Borrowed Time (7 page)

I grinned reassuringly. “Because they’re people, because they can try, and because people do things regardless of whether they’re right or smart. As to inevitability, we don’t know that. You hired me, I stopped the other guys.”

“But what if I hadn’t hired you and no one had stopped them? Wouldn’t our present still remain the same if you’re right? Wouldn’t someone else have ensured the North still won?”

“I don’t know. Is that a risk you’d care to take?” The client stared, then nodded and left. I leaned back for a while, remembering people and places long gone to dust, then started reviewing a file on Victorian England. Something told me I might need that information someday.

Author's Note on
Working on Borrowed Time

Another story featuring my hero from
Small Moments
and
Circle
. Now he has to deal with a big change that could alter history in major ways. That change involves something which did occur in history and left a very big mark at the time. The Tunguska Event in 1908 was a mysterious airburst in an unpopulated region of Siberia. The exact strength of the burst is now estimated at being equivalent to ten to fifteen megatons of TNT, or equal to a nuclear weapon one thousand times as powerful as that which was dropped on Hiroshima. I have often wondered that it struck on practically the only spot on Earth where such an explosion would directly or indirectly cause no loss of human life. What a lucky coincidence, because if it had landed on a city . . . It’s a big job, but fortunately, our hero finds an ally.

Working on Borrowed Time

The Here and Now which I call home has a number of advantages compared to most earlier There and Thens, one of which is air conditioning. I was still wiping sweat from my forehead and contemplating the fairly recent dust of now-ancient Egypt on my sandals when Jeannie interrupted my work. “You have a call from Mr. Farrow.”

I automatically looked up, even though my implanted Assistant couldn’t be seen, and fastened an annoyed glare on the nearest wall. “Tell him I just got home and ask him to call me back in a few hours.”

“He says it’s very urgent.”

I smothered an exasperated reply. Whenever I got together with other Temporal Interventionists we usually ended discussing one of the still-unsolved mysteries of the universe; why we had access to all of human history but always seemed not to have any time to spare. “Okay. Put him on.”

An image of Bill Farrow appeared before me, his usually cheerful face looking worried. I started talking before he could. “Look, I’m sure this is really important, but I just got back from dodging homicidal priests through the City of the Dead so I could stop someone from looting a tomb a few millennia before it was supposed to be looted. In other words, I had a really long night last night a long time ago. Can’t this wait?”

Bill frowned. “You guys always talk funny.”

“T.I.’s, you mean? It comes from living in circles. Can this wait?”

“No.”

I smothered another exasperated expression and tried to look halfway accommodating. “What’s up?”

“Tom, we’ve been friends since college, right?”

“Right.”

“Have I ever remembered stuff that wasn’t true?”

I started to give a flippant reply, then thought better of it. “No.” Not more so than anyone else, that is. But I didn’t want to get into Quantum Memory Effect at the moment.

“Then why . . . ” He looked bewildered now. “I was preparing a lecture for my classes, and went to check some of the information, and, and . . . ”

“Something didn’t match?”

“Not at all! How could I have forgotten London, England was destroyed by an asteroid in 1908 Common Era?”

“It was?”

“Yes!”

“Jeannie, please check Bill’s last statement for accuracy.”

Her voice sounded as calm and confident as always. “Historical data bases all agree that London, England was destroyed in 1908 CE. I am unable to check the accuracy of Mr. Farrow’s alleged forgetfulness.”

“Thanks.” I shook my head. “That’s not what I remember, either, Bill.”

Bill spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “But that’s what happened! Every history I’ve consulted says so. How could we misremember something like that? How could
I
misremember it? Imperial England is my specialty.”

I rubbed my forehead to fight off the first twinges of a headache. It looked like this conversation would take a while whether I wanted it to or not. “Have you ever heard of Quantum Memory Effect?”

“Uh, no.”

