The Other Side of Time

Chapter Nine

I came up out of a drugged sleep to see early morning sunshine glowing through curtains at an open window. I had a headache like a cracked anvil. Roosevelt was sitting in a brocaded chair beside the bed, dressed in a fantastic outfit that somehow, on him, looked natural enough: a short, loose coat with a fur collar, tight breeches, slippers with jeweled pompons, a big gold chain across his chest, and jewels everywhere, stitched to his sleeves, sparkling in finger rings.

He said “Good morning” in a cheery tone and passed me a cup of coffee. “We’ve been through a difficult time,” he went on. “But it’s over now, Curlon. I regret the necessity for the things I was forced to do—but I had no choice. And we succeeded, you and I. Now the victory and all its fruits are ours.” He said this in a low voice, but his black eyes glowed like a man looking at visions.

I tried the coffee. It was hot and strong, but it didn’t help my head any.

“You understand, don’t you?” His eyes probed mine. “A great new destiny is taking shape—for you as well as me. Think of it, Curlon! Who hasn’t wished to seize the sorry scheme of things entire, and mold it nearer to his heart’s desire? Well—we’ve done it—together! Out of the ashes of the old, a new world rises—a world in which our fates loom like colossi over the faceless mob! The world that should have been, Curlon, a world of might and glory, such as has never before been seen—spread at our feet like a carpet! We’ve turned back the clock of fate, set history back on a course that seemed doomed forever!”

“What about the girl?” I asked.

“I’m sorry; she was a shadow in a twilight world. And you, I’m afraid, were caught up in her spell. I did what I had to do. I would have brought her with us, but it was impossible. The fabric I’m weaving is too fragile at this stage to support the transfer of a key figure from a peripheral A-line.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, Roosevelt,” I said. “But whatever it is, the price is too high.”

“One day you’ll understand, Curlon. Of all mankind you’ll understand best. Because, out of all the millions of pawns on the board, you alone are my compeer; like mine, your destiny is entwined with that of the new world that’s taking shape.”

“Count me out, General,” I said. “I want no part of your operations. If you’ll tell me where my pants are, I’ll be going now.”

Roosevelt shook his head, smiling a little. “Curlon, don’t talk like a fool. Do you have any idea where you are?”

I got out of the bed, shakily, and went to the window and looked down on lawns and flowerbeds that were almost familiar.

“This is a world-line far removed from the turmoil of the Blight,” Roosevelt said as I dressed in the loose shirt and tight pants laid out for me. “Its common-history date with your world is 1199 A.D. We’re in the city of Londres, capital of the province of New Normandy, an autonomous duchy under the French king, Louis Augustus. Great affairs are afoot here, Curlon. Rebels challenge the power of the Emperor, loyalists are charged with treason, and across the Channel, Louis waits, ready to land forces at Harwich and Dover and Newcastle if needed. A touch would send the situation crashing into war. It’s that which we must prevent.”

“And what’s in it for you, General?”

“I’m known here; I enjoy the confidence of both Victory Garonne and important members of the rebellious faction. My hope is to prevent bloodshed, stabilize the situation. A strongly established A-line is necessary to contain the vast energies I’ve channeled here. You’ll recall what I told you of key objects, key lines. New Normandy will become the key line of its probability quantum, with the aid of the artifact we brought here. And with the rise of the new master-line, our stars too will ascend!”

“And where do I come in?”

“Ten days ago, Duke Richard fell dead at a public ceremony in full view of the populace. Murdered, they say. The rebels charge the loyalists with eliminating the natural leader of the Britons; the loyalists in turn charge the rebels with killing a man they regarded as no more than a vassal of the French king. The tension has reached crisis level; it must be relieved.”

“I still haven’t heard anything illuminating.”

“It’s really quite obvious,” Roosevelt said. “As a Plantagenet born and bred, you’ll step forward to take up the role of the Duke of Londres.”

“You’re out of your mind, General,” I told him.

“Nothing could be simpler,” he said with a wave of the hand. “No one could deny that you look the part; you’re enough like the departed Duke to be his brother. However, we shall present you in the role of a more distant relation, raised secretly north of the Scots border. Your appearance will satisfy the most fanatical rebel, and of course you’ll make suitably defiant pronouncements to satisfy that clique. More discreetly, you’ll engage in dialogues with Viceroy Garonne aimed at easing the crisis and restoring civil order.”

“What’s going to make me do all this?”

