“Well, suppose someone introduced to this imaginary planet some carnivores strong and quick enough to kill the herbivores. At first they would barely be noticeable on the planetary scale. You might scour its plains for years and find no trace of them. But in the long run, not meeting any opposition, they would breed in such numbers that they would reduce the herbivore population. The insects would suffer, then the birds, then the vegetation. The herbivores would be threatened from two sides at once. Then the carnivores in turn would start to die of hunger. If circumstances allowed, a new balance would be struck, quite different from the former and possibly not stable. Then, for one species or another, there would be cycles of plenty and famine. The critical threshold would be much lower than in the first example. Indeed, a single breeding pair of carnivores might be enough to trigger changes whose consequences could not be foreseen. As far as dynamic ecology is concerned, the significant factor is never one of the units in the chain but the totality of them. And the process is incapable of spontaneous reversal. It entrains subtle but decisive side effects. Under the threat from the carnivores, the herbivores will cultivate speed. The longest legs will save the most lives, and so on.
“To some extent that’s analogous with time travel. But ecological problems are laughably simple compared with those of temporality. You might lay a mountain low or snuff out a star without any serious change in your future. Here and there you might even wipe out a whole civilization with no untoward results from your point of view. On the other hand it might suffice for you to tread on someone’s toe in order to shake your heaven and your earth. Each point in the plenum has its own ecological universe. There is no such thing as absolute history.”
“How can you foresee which?” Corson demanded.
“It can be calculated. It also depends partly on intuition, and partly on experience. And it’s best to look at things from as far away as possible in the future. It’s always more comfortable to consider the various ways that might have led to this present than to try to build one which will lead to a desirable future. That’s why Those of Aergistal enter communion with us.”
He indicated the two women.
“But they can’t tell us everything. They can’t create timequakes that might erase them. They are at the ultimate end of time. For them history is almost absolute, almost complete. Besides, we have to work out our own destinies, even though they must take their places as part of a grander scheme.”
“I understand,” Corson said. “I too have the impression of being a pawn. At first I imagined I had free will. But the more I see of the game, the more I realize I’ve been pushed from one square of the board to another.” He hesitated. “I even thought you might be running the game.”
The man shook his head. “You were wrong. It is not we who have devised this plan.”
“But you do know what has been happening.”
“To some extent. For us, though, you’re a wild factor. You appeared at the appointed moment to resolve a crisis. We have always thought of you as the author of the plan.”
“Me?” Corson exclaimed.
“You and none other.”
“But I haven’t even finished formulating my plan!”
“You have time ahead of you,” the man said.
“But it’s already been put into effect.”
“That means it will exist.”
“And if I fail?” Corson countered.
“You’ll know nothing about it. Nor shall we.”
At long last one of the women moved. She rolled over, sat up, noticed Corson, and smiled. She was about thirty. He did not recognize her. Her expression was absent, as though from overlong use of her inward sight.
“I can hardly believe it,” she said. “The famous Corson here among us!”
“I have as yet no reason to be famous,” Corson said curtly.
“Don’t be rude to him, Selma,” the man interjected. “He has a long way to go still, and he’s a little upset.”
“Oh, I’m not going to bite him,” Selma said.
“And,” the man concluded, “we all need him.”
“How far have you got?” Selma asked Corson.
“Well, I came here as an envoy, and—”
But she cut him short. “I know that. I heard you talking to Cid. But how far have you thought things through?”
“I can neutralize Veran by not sending him this message that everyone claims I sent. But to be candid I wouldn’t know how to draft it and still less how to get it to him.”
“That’s a simple matter of creodes,” Selma said. “I’ll arrange it whenever you like. And I think that Those of Aergistal will agree to relay it for us.”
“Suppose you don’t send it,” said the man who had just been referred to as Cid. “Who will deal with the Monster and the Prince of Uria? A solution must be sought elsewhere. Veran forms part of the plan. You can’t eliminate him so easily.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Corson admitted. “And I even suspect it may be because I ran across him at Aergistal that I thought of making use of him. But I’m not sure yet. It’s an idea that won’t occur to me until much later.”
“He’s making a lot of progress for a primitive,” Selma said.
Cid frowned. “Corson is not primitive. Besides, he has been to Aergistal. He hasn’t made do with communion.”
“True,” Selma said. “I was forgetting.” Annoyed, she jumped up and ran toward the water.
Corson mused aloud, “Then who is to deal with Veran?”
“You,” Cid replied.
“I can’t attack him. I can’t even plan an action against him.” He touched his security collar, and added as faint hope sprang up in his mind, “Can you take this thing off me?”
“No. Veran hails from our future. His technology is in advance of ours.”
“So there’s no way out.”
“Wrong. There must be a solution. Otherwise you would not be here. There exists at least one line of probability—one creode—according to which you’ve carried out the plan. I don’t know if you’ve grasped all the implications yet, Corson, but your future depends on you in the most literal sense.”
“I rather had the impression I depend on it.”
“Another way of saying the same thing. You see, for a long time men have wondered about the problem of continuity of existence. Was a man the same on waking as when he went to sleep the night before? Might not sleep be a complete break? Why did certain ideas and memories vanish altogether from consciousness, only to turn up again later on? Was there a unity, or a mere juxtaposition of existences? One day somebody stumbled on the truth. Since his beginnings man had lived in ignorance of the greater part of himself, his unconscious mind. Nowadays we are asking ourselves almost the same questions in almost the same terms. How are possibilities related to one another? What connects the past, present, and future of one’s existence? Does childhood determine maturity, or the other way around? We don’t yet comprehend our own essential nature, Corson, and we shall not do so for a long while yet. But we have to live with what we do know.”