The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (47 page)

“No, no, Richard! Neither. By my time, subjective, it’s over two years.” Hazel added, to the others, “It’s all still new to Richard. He was recruited, his subjective time, just last week.”

“But I wasn’t recruited,” I objected. “That’s why we’re here.”

“We’ll see, dear. Uncle Jock, that reminds me—I want to tell you something and I must bend the Code a bit to do so. That doesn’t worry me; I’m a Loonie and never obey laws I don’t like. But are you really so regulation that you won’t listen to ‘coming attractions’ talk?”

“Well—” Uncle Jock said slowly. Aunt Til snickered. Uncle Jock turned to her and said, “Woman, what are you laughing at?”

“Me? I wasn’t laughing.”

“Mmrrph. Major Sadie, my responsibilities and duties require a certain latitude in interpreting the Code. Is this something I need to know?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

“That’s your official opinion?”

“Well, if you put it that way—”

“Never mind. Perhaps you had better tell me and let me be the judge.”

“Yes, sir. On Saturday the fifth of July eleven years forward, 2188, THQ will transfer to New Harbor on time line five. You will go along. All your household, I think.”

Uncle Jock nodded. “That is exactly the sort of loop-derived information the Code is designed to suppress. Because it can so easily create positive feedback and result in heterodyning and possible panic. But I can take it calmly and make good use of it. Uh…may I ask why the move? As it seems unlikely that I would go along—and surely not my household. This is a working farm, no matter what it conceals.”

I interrupted. “Uncle, I’m not bound by any silly code. Those West Coast hotheads finally quit talking and seceded.”

His eyebrows shot up. “No—Really? I didn’t think they would ever get off the pot.”

“They did. May Day ’88. By the day Hazel and I were here, Saturday July the fifth, the Angeleno Phalanges had just captured Des Moines. Bombs were dropping all around here. You may think—today—that you wouldn’t pull out. But I know that you were about to do so then; I was there. Will be there. Ask Dr. Hubert-Lazarus Long.
He
thought this place was too dangerous to hang around any longer. Ask him.”

“Colonel Campbell!”

I knew that voice; I turned and said, “Hi, Lazarus.”

“That sort of talk is strictly forbidden. Understand me?”

I took a deep breath, then said to Hazel, “He’ll never learn”—then to Lazarus, “Doc, you’ve been trying to make me stand at attention ever since we first met. It won’t work. Can’t you get that through your head?”

Somewhere, somewhen, Lazarus Long had had some sort of formal training in emotional control. I could now see him calling on it to help him. It took him about three seconds to invoke whatever it was he used, then he spoke quietly, in a lower register:

“Let me try to explain. Such talk is dangerous to the person you talk to. Making predictions, I mean, from knowledge gained from a loop. It is an observed fact that, again and again, it turns out to be a disservice to the person you inform when you tell him something in his future that you have learned in your past.

“As to why this is true, I suggest that you consult one of the mathematicians who deal with time—Dr. Jacob Burroughs, or Dr. Elizabeth Long, or anyone from the Corps’ staff of mathematicians. And you should consult the council of historians for examples of the harm it does. Or you could look it up in our headquarters library—file ‘Cassandra’ and file ‘Ides of March,’ for starters, then see file ‘Nostradamus.’”

Long turned to Uncle Jock. “Jock, I’m sorry about this. I pray that you will not let the troubles of ’88 make your household gloomy during the forward years till then. I never planned to bring your nephew here not yet trained in the disciplines of Time—I never planned to bring your nephew here at all. We do need him, but we expected to recruit him at Boondock with no need to bring him to Headquarters. But he refused to enlist. Do you want to try to change his mind?”

“I’m not sure I have any influence over him, Lafe. How about it, Dickie? Want to hear what a good deal a career in the Time Corps can be? You could say that the Time Corps supported you throughout your childhood—you could say it because it’s true. The sheriff was about to auction this farm right out from under us…when I joined up. You were just a tad…but you may remember a time we ate corn bread and not much else. Then things got better and stayed better—do you remember? You were about six.”

