The Shrassk entity, which had been invoked by the Nine of that other world in 1720, had been brought forth to their world from its nether-space, acted in concert with his distorter to create a dimensional gate, a gate only he could access.

Thus he crossed the boundary, killing his counterpart.

This done, he was greatly relieved.

Of course, the Nine in this parallel universe could be as dangerous to him—perhaps even more dangerous—than his own Nine. It would pay to keep tabs on them.

Living as two people in two different worlds for the past year had been complicated, but had been worth the risk, doubling his chances of finding a more permanent elixir.

He thought of the other two with whom he had comprised the Germanic trinity, his brothers Ebnaz XauXaz and Thrithjaz. They were still alive at the time of the universe’s division, and thus also existed in both worlds. It was fortunate for him they had died before the advent of Shrassk. The Other Ebnaz XauXaz and Other Thrithjaz might have seen through his deception. On his own world, he had simply kept Sahhindar’s elixir from his brothers; he had pretended to age alongside them, as if he were using their elixir, and watched them die of old age.

Nonetheless, it had been exhausting, traveling to the other world day after day for the past two hundred and forty-eight days, while two hundred and forty-eight yearly ceremonies passed deep in the Nine’s caverns below central Africa.

When the Nine of that other world finally became suspicious, in 1968, he had been forced to give up his imposture and fake the Other XauXaz’s death. Still, he was proud of what he had accomplished in that world, in so short a time.

He was particularly pleased that he had injected himself (he laughed to himself, silently amused at his own pun) into the bloodline of John Cloamby, Lord Grandrith and Cloamby’s half-brother, Doctor James Caliban, with midnight visits—in the guise of the elderly and charismatic Mister Bileyg—to their more-than-willing grandmother, and then set the brothers against each other so that they had, in turn, both revolted against the Nine.

Once he found the more permanent elixir, he’d need to ensure the Nine on both worlds were eliminated. This was a good first step. He couldn’t wait to see how it turned out.