"But?"
"Yes, well, there is a 'but,' Sergeant Major. I volunteered for the Corps. I didn't really have to. I finished in the top three percent of the Service Aptitude batteries. I chose the army anyway and I put in my time."
"Which qualified you for Referee Corps School," said Lucas.
Finn nodded. "I got halfway through before I washed out," he said. "I couldn't handle Econo-political Management and Arbitration. Way over my head. Well, maybe not over my head, but beyond my inclination. I did get through Temporal Physics and Trans-historical Adjustment and Maintenance, though."
"Which should have qualified you for the observers."
"It did," said Finn, nodding. "Only I didn't want it. You may think I'm crazy, but I missed this. Observing's not the same as participating, even though it pays better."
Lucas nodded. "I understand. I can't say I would have done the same thing in your position, but that's beside the point. The point is, you bluffed him. You made him think that we can still do something to get through this thing alive. Only we can't, can we?"
"Not necessarily," said Finn. "We still have a chance. We do. Hooker, I'm afraid, has no chance at all."
"I don't quite follow."
"Okay, I'll make it quick, they might come back at any minute. Time is fluid. The only thing that isn't is our subjective relationship to time. Time is like a river in that respect. Now you can take a boulder, let's say, and drop it in that river. It will create some eddies, but those eddies will have dissipated say, two hundred yards downstream. In order to significantly change the course of the river, or split the timeline, you're going to have to introduce a much more significant factor. Say, divert the river at one point and split it.
Now think of yourself as a molecule of water. Your relationship to that river is totally subjective, depending upon where you are in relation to its flow. If you move with the water to a point beyond which the river has been diverted, before it has been diverted, then that won't affect you. However, if I was to draw a cupful of water from that river, containing your little molecule, and pour you back in at a point upstream of the diversion, then that diversion could affect you."
"So we can't be attacked in our absolute past," said Lucas. "Irving can't kill me yesterday and expect that action to destroy me here today."
"That's right," said Finn. "You can't shoot five feet behind a clay pigeon and expect it to burst. What's happened to us has already happened. That's an absolute. Regardless of what Irving does in the past, it won't affect us right here right now. It will affect the past at a point at which the timeline will be split. From that point on, the future will be an entirely different scenario, depending upon when the timelines eventually rejoin. Irving can only kill us in a parallel timeline if he tries to attack us in our past. The point is, our job is to keep him from creating that parallel timeline. If he does succeed in causing the split, the future will be affected. And there's the danger. That game of Russian roulette the ref was talking about. His fate is sealed in that respect. If we succeed in stopping Irving, assuming that the real Richard Plantagenet is still alive and we can find him, then we have the possibility of our being able to clock back in to Plus Time with Irving, leaving the real Richard to sit on the throne. In that case, he'll have to be conditioned to forget all about Irving's intervention in his life. Not a problem. But then we'll have to clock back in at a point just beyond Irving's having gone back, so as not to create a paradox regarding our own experience. We will have restored the status quo of our own history. However, the possibility of that is almost nonexistent. I'll bet my life on the fact that Irving has killed the real Richard, in order to improve the odds of his success. In that case, we've got to kill Irving and let our ref become Richard, acting in a manner that will preserve our timeline. He will have to die, as Richard, in order to avoid a paradox."
"So where does that leave Hooker?" Lucas said.
"Hooker's finished," Delaney said. "We've still got a chance, because at this point, Irving has not confronted us with our own fates. Yet. He knows about Hooker. He knows about you. He may or may not know about me and Johnson. But the fact that we have been confronted with Hooker's corpse means that Hooker must die, because if he survives beyond the point at which Irving has killed him, assuming that it is Irving who's done it, then that will mean that he never died to be clocked back to right now. He will never have seen his own dead body. And that will change his experience. That will constitute a paradox and we, then, will have split the timeline. We have to make sure that Hooker is garroted."
"But we don't know when that's supposed to happen," Lucas said.
"That's right, we don't. With any luck, we won't be able to prevent it."
"You call that luck?"
"Compared to the alternative, yes."
"What alternative?"
"Well, there is the possibility that in order to avoid the paradox, we're going to have to kill him ourselves. And in that case, which one of us is going to volunteer?"
6
It was quiet and peaceful in Sherwood Forest. Finn and Bobby had walked all morning and now, at midday, they had stopped to rest by the side of the road, really little more than a narrow dirt path running through the forest, wide enough to permit two horses to travel closely side by side. They were not on horseback, however. They traveled on foot, at a leisurely pace. For a long time, both men had walked in silence, mulling over recent developments, especially what had happened in Lucas Priest's pavilion. The atmosphere in Sherwood Forest was conducive to quiet contemplation. All morning, they had not run into any other travelers. It was a bucolic scene, with the silence broken only by birdsong and the occasional hectic rustling of some small animal hurtling through the brush, frightened by their presence. The tree boughs made a canopy above them, through which shafts of sunlight streamed down to dapple the ground with light and shadow.
Finn had shot a rabbit and dressed it. They had cooked it on a spit and washed it down with cheap wine that tasted far better than it was supposed to. In another time and in another place, it would have seemed a very primitive and unsatisfactory repast, but in Sherwood Forest, it made for a veritable feast.
Finn leaned back against a large oak tree and lighted a cigarette. It was strictly against regulations, but neither of them cared. There was no one there to see them, so they passed the precious cigarette back and forth between them, hiding it with their hands just in case, staying very near the fire so that the smoke would not seem too noticeable to a prying eye. Finn had managed to smuggle several of the cigarettes from their island training base and he planned to ration them out carefully. They smoked in silence, neither man speaking until they were through. Then Finn field stripped the butt, shredding it and dropping what was left into the fire, which had almost burned out. That done, he leaned back against the tree trunk once again and shut his eyes.
"Finn?" said Bobby.
"Mmmm?"
"Suppose Hooker figures it out?"
Finn sighed, "It's possible, of course, but I don't think he will."
"Don't underestimate him just because he's still pretty green," said Bobby.
"No, that wasn't what I meant. This is going to sound pretty goddamn cold, but I don't think he'll knock it because, quite simply, he wants to live. When you're already predisposed toward one condition, your mind will tend to avoid considering any possible alternatives."
"I suppose you're probably right," said Bobby. "He seized on that bit of double-talk you fed him and hung onto it for all he was worth. He kept telling me how careful he was going to be, how he was going to refine paranoia to an art. He tried to make light of it, but he's pretty scared."