Bearing an Hourglass (46 page)

“Yeah, I guess it’s hell on romance; when you’re coming, she’s going.”

Aptly if unkindly put! “I think I need your advice, if you have the time.”

Mars squinted at the tanks and dragons. “
You
have the time, no pun; you can freeze the world and leave just the two of us to talk. But this is a minor and inconclusive operation. Pointless, really—but where there’s battle, I have to supervise. You know how it is. Spill the beans.”

“Uh, yes.” And Norton, somewhat haltingly, explained the situation. “So Luna thought you might have a better insight, since this is a war with Satan,” he concluded.

Mars nodded. “I have fought Satan myself, and I fear his deviousness prevailed. I am well aware how formidable an opponent he is. I can’t tell you how to reverse what he has done, for this is not my MOS, but—”

“MOS?”

“Military-Occupation-Specialty. But I can suggest broad principles of battle strategy that may apply.”

Norton had hoped for something more specific, but took this in stride. “Maybe that will help.”

“First you have to analyze the patterns of strength—yours and the enemy’s. That way you can arrange to attack his weak flank with your strongest force. Force is vitally important and must be understood in detail.”

“Force,” Norton agreed without much enthusiasm.

“Force,” Mars repeated emphatically. He gestured toward the indecisive battle. “See how those fools are opposing force with similar force? They’re slaughtering each other and destroying equipment and animals pointlessly. If either side had approached the issue with proper professionalism—” He shook his head sadly. “I hate to see things bungled by amateurs. War is too important for bungling! Now you—you are up against a real professional, the ultimate Master of Deceit, who has already won the battle. It is your task to reverse the outcome after the fact—and that is a considerable challenge.”

“Amen!” Norton agreed.

“But you are by no means powerless. You must use what you have—and you have the single most potent tool that exists.”

“But—”

“You doubt? Watch.” Suddenly a monstrous sword was in Mars’ hand. He swung it at Norton. Norton, without thinking, blocked it with the Hourglass.

The blade rebounded. Undismayed, Mars put it away. “To others, your instrument is without substance, but my Sword represents the essence of war and can not be blunted or avoided. Therefore the two instruments meet and balk each other; neither can hurt the other. Force against force, pointlessly. But, properly applied, my Sword is matchless—as
is your Hourglass. Not even Satan can stand against these tools, or against the Scythe of Thanatos or the Threads of Fate or the Will of Gaea—if they attack his weaknesses. Only by guile did he nullify my effort to balk his plot to assume political power on Earth, and only by guile did he foil you.”

“True. But—”

“You talk too much, Chronos,” Mars said with a smile. He produced a clipboard and pen and began marking the sheet of paper. “Now, we know there are only five intrinsic forces in our reality. Let’s list them in nominal order of strength.” He printed:
NUCLEAR STRONG, ELECTROMAGNETIC, NUCLEAR WEAK, GRAVITY, MAGIC
. “If you set the first at unity for convenience, or 10°, the others are 10
⁻³
, 10
⁻⁵
, 10
⁻³⁸
, and 10
⁻⁴¹
.”

“Now, wait!” Norton protested. “The whole universe is dominated by gravity; it is the single most compelling factor in the evolution of matter! How can it be rated so weak in comparison with the others? And magic—”

Mars smiled, as if a feint had been effective. “That does seem odd, doesn’t it! But sometimes the last shall be first, and the meek do inherit the Earth. Range is the key. The strong nuclear force has a range of about the diameter of a neutron. If another neutron were just one millimeter distant, it would never feel that force, any more than your Hourglass would feel the impact of my Sword if it were just out of range of my swing. That force binds our most basic substance together, and is indeed essential to the integrity of matter, but on our macroscopic scale we don’t even feel it. The weak nuclear force is even more limited, having a range only one-hundredth as far. Yet the disruption of these forces leads to nuclear explosions or lethal radiation. They are potent in their proper applications. Electromagnetic force falls in between the strong and the weak nuclear forces in power—but its range is infinite, so we can experience it on our scale. Indeed, we use it for our vision, radio, electricity, magnetism—our civilization would collapse without it.”

