London, 1944. The early winter night had fallen, and a thin cold wind blew down streets which were gulfs of darkness. Somewhere came the crump of an explosion, and a fire was burning, great red banners flapping above the roofs.
Everard left his hopper on the sidewalk—nobody was out when the V-bombs were falling—and groped slowly through the murk. November seventeenth; his trained memory had called up the date for him. Mary Nelson had died this day.
He found a public phone booth on the corner and looked in the directory. There were a lot of Nelsons, but only one Mary listed for the Streatham area. That would be the mother, of course. He had to guess that the daughter would have the same first name. Nor did he know the time at which the bomb had struck, but there were ways to learn that.
Fire and thunder roared at him as he came out. He flung himself on his belly while glass whistled where he had been. November seventeenth, 1944. The younger Manse Everard, lieutenant in the United States Army Engineers, was somewhere across the Channel, near the German guns. He couldn't recall exactly where, just then, and did not stop to make the effort. It didn't matter. He knew he was going to survive that danger.
The new blaze was a-dance behind him as he ran for his machine. He jumped aboard and took off into the air. High above London, he saw only a vast darkness spotted with flame. Walpurgisnacht, and all hell let loose on earth!
He remembered Streatham well, a dreary stretch of brick inhabited by little clerks and greengrocers and mechanics, the very petite bourgeoisie who had stood up and fought the power which conquered Europe to a standstill. There had been a girl living there, back in 1943. . . . Eventually she married someone else.
Skimming low, he tried to find the address. A volcano erupted not far off. His mount staggered in the air, he almost lost his seat. Hurrying toward the place, he saw a house tumbled and smashed and flaming. It was only three blocks from the Nelson home. He was too late.
No! He checked the time—just ten-thirty—and jumped back two hours. It was still night, but the slain house stood solid in the gloom. For a second he wanted to warn those inside. But no. All over the world, people were dying. He was not Schtein, to take history on his shoulders.
He grinned wryly, dismounted, and walked through the gate. He was not a damned Danellian either. He knocked on the door, and it opened. A middle-aged woman looked at him through the murk, and he realized it was odd to see an American in civilian clothes here.
"Excuse me," he said. "Do you know Miss Mary Nelson?"
"Why, yes." Hesitation. "She lives nearby. She's coming over soon. Are you a friend?"
Everard nodded. "She sent me here with a message for you, Mrs. . . . ah. . . ."
"Enderby."
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Enderby. I'm terribly forgetful. Look, Miss Nelson wanted me to say she's very sorry but she can't come. However, she wants you and your entire family over at ten-thirty."
"All of us, sir? But the children—"
"By all means, the children too. Every one of you. She has a very special surprise arranged, something she can only show you then. All of you have to be there."
"Well, . . . all right, sir, if she says so."
"All of you at ten-thirty, without fail. I'll see you then, Mrs. Enderby." Everard nodded and walked back to the street.
He had done what he could. Next was the Nelson house. He rode his hopper three blocks down, parked it in the gloom of an alley, and walked up to the house. He was guilty too now, as guilty as Schtein. He wondered what the exile planet was like.
There was no sign of the Ing shuttle, and it was too big to conceal. So Charlie hadn't arrived yet. He'd have to play by ear till then.
As he knocked on the door, he wondered what his saving of the Enderby family would mean. Those children would grow up, have children of their own: quite insignificant middle-class Englishmen, no doubt, but somewhere in the centuries to come an important man would be born or fail to be born. Of course, time was not very flexible. Except in rare cases, the precise ancestry didn't matter, only the broad pool of human genes and human society did. Still, this might be one of those rare cases.
A young woman opened the door for him. She was a pretty little girl, not spectacular but nice looking in her trim uniform. "Miss Nelson?"
"Yes?"
"My name is Everard. I'm a friend of Charlie Whitcomb. May I come in? I have a rather surprising bit of news for you."
"I was about to go out," she said apologetically.
"No, you weren't." Wrong line; she was stiffening with indignation. "Sorry. Please, may I explain?"
