The Last Protector (41 page)

"Once upon a time.” Jape ran his hand through his hair, struggling to find words. “Once upon a time—three years, three months and three days, ago, it was. I got an urgent message ordering me to Time Stream STC274, to back up Abe Matthews.” He paused, half-smiling, a sort of wistful, nostalgic grin.

"Abe Matthews,” Scrornuck said. “Was he the guy who filed those six word reports?"

Jape nodded. “Abe was never one for paperwork. But he was a legend among the Rangers, a brilliant improviser, at home in impossible situations. When they summoned me to assist him, I felt a little honored. At the same time I was scared—if he needed help, the situation had to be bad.” He paused for some beer, a normal-sized drink rather than a huge gulp, Scrornuck noted.

"The situation was beyond bad. The people of this world were slaves, serving a dictator who called himself ‘Dolph the Eighth.’ Soldiers walked the streets, watching everything and everybody, and rumor had it Dolph could make his elite guards, the Storm Troopers, do his bidding just by thinking about it. There were three days left before the stream crossing, and my ring was already a bright red.

"Abe had a plan: he was going to overthrow Dolph, bring down his government and set the people free, and he assured me that would turn the ring green again."

"I thought you said stream crossings involved volcanoes, earthquakes and stuff like that,” Nalia protested. “How can overthrowing a government prevent them?"

"I haven't really explained stream crossings, have I?” Jape paused for a moment to think. “Let me see,” he said, bringing his hands together and slowly moving them apart. “All the time streams wander around in a space that has no name. At first, right after they split, they tend to move further apart, but in time the strange attraction draws them back together, and when they meet—” He clapped his hands together noisily. “That's the crossing: for an instant the two are again one. If there's an irresolvable paradox, something that's got to be
this
way in one world and
that
way in the other, then bad things happen.” He stopped to take a small sip of his beer.

"The paradoxes aren't what you'd expect,” Jape continued, setting down the bottle. “Big things often don't cause any problem. For example, the City of Taupeaquaah doesn't exist in my world—at least not on a summer afternoon in the ninth century—but nothing in my world's history depends on it not being there. When the streams cross, the buffalo will see something strange, but they'll forget in a few seconds."

"But the Orb...” she began, pointing at Jape's ring.

He glanced at the angry red jewel and nodded. “For whatever reason—and I suppose we'll find out when we get to Darklord Castle—the Orb can't exist in the ninth century in my world, not even for an instant.

"Anyway, back to Dolph—about two hundred years ago, my world went through a terrible war that lasted six years and killed millions. Dolph's ancestors were from the side that lost the war. A century later, some of their descendents and followers split off a new time stream, brought in advanced weapons, won the war and went on to conquer their world. Of course, this didn't change the history of my world—Dolph's side had lost the war. So, when the present of Dolph's world crossed the past of mine, two opposite things would have to be true at once."

"Ow.” Nalia rubbed her temples. “This gives me more of a headache than the grandfather thing."

"It does the same for Mother Nature, and she responds with earthquakes, fires, floods, storms, plagues. That's why we have to resolve these paradoxes before the streams cross. This, Abe believed, meant bringing down Dolph's government.” He paused to take a very small sip of his beer. “Abe had worked himself into a position of trust with access to Dolph, but he was under suspicion from the Storm Troopers. I was more flexible, so Abe blackmailed a minor official and got me assigned to taste Dolph's food."

"Taste his food?” Nalia asked. “Why? Did he have special tastes?"

"To make sure it wasn't poisoned. Dolph had taken power by slitting his uncle's throat, and there were plenty of rivals looking for a way to kill him and take his place, so he needed a taster."

"Nasty,” she said, shuddering slightly.

Jape nodded. “Nasty world. Anyway, a power shift in the palace put Abe under house arrest. I'm not a good improviser, Abe wasn't able to give me instructions, so I got in touch with Ranger Control. They suggested I slip Dolph a drug that would make him passive and obedient. It was...” He paused to look it up on the softscroll. “Yes, the same stuff Tremmlowe used on you. Not surprising; it's a good, reliable medication for this purpose. The plan was to sneak it into Dolph's food, and once he was suggestible Abe and I would maneuver him into dissolving his government."

