Engineering Infinity (36 page)

Manson and Bundy were small-scale
murderers, compared with Hitler, Mao, and others of this slaughterhouse
century. But the serial killers Warren could reach and escape undetected. Also,
he loathed them with a special rage.

He hiked across a field of
enormous boulders in the semi-night of city glow, heading north. Two days ahead
in this future, on July 1, 1969, Manson would shoot a black drug dealer named “Lotsapoppa”
Crowe at a Hollywood apartment. He would retreat to the rambling farm buildings
Warren could make out ahead, the Spahn Ranch in Topanga Canyon. Manson would
then turn Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, with night patrols of armed
guards. Now was the last possible moment to end this gathering catastrophe,
silence its cultural impact, save its many victims.

Warren approached cautiously,
using the rugged rocks as cover. He studied the ramshackle buildings, windows
showing pale lighting. His background said this was no longer a functioning
ranch, but instead a set for moving pictures. He wondered why anyone would
bother making such dramas on location, when computer graphics were much
simpler; or was this time so far back that that technology did not exist? The
past was a mysterious, unknowingly wealthy land.

Near the wooden barns and stables
ahead, a bonfire licked at the sky. Warren moved to his right, going uphill
behind a rough rock scree to get a better view. Around the fire were a dozen
people sitting, their rapt faces lit in dancing orange firelight, focused on
the one figure who stood, the centre of attention.

Warren eased closer to catch the
voices. Manson’s darting eyes caught the flickering firelight. The circle of
faces seemed like moons orbiting the long-haired man.

Warren felt a tap on his
shoulder. He whirled, the 0.22 coming naturally into his hand. A small woman
held her palms up, shaking her head. Then a finger to her lips,
shhhh.

He hesitated. They were close
enough that a shot might be heard. Warren elected to follow the woman’s hand
signals, settling down into a crouch beside her.

She whispered into his ear, “No
fear. I am here for the same reason.”

Warren said, “What reason? Who
the hell are you?”

“To prevent the Tate murders. I’m
Serafina.” Her blonde hair caught the fire glow.

Warren whispered, “You’re from -”

“From a time well beyond yours.”

“You... side-slipped?”

“Following your lead. Your
innovation.” Her angular features sharpened, eyes alive. “I am here to help you
with your greatest mercy.”

“How did you -”

“You are famous, of course. Some
of us sought to emulate you. To bring mercy to as many timelines as possible.”

“Famous?” Warren had kept all
this secret, except for his - ah, of course, the team. Once he vanished from
his native timeline, they would talk. Perhaps they could track him in his
sideslips; they had incredible skills he would never understand. In all this,
he had never thought of what would happen once he left his timeline, gone
forever.

“You are a legend. The greatest
giver of mercies.” She smiled, extending a slender hand. “It is an honour.”

He managed to take her hand, which
seemed impossibly warm. Which meant that he was chilled, blood rushing to his
centre, where the pain danced.

“I... thank you. Uh, help, you
said? How -”

She raised the silencing finger
again. “Listen.”

They rose a bit on their
haunches, and now Warren heard the strong voice of the standing man. Shaggy,
bearded, arms spread wide, the fierce eyes showed white.

“We are the
soul
of our time, my people. The
family
. We are in truth
a part of the
hole
in the
infinite
.
That is our destiny, our
duty
.” The rolling
cadences, Manson’s voice rising on the high notes, had a strange hypnotic ring.

“The blacks will soon
rise up
.” Manson forked his arms skyward. “Make no mistake
- for the Beatles
themselves
saw this coming. The
White Album
songs say it - in
code
,
my friends. John, Paul, George, Ringo - they directed that album at
our Family itself
, for we are the
elect
.
Disaster
is
coming.”

