It's partly that I'm not a people-person, but mainly that three years training in the most sophisticated simulators ever devised had never included the appearance of a naked man with a badly swollen face out of the thin air of my cabin. So I did what came naturally, made inarticulate noises of surprise and distress. He said
"Wuhh wuh, wuuuh wuhhhh, wuhhh", then, with some difficulty, removed two large balls from his mouth, so that his face took up a more conventional shape, and expanded. "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you."
He examined the two balls closely while I gasped unhelpfully, and chose one to hold out to me. I took the disgustingly wet thing in thumb and fingertip, and looked at it.
"Put it in your mouth, but don't swallow it. And don't think at it, it's preset already." He said, in a tone that suggested it made sense.
"What? I can't swallow this, and I'm not putting it in my mouth anyway."
"Would you rather die?"
"Yes, well, maybe not, hang on, you said you wouldn't hurt me and now you're threatening to kill me for not sharing a gobstopper. What is going on here?"
"It's not a threat, I'm trying to save you, but you won't get out of here without the homer in your mouth"
"What? We're in space, travelling at thousands of miles per hour, how can I possibly get out of here even if I wanted to?"
"Same way I got in here, by jumping through time and space. I'd like to explain slowly, but this ship is going to explode in a few seconds, so you have to decide what to do with the rest of your life rather quickly."
"This is insane, there's nothing wrong with this ship, all the instruments show green." An array of lights on the controls went red and several klaxons started. "It can't do that. Why's it doing that?"
"There really isn't time to go into detail. I'm here to recruit you to a time travel agency at this point where you won't be missed. If you'd rather not join, I'll be on my way."
I looked at the flashing red lights, and felt the cabin shudder as though something big had exploded nearby. I decided it was a dream, but there was no point taking chances.
"OK, I'll sign, get me out of here."
"Good, I just need to snap your anchors." He closed his eyes and I felt a headache of astonishing proportions blot out the explosions outside my head. I screamed, including some words about wanting an explanation for this, or indeed the rest of it. He answered
"You have the right mind for time travel, but can't use it while your anchors are stiff. Life developed time anchors about the same time as cell walls and DNA, otherwise it would drift all over the clock, like the coelacanths. Teaching someone to time jump is like teaching a limpet to swim, the anchors have to be snapped."
It was still hurting a lot when I put the sticky ball in my mouth and
felt the anchors snap, jumping away through endless darkness to fall heavily
onto a dirt surface under a high dome.
Call me Uncas.
In a parallel universe it could have been a witty and insightful reply, but in this case it was the wrong answer for several reasons. One was the assumption that the big stranger next to me had read both Moby Dick and Last of the Mohicans, flawed by his being dead long before they were written. Another was that his sense of humour stretched no further than the Illyrian Hanging Game. Also, he hadn't asked my name, and it's not Uncas.
He looked around the parade ground, barren as far as the dome walls that kept our air in, saw no more promising prospects for smalltalk and tried the question again.
"So, how did you die?"
"You know the difference between a very large rocket waiting for blast off and a bomb?" His expression suggested this was a bad approach too.
"I died fighting Caesar's legions, so not really, no."
"Right." Perhaps best to simplify. "Actually it wasn't mainly a rocket, it was the first ion drive interstellar probe, capable of reaching Alpha Centauri in 7 years. The rocket was just to get it into space."
"You didn't get to the stars then."
"No, the recruitment agent appeared in my cabin just as I launched, disabled communication with the ground using a surprisingly large axe, and made me the offer: join the Time Partrol now or stay here and blow up."
"You joined."
"It seemed best."
The barracks and teaching rooms were underground, and we never did
any parading so didn't have to see the outside view again. Maybe they thought
looking at the end of the world would be too depressing for new recruits.
We were taught in a small group, mostly twentieth century like me, with a few from all over. What I remember of what they taught us was mainly the shocks. Something of the people and the skills, but mainly the shocks. Sydney, who taught "Miscellaneous" was the worst of them.
"We teach by the Socratic Method" he began our first Miscellaneous session. "And as it happens, I knew him well. He was a git, but good on teaching. It means you learn by answering my questions, though I may let things slip as well."
I looked around in case this made sense to anyone else, and he picked on me.
"Uncas" He liked nicknames and someone had leaked it to him "What is the purpose of the Time Patrol?"
Fortunately, I'd read a lot of science fiction and could supply many plausible guesses:
"Trade between different times?"
"Pointless and dangerous.Again."
"Research into the past?"
"No-one would care enough to pay the price. Again."
"Tourism?"
"Stupid. Again."