She led him into a drab and cluttered parlor. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Everard? Please don't talk too loudly. The family are all asleep. They get up early."
Everard made himself comfortable. Mary perched on the edge of the sofa, watching him with large eyes. He wondered if Wulfnoth and Eadgar were among her ancestors. Yes . . . undoubtedly they were, after all these centuries. Maybe Schtein was too.
"Are you in the Air Force?" she asked. "Is that how you met Charlie?"
"No. I'm in Intelligence, which is the reason for this mufti. May I ask when you last saw him?"
"Oh, weeks ago. He's stationed in France just now. I hope this war will soon be over. So silly of them to keep on when they must know they're finished, isn't it?" She cocked her head curiously. "But what is this news you have?"
"I'll come to it in a moment." He began to ramble as much as he dared, talking of conditions across the Channel. It was strange to sit conversing with a ghost. And his conditioning prevented him from telling the truth. He wanted to, but when he tried his tongue froze up on him.
". . . and what it costs to get a bottle of red-ink ordinaire—"
"Please," she interrupted impatiently. "Would you mind coming to the point? I do have an engagement for tonight."
"Oh, sorry. Very sorry, I'm sure. You see, it's this way—"
A knock at the door saved him. "Excuse me," she murmured, and went out past the blackout drapes to open it. Everard padded after her.
She stepped back with a small shriek. "Charlie!"
Whitcomb pressed her to him, heedless of the blood still wet on his Jutish clothes. Everard came into the hall. The Englishman stared with a kind of horror. "You. . . ."
He snatched for his stunner, but Everard's was already out. "Don't be a fool," said the American. "I'm your friend. I want to help you. What crazy scheme did you have, anyway?"
"I . . . keep her here . . . keep her from going to—"
"And do you think they haven't got means of spotting you?" Everard slipped into Temporal, the only possible language in Mary's frightened presence. "When I left Mainwethering, he was getting damn suspicious. Unless we do this right, every unit of the Patrol is going to be alerted. The error will be rectified, probably by killing her. You'll go to exile."
"I. . . ." Whitcomb gulped. His face was a mask of fear. "You . . . would you let her go ahead and die?"
"No. But this has to be done more carefully."
"We'll escape . . . find some period away from everything . . . go back to the dinosaur age, if we must."
Mary slipped free of him. Her mouth was pulled open, ready to scream. "Shut up!" said Everard to her. "Your life is in danger, and we're trying to save you. If you don't trust me, trust Charlie."
Turning back to the man, he went on in Temporal: "Look, fellow, there isn't any place or any time you can hide in. Mary Nelson died tonight. That's history. She wasn't around in 1947. That's history. I've already got myself in Dutch: the family she was going to visit will be out of their home when the bomb hits it. If you try to run away with her, you'll be found. It's pure luck that a Patrol unit hasn't already arrived."
Whitcomb fought for steadiness. "Suppose I jump up to 1948 with her. How do you know she hasn't suddenly reappeared in 1948? Maybe that's history too."
"Man, you can't. Try it. Go on, tell her you're going to hop her four years into the future."
Whitcomb groaned. "A giveaway—and I'm conditioned—"
"Yeh. You have barely enough latitude to appear this way before her, but talking to her, you'll have to lie out of it because you can't help yourself. Anyway, how would you explain her? If she stays Mary Nelson, she's a deserter from the W.A.A.F. If she takes another name, where's her birth certificate, her school record, her ration book, any of those bits of paper these twentieth-century governments worship so devoutly? It's hopeless, son."
"Then what can we do?"
"Face the Patrol and slug it out. Wait here a minute." There was a cold calm over Everard, no time to be afraid or to wonder at his own behavior.
Returning to the street, he located his hopper and set it to emerge five years in the future, at high noon in Piccadilly Circus. He slapped down the main switch, saw the machine vanish, and went back inside. Mary was in Whitcomb's arms, shuddering and weeping. The poor, damned babes in the woods!
"Okay." Everard led them back to the parlor and sat down with his gun ready. "Now we wait some more."
