“Still, if you actually are a homicidal maniac, go ahead. Don’t bother to listen to what I have to say, or to wonder why I came here.”
I looked at him across the fire, then thrust the gun into my pocket and sat down. “Go ahead,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“I gave the matter considerable thought, Bayard,” Dzok said calmly. He poured himself another cup of coffee, sniffed at it, balanced it on his knee. “And an idea occurred to me…”
I didn’t say anything. It was very silent; even the night birds had stopped calling. Somewhere, far away, something bellowed. A breeze stirred the trees overhead. They sighed like an old man remembering the vanished loves of his youth.
“We’ve developed some interesting items in our Web Research Labs,” Dzok said. “One of our most recent creations has been a special, lightweight suit, with its Web circuitry woven into the fabric itself. The generator is housed in a shoulder pack weighing only a few ounces. Its design is based on a new application of plasma mechanics, utilizing nuclear forces rather than the conventional magneto-electronic fields—”
“Sure,” I snapped. “What does it have to do with me?”
“It gives the wearer Web mobility without a shuttle,” Dzok continued. “The suit is the shuttle. Of course, it’s necessary to attune the suit to the individual wearer’s entropic quotient—but that in itself is an advantage: it creates an auto-homing feature. When the field is activated, the wearer is automatically transferred to the continuum of minimum stress—namely, his A-line of origin—or whatever other line his metabolism is attuned to.”
“Swell. You’ve developed an improved shuttle. So what?”
“I have one here. For you.” Dzok waved toward the bubble-shape of his standard Xonijeel model Web traveler—a far more sophisticated device than the clumsy machines of the Imperium. “I smuggled it into my cargo locker—after stealing it from the lab. I’m a criminal on several counts on your behalf, old fellow.”
“What do I do with this suit? Go snark hunting? You’ve already told me my world is gone—”
“There is another development which I’m sure you’ll find of interest,” Dzok went on imperturbably. “In our more abstruse researches into the nature of the Web, we’ve turned up some new findings that place rather a new complexion on our old theories of reality. Naturally, on first discovering the nature of the Web, one was forced to accept the fact that the totality of all existence; that in a Universe of infinities, all possible things exist. But still, with the intellectual chauvinism inherent in our monolinear orientation, we assumed that the wavefront of simultaneous reality advanced everywhere at the same rate. That ‘now’ in one A-line was of necessity ‘now’ in every other—and that this was an immutable quality, as irreversible as entropy…”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“Yes—precisely as irreversible as entropy. But now it appears that entropy can be reversed—and very easily, at that.” He smiled triumphantly.
“Are you saying,” I asked carefully, “that you people have developed time travel?”
Dzok laughed. “Not at all—not in the direct sense you mean. There is an inherent impossibility in reversing one’s motion along one’s own personal time track…” He looked thoughtful. “At least, I think there is—”
“Then what are you saying?”
“When one moves outward from one’s own A-line, crossing other lines in their myriads, it is possible, by proper application of these newly harnessed subatomic hypermagnetic forces I mentioned to you, to set up a sort of—tacking, one might call it. Rather than traveling across the lines in a planiform temporal stasis, as is normal with more primitive drives, we found that it was possible to skew the vector—to retrogress temporally, to levels contemporaneous with the past of the line of origin—to distances proportional to the distance of normal Web displacement.”
“I guess that means something,” I said. “But what?”
“It means that with the suit I’ve brought you, you can return to your Zero-zero-line—at a time prior to its disappearance!”
It was nearly daylight now. Dzok and I had spent the last few hours over a chart laid out on the tiny navigation table in his shuttle, making calculations based on the complex formulation which he said represented the relationships existing between normal entropy, E-entropy, Net displacement, the entropic quotient of the body in question—me—and other factors too numerous to mention, even if I’d understood them.
“You’re a difficult case, Bayard,” the agent said, shaking his head. He opened a flat case containing an instrument like a stethoscope with a fitting resembling a phonographic pickup. He took readings against my skull, compared them with the figures he had already written out.
“I think I’ve corrected properly for your various wanderings in the last few weeks,” he said. “Since it’s been a number of years since your last visit to your original A-line—B-I three—I think we can safely assume that you’ve settled into a normal entropic relationship with your adopted Zero-zero line—”
“Better run over those manual controls with me again—just in case.”
“Certainly—but let’s hope you have no occasion to use them. It was mad of you, old chap, to set out in that makeshift shuttle of yours, planning to navigate by the seat of your pants. It just won’t work, you know. You’d never have found your target—”
“Okay, but I won’t worry about that until after I find out if I’m going to survive this new trip. What kind of margin of error will I have?”
Dzok looked concerned. “Not as much as I’d like. My observations indicated that your Zero-zero line was destroyed twenty-one days ago. The maximum displacement I can give you with the suit at this range is twenty-three days. You’ll have approximately forty-eight hours after your arrival to circumvent the Hagroon. How you’ll do that—”
“Is my problem.”
“I’ve given it some thought,” Dzok said. “You observed them at work in null time. From your description of what they were about, it seems apparent that they were erecting a transfer portal linking the null level with its corresponding aspect of normal entropy—in other words, with the normal continuum. They’d need this, of course, in order to set up the discontinuity engine in the line itself. Your task will be to give warning, and drive them back when they make their assault.”
“We can handle that,” I assured him grimly. “The trick will be convincing people I’m not nuts…” I didn’t add the disquieting thought that in view of the attitude of the Imperial authorities—at our last meeting—my own oldest friends included—it was doubtful whether I’d get the kind of hearing that could result in prompt action. But I could worry about that later too, after I’d made the trip—if I succeeded in finding my target at all. “Now to fit the suit.” Dzok lifted the lid of a wall locker, took out a limp outfit like a nylon diver’s suit, held it up to me.
“A bit long in the leg, but I’ll soon make that right…” He went to work like a skilled seamstress, using shears and a hot iron, snipping and re-sealing the soft woven plastic material. I tried it on, watched while he shortened the sleeves, and added a section down the middle of the back to accommodate my wider shoulders.
“Doesn’t that hand-tailoring interfere with the circuits?” I asked, as he fussed over the helmet-to-shoulder fit.
“Not at all. The pattern of the weave’s the thing—so long as I make sure the major connecting links are made up fast…”
He settled the fishbowl in place, then touched a stud on a plate set in the chest area of the suit, looked at the meters mounted on a small test panel on the table. He nodded, switched off.