What could he do, specifically? He could stay here in the future (which operationally was the present), assume a disguise and wait for a chance to strike a blow against the Emperor.
He could go back fifty or a hundred years, to a time before Mingus's accession to power, locate the future Emperor as Mingus had located others, kill him.
Or, if Mingus was able to protect himself through the powers of the time machine, Gleister could form an organization to overthrow the Emperor, starting his organization before the Emperor assumed power.
It was impossible to juggle all of the variables presented by his various plans. He would just have to pick one and go with it. But which one? Aye, there was the rub: man proposes, but the hidden law of temporality disposes. Which plan? Random sampling---eenie meenie...
Gleister looked up as a man sat down on the bench beside him. He was in his fifties, bearded, somberly dressed. He carried an attaché case. He looked like a businessman or a minor official.
"You new around here?" the man asked.
"Sort of new," Gleister admitted reluctantly. "I'm a student."
"Where from?"
"The University of East Bengal. The new one, not the old one. I'm here to do a study." Stop babbling, he ordered himself.
"School days are the best time of all," the man said, smiling. "How well I remember my own."
"Where did you go to school?" Gleister asked.
"I attended the University of Ohio," the man said. "But I never did graduate. Too much work for me to do out there in the world. Ah well, it can't be helped."
"No, it can't be," Gleister said. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He too had attended the University of Ohio.
"What do you use that white box for?" the man asked abruptly. "School books?"
"Yes. I mean no," Gleister said. "It's a little too small for books. I keep tapes of some of my lectures in there."
"Is that a fact?" the man said. "You know, it's a weird coincidence. I've got one just like it." He opened his attaché case. Within it Gleister saw a white box identical to his own, cushioned in red velvet. Beside it, there was a large blue-steel automatic.
The man picked up the automatic and pointed it at Gleister.
"Hey, wait a minute, don't fool around with that thing," Gleister said. Already he was beginning to feel a faint twist of sickness in his stomach. He was afraid that he knew all too well what was happening.
"Hand over that white box of yours," the man said. "Handle it real slow and don't try to push any buttons."
"Who are you?" Gleister asked.
"I'm known by various names in various regions of the Earth," the man said. "But I'm best known as Mingus."
"You're the Emperor!" Gleister said.
"At your service," the bearded man said. "Now, very slowly, give me the box."
Gleister's forefinger rested on the operation button. He could feel the Emperor's eyes on his hand, daring him to press the button. Gleister remembered that there was a lag between turning the machine on and physically leaving a place. He decided that he had no chance at all. Slowly he began to extend the white box.
"That's it, slow and easy," the Emperor said.
Then Gleister noticed a shimmering in the air some ten feet behind the Emperor. Something was about to happen, and, considering the circumstances, it could only help Gleister.
"Look," he said, "can't we talk this over? Maybe we could reach a compromise."
"What are you up to?" Mingus's forefinger tightened on the trigger. An involuntary movement of Gleister's eyes warned him that something was happening. He whirled just as another Gleister materialized behind him.
The Emperor fired at the new arrival at pointblank range, but with no apparent effect. Charlie Gleister, noticing the faint red haze around the newcomer, had realized in an instant that it was not an actual corporeal person; obviously, to the trained eye, it was a solidified pseudo-doppler reflection caused by Gleister's passage through time. As he watched, the image disappeared.
The Emperor turned toward him again; but Gleister had already punched the OPERATE button of his time machine.
Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One Sub One Low Probability Closed Loop 12:
Nothing goes right when you're in a hurry. Charlie Gleister hit the OPERATE button so hard that he broke the interlock on the OVERRIDE assembly. Unrationalized power surged crazily through the time machine, turning the primary circuits into roulette accelerometers, and causing an instant multiplication of geometric accumulators. Energy flooded the available networks of n-dimensional pasts/ presents/futures, then searched for new outlets and found them by jumping an entire magnitude---to the universe of low-probability actualities.
When Gleister came to himself, he was standing on a flat, featureless plain. The glaring white sky above pulsated with bulges of darkness. He could hear a low, melancholy crooning. It seemed to come from a piece of white limestone rock near his right foot.
"Is that you singing?" Gleister asked.
"Yeah, baby, it's me," the limestone rock answered in a deep mournful voice. "I been singing the blues ever since the world began."
"How long has that been?" Gleister asked.
"About three hundred years, close as I can figure it. You got any idea what or where or why this place is?"
"I can make an educated guess," Gleister said. "It seems reasonable to hypothesize that we are in a low-probability universe. The theoretical existence of such a place is quite certain. High and low probability are terms of statistical intuition relative to our experience, of course. Do you follow me so far?"
"Well, baby, not too closely," said the limestone rock. "When you said an educated guess, you really meant educated. Could you maybe put it into English for me?"
"Well...in my own particular case there was like one hell of an explosion and I was blown clean out of the world into this place."
"Hey, that's just what happened to me," said the limestone rock. "How I came to be playing tenor sax in the Wigwam Club in downtown Hiroshima on that fateful day in 1945 is a story which I won't go into right now. You got any idea how we get out of here?"
"I think we must simply wait until it happens," Gleister said. "In normal high-probability terms, there's not much chance of that happening. But if this is a universe where low-probability is the law, then all odds are reversed and our chances for getting out of here are very good indeed."
"Ask a man a serious question and he jives me," the limestone rock said.
"No, I meant what I said quite seriously."
"In that case, baby, and excuse my saying it, you are a real weirdo."
"At least I'm not a limestone rock," Gleister said, then added hastily, "not that I consider you in any way inferior because of your igneous appearance."
"Sure, baby, sure," the limestone rock said, with sarcasm so thick that you could cut it with a knife and spread it on a piece of Tibetan barley bread that had just appeared on the low oaken bench that supported the various instruments that Gleister needed to make a reasonable assessment of the validity of his previous statements.
In a universe of non-sequiturs---which is what low-probability is all about---it is difficult to find continuities, tough to keep a grip on sequences, hard to hang on to certainties. Historically, the low-probability levels have been considered paradise. They are the vacation spots of the hashishin, the mystagogue, the doper. They are usually fun places, which is why most people can't get into them.
There are some low-probability worlds in which nothing much happens and the whole thing is as boring as being kept after school. But usually, a good time is enjoyed by all.