It didn't take long. A hopper appeared, with two men in Patrol gray aboard. There were weapons in their hands. Everard cut them down with a low-powered stun beam. "Help me to tie 'em up, Charlie," he said.
Mary huddled voiceless in a corner.
When the men awoke, Everard stood over them with a bleak smile. "What are we charged with, boys?" he asked in Temporal.
"I think you know," said one of the prisoners calmly. "The main office had us trace you. Checking up next week, we found that you had evacuated a family scheduled to be bombed. Whitcomb's record suggested you had then come here, to help him save this woman who was supposed to die tonight. Better let us go or it will be worse for you."
"I have not changed history," said Everard. "The Danellians are still up there, aren't they?"
"Yes, of course, but—"
"How did you know the Enderby family was supposed to die?"
"Their house was struck, and they said they had only left it because—"
"Ah, but the point is they did leave it. That's written. Now it's you who wants to change the past."
"But this woman here—"
"Are you sure there wasn't a Mary Nelson who, let us say, settled in London in 1850 and died of old age about 1900?"
The lean face grinned. "You're trying hard, aren't you? It won't work. You can't fight the entire Patrol."
"Can't I, though? I can leave you here to be found by the Enderbys. I've set my hopper to emerge in public at an instant known only to myself. What's that going to do to history?"
"The Patrol will take corrective measures . . . as you did back in the fifth century."
"Perhaps! I can make it a lot easier for them, though, if they'll hear my appeal. I want a Danellian."
"What?"
"You heard me," said Everard. "If necessary, I'll mount that hopper of yours and ride a million years up. I'll point out to them personally how much simpler it'll be if they give us a break."
That will not be necessary.
Everard spun around with a gasp. The stunner fell from his hand.
He could not look at the shape which blazed before his eyes. There was a dry sobbing in his throat as he backed away.
Your appeal has been considered, said the soundless voice. It was known and weighed ages before you were born. But you were still a necessary link in the chain of time. If you had failed tonight, there would not be mercy.
To us, it was a matter of record that one Charles and Mary Whitcomb lived in Victoria's England. It was also a matter of record that Mary Nelson died with the family she was visiting in 1944, and that Charles Whitcomb had lived a bachelor and finally been killed on active duty with the Patrol. The discrepancy was noted, and as even the smallest paradox is a dangerous weakness in the space-time fabric, it had to be rectified by eliminating one or the other fact from ever having existed. You have decided which it will be.
Everard knew, somewhere in his shaking brain, that the Patrolmen were suddenly free. He knew that his hopper had been . . . was being . . . would be snatched invisibly away the instant it materialized. He knew that history now read: W.A.A.F. Mary Nelson missing, presumed killed by bomb near the home of the Enderby family, who had all been at her house when their own was destroyed; Charles Whitcomb disappearing in 1947, presumed accidentally drowned. He knew that Mary was given the truth, conditioned against ever revealing it, and sent back with Charlie to 1850. He knew they would make their middle-class way through life, never feeling quite at home in Victoria's reign, that Charlie would often have wistful thoughts of what he had been in the Patrol . . . and then turn to his wife and children and decide it had not been such a great sacrifice after all.
That much he knew, and then the Danellian was gone. As the whirling darkness in his head subsided and he looked with clearing eyes at the two Patrolmen, he did not know what his own destiny was.
"Come on," said the first man. "Let's get out of here before somebody wakes up. We'll give you a lift back to your year. 1954, isn't it?"
"And then what?" asked Everard.
The Patrolman shrugged. Under his casual manner lay the shock which had seized him in the Danellian's presence. "Report to your sector chief. You've shown yourself obviously unfit for steady work."
"So . . . just cashiered, huh?"
"You needn't be so dramatic. Did you think this case was the only one of its kind in a million years of Patrol work? There's a regular procedure for it.
"You'll want more training, of course. Your type of personality goes best with Unattached status—any age, any place, wherever and whenever you may be needed. I think you'll like it."
Everard climbed weakly aboard the hopper. And when he got off again, a decade had passed.