I felt a sudden hesitation; I had never killed anyone in cold blood. I thought of Luke, of the Representative’s appalling threat to humanity. Suddenly the Primary became aware of me, looked up at the balcony, his mind forming a warning command to his men. I gritted my teeth and squeezed the trigger. This time, the distance was long enough for the fuze to arm, and the Primary’s chest burst open as the shell detonated. His defences dropped in shock and I wrenched the life out him as he collapsed to the floor. I twisted back into S1 a second before the balcony disappeared in a hail of high-explosive shellfire.
A couple of hours later I visited another capital. And then another. My mind was numb, I aimed and fired automatically, tried not to think about what I was doing. I held on to the feeling of grim determination, that this must be done, to end the threat now. Tertia was becoming nervous and concerned, looking at me as if she had never seen me before. ‘Are you going to kill all of them?’
‘No, that’s enough. The next one can live – after I’ve spoken to him.’
It was night by then and the Ruler was in his private apartment. He goggled at the muzzle of the P.A.W. centred on his forehead and paid due attention as I spoke slowly.
‘You will live. But only because I need you to give a message to your Council. You are to stop all research into slider technology immediately and forever. You are to make no attempt to develop the ability to communicate with parallel worlds. If any Ruler disobeys I will come visiting, and kill him and all of his family. His line will cease to exist. Know that I can always reach you, no matter what defences you try to use. I have killed some of you today, including your Primary, to demonstrate this. Is that clear?’
I took a gargling noise as assent, and left him staring at empty space.
We returned home early in the morning. The Convenor had arrived at Laketown before us and was waiting in the dwelling we shared. She was, of course, already fully aware of all that had happened, and looked at me with concern clear in her mind.
‘I’m not sure what to say to you Cade. You have averted a terrible danger, at great cost – most of all to yourself, I think. I understand why you took the actions you did, although none of us could have done it. We have been too comfortable, too civilised, for too long. But we would have lost all of that without you.’
‘Sometimes the beast has its uses, when faced with other beasts. It’s a question of balancing the scales.’
She sadly acknowledged that, then asked, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Oh, I have a lot to do. There are scores of human worlds, all blindly working their way towards the extinction of their civilisations. I have a mission now, to show them the error of their ways. When I turn up on their doorstep, they are going to pay attention.’
A flash of wry amusement. ‘Yes, I expect they will.’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘you will need transport. We can make sure than an airship is always available to you, so you can travel safely in this world before entering the others at whatever location you want to.’
‘Thank you; that will be most helpful.’
I went for a walk alone, to clear my head and think through my plans. They involved an inherent paradox, of course; my visit to each world would form a point of divergence, causing it to split into “visited” and “not visited” worlds. But I felt that saving one version of each human world was better than losing all of them. And if I kept chasing down the “not visited” worlds to visit them in turn, perhaps the network of braided worlds I created would eventually come back together again, all ending up with the same basic history save for some historical confusion over a few dates.
Slowly, despite all that had happened, I began to feel the first stirrings of optimism. The next few centuries promised to be very interesting.
EPILOGUE
The airship travelled low over a flat, marshy landscape which was glowing in the last rays of a late summer sun. Rivers meandered through reed-beds and the air was alive with water-fowl, rising from the surface in alarm as the great ship cruised overhead.
The pilot warned that we were approaching the target, so I accessed my index of worlds, chose the right one, and looked. The view magically changed from a natural idyll into a great swathe of arable land, the rivers tamed into straight channels. A few narrow, ruler-straight roads paralleled the water-courses. Along one of them, just coming into view, was a straggle of buildings; a farm, some houses and a pub.
The lift cabin deposited me on the road at the edge of the village. In front of me was the ruin of a house – roofless, and with only part of the walls still standing. The interior had been cleared, and an information plaque set in the centre. A part of the grounds at the front had been paved to provide parking for visitors’ cars. No doubt the pub was seeing more passing trade than it used to.
I gazed at it for a long time, my mind full of memories. Luke; the childhood we had shared together, the long estrangement and the reconciliation before his death. I hoped that he had found what he believed in, there where my mind could not follow. Then I recalled Sophie’s saucy grin, the long walks along the shore, the welcoming warmth of her body. Freya, now living her own life. Zara – I must visit her sometime, to tell her all that had happened to me. And Richards, he deserved to hear the tale as well. But first, I had some tasks to begin.
I selected another world, and the scene shifted. The house sprang tall against the darkening sky, lights glowing in the windows. I saw a shadow moving inside, heard the faint strains of jazz music.
Well, I had to start somewhere, and this world was closer to disaster than any other.
I walked up to the house and knocked on the door.
Also by Anthony G Williams:
What if – you went to sleep as usual in 2004: and woke up in 1934?
What if – you had vital knowledge about the forthcoming Second World War, and could prove that you came from the future?
What could you do to affect British policy, strategy, tactics and equipment?
How might the course of the conflict be changed?
And what if there was another throwback from the future – and he was working for the enemy?
The novel follows the story of these two ‘throwbacks’ as they pit their wits against each other. A very different Second World War rages across Europe, the Mediterranean, Russia, the North Atlantic and the Pacific, until its shocking conclusion.
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