“This is the drama of life itself—and you were a part of it from the moment you were born—and before. Like me, you’re the inheritor of a mighty dynasty. All that you might have been—that your analogs, those close to you might have done—all the vast repercussions across time and history of every act of that great clan, chopped down in the prime of their strength—all those aborted probability energies must find their expression in you—and in the world you help create!”

“What about my own world?”

“The new master-line will dominate the quantum,” Roosevelt said flatly. “In the readjustment that accompanies its establishment, lesser lines must of necessity be sacrificed. The Imperium and the Blight Insular lines will go under. But that’s a matter of no moment to you, Mr. Curlon—or to me. Our destinies lie elsewhere.”

“You have it all figured out,” I said. “There’s just one weak point.”

“Which is?”

“I won’t play.”

Roosevelt looked grim. “Understand me, Curlon: I want you as my willing ally; but willing or not, you’ll help me.”

“You’re bluffing, Roosevelt. You need a walking, talking puppet, not a man with wires on his wrists.”

He made an impatient gesture. “I told you I regretted that, and the need for drugging you to bring you here. But I’d do it again, ten thousand times, if that were the only way! The Old Empire will rise again! We’re not discussing if, Curlon; only how. Meet this challenge—lend me your full support—and your future will be of a splendor unimaginable to you now. Defy me, and you’ll walk like a corpse through what would have been your triumph. Which do you want, Curlon? Honors, or rotted^rags? Majesty, or misery?”

“You’ve worked your story out pretty carefully, General. But it still doesn’t make sense.”

“The rebels are strong,” Roosevelt said grudgingly. “They have all the strength on their side, if the truth were known. They could seize power any time they chose. They lack only one thing: leadership. They’ll rally to you, Curlon—but instead of leading them to victory, you’ll cool their revolutionary fervor. Because if they should rise up and cast out the French, a major branching of the line will result! Seven hundred years of stable history would be shattered, creating a whole new probability spectrum. I need not detail the effect this would have on my plans for New Normandy!”

I smiled a smile I didn’t feel. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you, Roosevelt? You need me—and not just to carry a spear in the third act of some farce to fool the locals. What is it? What’s the real reason for trying to drag me into this paranoid fantasy-system of yours?”

“I’ve told you! We’re linked, you and I, all down through the corridors of past time, on every world within a thousand years of common history. As your fortunes wax, so do mine. I can force you, Curlon—but to the extent that I must break you to my will our joint stature is diminished. Join with me freely, lend your mana to mine—and anything we desire is within our grasp!”

“And if I don’t?”

“I want your willing aid,” he said in a steely voice. “But your broken mind and body, dangling from the strings, will serve if need be.”

“Everything you say confirms the one clear idea I’ve gotten from all this, Roosevelt. Whatever this fight is, you’re on one side, and I’m on the other.”

“I can break you, Curlon. The stronger man can always break the weaker. A simple demonstration will suffice to prove my point.” He took a stance with his feet apart and raised his arms until they were level with his shoulders, smiling.

“The first to drop his arms acknowledges the other man his superior—at least in one small way.”

I put my arms out. The effort made my temples pound, but I didn’t burst into tears. If Roosevelt wanted to play little games I was willing to go along. The hamburger machines could wait.

“In every world, in every time, the will of some man has shaped reality,” Roosevelt said suddenly. “Here, now, that old rule is still in force—but made more potent by the existence of titanic new forces. Those forces are at the command of whoever can master them. Fate is a fragile thing, Curlon. A mindless thing, controlled by the whim of a strong man. Let an Alexander set out to conquer the world; the world becomes what he makes it. Without Alexander, there would have been no Caesar, no Atilla, no Muhammad, no Hitler in your world, no Guglielmo Maxoni in the Zero-zero line. Men make fate, Curlon, not the other way around. You saw that demonstrated when we fought together, back to back. We two form islands of stability about ourselves, even in a sea of formlessness.

“But only one of us can shape the cosmos to his will. That one will be me. I’ll dominate you—not because I hate you—I have no cause for enmity. But because I must—as an Alexander must destroy a Darius.”

“Funny,” I said, “I never had any interest in shaping the cosmos to my will. But I’m not willing to see it shaped to yours. Home was never much to me, but I’m not ready to see it flushed down the drain to give you a roost to rule.”

Roosevelt nodded. “I suppose it’s a thing outside both of us, Curlon, written in the stars, as they say. For seven hundred years, your ancestors and mine fought to rule the quantum. Think of it, Plantagenet! In a thousand billion alternate world-lines, each differing from the others in some greater or lesser degree, your clan and mine, striving, down through the centuries, each to dominate his world, none knowing of the others, all driven by the common instinct to fulfill the potentiality inherent in them. And then—the day of cataclysm, when the Blight swept in to wipe them out, root, stem and branch—all but one man of my line, and one of yours.”