Warren felt the impact of Manson’s
voice, seductive; he detested it. In that rolling, powerful chant lay the
deaths to come at 10050 Cielo Drive. Sharon Tate, eight and a half months
pregnant. Her friend and former lover Jay Sebring. Abigail Folger, heiress to
the Folger coffee fortune. Others, too, all innocents. Roman Polanski, one of
the great drama makers of this era and Tate’s husband, was in London at work on
a film project or else he would have shared their fate, with others still -

The thought struck him - what if,
in this timeline, Roman Polanski was there at 10050 Cielo Drive? Would he die,
too? If so, Warren’s mission was even more a mercy for this era.

Manson went on, voice resounding
above the flickering flames, hands and eyes working the circle of rapt
acolytes. “We’ll be movin’ soon.
Movin’!
I got a
canary-yellow home in Canoga Park for us, not far from here. A great pad. Our
family will be submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world” - a pause
- “I call it the
Yellow Submarine
!” Gasps, applause
from around the campfire.

Manson went on, telling the “family”
they might have to show blacks how to start “Helter Skelter,” the convulsion
that would destroy the power structure and bring Manson to the fore. The circle
laughed and yelped and applauded, their voices a joyful babble.

He sat back, acid pain leaking
into his mind. In his joggs Warren had seen the direct presence of evil, but
nothing like this monster.

Serafina said, “This will be your
greatest mercy.”

Warren’s head spun. “You came to
make...”

“Make it happen.” She pulled from
the darkness behind her a long, malicious device. An automatic weapon, Warren
saw. Firepower.

“Your 0.22 is not enough. Without
me, you will fail.”

Warren saw now what must occur.
He was not enough against such massed insanity. Slowly he nodded.

She shouldered the long sleek
weapon, clicked off the safety. He rose beside her, legs weak.

“You take the first,” she said.
He nodded and aimed at Manson. The 0.22 was so small and light as he aimed,
while crickets chirped and the bile rose up into his dry throat. He
concentrated and squeezed off the shot.

The sharp splat didn’t have any
effect. Warren had missed. Manson turned toward them -

The hammering of her automatic
slammed in his ears as he aimed his paltry 0.22 and picked off the fleeing
targets.
Pop! Pop!

He was thrilled to hit three of
them - shadows going down in the firelight. Serafina raged at them, changing
clips and yelling. He shouted himself, a high long
ahhhhhh
.
The “family” tried to escape the firelight, but the avenging rounds caught them
and tossed the murderers-to-be like insects into their own bonfire.

Manson had darted away at
Serafina’s first burst. The man ran quickly to Warren’s left and Warren
followed, feet heavy, hands automatically adding rounds to the 0.22 clip. In
the dim light beyond the screams and shots Warren tracked the lurching form,
framed against the distant city glow. Some around the circle had pistols, too,
and they scattered, trying to direct fire against Serafina’s quick, short
bursts.

Warren trotted into the darkness,
feet unsteady, keeping Manson’s silhouette in view. He stumbled over
outcroppings, but kept going despite the sudden lances of agony creeping down
into his legs.

Warren knew he had to save
energy, that Manson could outrun him easily. So he stopped at the crest of a
rise, settled in against a rock and held the puny 0.22 in his right hand, bracing
it with his left. He could see Manson maybe twenty meters away, trotting along,
angling toward the ranch’s barn. He squeezed off a shot. The
pop
was small against the furious gunfire behind him, but
the figure fell. Warren got up and calculated each step as he trudged down the
slope. A shadow rose. Manson was getting up. Warren aimed again and fired and
knew he had missed. Manson turned and Warren heard a barking explosion - as a
sharp slap knocked him backward, tumbling into sharp gravel.

Gasping, he got up against a
massive weight. On his feet, rocky, he slogged forward.
Pock
pock
gunfire from behind was a few sporadic shots, followed immediately
by furious automatic bursts, hammering on and on into the chill night.

Manson was trying to get up. He
lurched on one leg, tried to bring his own gun up again, turned - and Warren
fired three times into him at a few meters range. The man groaned, crazed eyes
looking at Warren and he wheezed out, “Why?” - then toppled.

Warren blinked at the stars straight
overhead and realized he must have fallen. The stars were quite beautiful in
their crystal majesty.

