Odyssey. Part 48

"That's right," he said. "Back at home port again-or the mirror image of it. Complete except for the small detail that the jump field's operating in a closed loop. Outside there's nothing."

"I saw it, remember?"

"Right. That was the first time around. You jumped out into a post-segment of your life-a non.o.bjective dead end. You were smart, you figured a way out-but they were there ahead of us, too. You struggled hard, but the circle's still closed-and here you are."

"And I thought I was maneuvering him," I said. "While he thought he was maneuvering me."

"Yeah-and now the play is to us-unless you're ready to concede."

"Not quite," I said.

"I . . . we're . . . being manipulated," he said. "The Karg had something in reserve after all. We have to break the cycle. You have to break it." He unholstered the gun at his hip and held it out.

"Take this," he said, "and shoot me through the head."

I choked on what I started to say.

"I know all the arguments," my future self was saying. "I used them myself, about a week ago. That's the size of this little temporal enclave we have all to ourselves. But they're no good. This is the one real change we can introduce."

"You're out of your mind, pal," I said. I felt a little uneasy talking to myself, even when the self I was talking to was facing me from four feet away, needing a shave. "I'm not the suicidal type-even when the me I'm killing is you."

"That's what they're counting on. It worked, too, with me. I refused to do it." He gave me the sardonic grin I'd been using on people for years. "If I had, who knows-it might have saved my life." He weighed the gun on his hand and now his expression was very cold indeed.

"If I thought shooting you would help, I'd do it without a tremor," he said. He was definitely he now.

"Why don't you?"

"Because you're in the past-so to speak. Killing you wouldn't change anything. But if you kill me-that introduces a change in the vital equations-and possibly changes your . . . our future. Not a very good bet, maybe, but the only one going."

"Suppose I introduce a variation of my own," I said.

He looked weary. "Name it."

"Suppose we out-jump together, using the station box?"

"It's been tried," he said tersely.

"Then you jump, while I wait here."

"That's been tried, too."

"Then do the job yourself!"

"No good."

"We're just playing an old tape, eh? Including this conversation?"

"Now you're getting the idea."

"What if you varied your answers?"

"What would that change? Anyway, it's been tried. Everything's been tried. We've had lots of time-I don't know how much; but enough to play the scene in all its little variations. It always ends on the same note-you jumping out alone, going through what I went through, and coming back to be me."

"What makes you so sure?"

"The fact that the next room is full of bones," he said, with a smile that wasn't pretty. "Our bones. Plus the latest addition, which still has a little spoiled meat on it. That's what that slight taint in the air is. It's what's in store for me. Starvation. So it's up to you."

"Nightmare," I said. "I think I'll go sleep it off."

"Uh-huh-but you're awake," he said, and caught my hand and shoved the gun into it. "Do it now-before I lose my nerve!"

"Let's talk a little sense," I said. "Killing you won't change anything. What I could do alone we could do better together."

"Wrong. The only ace we've got left is to introduce a major change in the scenario."

"What happens if I jump out again?"

"You end up back aboard the Sao Guadalupe, watching yourself foul up an a.s.signment."

"What if I don't foul it up this time-if I clear the door?"

"Same difference. You end up here. I know. I tried it."

"You mean-the whole thing? The mudhole, Mellia?"

"The whole thing. Over and over. And you'll end up here. Look at it this way, Ravel: the Karg has played his ace; we've got to trump it or fold."

"Maybe this is what he wants."

"No. He's counting on our behaving like humans. Humans want to live, remember? They don't write themselves out of the script."

"What if I jump back to the s.h.i.+p and don't use the corpse's jump gear-"

"Then you'll burn to the waterline with the s.h.i.+p."

'Suppose I stay on the beach with Mellia?"

"Negative. I've been all over that. You'd die there. Maybe after a short life, maybe a long one. Same result."

"And shooting you will break the chain."

"Maybe. It would introduce a brand-new element-like cheating at solitaire."

I argued a little more. He took me on a tour of the station. I looked out at the pearly mist, poked into various rooms. There was a lot of dust and deterioration. The station was old. . . .

Then he showed me the bone-room. I think the smell convinced me.

"Give me the gun," I said. He handed it over without a word. I lifted it and flipped off the safety.

"Turn around," I snapped at him. He did.

"There's one consoling possibility," he said. "This might have the effect of-"

The shot cut off whatever it was he was going to say, knocked him forward as if he'd been jerked by a rope around the neck. I got just a quick flash of the hole I'd blown in the back of his skull before a fire that blazed brighter than the sun leaped up in my brain and burned away the walls that had caged me in.

I was a giant eye, looking down on a tiny stage. I saw myself-an infinite manifold of substance and shadow, with ramifications spreading out and out into the remotest reaches of the entropic panoramas. I saw myself moving through the scenes of ancient Buffalo, aboard the sinking gallea.s.s, alone on the dying beach at the edge of the world, weaving my petty net around the rogue Karg, as he in turn wove his nets, which were in turn enfolded by wider traps outflanked by still vaster schemes. . . .

How foolish it all seemed now. How could the theoreticians of Nexx Central have failed to recognize that their own efforts were no different in kind from those of earlier Timesweepers? And that . . .

There was another thought there, a vast one; but before I could grasp it, the instant of insight faded and left me standing over the body of the murdered man, with a wisp of smoke curling from the gun in my hand and the echoes of something immeasurable and beyond value ringing down the corridors of my brain. And out of the echoes, one clear realization emerged: Timesweeping was a fallacy, not only when practiced by the experimenters of the New Era and the misguided fixers of the Third Era, but equally invalid in the hands of Nexx Central.

