"But, if it ever happened, it was fifteen or twenty billion years ago," Lafayette protested. "I've only been around for thirty-three."
"And no matter how far back or forward we travel along the temporal axis," the girl said, "the Bang's always twenty gigayears off. That's the temporal diameter of this manifold. The entire cosmos naturally had to readjust to accommodate the new mass. All else follows."
"But what's all that got to do with me?" Lafayette yelled. "I was just sitting quietly in the garden ..."
"Figure, Laugh," Mickey Jo put in. "Everything shifts one parameter, right? Now, you figure the spatial distance of the Event, plug in one hundred eighty-six thousand miles is equal to a second, and a couple finagle factors like the cosmological constant, and whata ya got? Three hundred years displacement is what. So, of course some compensation is required."
"What kind of compensation could that be?" Lafayette wondered aloud. "All that, if it ever happened, was still maybe twenty billion years ago. What can anyone do now to influence that?"
"Time is a convenient fiction," Mickey Jo said flatly. "A billion years or a billionth of a second: What's the difference, really? They're both just ideas, existing only in the mind."
"Maybe," Lafayette replied. "The question still stands."
"There are two choices," Mickey Jo said crisply. "It can be all at once, or distributed over the whole reality manifold."
"And ...?" Lafayette prompted.
"And somebody is busy redistributing it," Mickey Jo finished. "We thought it was you," she added. "But I guess that idea was just grabbing at a straw."
"Who's 'they'?" Lafayette demanded. "I'm getting very weary of the impersonal 'they', and calling them a committee doesn't help. And who are you, and what were you doing in the beer joint?"
"I'm just who I said I am," Mickey Jo retorted. "I work part-time out of Supreme HQ, and I was at Special Ed's dump to meet you."
"What's the survey?" O'Leary asked. "And don't tell me it's the executive wing of the Council or something. Just skip ahead. I don't need all the intermediate obfuscations."
"Somebody has to keep an eye on things," Mickey Jo said in tones of exasperated patience. "After all, if every little entropic vortex generated over a low probability area were allowed to gather energy until it became a full-scale probability storm, the entire cosmos would remain in a state of chaos."
"So this Supreme HQ has appointed itself Boss of All," Lafayette deduced without approval. "But they've gotten too big for their swivel chairs when they start bouncing a law-abiding Artesian nobleman around like a mouse in a washing machine."
"That's purely incidental, O'Leary," Mickey Jo said, waving the idea aside with a shooing motion of her hand. "In fact when your presence was discovered I was dispatched here to enlist your cooperation in a scheme devised by the Technical Council to try to divert the main thrust of the entropic surge off into a manifold of unevolved continua. Will you help?"
"Why me?" Lafayette demanded. "What can I do?"
"Hey, Al," Marv's distant voice echoed across the mud-flat. "Come on, I can see sumpin'."
"Ignore him," Mickey Jo rapped. "As for what you can do, it seems somehow you are the focal point of certain gigantic forces, over which in some curious fashion you are able to exercise some influence. We want you to employ that ability in the interest of restoring order to the Manifold."
"How would I do that?" Lafayette inquired. Marv was on his way back now, waving his arms and shouting:
"Hunherts of 'em! Got some heavy equipment. Camped out around that old building yonder! Better try a sneak-up after dark." He arrived, panting. "Don't think they seen me. We needa get outa sight, find some cover."
"Why?" Lafayette demanded. "Why assume they're hostile?"
"Got a whole bunch o' guys hung up by the neck," Marv explained.
"Maybe they've just got a hanging judge," O'Leary suggested. "We could use some Law and Order." He looked around at the seemingly endless mud-flat which surrounded the lake and stretched to the horizon on all sides, interrupted only by a low knoll beyond the ruined building. The sun was low in a sky heavy with clouds the color of used dishwater. The gusty breeze was cool, and his wet clothes were clammy.
"We need to find some shelter, whether we're hiding or not," he commented. "Come on, Mickey Jo, let's take a walk." He offered the girl a hand, which she ignored.
"And you'd better give me the gun," he added. She fished it out from her sodden décolletage and handed it over silently. As he dropped it in his pocket, Lafayette noticed it was not a common slug-throwing pistol. He leaned to grasp Mickey Jo's arm and hauled her to her feet. Marv fell in on her other side, and they set off across the mud, their feet squelching at each step. Lafayette looked back: their footprints filled with water as soon as they were made.
"An inch of rain and we'll be swimming," he commented.
"Ain't seen no rain in years," Marv commented.
"Nonsense," Lafayette replied. "It was raining cats and dogs the evening we met. That's why Daph and I had to run for it."
"No rain outa clouds like them," Mickey Jo remarked. "Gotta have vertical structure to squeeze the rain out."
"Oh, Al?" Marv called, pausing and falling a pace behind. "Talk to ya a minute?" Lafayette glanced at him. He was mouthing words with grotesque facial distortions.
" 'Gotta get ridda the dame'," Lafayette interpreted. "Go ahead, Mickey Jo," he told the girl. "I'll catch up."
"Ever occur to you I might hafta take a leak too?" she demanded in an irascible tone, but she went on ahead.
"Don't trust that little broad," Marv said hoarsely. "We gotta ditch her, Al; she's some kinda fink. We can lose her easy, come dark."
"You seem to stick to me like a burr to tweed," Lafayette said. "Why? It isn't sheer affection, I feel sure."
Marv looked at Lafayette blankly for a moment; then, as if at a decision, his expression firmed to a look of shrewd determination.
"I'll level with you, milord," he grated. "You seem like a right guy, and you stuck up for me when you didn't hafta. So I'll lay it all out. I'm a agent of Prime. My assignment is to stay with you. That's taken some doing, too, I can-tell you, pal."
"Why?" Lafayette inquired casually.
" 'Cause that's my orders," Marv replied.
"Sure, but why the orders?" Lafayette persisted.
"Look, Al, I'm just a plain guy, see? I got the job because I happena pick a big shot's kid outa the way of a runaway rail-wagon. I don't unnerstan half I know about entropic disjunctions and Schrodinger Functions, and-"
"Collapsed ones," Lafayette put in. "Somebody said that," he added vaguely. "Go on."
"What we got here is a classic worst-case analysis," Marv stated. "Course, I dunno what that is, but it don't sound good. And we're into what ya call 'nondeterministic polynomial complete' problems, too. Tie that, will ya?"
"According to Ramsey," O'Leary said dully, "total disorder is impossible."
"Maybe: I don't hear about this Ramsey," Marv said. "But we're close, I can tell you that. And we're tryna hold it short of the edge. We don't want to let any more temporal anomalies sneak in, and that's where you come in, Al."
"I had nothing to do with it, I tell you!" Lafayette snapped. "I'm as much a victim as you are—maybe more; at least you've got some kind of official status. Mickey Jo, too."
"I don't trust that broad," Marv said. "Like I said, Al; she's working some kind of a angle."
"She's a duly accredited agent of Supreme HQ," O'Leary said. "She's got you outranked."
"Maybe, maybe not," Marv grunted. "That's a point for the philosophers. Meanwhile, let's you and me kinda do a fast fade, and leave her go on into town alone."
"Fade where?" Lafayette inquired. "The landscape is as flat as a pool table in all directions."