And he looked at me strangely, and caught his breath, and came toward me and picked me up and dropped me. And picked me up and dropped me. And picked me up a third time, but Metaxas made him put me down.
Sam said gently, “It’s true that I am a black nigger bastard, but was it really necessary to say so that loudly?”
Metaxas said, “Give him some wine, somebody. I think he’s going off his head.”
I said, seizing control of myself somehow, “Sam, I didn’t mean to call you names, but it absolutely cannot be the case that Conrad Sauerabend is living under the name of Heracles Photis.”
“Why not?”
“Because — because—”
“I saw him myself,” Sam said. “I had wine in his tavern no more than five hours ago. He’s big and fat and red-faced, and thinks a great deal of himself. And he’s got this little hot-ass Byzantine wife, maybe sixteen, seventeen years old, who waits on table in the place, and waves her boobies at the customers, and I bet sells her tail in the upstairs rooms—”
“All right,” I said in a dead man’s voice. “You win. The wife’s name is Pulcheria.”
Metaxas made a choking sound.
Sam said, “I didn’t ask about her name.”
“She’s seventeen years old, and she comes from the Botaniates family,” I went on, “which is one of the important Byzantine families, and only Buddha knows what she’s doing married to Heracles Photis Conrad Sauerabend. And the past has been changed, Sam, because up until a few weeks ago on my now-time basis she was the wife of Leo Ducas and lived in a palace near the imperial palace, and it happened that I was having a love affair with her, and it also happens that until the past got changed she and Leo Ducas were my great-great-multi-great-grandparents, and it seems to have happened that a very stinking coincidence has taken place, which I don’t comprehend the details of at all, except that I’m probably a nonperson now and there’s no such individual as Pulcheria Ducas. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go into a quiet corner and cut my throat.”
“This isn’t happening,” said Sam. “This is all a bad dream.”
57.
But, of course, it wasn’t. It was as real as any other event in this fluid and changeable cosmos.
The three of us drank a great deal of wine, and Sam gave me some of the other details. How he had asked about in the neighborhood concerning Sauerabend/Photis, and had been told that the man had arrived mysteriously from some other part of the country, about the year 1099. How the regulars at his tavern disliked him, but came to the place just to get a view of his beautiful wife. How there was general suspicion that he was engaged in some kind of illegal activity.
“He excused himself,” Sam said, “and told us that he had to go across to Galata to do some marketing. But Kolettis followed him and found that he didn’t go marketing at all. He went into some kind of warehouse on the Galata side, and apparently he disappeared. Kolettis went in after him and couldn’t find him anywhere. He must have time-jumped, Kolettis assumed. Then this Photis reappeared, maybe half an hour later, and took the ferry back into Constantinople.”
“Timecrime,” Metaxas suggested. “He’s engaged in smuggling.”
“That’s what I think,” said Sam. “He’s using the early twelfth century as a base of operations, under this cover identity of Photis, and he’s running artifacts or gold coins or something like that down the line to now-time.”
“How did he get mixed up with the girl, though?” Metaxas asked.
Sam shrugged. “That part isn’t clear yet. But now that we’ve found him, we can trace him back up the line until we find the point of his arrival. And see exactly what he’s been up to.”
I groaned. “How are we ever going to restore the proper sequence of events?”
Metaxas said, “We’ve got to locate the precise moment to which he made his jump out of your tour. Then we station ourselves there, catch him as soon as he materializes, take away that trick timer of his, and bring him back to 1204. That extricates him from the time-flow right where he came in, and puts him back into your 1204 trip where he belongs.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said. “But it isn’t. What about all the changes that have been made in the past? His five years of marriage to Pulcheria Botaniates—”
“Nonevents,” said Sam. “As soon as we whisk Sauerabend from 1099 or whenever back into 1204, his marriage to this Pulcheria is automatically deleted, right? The time-flow resumes its unedited shape, and she marries whoever she was supposed to marry—”
“Leo Ducas,” I said. “My ancestor.”
“Leo Ducas, yes,” Sam went on. “And for everybody in Byzantium, this whole Heracles Photis episode will never have happened. The only ones who’ll know about it are us, because we’re subject to Transit Displacement.”
“What about the artifacts Sauerabend’s been smuggling to now-time?” I asked.
Sam said, “They won’t be there. They won’t ever have been smuggled. And his fences down there won’t have any recollection of having received them, either. The fabric of time will have been restored, and the Patrol won’t be the wiser for it, and—”
“You’re overlooking one little item,” I said.
“Which is?”
“In the course of these shenanigans I generated an extra Jud Elliott. Where does he go?”
“Christ,” Sam said. “I forgot about him!”
58.
I had now been running around 1105 for quite a while, and I figured it was time to get back to 1204 and let my alter ego know something of what was going on. So I made the shunt down the line and got to the inn at quarter past three on that same long night of Conrad Sauerabend’s disappearance from 1204. My other self was slouched gloomily on his bed, studying the ceiling’s heavy beams.
“Well?” he said. “How goes it?”
“Catastrophic. Come out into the hall.”
“What’s happening?”
“Brace yourself,” I said. “We finally tracked Sauerabend down. He shunted to 1099, and took a cover identity as a tavernkeeper. A year later he married Pulcheria.”
I watched my other self crumble.
“The past has been changed,” I went on. “Leo Ducas married somebody else, Euprepia something, and has two and a half children by her. Pulcheria’s a serving wench in Sauerabend’s tavern. I saw her there. She didn’t know who I was, but she offered to screw me for two bezants. Sauerabend is smuggling goods down the line, and—”
“Don’t tell me any more,” he said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“I haven’t told you the good part yet.”
“There’s a good part?”
“The good part is that we’re going to unhappen all of this. Sam and Metaxas and you are going to trace Sauerabend back from 1105 to the moment of his arrival in 1099, and unarrive him, and shunt him back here into this evening. Thus canceling the whole episode.”
“What happens to us?” my other self asked.
“We discussed that, more or less,” I said vaguely. “We aren’t sure. Apparently we’re both protected by Transit Displacement, so that we’ll continue to exist even if we get Sauerabend back into his proper time flow.”
“But where did we come from? There can’t be creation of something out of nothing! Conservation of mass—”
“One of us was here all along,” I reminded him. “As a matter of fact, I was here all along. I brought you into being by looping back fifty-six seconds into your time-flow.”
“Balls,” he said. “I was in that time-flow all along, doing what I was supposed to do. You came looping in out of nowhere. You’re the goddam paradox, buster.”