He grounded the pointer, looked at me long and hard.
“Your destiny is interwoven with that of your world, Mr. Curlon—your fate, your history, are a part of the basic warp of the fabric of the reality we know. We have to seize on that thread—and every other thread we know of, few though they are—and from them, attempt to reweave a viable matrix into which the trapped energies can drain.”
I had the feeling he was oversimplifying the problem; but even so, it was too dense for me.
“Keep talking, General,” I said. “I’m trying to grope along with you.”
“Our lives don’t exist in a vacuum, Curlon. We have pasts, roots, antecedents. Actions of men of a thousand years ago affect our lives today, just as our actions of today will repercuss down the ages that come after. Napoleon, Hitler, Caesar, affected their times and all the times to follow. But we stand at a moment where the very texture of existence is strained to the breaking point. What we do, far beyond the ordinary measure of the potency of key individuals, will determine the shape of the world to come. We must act promptly, decisively, correctly. We can afford no weakness, no mistake.”
“You’re building up to something, General. Why not come to the point.”
He pushed a button on a console and the map winked out and another diagram took its place. This one showed an amoeba of pink and red lines twitching and writhing over a grid dotted with glowing points.
“This is a close-range energy chart of the Blight,” he said. “Here you see the shifting of the lines of quantum demarcation, as they seek to adjust to the abnormal pressures exerted by the probability storm. In every world-line adjoining the Blight, objective reality is in flux. Objects, people, landscapes, are shifting, changing from moment to moment, day to day. I need not detail for you the pandemonium thus produced. So far we’ve felt the effects less, here; the Zero-zero line is a stable one firmly rooted in past history by a series of powerful key events. The same is true of your line, B-I Three. For the Blight to engulf these lines would entail the obliteration of basics of human cultural development as powerful as the discovery of fire.”
He switched again, this time to a view of a blazing roil like a close-up of the sun.
“This is the center of the probability storm, Mr. Curlon. We’ve pinpointed its location, in a world-line that was once the seat of a great culture. This is where the key to the crisis will be found. I propose to go there, Mr. Curlon, to find that key.”
“It looks as though that would be a lot like jumping down the throat of a live volcano.”
“This diagram represents the turmoil of probability energies,” Roosevelt said. “On the surface, to an observer within the A-line itself, the storm is not directly apparent. Abnormalities, freaks, impossibilities, the suspension of natural law, the distortion of reality under your very eyes, yes; but the tempest itself rages at a level of energy detectable only to specialized instruments. A man can go there, Mr. Curlon; the dangers he faces will be beyond description—but not perhaps beyond overcoming.”
“Once there, then what?”
“Somewhere in that line is a key object, an artifact so inextricably interwoven with the past and future of the line, and of the quantum it controls, that all major probability lines must pass through it, in the way that lines of magnetic force flow through the poles of a magnet. I propose to find and identify that object, and remove it to a safe place.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Spell the rest of it out.”
“What more is there to say, Mr. Curlon?” Roosevelt gave me the sunny smile again, and his eyes had that dangerous twinkle of a man in love with danger. “I want you with me. I need you—the powers you represent—at my side.”
“What makes you think I’ll go?”
“I ask you to go—I can’t, wouldn’t attempt to force you. That would be worse than useless. But remembering the greatness of your line, I believe you’ll know where your duty lies.”
“Now it’s my duty, eh?”
“I think it is, Captain Curlon.” He rose and gave me the smile again. This was a man I would have to love or hate; there’d be no middle ground.
“You needn’t make your decision now,” he said easily. “I’ve arranged for quarters for you here in my apartments. Get a night’s rest; then we’ll talk again.” His eyes strayed down over my sweater and dungarees, fixed on the knife stuck through my belt.
“I shall have to ask that you leave the, er, weapon with me,” he said. “Technically, you’re under what is known as RIA—routine interrogational arrest. No point in causing talk.”
“I’ll keep it,” I said. I don’t know why. He had an army at his disposal to take it away from me if he felt like it. He leaned forward and frowned at me. His eyes were showing a little controlled anger now.
“Be kind enough to save unpleasantness by placing the knife on my desk,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s a sentimental hang-up I have. General. I’ve carried it so long I’d feel naked without it.”
His eyes locked on mine like electronic gun-pointers; then he relaxed and smiled.
“Keep it, then. Now go along and think over what I’ve said to you. And by tomorrow I hope you’ve decided to do as I ask.”
The room they took me to was a little small for a diplomatic reception, but otherwise would have filled the bill OK. After my escort left I poked into a dressing room fit for a Broadway star, a closet that could have slept six with room left over for an all-night poker game, stuck a finger in a bed that looked like an Olympic wrestling mat with tassels. It was fancier than my usual style, but I had an idea I’d be able to sleep on it all right.
I took a shower in a bathroom full of gold faucets and pink marble, and put on the fresh clothes that were laid out for me, after which a waiter in black knee pants and a gold vest arrived with a cart loaded with pheasant on translucent china and wine and paper-thin glasses. While I tucked it away I thought about what I’d learned from Roosevelt. The surface part—the story about parallel worlds and the disaster hanging over them unless he and I did something about it—was all right; as all right as insanity ever is. I didn’t understand it, would never understand it—but the evidence was here, all around me. It was the other parts of the general’s presentation that bothered me.
Once, when time hung heavy on my hands in a flat-top ready room, I spent some time reading up on games theory. The present situation seemed susceptible to analysis in the light of what I learned then. Roosevelt had tried three gambits: First, when he’d eased the commission at me. Second, when he’d tried to get my agreement to go along with him, in the blind, on a mission into the Blight. And third, when he’d tried to separate me from the knife. I’d resisted all three moves, more by instinct than any logic or plan.
I walked over to the window and looked down at a wall and a cobbled street. The big trees threw shadow patterns over the grass strips and flowerbeds, and the wide sidewalks were full of pretty women and men in bright uniforms with horsetail plumes and buttons that sparked under the lights. Across the park there were shops with bright-lit windows full of plush merchandise, and caf£s with open-air terraces and awnings and tables and an odor of fresh-ground coffee and fresh-baked bread. From a bandstand somewhere you could hear an orchestra playing a Straussy sort of waltz—one that had never been heard, back where I came from.
I wondered what Bayard was doing now and what he’d have to say about the latest developments. I’d accepted him at face value, mostly on the basis of the fact that he’d snatched me off my boat just before I started the long swim. But if Roosevelt was telling the truth—if the whole thing had been designed just to test my reactions before pulling me into a key role in world-shaking events…