This struck Scrornuck as an awfully round-about approach. “This guy was evil—why didn't you just poison his dinner and get it over with?"

Jape shook his head. “The experts at Control thought killing him would be a bad idea; he'd just be followed by another Supreme Leader. To resolve the paradox, we had to bring down the institution, not just the man."

Scrornuck nodded. “I guess that's why you're the Ranger. I'd have just whacked the guy."

"You have your own talents, Mister Saughblade.” Jape lifted his beer, looked across the mouth of the bottle at Scrornuck, and then set it down as if thinking better of having another drink. “I hopped to another world to get the pills, took the antidote, slipped the drug into Dolph's breakfast and waited for it to do its job.

"It didn't work the way we expected. Instead of becoming obedient and passive, he became more aggressive. At noon the next day, less than an hour before the streams would cross, he had us both brought to his command bunker for an interrogation.

"He seemed to already know what we were up to, and after screaming at us for a while, he stood us against the wall and said, ‘Never mind the firing squad—I'm going to execute you right here.’ Then he took this huge gun from one of the Storm Troopers and pointed it at me. I checked my timepiece—it was barely two minutes before the crossing. There was nothing more we could do. I shouted to Abe that it was time to bail, found a world I could reach, and just as Dolph squeezed the trigger I got out of there. Just in time, too.” He pulled back his sleeve and pointed to a small, perfectly healed scar just above his left wrist. “First bullet winged me."

Nalia looked at the scar. “Wow, that was close."

Jape nodded. “Too close. The only world I could reach was that smoky hell-hole. I just about coughed myself to death, walking twenty miles before I could jump to a safe world. I hopped through a half-dozen others before I got to one that could treat this wound properly.

"Three days later I tried to see what had happened. There wasn't a single time stream with a stable surface connection to 274. I ended up dropping from a flying machine up in the air of a safe world, did the jump to 274 in mid-air, and saw what I could while I was falling. Almost got myself killed—there were terrible storms there, and I was being blown all over the sky. Then I jumped back to the safe world and opened my parachute just in time to make a landing. I was only on 274 for a couple minutes, but I saw enough to know Abe was dead. The world was tearing itself apart from the inside, with earthquakes, storms, fires, volcanoes. Nothing could live there."

"Except for your friend, it sounds like they deserved it,” Nalia said. “Killing each other left and right just to see who could be the big boss? An army of slaves? What a rotten world."

"Maybe, but there were a lot of innocent people in that world, people who had been enslaved by Dolph and his followers. They didn't deserve their fate. And, sad to say, the story's not over."

He picked up his beer, and this time took a long drink. “Seventeen years ago something happened. We call it the Great Vanishing.” His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Millions simply disappeared: people who had gone to sleep with a loved one woke up to an empty bed, parents found their children gone, as if they'd never been born, children who'd gone to sleep with two parents woke up orphans.

"At first, people thought it was a plague, or some kind of attack. Some even thought it was the ‘rapture’ predicted by their religion. In time, we discovered the truth: the first major stream crossing, the Safari World disaster, had sent a disturbance rattling up through my world's past. It took a century to reach our present, and when it did, twenty-one million people either disappeared or died. I lost a brother and two cousins. That's why I volunteered for the Rangers—I wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. And on Dolph's world, I failed. The timequake from 274's stream crossing will hit my world around four in the morning."

"Do you have any idea how bad it'll be?” Nalia asked.

Jape shook his head. “Some people don't think anything will happen at all. Right after we Rangers set out, my people put up a barrier in the space with no name, so that it's no longer possible to travel back in time from my world. The idea was to keep people from going into the past and splitting off new time streams. According to theory, if no new time streams get created, eventually the space with no name will settle down and there won't be any more crossings.” He sighed. “Of course, nobody can predict just when that'll be. It could be tomorrow, a year from now, or it might not come for centuries.” He drained his beer and belched. “Excuse me. Anyway, some people think this barrier will keep the timequake from reaching my world's present. I think they're dreaming. The stream crossing was bad, and I expect the timequake to be bad, too—maybe so bad that my world won't survive."