"Preventing criminals changing the past?"
"The past is the past, it cannot be changed. Again."
That took me back, I'd thought changing the past, or at least stopping anyone else changing it, was the central activity of any Time Patrol.
"Er, something very important that has no effect?"
"Yes. We are engaged in the most important temporal work imaginable,
and our highest duty is to ensure that it has no effect. Dismissed"
Sydney's great strength as an instructor was that he was easily distracted, allowing us to extract extra information from him. I thought at the time this was unintentional. One evening in the mess he talked about his own era.
"Yes, theatre was very popular then, I used to visit the Globe twice a week."
"You saw Shakespeare's plays premier?"
"As it happens, I knew him well. He was a git, but he could have been a great actor if it wasn't for that accent."
"Stratford?"
Sydney laughed, "He wasn't from Stratford originally, it was Llandridnod Wells, and he never managed to shake it off. That's why people called him Captain Fluellen."
"Lucky for the world though, that he becamse a writer instead."
"Well, that was a near-thing too. One of the less clever Historical Improvement Missions was to give him, in translation to his own English, a book of literary criticism on his future work. The thought was that this would set up a positive feedback loop and make his works even better."
"Did it work?"
"Opinions differ. Some say it was why he wrote all those comedies that
aren't funny. I'd say it made no difference because he couldn't understand
a word of it."
"As you know, there are no time machines: only people can time jump, but the definition of a person needs to be very precise in this. If it included only the cells of the body, then the loss of stomach and entrail contents during jumps would be not only very messy, but would cause implosive internal injuries.
"In fact what jumps is the body and all its contents, so although we travel naked we do at least avoid needing to be hospitalised on arrival. And it gives us some scope to transport physical objects."
She began carefully putting small objects into her mouth, becoming less distinct as her cheeks stretched to contain far more than I would have thought possible.
"You see, to be an effective inter-temporal operator you need to be diligent in cheek stretching exercises, and always sleep with your mouth as full as possible." I couldn't decode any of her words after that.
The next lesson was on swallowing and associated skills, such as wrapping delicate objects in suitable protective material to let them survive stomach acid. She'd trained her throat to open like a snake's dislocated jaws, and if she hadn't been so deeply unattractive I'd have had impure thoughts about this extraordinary ability.
But the final lesson is the one that I can't forget.
"Swallowing is no good for fast-draw items such as weapons, "She began, while opening a case on the table, "and there's a limit to how big your cheeks can be without making it difficult to fit into normal society" We looked away from her at that point. "But there are more options".
When I raised my eyes again I saw the growing horror on other faces, and looking to the front I saw the growing line of pointed cylinders on the table, each bigger than the last.
"Of course it's easier for the girls, especially after a few children, but with a determined program of stretching with larger and larger implements, anyone can develop a very useful capacity." She pulled up her skirt and reached for the biggest of her collection, "I think you'll be impressed with this"
I could hear one of the Victorians throwing up as I fled the room.
"What's important enough to justify the apalling risks of time travel?" He caught the eye of Michael, a computer programmer from the late twentieth century, who looked relieved.
"The End of the World, the desolation we can see outside the dome above us."
"Yes. While the uninhabited far future makes a useful hiding place for this base, most people would prefer the world not to end. So what does the Time Patrol do about it?"
"It tries to change history before the End in order to delay or prevent it."
"I have told you the past is the past, it cannot be changed."
"But, that can't be true. If I kill the baby Hitler then that must change history. It can't not work."
"That is a popular point of view, many have died believing it. It is even popular within the Time Patrol, and most agents are engaged in the changing of history to delay or prevent the End of the World."
"So I'm right? The past can be changed?"
"No, the Time Patrol is part of the past, and their actions cannot be changed any more than the consequences of those actions can be changed."
"Then we've already lost, the blasted world outside is the Time Patrol's failure to save the world. There's no point trying."
Sydney looked enquiringly to one of the Victorian twins we called Agatha, who glanced at her sister and began:
"No, the past that contains our work is already better than it would have been without it. There's the same reason to do the work in the past as at any other time, it's to have a meaningful life."
"And if someone chooses to leave the Patrol and have no effect on the past? Does that make things worse?"
"Yes", she became more confident, "The past already doesn't contain the contributions of anyone who will decide that, so something is worse, though it was always worse."
"So you are willing to work on changing the past to create the history that we see?"
She hesitated, then "Yes, I'll do it."
"No, we don't do that, that is the role of the rest of the Time Patrol, who are trained elsewhere. It's important that you do not know agents working on historical improvement for two reasons, which are?"