“Human brains work partly on a quantum level. That’s how we accomplish creative work, and it’s why our minds can accept apparent multiple realities simultaneously. You know, like fiction. But it also has an effect when there’s been a temporal intervention that causes changes to ripple up through history. Thanks to QME you remember something being a certain way, and it’s not, even though you’re positive you couldn’t be mistaken. That’s because part of you is still remembering a reality which has been altered, a reality which no longer actually happened. Usually, it’s just something small and insignificant. But if a really big change happens downtime it can cause really big changes uptime.”

Bill didn’t look reassured. “But your assistant -.”

“Jeannie, and every other artificial intelligence, doesn’t work the same way as our brains do. Not yet. They can only accept one reality at a time, even though they can shuffle through alternatives very quickly.”

“You’re saying London
wasn’t
destroyed in Victorian times?”

“Well, no. I mean, it obviously was. But it apparently wasn’t before. Maybe. Now it was.”

“I don’t understand. You’re talking in circles again.”

Despite everything, I laughed briefly. “Because that’s how I have to think.
You
can think in linear terms of before and after. But I have to deal with causality loops brought into existence when someone uptime goes downtime and changes something. The cause of the action takes place after the action, you see. It’s a causality loop through time, not a straight line.”

Bill didn’t look reassured, then he looked puzzled. “What does that all mean? Look, what’re we arguing about, anyway?”

“You wanted me to explain why you didn’t remember London being destroyed.”

“London? You mean the 1908 CE event? Of course I remember that. I wrote my thesis on it.”

I looked away for a moment, startled by the rapid overwhelming of the QME. When I looked back, Bill’s image was gone. “Jeannie, did Mr. Farrow terminate that call or did something else happen?”

“I require further information to answer your question.”

I pointed, unnecessarily, at the spot where the image had been. “Mr. William Farrow. The call he made to me just now. How did it terminate?”

“You were not engaged in a call. Your last call was made seven minutes ago to notify your employers of your successful completion of your mission.”

“I see.” Or, at least, I was afraid I did. “Please put through a call to Mr. Farrow.”

“I have no data for a Mr. Farrow in your personal contact file. Please provide more identifying information.”

I stared at the spot where Bill’s image had been, rubbing my chin this time. He wasn’t there anymore, and he wasn’t in the contact list I maintained for friends. Someone had made an Intervention downtime, something which might’ve made William Farrow disappear completely from existence, like that man who’d famously walked around the horses, or maybe he’d just shifted to a new reality where he and I weren’t friends. I don’t like Interventions that mess with my friends. “Jeannie, how many names are in my personal contact file?”

“Eighty six.”

There should’ve been an even one hundred, a number I’d stuck to so I could keep the file from bloating into uselessness. I was certain of that, even though doubt nagged at me in a way I recognized. “Confirm. Eighty six?”

“No. Eighty five.”

Damn. I’d lost another in that second of time. It’d been a big Intervention, then. Not just ripples causing localized effects that dampened out as they ran up through the inertia of history, but a big wave crashing through time and rearranging what had been. Big wave. Big Intervention. London, 1908.

And I had to assume I was just experiencing the front of that wave. As a T.I., I’d developed some extra resistance to changes working their way through time. No one knows for sure why that is, but even with that resistance if I was still here when the crest hit . . . maybe I’d change enough not to remember what had been, either. I didn’t know what that new reality would be like, but I had a feeling anyone willing to destroy a city to bring it about wasn’t interested in building a better tomorrow in any way I’d approve of.

“Jeannie, I need to do a jump.”

“Your credit reflects payment for your Intervention in Egypt.”

For what that was worth. Museums hated losing objects from their collections but couldn’t budget much to get them back, especially since they often couldn’t prove they’d ever had them. Also unfortunately, T.I.’s are prohibited from soliciting work, even in what I assumed was a good cause. “Will my current credit line cover a jump downtime to 1908 CE?”

“Yes. It will be close to maximized, however. I am required to counsel against making a jump on borrowed funds with no specific client.”