I had some long thoughts. “Yes, I remember. I think I do. Uncle, I’m not against joining. You’re in it, my wife is in it, several of my friends are in it. But Lazarus has been trying to sell me a pig in a poke. I’ve got to know what it is they want me to do and why they want me to do it. They say they want me for a job with the chances only fifty-fifty that I get out of it alive. With those odds there is no point in talking about retirement benefits. I don’t want some chairwarmer in Headquarters being that casual about my neck. I must know that it makes sense before I’ll accept those odds.”

“Lafe, just what is this job you have for my boy?”

“It’s Task Adam Selene in Operation Galactic Overlord.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“And now you should forget it, as you don’t figure into it and it has not been mounted as of this year.”

“That makes it difficult for me to advise my nephew. Shouldn’t I be briefed?”

Hazel intervened. “Lazarus! Knock it off!”

“Major, I’m discussing official business with the THQ stationkeeper.”

“Pig whistle! You are again trying to chivvy Richard into risking his life without his knowing why. When I agreed to try to do so, I had not yet met Richard. Now that I know him—and admire him; he is
sans peur et sans reproche
—I’m ashamed that I ever tried. But I did try…and almost succeeded. But you barreled your way in…and mucked it up, as was predictable. I told you then that the Circle would have to convince him, I told you! Now you are trying to get Richard’s closest relative—his father in all that counts—to pressure him in your place. Shame on you! Take Richard to the Circle. Let
them
explain it…or let him go home! Quit stalling! Do it!”

What I had always thought of as a closet in Uncle’s den turned out to look like an elevator inside. Lazarus Long and I went into it together; he closed the door and I saw that, where an elevator usually has floor numbers with touchplates for each number, there was a display of lighted symbols—signs of the Zodiac I thought, then changed my mind, as there is no bat in the Zodiac, no black widow spider, certainly no stegosaurus.

At the bottom, by itself, was a snake eating its own tail—the world snake, Ouroboros. A disgusting symbol at best.

Lazarus placed his hand over it.

The closet, or elevator cage, or small room, changed. How, I am not certain. It simply blinked and was different. “Through here,” Lazarus said, and opened a door on the far side.

Stretching from that door was a long corridor that would never fit inside my uncle’s house. But views I could see through windows that lined that long passageway did not fit his farm, either. The land looked like Iowa, yes—but Iowa untouched by the plow, never cleared for farming.

We stepped into this passage and were at once at its far end. “Through there,” Lazarus said, pointing.

An archway melted out of a stone wall. The passage beyond it was gloomy. I looked around to speak to Lazarus; he was gone.

I said to myself, Lazarus, I told you not to play games with me…and turned around to go back down the long passage, back through Uncle Jock’s den, find Hazel and leave. I had had it, fed up with his games.

There was no passage behind me.

I promised Lazarus a clop in the head and followed the only available route. It remained gloomy but always with a light a little farther ahead. Shortly, five minutes or less, it ended in a small, comfortable lounge, well-lighted from nowhere. A brassy uninflected voice said, “Please sit down. You will be called.”

I sat down in an easy chair and laid my cane aside. A small table by it held magazines and a newspaper. I glanced at each one, looking for anachronisms, but found none. The periodicals were all ones that I recalled as available in Iowa in the seventies; they carried dates of July 2177 or earlier. The newspaper was the
Grinnell Herald-Register
, dated Friday, June 27, 2177.

I started to put it down, as the
Herald-Register
is not exactly exciting. Uncle subscribed to a daily printout from Des Moines and, of course, the
Kansas City Star
, but our local paper was good only for campus notes, local notices, and the sort of “news” and “society” items that are published to display as many local names as possible.

But an ad caught my eye: On Sunday, July twentieth, one night only, at Des Moines Municipal Opera House, the Halifax Ballet Theater will present
Midsummer Night’s Dream
, with the sensational new star Luanna Pauline as Titania.

I read it twice…and promised myself that I would take Hazel to see it. It would be a special anniversary: I had met Mistress Gwendolyn Novak at Golden Rule’s Day One Ball, Neil Armstrong Day, July twentieth a year ago (never mind that silly time loop) and this would make a delightful reprise of the gala eve of our wedding day (without, this time, some unmannerly oaf crashing our party and dying at our table).