Going the wrong way.
Details of how it started are blurry, I must have drunk enough to
think playing the Illyrian Hanging Game would be a good idea, despite knowing
what it was. Big Man had told us about it several times, but only when
we were sober enough to refuse to play it with him, until this time.
While he set up the noose over a rafter and positioned the stool under it I was insisting on first turn, but feeling a vague unease about it. At the time I put this down to how I'd feel about playing any high-bodycount pub game, but it wasn't that.
I was still going over the rules in my head as I climbed onto the stool and carefully tightened the noose around my neck. The whole fun of it, Big Man had explained, is after the player's friends kick the stool away. They cheer or heckle as needed while he draws his sword and tries to cut the rope before it's too late. Yes, there was definitely something worrying about the rules, but I couldn't place it.
Big Man kicked the stool away and as I fell I suddenly knew exactly what was wrong. To do well at this game, the player really needed to be wearing a sword.
The rope pulled tight, snapped, and dropped me on the floor with a surprisingly sore neck. The others booed at my lack of prowess.
"Because they don't like us." It was an unusually paranoid idea even for Big Man, but Sydney nodded.
"That's one reason. Why don't they like us?" He turned to me, and it became clear.
"They can't detect what we do. They don't believe in paradoxes" He raised an eyebrow and I corrected, "They don't believe in poxes and think we do nothing useful. Why do they allow us to exist at all?"
"Official policy is that we are a precaution in case a pox should ever occur. In fact we deal with thousands of them. Why else must we be separate, Big Man?"
"Because we don't like them." He usually found this diffucult but brightened as it seemed to be going well.
"No, it's to prevent us knowing, and therefore liking, them. Explain" Back to me.
"If we liked them it would be harder for us to resolve poxes."
"Because?"
"Because, in the worst case, we might have to resolve a paradox involving an agent, by doing something bad."
"Yes, though it's almost every case. The career of a typical agent ends when they cause a pox and we clear it by killing them. Why?"
"Because it would be worse otherwise. For some reason." This was going into rubber physics mysticism and I was hoping for some concrete information. Sydney nodded slightly and shifted to a new target.
"Michael, you programmed computers, requiring actual real practical solutions which can be physically implemented. Suppose I asked you to implement a simulation of history which includes time travel. Effects may precede their causes, loops and poxes are not forbidden by any special magic. How do you do it?"
Michael glazed over for so long that I thought Sydney would give up, but then he said:
"It's impossible. I can't simulate time travel without using time travel, which depends on some magical pox-avoidance system you haven't told us about yet."
"In the language of your day, impossible is a technical argument. Suppose as the customer I say there is a commercial requirement for time travel, which overrides your technical argument. You must implement it now, so how do you do it?"
"You can't say that, impossible always beats required."
"No it doesn't, come back next week with the solution."
Michael looked distressed, though not unfamiliar with the situation.
The early lessons covered twentieth century equipment, which made sense for the people with earlier origins, but progress was so slow that I became impatient for the unimaginably advanced technology.
"Digital watches are great as far as they go, but can we get to the really neat stuff from the far future?"
She looked puzzled, then sympathetic, "You're the science fiction reader."
"Well, yes, I might have some expectations from that, but even if it's all wrong I still want to see more of the magic science."
"More? You've seen some beyond the twentieth century already?"
"Just the obvious examples, like the universal translator that lets us understand each other. The amazing thing there is the lip sync, if I didn't know you're from ancient Egypt I couldn't tell you're not speaking modern English."
"Ah, that." She smiled uncomfortably and Big Man spoke instead:
"You idiot. She is speaking modern English, just like I am. It's the Patrol language. The ones who didn't have it already went and learned it with basic twentieth century culture before coming here."
"But, but why modern English? Is that really the majority language for people from all over history? Why isn't it something from the far future, like Japanese?"
Isis spoke again, "When I talk about the far future, and the End of the World, you do realise it's my far future, not yours?"
I spoke without making any sound for a moment, then remembered to breathe. "No, I don't realise that." The implications attacked me en masse. "Then the twentieth century is the highest technology we have, and the most populous time in history. And the End of the World isn't in the remote distance." It became horrible. "The date here, now, with the world destroyed outside the dome, what is it?"
"In Anno Domini terms, today is September, a Friday I think, in the year 2010."
"No! But that means I've only been dead a year." I sat down heavily and Michael finished the ghastly thought for all of us from the last days of Earth:
"People I knew lived to the End of the World. They're out there now, dead."
"Yes" said Isis soberly, "Completely and permanently dead. The best
pox-bait you'll ever have to avoid."
