"And where do you put them?"
"I've managed to house about twelve million to date. But the Empire is running out of resources, and they're coming thicker than ever!"
"Is there no way of stopping them?"
Mingus shook his head. "Even if the Army shot them on sight, we couldn't control the mounting progression. Soon there will be nothing but Gleisters; the Earth will be carpeted in Gleisters, and new ones will continue to pour in. The Emperor is truly the slave of time."
"What have you done about a solution?"
"Everything possible. I'm open to suggestions."
"The only thing that occurs to me," Hieronymous said, "is that the original Gleister must be killed before he can invent the time machine."
"It can't be done. Many of us have tried, but we can't get back far enough in time. We can only encounter Gleister after the invention. And each Gleister who goes back and fails further expands the progression."
"Yes, I see."
"Do you have any ideas?"
"Only one, and I don't much like it."
Mingus waited. Hieronymous said, "As it stands now, the Gleister-series is an infinite expansion. Therefore a limit must be introduced in order to make the series capable of termination."
"What limit'"
"Death is the only natural limit," Hieronymous said. "Termination must be introduced as early as possible in the series, so that it will expand simultaneously with the series, render it self-limiting, and finally self-canceling."
"Many of us have died," Mingus said. "It hasn't effected the expansion."
"Of course not. All the Gleister-deaths so far have been normal terminations of individual time tracks. What is needed is an early death out of continuity---a suicide."
"In order to introduce a short-term recycling death factor," Mingus said. "Suicide...Yes. It will be my final imperial act."
"Not yours, mine," Hieronymous said.
"I am still the Emperor," Mingus said. "It is my responsibility."
"You're too old, for one thing," Hieronymous said. "A young Gleister must die as early in his time track as possible."
"Then we'll draw lots among the younger Gleisters."
Hieronymous shook his head. "I'm afraid it must be me."
"Would you mind explaining why?"
"At the risk of seeming egotistical," Hieronymous said, "I must tell you that I believe that I am the original Gleister, and only my suicide can end what I began."
"Why do you think you are the original Gleister?"
"It's an intuition."
"That's not much to go on."
"No, but it's something. Do you have an intuition like that?"
"No, I don't," Mingus said. "But I don't believe that I'm---unreal!"
"You're not," Hieronymous said. "We're all equally real. I'm just the first, that's all."
"Well...It doesn't matter, I suppose. I hope that you're right."
"Thanks," Hieronymous said, setting his time machine. "Do you still have that laser gun?" Mingus handed it to him and Hieronymous put it in his pocket. "Thanks. I'll be seeing you."
"That seems unlikely."
"If my assumptions are correct," Hieronymous said, "then you will have to see me again."
"Explain that!" Mingus said. "That makes no sense..."
But Hieronymous had pushed the button and was gone.
Gleister Main Line Sequence Termination No. 1:
It was a beautiful September afternoon in Harvest Falls, Indiana. Charlie Gleister walked past Apple Street and looked wistfully at the white frame house in which he had had his laboratory. He thought about going in and having a word with himself, but decided against it. He'd had his fill of Gleisters.
He continued walking, out of town on Route 347. Cars passed him, but he didn't try to hitch a ride. He didn't have far to go.
He turned off the route and crossed a stubbled field. He went through woods and came to a little brook. He had fished here as a boy, catching an occasional sunfish. The big oak tree was still where he remembered it, and Charlie sat down and leaned his back against it.
He took out the gun and looked at it. He felt numb, self-conscious. He rubbed his nose and looked at the sunlight on the water for several minutes.
Then, irritably, he said, "All right, let's get it over with." He put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth, gagging slightly over the taste of oily metal. He shut his eyes and pulled the trigger and died.
Gleister Series Initial Termination Recycling:
Charlie Gleister opened his eyes. The imperial audience room was as he had remembered it. On a table in front of him were the latest statistics: over twelve million Gleisters settled to date, more coming every minute. He shook his head and ran his fingers absentmindedly through his beard. Then he looked at the young man standing in front of him.
"Good luck," he said, and handed him the laser gun.
Egon Gleister said, "Thank you," pushed the button on his time machine, and was gone.
Alone, Charlie looked around the audience room. He would have to accustom himself to imperial duties, for of course he had to take his turn as Emperor, just as all the others would have to do. He and they would have to take all of the Gleister roles as the termination proceeded, until at last only he was left, in the end as in the beginning.
But for now he was the Emperor, and that might be interesting. He was grateful that he had gotten the suicide-part out of the way. He would have to do it again, of course; but not yet, not until all the others had done it.
BILL GARNETT
Singular
American-born, British-raised Bill Garnett came to science fiction after years in television and advertising. Fleeing London, the way other writers flee New York City, he is now settled in an eighteenth-century hill-farm near the Scottish border where, between strenuous bouts of hunting, chess playing and dry stone wall building, he found the time to write an excellent science fiction novel (Down Bound Train). He writes a mean short story too.
The woman lay in her sleep-sling and watched the stars through the roof above her.
Already they were paling, the sky coming bright with dawn. Soon it too would lose definition, as filters came on in the roof and turned it opaque to screen out the ultra-vi of day. As always, it had rained in the night and now, through open parts of her walls, she could smell the wet of the grass, hear the wet morning song of a bird.
Perhaps this would be the day.
She shifted slightly in the sling and imagined the life within her flutter. Unconsciously, her fingers moved across her belly tracing what was within it. She loved this unborn, wanted it. But nine months was waiting enough. She missed the double sling, the hard length of man in the night. More, she missed the once lightness of her body, the spring of it. And the sharp clear of her mind. She smiled in the dawn. The last few months her thoughts had been like cloud waves: floating peaceful—but scattered.
"You awake, mom?"
The woman turned her head, saw her five-year-old son just a meter away. Typical of my pregnant vagueness, she thought —I didn't even sense him standing there.
"I am now," she smiled at him.
"What do snakes eat, mom?"
She looked at his face, solemn and concentrating, and loved it. Just behind him, through an open part of the wall, she registered the rising sun. "Snakes? Well now—I'm not sure, honey. Why?"
"There's one come in below and \ thought maybe he was hungry."
That was Mark all over, considerate of everything that breathes, she thought. Of course it was only proper—but still good to see already in one so young. She smiled more. "Try candy, darling."
"Right!" And he was gone.
The woman stretched. Carefully she let herself down from the sleep-sling and padded across the room. She stood in a corner there and after a second water came on round her body. She let it play on her, gazed out through a wall opening at long curves of living green and brown that flowed to the flow of far sea. There were dwellings out there, many dwellings, but so made one with the land that, even though she knew where they were, she could not see them.