Everyone's attention was distracted by the intrusion. Bush calculated
the time it would take to jump up and sprint out of the door. The attempt
was not worth making under normal odds, but the situation was desperate
enough for a try. The servants were hardly two paces into the room
before he had weighed up the situation and was tensing his muscles for
the bid. And then the future came in.
There were four of them, the Dark Woman and three men. They seemed to hang
insubstantially in the air, like legless people standing behind many layers
of glass. And they carried slender rods which they now aimed.
Bush's and the Dark Woman's gaze met. She gave him a small gesture,
raising her empty hand to cover her nose and mouth, and then the four
of them moved to cover Grazley and his men and opened fire with their
weapons.
Grazley was fast. He threw himself at his shadowy attacker -- and charged
right through him, dropping his fawn topper in the process.
The weapons of the future worked through the entropy barrier, giving off
quick puffs of a clinging gas. Two of Grazley's men were firing back
indiscriminately. The weapons turned on them, they staggered and fell.
Bush caught an acrid smell that nearly lifted his head off. Picking himself
up as he moved, he ran for the door.
His head swam. The gas bit at his senses. His action was useless. He was
never free. What was that about the nature of infinity? Action is . . .
suffering is . . . God, yes, permanent, obscure, and dark . . . like Ann
. . .
He managed to hold on to some of his wits. He sprawled on the rich carpet
in the corridor. The crowds had gone by now, had jostled in to the luncheon.
Only two important figures coming towards him, the woman in full sail,
bearing herself like a queen and placing her hand on the arm of her escort
in such a way that he -- He! and She! No wonder the lackeys behind them
bowed so obsequiously that their wigs almost fell off! Groaning, Bush made
ineffectual efforts to roil out of the way as the Queen of England and
the Prince Consort sailed through him and he drowned beneath her ample
phantom skirts.
The shock, the farce, the madness of it drew him properly to his senses.
Wiping his eyes, he gasped fresh air through his leaker, stood up, and drew
his gas-gun, the only weapon left to him. He peered cautiously into the
room he had escaped from. All the minders sprawled unconscious on the floor.
The Victorian servants turned serenely from the curtains, which they had
drawn a precise distance apart, and marched out of the door, through Bush.
The gas had not harmed them. The four from the future bowed to him and took
shadowy leave of the room, the Dark Woman leading.
Bush spared only a second to gape at them. He moved hurriedly about
the room, disarming Grazley and his men; they did not stir. As an
afterthought, he went round again, searching them, collecting up
their supplies of CSD so as to delay their return to 2093 -- though
they would be sure to appropriate the drug from others. He grabbed the
senseless Howes under his armpits and dragged him into the corridor, his
eyes burning with the lingering gas. Then he plunged in again and got
Silverstone, unconscious in the armchair and still tied. As he lugged
the man across the floor, he happened to kick his light-gun, which had
fallen from his grasp when he first entered the room: and his mind,
although muzzy from the gas, started to spark off revelations at him,
so that he almost cried aloud in surprise and relief.
He had a knife in his pack. Pulling it out, he cut the rope that bound
Silverstone and tied up Howes instead, trussing his hands behind his feet
and tying his ankles back towards his wrists.
"You clever bastard!" he said.
Then he started yelling down the palace corridors, "Ann! Ann!"
Chapter 4
A CASE OF INCOHERENT LIGHT
A number of arbitrary points mark the mental frontiers of our lives.
Stake out, say, a crooked leg, a line from Wordsworth, a day in an abandoned
garden, a loving cheek on a shoulder, a bloody golf club, a drug, the long
twilight of a Devonian beach, a light-gun, and you define within these
factors one human existence. it is an unusual human being who is more than
the multiple of his factors.
Bush broke away now. So strong was his sudden perception that Ann lived
that he forgot all he had been taught and started inventing new rules.
After a berserk moment of running down the corridor shouting, he knew it
was useless to try and track Ann down that way. Convinced she was alive,
he realized she might have her own obscure purposes for being away from
the palace. He had only a little while to act before Grazley and his
men recovered consciousness. To find if Ann was still alive, he minded.