He gestured toward the ongoing battle. “The motors
of those tanks utilize magnetism for their power, for example. But it has one critical limitation: it acts
as a force
only on charged particles. The most potent magnetic field has no direct effect on wood or human flesh. So magnetism is limited though infinite. Gravity, in contrast, not only has infinite range, it is accumulative and acts on all matter. So, despite its low rating—and 10
⁻³⁸
is almost unimaginably small—on the scale of the universe it becomes the overwhelming force, as you pointed out. The last has become first, because of its nature. Of course the ratings are distorted; if the significance of range was factored in, gravity would be the strongest, if most diffuse, force.”

“Yes, I have seen it in action,” Norton replied, thinking of the black holes and the way they governed the universes. What was a black hole but a gravity sink? “So its effective force—”

“Effective force,” Mars repeated. “There is another key concept. Think of a tiger and a million ants. The tiger has much more force than any ant, or any hundred or thousand ants. But the tiny force of the ants is accumulative and cooperative; together they swarm over the tiger and destroy him, as gravity swarms over the universe.
Effective
force—you must retain that concept, for it certainly counts most in battle.”

“Um, yes, I suppose.” Norton was not entirely satisfied with this argument, since it seemed that his Hourglass was the tiger and the minions of Satan were the million ants. “But then magic—”

“A thousand times as feeble as gravity! So weak that for a time scientists doubted its existence!” Mars chuckled, as if it were a great joke. “Can you imagine that? Not believing in magic, simply because you can’t detect it in a single molecule? It’s pretty hard to detect gravity in a single molecule, too, but they never doubted gravity! The magic in the molecule is overwhelmed by the gravity there; that doesn’t mean the magic doesn’t exist. But magic has a range of about 10
⁷
meters, or about the diameter of Earth. So we can experience it quite conveniently on our
scale, without noting any effect on the larger universe. It’s like the strong nuclear force, acting only on the neutron touching it; but since all of us are touching Earth, we’re in its range. It is true it is weak in absolute terms, but not only is it accumulative, it is focusable, so that the magic inherent in a cubic kilometer of the planet can be brought to bear in concentrated form at a microscopically small point. Think of it as sunlight being focused by a magnifying glass, able to burn holes in solid wood. Thus its malleability causes magic to become, when properly applied, a force more potent than even the strongest of the other forces. The right magic, concentrated 10
⁴²
times, can separate the nucleus of an atom nonexplosively, which accounts for the transmutation of lead into gold; or it can interfere with the internal workings of a small black hole.” Mars paused to waggle his finger in mock warning. “Now don’t you try it with a
large
black hole! Anywhere the magicons can reach—”

“Don’t you mean ‘magicians’?” Norton asked.

“I do not. The strong nuclear force is carried by gluons, the weak by intermediate vector bosons of several varieties, the electromagnetic by photons, gravity by gravitons, and magic by magicons. Of course, all these basic forces are united by the Reunified Field Theorem—”

“You’re getting too technical for me,” Norton protested. “I never did understand nuclear physics very well.”

“Certainly. My business is force, so I understand forces; your business is time, so you understand aspects of time that would baffle me. It is enough for you to accept that, for you, time
is
force. Your Hourglass focuses magic more potently than does any other instrument. The Hourglass has the power to balk Satan—if you use it properly.”

“That’s good to know! But how should I use it?”

Mars spread his hands. “That I can not tell you, for time is not my specialty. I can only assure you that the potential is there. My force analysis makes this quite clear.” He showed Norton the paper, now filled out with a neat chart of the five intrinsic forces with their strengths, ranges, and carrier particles. “Take this with you; maybe it will help your strategy of battle.”

“Uh, thank you,” Norton said, uncertain about that.

“Remember, Chronos: fight, never give in, and you shall win. You have the instrument Satan can not overcome. He is Goliath; you are David.”

“I’ll try,” Norton agreed weakly and moved out. If he had to bet on a return match, he would bet on Goliath.

He went back to his mansion in Purgatory, deeply troubled. Mars had expressed confidence in him—but was it justified? It hardly mattered how powerful the Hourglass was or how vulnerable Satan might be—if he did not know how to apply his force to Satan’s weakness, what good was it?