“Thank you. Counsel noted.” I glanced around the room, noticing a blank space where I was sure a picture ought to be. A picture of what? The memory was already blurring. “When exactly was London destroyed? And what does history say did it?”

“Old London was destroyed just before dawn on 30 June, 1908 CE by an atmospheric explosion attributed to a meteor impact with the Earth.”

A meteor? There must be another explanation, even though I now had memories of a New London crowding into my head. I waited a very long second while Jeannie set up the jump.

“The period immediately prior to the destruction is inaccessible,” she reported.

“Inaccessible? How can it be inaccessible?”

“I cannot determine the reason. I can jump you in four months prior.”

Too long. “That’s the closest you can get?”

Another long second passed. “I can access 28 June, 1908. There’s a very narrow window available.”

I needed to change out of my outfit and get into clothes at least halfway appropriate for the period. “How long can you hold that window?”

“I do not know. It appeared on my third access scan and may disappear just as quickly.”

“Then let’s go. Right now.” A moment later, I dodged into an alley while the locals were still trying to figure out if they’d really seen a man dressed like an ancient Egyptian court functionary standing in the middle of a street in very early twentieth century London.

“Jeannie, I’d appreciate suggestions on how to get Here and Now clothing.”

“You should acquire such clothing prior to a jump.”

“You’re supposed to tell me things I don’t already know.” I spent a moment becoming aware of my surroundings. Something scuttled through a pile of trash not far from me. The tang of horse manure and assorted less pleasant scents filled the air. Downtime cities stink. Downtime people usually do, too. I coughed, glancing up at the soot-laden sky. “They burn coal for heat Here and Now, don’t they?”

“Yes. I can describe the effects of the coal burning residues on health if you desire.”

“No, thanks.”

The sky seemed darker than it should be, though, even through the smog. I got a glance of a sunbeam spearing through the sky and realized the sun was setting. Jeannie’s narrow window must have been late in the day, leaving me that much less time to discover what had destroyed London and whether I could stop it.

I studied the nearest pile of trash, kicked it a few times, waited for various unseen somethings to scurry out of it, then reached down and pulled out a broken wooden chair leg about the length of my forearm. Then I waited for the sky to get darker.

As I’d expected, the street lighting of the period wasn’t up to the task. It never is. I reached out through the gloom, grabbed a passing stranger who seemed about my size, yanked him into the alley, then menaced him with my club. A few minutes later, my victim was trussed up in strips torn from my Egyptian get-up, and I was wearing somewhat ill-fitting but appropriate clothing and striding rapidly down the street. As rapidly, that is, as my Here and Now footwear permitted. My feet, accustomed most recently to sandals, sent out pain messages with almost every step in the heavy, stiff shoes I’d appropriated. Just my luck that in this Here and Now feet were supposed to accommodate themselves to shoes rather than the other way around.

When I’d put a good deal of distance between me and my mugging victim, I found a bench and sat down to think. I was here. The day after tomorrow, something really bad was going to happen to London. I needed a lead. Fortunately, whoever was carrying out this Intervention had to have left footprints of some kind. All I had to do was spot those footprints within less than two days in a very large and primitive city. I watched the foot and vehicle traffic going by, coughed some more, and wished I had more time to work with and more ideas.

A boy’s voice was yelling out something. I looked that way, and saw he was selling newspapers. I slapped my forehead, drawing an alarmed look from a passerby. Maybe it was some lingering effect of the Intervention wave, but I’d failed to immediately focus on the obvious and best search method.

My new clothes proved to have some coins in one pocket, with which I purchased copies of every newspaper I could find being sold. Then I returned to the bench, opened the first newspaper to its personal advertisements, and started reading. Hours later, the street lights were turned down and passing police officers began giving me long looks, so I found a hotel cheap enough to pay for with my ill-gotten gains but not cheap enough to run too high a risk of picking up parasites. Soon after that I fell asleep despite my best intentions, waking only after the sun was well up the next morning.