He did it by flexing muscles he never knew existed within the dark territory
of his undermind. The CSD still ran in his veins from his recent emergence
into 1851, otherwise he could not have achieved what he did.
Diving into the reception room, he sank himself back; space-time tilted,
and then he surfaced in the palace again -- how much earlier? He did
not know. There were other people in the lounge, genuine Victorians --
not Silverstone, not Howes, not Ann.
He dived under again, kicking, in and out of mind. People. Times. 1847?
'49? '50? He kept surfacing and diving, powered by emotion, like a dolphin
speeding through water, glaring out of the window, trying to feel the
medium he was plunging through, seeing sunlight in the courtyard outside
replaced by snow, leaves blowing across the pavements, night, day, grey
light or daylight. He fought his way upstream.
As he did so, he was concealing himself in one of the window bays. The
heavy drapes helped his purpose. He needed to find the place in space-time
immediately before Ann and Howes had come to him, when his earlier self
was waiting in the little ante-chamber down the corridor. As his first
frenzy cooled, the task of minding became harder. The dolphin stuck in
the shallows. He stopped. Some damned anonymous day in 1851, unrecorded
. . . although the Queen would be making an entry in her journal, careful
and pedestrian, unobscured by any doubts of the universe of which she
ruled so mighty a mote.
Impatient, he jabbed an ampoule of CSD into his artery and moved into
mind-travel again.
There was Silverstone! Pacing a corner of the room. Bush remembered
clearly that remarkable face, with the wry mouth and beaky nose; a phrase
describing it popped into being: the self-mocking-bird. Four genuine
Victorian gents smoked at the other end of the chamber. Bush knew this
was the moment he needed; that mysterious instinctive sense guiding him
through mind-travel had worked again. He must be careful. He was only a
matter of minutes, scarcely an hour, away from Silverstone in time.
The man would be able to see him quite easily, hear him, speak to him,
shoot him. He crouched behind the thick curtains.
Silverstone turned -- whipped his head round, saw Bush, perhaps had seen
him materialize from the corner of his eye. His face clouded, he pointed
an accusing finger at Bush. Dumbfounded by his own stupidity, Bush flicked
back into mind. He had forgotten that Silverstone had probably spent some
while in 1851 before Howes arrived, had forgotten to take thorough
precautions against being seen by men of his own time.
He surfaced. The room was empty now, stacked with twilight, like a replica
of itself standing in a museum. He went behind a long sofa, the upholstered
wooden back of which curved like a mahogany wave, foaming roses and rose
buds. Safely concealed, he surged through time again, ignoring his own
fatigue.
Then he had it!
The instinct had served him well and homed him in on a moment when they
were actually talking about him.
Silverstone was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. Howes was
standing by him, but had turned from him as Ann entered the room. She was
in distress, calling to him even as she ran across to the far side of the
room where they were. Every word carried to Bush, faint but very clear
amid all the surrounding silence.
"Eddie Bush is in the palace, David! I just met him on this floor."
She stood before Howes, running her hands up and down the seams of her
maid's uniform. Howes became tense and unsmiling, even stroking his false
whiskers.
Silverstone said, "I told you he'd be back. He was in this very room
two months ago. I saw him by this window. He could have killed me then,
young ruffian!"
Ignoring him, Howes asked the girl, "Did you obey your orders?"
"I couldn't, David! Listen -- there's no need to kill Bush now. He's changed
his opinions. He'll
help
us now, and goodness knows we need help."
Howes made to push by her, reaching for his gun at the same time.
"You've disobeyed orders, Ann. We've got enough trouble without the
uncertain factor of Bush complicating life for us. Take me to him!"
She caught his arm. "Don't do anything you'd regret later, David. He can
help us. Be reasonable with him -- you said yourself he was an artistic
type. Besides, he has a light-gun."
"Ha! You needn't worry about that! We fixed that."
"You're so good at fixing! I'm just asking you not to hurt him. Please!"
When he looked at her, his expression softened.
"You still fancy him, don't you? All right, I'll talk to him, if I must.
But don't forget how much hinges on the success of this operation.