"First, I implement a complete simulation of history without time travel, running from the start to the end. I assume there's a big computer available for this?"
Sydney was magnanimous, "Yes, assume next year's model, for any year it needs to be."
"Then I include entries and exits for people time jumping. I still run from the start to the end, recording exits and applying entrances if they happen in time. That gets me the forward jumps, plus a list of exits." He looked around, it seemed plausible to me so far, the others looked uncertain.
"Then I run history again, adding people with the entrances remembered from the previous run, and make a new list of exits. If the exits and entrances line up, it's done. But generally they won't: time jumps will change the exits as people cross their own pasts. So run it again, with the new list of entrances, and make another list of exits. Keep running it, millions of times or more, until the exits and entrances do match. That's the final cut, the actual real history that we live in."
Sydney considered briefly, and began to question:
"What makes the lists ever match? If someone goes back and kills their grandmother their exit and entrance will alternate in each run."
"Indeed they will, and if the world were deterministic it would alternative for ever, but it isn't. There's quantum mechanical uncertainty to provide variation, and chaos to magnify small uncertainty into huge effects. So it might take a million runs, but the granny killer will be caught by a random event that stops them doing it."
"Fate?"
"Mathematics. The simulation runs as long as it needs to, until the pox is fixed, however unlikely the fix is it will happen in the final run. That's what makes it the final run."
"Then we are redundant, poxes are removed by the normal action of the universe. What use is a pox police?"
"The very low probability events that resolve poxes might be very very bad. Maybe an agent in the Middle Ages said something they shouldn't have to a younger self, and the only resolution was an extra plague to kill them along with a hundred million bystanders."
Sydney nodded, "Yes, our role is to commute the sentences of history,
often to as little as death for the agent."
"What about the homers? We have a thing that looks like a rock but can be set by thought to match time, space and velocities with any point in Earth's history. There certainly wasn't anything like that in the world I came from, I'm not even sure it's a machine."
"No, it's not a machine in the technological tradition you come from. It's a crystal, which can be attuned by the sensitive to the vibrations of any time and place. I believe they were known in your time, but rejected by traditional science."
"Oh no, not crystals. Not hippies sharpening pyramids. Not all that ludicrous rubbish. Please no, no, no."
She looked unhappy but firm, "I'm afraid so. If it doesn't work, how are any of us here?"
I went to sit in a corner and cry for a while, Michael took over:
"These things were junk in my era, why are they in such short supply here?"
"The working homers have all been made personally by Number One." She saw our blank looks and explained, "Number One is the first time traveller, the one who discovered the process and learned how to make the homers. He discovered that although a few people could be taught to time jump, no-one else could make homers."
"This Number One, what's he like?"
"An old man with an extensive beard, doesn't like being photographed."
There were groans around the room. Isis continued quickly, "Yes, yes,
I know, it's almost certain someone in the Patrol will turn out to be Number
One, with a sex change if needed, and the homers may have a tangled origin
too. If any of you happen to be the one, just remember what a good instructor
I was and give me a raise next week."
After we were good at basic depoxing of the timelines Sydney called us in for a particularly strange case.
"It begins normally" He began normally, "Two agents from the late twentieth century operating as a couple in the London Blitz, 1940. Something went slightly wrong and they were killed in the usual way, and unfortunately they found out the details in advance, so they decided to skip around that whole week."
It was a common theme in anti-pox work, agents would create a pox by avoiding their own deaths, so we'd arrange for them to keep their appointment and so avoid anything worse arranging it instead.
"The first odd thing is that they succeeded, and continued their mission for the rest of the war unharmed." He looked around, having us now so trained to his methods that he didn't have to ask the questions.
"It's a trick, they didn't really die." Big Man spoke quickly, before the easy answers could be used up by others.
"No, we checked the deaths thoroughly. It's now a crowd scene with all the Patrol and Pox Cop observers."
Michael tried "Then the later appearances are misreported."
"No, the second odd thing is that we have their Patrol records for that period."
That never happened, even the most pox-unaware Patrol people would never use or release future internal records, with their huge scope for poxing. And if it did happen, Sydney would certainly protect us from any knowledge of a case in our own futures.
"Pity you can't tell us what's in them." Muttered one of the twins called Agatha.
"They're public. There was a Patrol trial after William and Margaret skipped their deaths. They went completely rogue in the missing week and stole their own future service records, which they presented as evidence in their defence at the trial. These records confirm they put in many years of good work after their deaths."