"It has to survive,” Scrornuck said. “We've worked too hard for it to all go up in smoke now."

Jape sighed and opened another beer. “I wish things worked that way, but too often they don't. It could be that everything the Rangers have done was for nothing, because of this one mistake.” He attempted to chug his beer. It landed in his belly with a sickening splash, filling his stomach with gas, and he practically gagged it back up again.

"Time to get some sleep.” Scrornuck took the half-empty bottle from Jape's hand. “If you stay up, you'll just drink yourself into being sick. I'll keep watch."

Jape nodded, looking a little green. “You take such good care of me, Mister Saughblade.” He got up, a bit unsteadily, and Scrornuck quickly rose and took his arm. About halfway to the tent, Jape stopped. “Can I ask you to do one more thing for me?"

"You name it."

"Pray for my world. It's going to need all the help it can get."

"Poor guy,” Nalia said, as Jape cried out yet again as he relived the destruction of STC274 in his dreams. “He's really taking this hard. I'm trying not to listen to his thoughts, but it's hard not to feel his guilt."

Scrornuck looked up from the Setron and nodded. “I think it's tougher for him than it is for me."

"Oh?"

"It wasn't hard for me to leave my home and become his Protector. Life was short and hard in my world. I was young and didn't have much of a family or many friends. Jape left his family and a comfortable life to become a Ranger. For seventeen years he's been risking his life to clean up the mess his ancestors made."

"Seventeen years? But you're only..."

"Twenty-two, I know. But I've only been with him for three years. I'm not his first Protector."

"What happened to the others?"

Scrornuck shrugged. “We've never talked about it. They died, I guess. It's a dangerous business.” He sniffed Jape's half-finished beer and poured it out. It smelled of sour stomach. “You know, he can't go home until he's finished his mission. That barrier they put up, it means that once he goes back to his world he can never leave it again. So he's missed seventeen years of his family. The son who was a baby when he started this job is about ready to get married and move away. And who knows how long this'll go on? He might live to a ripe old age and still never get to go home."

"He must really love his world."

"His world, yours too, and the others. He loves them all.” Scrornuck returned his attention to the Setron, closing his eyes, squeezing its grip gently, feeling the messages it returned as it taught him yet another trick. Nalia watched him intently, and after a while he felt like he was under a microscope. “Waiting for something?"

"Jape asked you to pray for his world. I want to see how you do it."

"I thought you're a Spafuist."

"I am. I'm just curious. I've told you all about the Dragon, but you haven't told me anything about your religion."

"It's a long story."

"We've got all night."

"All right.” He tugged at his beard and looked up at the fat, silvery moon as he pulled the story together. “Once upon a time, not long after the world began, there were two naked people in a garden..."

The moon had crossed a fair chunk of the sky by the time Scrornuck finished his story, saying, “and we all live happily forever after."

Nalia sat in silence for the better part of a minute. “That,” she said at last, “is the craziest thing I've ever heard!"

"Isn't it?” He nodded cheerfully. “That's how I know it's true."

"So you're crazy, too."

"Could be. Anyway, you wanted to see a prayer. Here goes.” He stood up, squeezed the Setron's grip, and played a loud, raucous song. He couldn't come close to hitting the high notes, and as he finished, he saw Nalia doubled up with laughter. “Was I that bad?"

"You're no soprano."

"No kidding. This song was originally performed by a woman. She hit the high notes a lot better than I do."

"A woman? Play it again, then. Let me try to hit those high notes."

"You can learn a song just by hearing it once?"

"Sure. Can't you?"

Scrornuck shrugged and played. Sure enough, Nalia remembered the words, remembered the music, and perfectly hit the high notes that he couldn't. He happily sang the deeper harmonies and played more elaborate solos. When the song ended, they both found themselves with big, broad grins on their faces.

"Woo, that was fun!” Nalia did a little pirouette before sitting on her sleeping bag. “Your religion is crazy. But the songs are sure fun!"