Professor Silverstone, if you'd kindly stay here, we'll be back in a couple
of minutes, and then we will mind at once, before things get too hot for us."
"But my parcel," Silverstone said. "I can't leave without that. Ann, you
were going to get it for me."
Ann snapped her fingers. "I was on my way to get it -- I forgot when I saw
Eddie. There'll be no hitches, Professor -- I'll fetch your parcel at once."
Bush was not staying to hear the last part of the conversation. While their
attention was focused on each other, he ran, bent double, out of the door.
Directly he got into the corridor, he capered, enemy agents or no. Wonderful!
He had seen the look on Ann's face when Howes had asked if she still fancied
him. Until that moment, he had forgotten he possessed any talent for loving.
The unguarded look on her face told him otherwise -- yes, unguarded, just as
little Joan Bush had been observed unguarded; it was the first time he had
seen Ann with her guard down.
And he had caught Howes with
his
guard down! Howes -- the fixer!
A brave and cool and far-sighted man: all qualities Bush could not see
in himself. Howes' sabotage of the regime's plans had been as complete
as he could make them: and had included making sure the guns of his chosen
assassins did not function properly. No doubt Bush's gas-gun fired harmless
carbon dioxide, just as his light-gun had fired harmless unlasered light
rather than the coherent beam it was supposed to do. It was all clear.
He had not killed Ann.
What Howes just said confirmed what Bush had already guessed. The fact that
his gun was tampered with was the one bit of tangible proof he had that
Howes' account of subversive activity was true.
He knew he could now cheerfully mind back to the point where he had left
Silverstone and Howes lying gassed in the corridor. Time was of the essence
-- a pregnant thought! But he was no longer a murderer! He was reprieved!
-- a good harmless creature who intended injury to no one. And Ann lived
her elusive life still!
Caprice took him. Laughing, he bounded down the corridor, back the way
he knew Ann had just come.
He found his earlier self lurking in the dark alcove behind which the women
still ironed. Impulsively, he reached his hand and found it grasped by
himself. He smiled. How fine he was, larger than he had anticipated,
deft in his movements.
"You!"
"I!"
It was a sort of exchange of love. How well he wished this man, this
stranger whose every thought, every inch of body he knew -- the only
such person! What a crazy dark unknown incest this was, to be clutching
himself in love! He could say no more, overcome with emotion, content
with the charge that had been conveyed. He minded.
He was back -- or he had been there all the while and the universe had
been away. The effort of breaking through the time-entropy barrier told on
him and sobered him down, making him aware once more of present dangers.
Silverstone and Howes were returning to consciousness, sprawled on the
corridor carpet. Although they had breathed relatively less of the gas
than Grazley's men, it would not be long before the enemy also revived
and burst into the corridor.
Stooping, Bush slapped the professor's face -- the face of the self-
mocking-bird -- and rubbed it briskly, calling, "Stein, Stein!" He changed
his mind. "Silverstone!" he said.
The professor opened his eyes. "It was proof," he muttered. "That weapon
-- proof positive!"
The words piled confusion into Bush's head. Could Silverstone remember
that his light-gun had been tampered with? He was totally at a loss to
understand how the man had learned what he had been through. He just
stared down at Silverstone as the professor struggled into a sitting
position and said, with a much firmer grasp on consciousness, "That weapon
the four people from the other time used -- it is proof that my theory
is absolutely correct, and we shall have other proof, you'll see! This
is the first time they have intervened through the time-entropy barrier."
Somewhat disgruntled to find that his own case was not being discussed,
Bush said, "I'm going to get you out of here, Silverstone. In any case,
I don't see how they could use a weapon through the entropy barrier."
"Simple, isn't it? We'd have developed it ourselves in a few years,
no doubt. We've already learned to leak air through the barrier; the
whole concept of mind-travel necessitates it. They merely leaked an
anesthetic through. Now, get me to my feet, will you? You're Edward
Bush, I know. We've met up and down the time spectrum, not always in
friendly circumstances. I hope I did not hurt you too much that time by
The Amniote Egg. I imagined you were one of that villain Bolt's agents."
Bush laughed. "I hadn't even noticed you on that occasion. I was too taken
up with the girl you were with."