It had been about ten minutes since the game had begun. Fiery pains were shooting along the backs of my arms and shoulders. Roosevelt was still standing as rigid as a statue. His arms hadn’t quivered.

“They tell me the Blight dates back to the nineties,” I said. “You’re a little young to be remembering it—unless your Imperium has face-lift techniques that beat anything Hollywood’s come up with.”

“I’m telling you what I’ve learned—what my researchers have revealed, what I was told—” He cut himself off.

“I thought this was all your own idea, Roosevelt.”

“Told—by my father,” Roosevelt said. “He devoted his life to the conviction that somehow—somewhere—our time would come again. His world was gone—but how could such glory be forever vanished? He worked, studied, and in the end made his discovery. He was old then, but he passed the charge on to me. And I’ve made it good! I worked first to gain a powerful position within Imperial Intelligence—the one organization that knew the secrets of the Net. This gave me a platform from which to prepare this line—New Normandy—to be the vessel that would contain and shape the forces of the Blight.”

I had to concentrate on keeping my arms at shoulder level. Somehow, it seemed important not to lose at Roosevelt’s game. If he was suffering, he didn’t show it.

“Are you tiring?” he asked in a conventional tone.

“Poor Mother Nature, so blind in her efforts to protect the body. She sends pain as a warning, first. Then little by little, she’ll numb the nerves. Your arms will begin to sag. You’ll try, with” all your will, to hold them high—to outdo me, your inevitable master. But you’ll fail. Oh, the strength is there—but Nature forces you to husband your strength. So though you might be willing of yourself, to endure the torture of fatigue until death from exhaustion—she won’t let you. You’ll suffer—for nothing. A pity, Mr. Curlon.”

I was glad he felt like talking. It kept my mind off the hot clamps set in the back of my neck. I tried to fan a little spark of anger alive—another of Mother Nature’s tricks, this one on my side. I wanted to keep him chattering, but at the same time coax along the frustration I hoped he was beginning to feel.

“Seeing you drop will be worth waiting for,” I said.

“But you won’t. I’m stronger than you are, Mr. Curlon. Since childhood I’ve trained every day in these exercises—and the mental control that goes with them. At the age of seven I could hold a fencing foil across my palms at arm’s length for a quarter of an hour. For me, this is literally child’s play. But not for you.”

“There’s nothing to this,” I said breezily. “I can stand here all day.”

“So far, you’ve endured it for less than a quarter of an hour. How will you feel fifteen minutes from now, eh, Mr. Curlon? And half an hour after that?” He smiled—not quite the easy smile he’d have liked. “In spite of yourself, you’ll have failed long before then. A simple demonstration, Curlon—but a necessary one. You must be brought to realize that in me you’ve met your superior.”

“There must be a catch to it,” I said. “Maybe this is supposed to keep my attention occupied while your pals aim a spy beam at my brains—or whatever it is mad scientists do.”

“Don’t talk like a fool, Curlon,” Roosevelt almost snapped the words. “Or—why, yes, I see.” He smiled and the strain went out of his face. “Very good, Mr. Curlon. You were almost beginning to irritate me. A well-designed tactic. Such distractions can appreciably sap endurance. By the way, how are your arms feeling? A trifle heavy?”

“Fine,” I said in what I hoped was a light tone. “How about yours?” The lines of fire were lancing out into my trapezius muscles, playing around my elbows, tingling in my fingertips. My head ached. Roosevelt looked as good as new. He stared across at me, silent now. That bothered me. I wanted him to talk.

“Keeping up the patter’s hard work, eh? But I’ll tip you, Roosevelt. You picked the wrong man. I’m a fisherman. I’m used to fighting the big ones eight hours at a stretch. For me, this is a nice rest.”

“A flimsy lie, Curlon. I expect better of you.”

“The circulation is the weak point,” I said. “Soldiers who could march all day in the sun under a full pack used to drop out in a dead faint on parade. Standing at attention, not moving, restricted the flow of blood to the brain—and all of a sudden—blackout. Some fellows couldn’t take it. Nothing against them, just a peculiarity of the metabolism. It never bothered me. Good circulation, you know. How’s yours?”

“Excellent, I assure you.”

“But you’re not talking.” I gave him a grin that cost me a year off the end of my life.