Would a one-gravity performance be disappointing after having seen the Queen of Fairies cutting didoes high in the air? No, this was a sentimental journey; it would not matter. Besides, Luanna Pauline had made (would make, will make) her reputation dancing in one gravity—it would be a fascinating contrast. We could go backstage and tell her that we saw her dance Titan at one-third gravity in the Circus Room of Golden Rule. Oh, certainly—when Golden Rule does not yet exist for another three years! I began to understand why the Code had limitations on loose talk.

Never mind. On Neil Armstrong Day I would gift my beautiful bride with this sentimental celebration.

While I was looking at the
Herald-Register
, an abstract design on the wall changed to a motto in glowing letters:

A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion

While I watched, it changed to:

A Paradox Can Be Paradoctored

Then:

The Early Worm Has a Death Wish

Followed by:

Don’t Try Too Hard; You Might Succeed

I was trying to figure out that last one when it suddenly changed to “Why Are You Staring at a Blank Wall?”—and it was a blank wall. Then on it appeared, large, the World Snake, and, inside the circle it made by its nauseating way of eating, letters were chasing themselves. Then they leveled out into a straight line:

Making Order Out of Chaos

Then under that:

THE
CIRCLE
OF
OUROBOROS

This was displaced by another archway; that brassy voice said: “Please enter.”

I grabbed my cane and went through the archway and found myself translated to the exact center of a large circular room. There is such a thing as too much service.

There were a dozen-odd people seated around the room on a dais about a meter high—a theater in the round, with me in the leading role…in the sense in which an insect pinned to the stage of a microscope is the star of the show. That brassy voice said, “State your full name.”

“Richard Colin Ames Campbell. What is this? A trial?”

“Yes, in one sense.”

“You can adjourn court right now; I’m not having any. If anyone is on trial, it is all of
you
—as I want nothing from you but you seem to want something from me. It is up to
you
to convince
me
, not the other way around. Keep that clear in your mind.”

I turned slowly around, looking over my “judges.” I found a friendly face, Hilda Burroughs, and felt enormously better. She threw me a kiss; I caught it and ate it. But I was enormously surprised, too. I would expect to find this tiny beauty at any gathering requiring elegance and grace…but not as a member of a group that had been represented to me as being the most powerful council in all history and any universe.

Then I recognized another face: Lazarus. He nodded; I returned his nod. He said, “Please don’t be impatient. Colonel. Allow protocol to proceed.”

I said, “Protocol is either useful or it should be abolished. I am standing and all of you are seated. That is protocol establishing dominance. And you can stuff it! If I don’t have a chair in ten seconds I am leaving.
Your
chair will do.”

That invisible robot with the brassy voice placed an upholstered easy chair back of my knees so fast that I had no excuse to leave. I sank back into it and put my cane across my knees. “Comfortable?” Lazarus inquired.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good. The next item is protocol, too—introductions. I do not think you will find it objectionable.”

The brassy voice started in again, naming members—“Companions”—of the Circle of Ouroboros, governing body of the omniversal Time Corps. Each time one was named, my chair faced that companion. But I felt no movement.

“Master Mobyas Toras, for Barsoom, time line one, coded ‘John Carter.’”

“Barsoom”? Poppycock! But I found myself standing up and bowing in answer to a gentle smile and a gesture suggesting a blessing. He was ancient, and hardly more than skin and bones. He wore a sword but I felt sure that he had not wielded one in generations. He was huddled in a heavy silk wrap much like that worn by Buddhist priests. His skin was polished mahogany, more strongly red than any North American “redskin”—in short he looked exactly like the fictional descriptions in the tales of Barsoom…a result easy to achieve with makeup, a couple of meters of cloth, and a prop sword.

So why did I stand up? (Because Aunt Abby had striped my calves for any failure whatever in politeness to my elders?

Nonsense. I knew that he was authentic when I laid eyes on him. That my conviction was preposterous did not alter it.)

“Her Wisdom Star, Arbiter of the Ninety Universes, composite time lines, code ‘Cyrano.’”

Her Wisdom smiled at me and I wiggled like a puppy. I’m no judge of wisdom but I am certain that males with high blood pressure and any history of cardiac problems or T.I.A. should not be too close to her. Star, Mrs. Gordon, is as tall or taller than I, weighs more and all of it muscle but her breasts and that slight layer that smooths female body lines. She was wearing too little for Poweshiek County, quite a lot for Boondock.