When he entered, the butler informed him that he had a caller. No rest for the weary! It was Satan, the last entity he wanted to see at the moment. “Get out, Beelzebub!” he snapped.

“Now, don’t be that way, My dear associate,” Satan said graciously. “I have glimpsed an alternate reality in which we had a very stimulating encounter. Now it is over, and there need be no hard feelings. I am really not a bad fellow, when you give Me a chance. For example, there is lagniappe for you.” He gestured to the television set, and it came on, showing a woman with a healthy baby.

Norton stared. The woman was Orlene! Alive and well!

“In this reality, she survives,” Satan said. “Gaea was more alert and refused to do the favor for the foolish ghost. Her baby is not flawed, favors you, and will live to inherit the estate. You may readily verify this for yourself. Go to her, Chronos; she loves you.”

With that, Satan opened his suit jacket, revealing emptiness inside. The emptiness expanded as he drew the lapels back around him, until only his two hands holding the lapel remained; then they, too, disappeared, and he was gone.

Orlene! After Norton had given her up for lost—to have her back! To have joy return to his life!

Then he wondered whether it was right. It was true that he loved her, she loved him, and their baby had a
fine future awaiting him. But Satan was actually proffering a bribe—settle for this reality and have this reward. At what cost? If he went along with it, he would be acquiescing in Satan’s victory on Earth. In fact, because he, Chronos, had unwittingly enabled Satan to bring about this reality, he had become one of the agents of the Prince of Evil.

He watched Orlene’s image on the screen as she cooed to her baby. How he wanted her and wanted her to be alive and happy! But could he accept these things—as payment for facilitating evil?

He stood, and slowly his vision blurred; an intangible yet terrible weight settled upon him. “Forgive me, Orlene,” he whispered. “I can not.”

The television snapped off. She was gone, in every sense. Norton stared at the blank screen, feeling a wash of grief for what might have been. He had thought he was over Orlene; now he knew he would never be over her. Yet he had denied her. He would have to live out his life with the knowledge that he could have saved her—and had not. He had condemned her back to agony and death. What price, conscience?

That was assuming he found a way to reverse what Satan had done. Did he really want to do that now? Knowing what was right was not the same as completely desiring it. But even if he found no way, and this present reality stood, he would always know that he had in the end rejected the woman he loved. She had not, in the final analysis, been the most important thing in his life. He had chosen principle instead.

Principle tasted like ashes.

Satan had found a fiendish way to torture him, by showing him Orlene! Satan certainly knew how to exploit a person’s weakness.

Then he had another thought—why had Satan bothered? Surely the Prince of Evil had worse things to do than torment a defeated foe. Satan had a world to organize, preparing for his final victory on Earth just a few years hence. It did not make sense for him to trouble himself with trifles.

Unless he was not teasing Norton, Suppose the bribe was real—that it had definite justification, by Satan’s logic? That it was necessary to change the outcome of a battle that was not yet quite over? This suggested that Chronos could indeed reverse what Satan had done, and Satan knew it. So Satan was trying to sap Norton’s will to fight.

Mars had told him to keep fighting and never give up. Mars had believed Chronos could win, because of the supreme potency of the magical force he controlled. Was Mars a fool? Surely not about battle!

Norton brought out the chart Mars had made. There was magic, the weakest of the intrinsic forces, yet the strongest when properly utilized. Here was the Hourglass, capable of utilizing magic most properly. Satan was Goliath, seemingly all-powerful; Norton was David, with only one weapon. But it was the one weapon that could do the job.

It seemed that Goliath knew of his own vulnerability, so he had tried to bribe David not to use his weapon. “Here, David, you’re a plucky lad—let me give you this beautiful woman Delilah for that little sling of yours.” No, Delilah was from another legend, and Orlene was no temptress. Still, it fitted. Satan wanted him to quit. Therefore he should fight on. His enemy had confirmed his power.

Now another thing occurred to him. He could not have Orlene anyway, for the same reasons as before; he lived backward and, if he reversed himself to join her, he would soon come up against the date of his acquisition of the office of Chronos and have to leave her. So Satan’s offer was largely illusion, anyway.