Serafina loomed above him. He
tried to talk but had no breath.

Serafina said softly, “They’re
all gone. Done. Your triumph.”

Acid came up in his throat as he
wheezed out, “What...next...”

Serafina smiled, shook her head. “No
next. You were the first, the innovator. We followed you. There have been many
others, shadowing you closely on nearby space-time lines, arriving at the
murder sites - to savour the reflected glory.”

He managed, “Others. Glory?”

Serafina grimaced. “We could tell
where you went - we all detected entangled correlations, to track your ethical
joggs. Some just followed, witnessed. Some imitated you. They went after lesser
serial killers. Used your same simple, elegant methods - minimum tools and
weapons, quick and seamless.”

Warren blinked. “I thought I was
alone - “

“You were alone. The first. But
the idea spread, later. I come from more than a century after you.”

He had never thought of
imitators. Cultures changed, one era thinking the death penalty was obscene,
another embracing it as a solution. “I tried to get as many -”

“As you could, of course.” She
stroked his arm, soothing the disquiet that flickered across his face, pinching
his mouth. “The number of timelines is only a few hundred - Gupta showed that
in my century - so it’s not a pointless infinity.”

“Back there in Oklahoma -”

“That was Clyde, another jogger.
He made a dumb mistake, got there before you. Clyde was going to study the
aftermath of that. He backed out as soon as he could. He left Clifford for you.”

Warren felt the world lift from
him and now he had no weight. Light, airy. “He nearly got me killed, too.”

Serafina shrugged. “I know; I’ve
been tagging along behind you, with better transflux gear. I come from further
up our shared timestream, see? Still, the continuing drop in
the homicide rate comes at least partly from the work of jogg people, like
me.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “Why
did you come here?”

Serafina simply leaned over and
hugged him. “You failed here. I wanted to change that. Now you’ve accomplished
your goal here - quick mercy for the unknowing victims.”

This puzzled him but of course it
didn’t matter anymore, none of it. Except -

“Manson...”

“He killed you here. But now, in
a different timestream - caused by me appearing - you
got
him.”
Her voice rose happily, eyes bright, teeth flashing in a broad smile.

He tried to take this all in. “Still...”

“It’s all quantum logic, see?”
she said brightly. “So uncertainty applies to time travel. The side-jogg
time traveller affects the time stream he goes to. So then later
side-slipping people, they have to correct for that.”

He shook his head, not really
following.

She said softly, “Thing is, we
think the irony of all this is delicious. In my time, we’re more self
conscious, I guess.”

“What...?”

“An ironic chain, we call it. To
jogg is to act, and be acted upon.” She touched him sympathetically. “You did
kill so many. Justice is still the same.”

She cocked his own gun, holding
it up in the dull sky glow, making sure there was a round in the chamber. She
snapped it closed. “Think of it as a mercy.” She lowered the muzzle at him and
gave him a wonderful smile.

Gwyneth Jones

Gwyneth Jones
was born in Manchester, England and is the author of more than twenty novels
for teenagers, mostly under the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF
novels for adults. She has won two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke
award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula
Society’s Children of the Night award, the Philip K. Dick award, and shared the
first Tiptree award, in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. Her most recent books are
novel
Spirit
and essay collection
Imagination/Space
. Upcoming is new story collection
The Universe of Things
. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son; a
Tonkinese cat called Ginger and her young friend Milo.

If he’d been at home, he’d have
thought,
Dump Plant Injuries
. In the socially unbalanced,
pioneer cities of the Equatorial Ring, little scavengers tangled with the
recycling machinery. They needed premium, Earth-atmosphere-and-pressure nursing
or the flesh would not regenerate - which they didn’t get. The gouges and dents
would be permanent: skinned over, like the scars on her forearms. Visible
through thin clothing, like the depressions in her thighs. But this wasn’t
Mars, and she wasn’t human, she was a Ki. He guessed, uneasily, at a more
horrifying childhood poverty.