I couldn't stay quiet any longer, "This makes no sense. Apart from anything else, if they were tried after they caused a pox and stole their records, but before they did those years of service, why weren't they dismissed at that point?"
"Their records also contained the trial results of course, showing that all charges were dropped for reasons which were not recorded."
"What? Some half-witted Patrol bureaucrat let them off?"
"That would be one interpretation. The report merely says it was done at the request of a Pox Cop team under your command."
There was a pause, until I felt obliged to sum up. "So they've done something not only illegal but impossible, we know so much about it that we have no flexibility to change anything, and it's going to end up being my fault. Is there anything else we should know?"
"Just a footnote from the team's medical files that's also in the records. It says that both the twins become pregnant during this mission, and that you are responsible."
I was still staring at him by the time the second twin had gone red, stood up, and slapped my face as well.
We sat in the parlour and Margaret served tea, saying "Rationing, no sugar I'm afraid. Nor milk, unless you want powdered, which is worse than nothing."
"No, I like it this way. Please sit down." She did and I continued, "I need to tell you what we've done so far, and what has to be done next."
They looked more nervous, William said "Done? Done? We already have the evidence that it all turns out right. What needs to be done?"
I sighed, "The evidence shows that it all turns out right for you, but that's because others have paid the price, starting with my team, and ending with, others. But let me tell it from the start.
"We began by checking the death scene. Michael joined the crowd of witnesses and saw everything, saw you Margaret going into the house, then you William running in as if you already knew what was happening. That may be a later you, we can't be sure within the bigger tangle."
They'd seen it themselves of course - they were in the crowd watching - but telling it again made their hunted looks worse, and he took her hand without appearing to notice doing it.
"Big Man went earlier, and jumped directly into this house one night last month. He's good with chloroform and I'd guess you don't remember being put under in your sleep at all." Their looks of horror confirmed this, "He's less good at medical sampling, but always willing to have a go, you might recall various scrapes and bruises."
"That dream,", said Margaret, "Euch!"
"The rest of us went to the last days, beyond 2000 AD, and arranged to use technology so advanced as to have almost no chance of success, except that we were cheating by knowing it had to work in this case. The most difficult part there was how to transport the baby clones far enough back in time to let them grow up before the End of the World, but fortunately they had to be implanted in host mothers anyway. The twins argued that as unmarried Victorians they couldn't possibly do this, but our options were limited."
William managed to speak, "You really cloned us? You took them back, they grew up, you have them as adults now?"
"Yes, we put them at your birth-dates and visited at intervals to keep them on track to roughly match your lives, but adding in a strong preparation for self-sacrifice. The time jump gift must be genetic, because they took to it as soon as we recruited them to the Patrol, and with some basic training they're now ready to take over from you for the missing week."
"You're actually going to send them to their deaths in our place?" Margaret looked at me as if I were a monster, and it seemed a reasonable point of view.
"Not exactly. They're waiting outside for a final briefing from you to get everything exactly right. I'll be back tomorrow, before the raids start, to escort them to the fatal night."
I went out, letting Bill and Peg in as I went, and jumped to the following evening.
They said nothing as I sat in the same chair and looked around, "They're not here?"
"No", she said, "They went on without you."
"Fully briefed though?"
"They told us what they could before they couldn't bear it anymore", he said, "The rest we can learn from the Patrol."
"You've decided then?"
"Yes, we want to continue the careers our, well, parents, had started."
Then I saw flashes through the cabin windows, and heard new voices on the radio. Very large craft were appearing from nowhere, and I heard the language of the far future for the first time. Japanese or Chinese wouldn't have surprised me, but this was oddly accented English, and in the background their battle speakers were blaring out "Men of Harlech".
"Right, Boys, deploy by 'ere and 'old the line against any granny sucking alien that crosses it."
I saw it all. The dreadnoughts of future Earth would defend the present and prevent the end of the world. I would return to that future, persuade them of the danger and teach them time travel. They would come back and build a colony on some nearby planet early enough to build a warfleet by 2000 AD, and save the Earth.
The difficulty would be the loose ends, more specifically me: I'd already seen the end of the world and my past couldn't be changed. But it could be perverted. I'd guessed the future would have brain scanning techniques that could extract complete memories, and holodecks or virtual reality which could play them back. I'd gambled that they could take all my memories, return to the point of my recruitment into the Time Patrol, and fake everything that came afterwards.
So this is the universe I'm in, the one I was always in. My life since recruitment has been simulated using a scan of it that will be taken when I reach the future. There never was a Time Patrol, the people I knew are echoes from an earlier loop squeezed out from the final cut.
Earth lives on, there are no loose ends.