The cause to which I had devoted my lifework was a hollow farce. I was a puppet, dancing on tangled strings, meaninglessly.

And yet-it was clear now-something had thought it worth the effort to sweep me under the rug.

A power greater than Nexx Central.

I had been hurried along, manipulated as neatly as I had maneuvered the doomed Karg, back in Buffalo-and his mightier alter ego, building his doomed Final Authority in emptiness, like a spider spinning a web in a sealed coffin. I had been kept off-balance, shunted into a closed cycle that should have taken me out of play for all time.

As it would have, if there hadn't been one small factor that they had missed.

My alter ego had died in my presence-and his mindfield, in the instant of the destruction of the organic generator which created and supported it, had jumped to-merged with-mine.

For a fraction of a second, I had enjoyed an operative I.Q. which I estimated at a minimum of 300.

And while I was mulling over the ramifications of that realization, the walls faded around me and I was standing in the receptor vault at Nexx Central.

37.

There was the cold glare of the high ceiling on white walls, the hum of the field-focusing coils, the sharp odors of ozone and hot metal in the air-all familiar, if not homey. What wasn't familiar was the squad of armed men in the gray uniforms of Nexx security guards. They were formed up in a precise circle, with me at the center; and in every pair of hands was an implosion rifle, aimed at my head. An orange light shone in my face: the aiming beam for a damper field projector.

I got the idea. I dropped the gun I was still holding and raised my hands-slowly.

One man came in and frisked me, but all he got was his hands dirty; quite a bit of archeological mud was still sticking to me. Things had been happening fast-and still were.

The captain motioned. Keeping formation, they walked me out of the vault, along the corridor, through two sets of armored doors and onto a stretch of gray carpet before the wide, flat desk of the Timecaster in Charge, Nexx Central.

He was a broad, tall, powerful man, with clean-cut features built into a stern expression. I'd talked to him once or twice before, under less formal circ.u.mstances. His intellect was as incisive as his speech. He dismissed the guards-all but two-and pointed to a chair. I sat and he looked across at me, not smiling, not scowling, just turning the searchlight of his mind on the object of the moment's business.

"You deviated from your instructions," he said. There was no anger in his tone, no accusation, not even curiosity.

"That's right, I did," I said. I was about to elaborate on that, but he spoke first: "Your mission was the execution of the Enforcer DVK-Z-97, with the ancillary goal of capture, intact, of a Karg operative unit, Series H, ID 453." He said it as though I hadn't spoken. This time I didn't answer.

"You failed to effect the capture," he went on. "Instead you destroyed the Karg brain. You made no effort to carry out the execution of the Enforcer."

What he was saying was true. There was no point in denying it any more than there was in confirming it.

"Since no basis for such actions within the framework of your known psychindex exists, it is clear that motives must be sought outside the context of Nexx policy."

"You're making an arbitrary a.s.sumption," I said. "Circ.u.mstances-"

"Clearly," he went on implacably, "any a.s.sumption involving your subversion by prior temporal powers is insupportable." I didn't try to interrupt; I saw now that this wasn't a conversation; it was the Timecaster in Charge making a formal statement for the record. "Ergo," he concluded, "you represent a force not yet in subjective existence: a Fifth Era of Man."

"You're wagging the dog by the tail," I said. "You're postulating a post-Nexx superpower just to give me a motive. Maybe I just fouled up my a.s.signment. Maybe I went off the skids. Maybe-"

"You may drop the Old Era persona now, Agent. Aside from the deductive conclusion, I have the evidence of your accidentally revealed intellectual resources, recorded on station instruments. In the moment of crisis, you registered in the third psychometric range. No human brain known to have existed has ever attained that level. I point this out so as to make plain to you the fruitlessness of denying the obvious."

"I was wrong," I said.

He looked at me, waiting. I had his attention now.

"You're not postulating a Fifth Era," I said. "You're postulating a Sixth."

"What is the basis for that astonis.h.i.+ng statement?" he said, not looking astonished.

"Easy," I said. "You're Fifth Era. I should have seen it sooner. You've infiltrated Nexx Central."

He gave me another thirty seconds of the frosty glare; then he relaxed-about a millimicron.

"And you've infiltrated our infiltration," he said. I glanced at the two gun-boys behind him; they seemed to be taking it calmly. They were part of the Team, it appeared.

"It's unfortunate," he went on. "Our operation has been remarkably successful-with the exception of the setback caused by your interference. But no irreparable harm has been done."

"Not yet," I said.

He almost raised an eyebrow. "You realized your situation as soon as you found yourself isolated-I use the term imprecisely-in the aborted station."

"I started to get the idea then. I wondered what Jard had been up to. I see now he was just following orders-your orders-to set up a trap for me. He s.h.i.+fted the station into a null-time bubble-using a technique Nexx Central never heard of-after first conning me outside. That meant I had to use my emergency jump gear to get back-to a dead end. Simple and effective-almost."

"You're here, immobilized, neutralized," he said. "I should say the operation was highly effective."

I shook my head and gave him a lazy grin that I saw was wasted.

"When I saw the direction the loop was taking I knew Nexx Central had to be involved. But it was a direct sabotage of Nexx policy; so infiltration was the obvious answer."

"Fortunate that your thinking didn't lead you one step farther," he said. "If you had eluded my recovery probe, the work of millennia might have been destroyed."

"Futile work," I said.

"Indeed? Perhaps you're wrong, Agent. Accepting the apparent conclusion that you represent a Sixth Era does not necessarily imply your superiority. Retrogressions have occurred in history." He tried to say this in the same machined-steel tone he'd been using, but a faint, far-off whisper of uncertainty showed through.