“I’ve said what I intended.”

“I don’t believe you. You had canned lecture number three all ready to go. I can see it in your eyes.”

Roosevelt laughed—a genuine laugh. “Mr. Curlon, you’re a man after my own heart. I wish we could have met in another time at another place. We might have been friends, you and I.”

Neither of us said anything after that. I discovered I was counting off the seconds. It had been about twenty minutes now, maybe a little more. I realized one hand was sagging and brought it back up. Roosevelt smiled a faint smile. More time passed. I thought about things, then tried not to think about things. It occurred to me that the ancient Chinese had wasted a lot of time and effort designing iron maidens and chipping bamboo splinters. Torture was a sport you could play without equipment. And Roosevelt’s version was a double challenge, because the only one forcing me was me. I could quit now and laugh it off and call for the next round.

That was the catch. There’d be a next round—and one after that. And if I quit on the first, I’d quit sooner on the second, until I refused to meet his challenge—and that was what he wanted.

That was his swindle. To make me think that if I lost—I’d lost. But it wasn’t true. Losing was nothing. Only surrender counted.

And once I understood that, I felt better. The pain was like flaying knives, but it was just pain, something to be endured until it ended. I hitched my arms back up into line and stared across at him through the fading light…

…and came to, lying on the floor. Roosevelt was standing over me. His face looked yellowish and drawn.

“A commendable effort, Curlon,” he said. “One hour and twelve minutes. But as you see—you lost. As you must always lose—because it’s your destiny to lose to me. Now—will you join with me willingly?”

I climbed back to my feet, feeling dizzy, and with slow fires still burning in my shoulders. I raised my arms to the crucifix position.

“Ready to try it again?” I said. Roosevelt’s face twitched before he laughed.

I grinned at him. “You’re afraid, aren’t you, Roosevelt? You see your grand scheme coming apart at the seams—and you’re afraid.”

He nodded. “Yes—I’m afraid. Afraid of my own weakness. You see—incredible though it may seem to you—I truly wanted you to be a part of it, Plantagenet. A foolish sentimentality—but you, like me, are a man of the ancient stock. Even a god can be lonely—or a devil. I offered you comradeship. But at the first trial, you turned against me. I should have known then. And now I’ve learned the lesson. I have no choice left to me. My course is plain now.”

“You’re a flawed devil, Roosevelt,” I said. “A devil with a conscience. I pity you.”

He shook his head. “I want none of your pity, Plantagenet. As I can have none of your friendship. What I want from you, I’ll take, though the taking will destroy you.”

“Or you.”

“That’s a risk I’ll run.” He motioned to the waiting guards; they closed in around me. “Spend these next hours in meditation,” he said. “Tonight you’ll be invested with the honors of a dukedom. And tomorrow you’ll be hanged in chains.”

The dungeons under the viceregal palace were everything that dungeons should be, with damp stone walls and iron doors and unshielded electric lights that were worse than smoky flamebeaux. The armed men in Swiss Guard uniforms that had herded me down the upper levels waited while a burly man with a round, oily, unshaven face opened a barrel grill on a six-by-eight stone box with straw. I didn’t move fast enough for him; he swung a kick to hurry me along, but it never landed. Roosevelt showed up in time to slam the back of his hand across the fat face.

“You’d treat a royal duke like a common felon?” he barked. “You’re not fit to touch the floor he stands on.”

Another man grabbed up the fat man’s keys, led the way along the narrow passage, opened an oak door on a larger cell with a bed and a loophole window.

“You’ll meditate here in peace,” Roosevelt told me, “until I have need of you.”

I lay on the bed and waited for the pounding in my head to retreat to a bearable level.

…and woke up with a voice that wasn’t in my head, whispering, “Plantagenet! Be of good cheer! Wait for the signal!”

I lay where I was and waited for more, but there wasn’t any more.

“Who’s that?” I whispered, but nobody answered. I got up and examined the wall by my head, and the bed itself. It was just a wall, just a bed. I went to the door and listened, pulled myself up and looked out the six-inch slit at a light-well. There were no lines dangling there with files tied to them; no trapdoors opened up in the ceiling. I was locked in a cell, with no way out, and that was that. The voices were probably courtesy of the management, another of Roosevelt’s subtle moves to either wear me down or convince me I was crazy. He was doing pretty well on both counts.

I was having a fine dream about a place where flowers as big as cabbages grew on trees beside a stilt lake. Ironel was there, walking toward me across the water, and the water broke into a sea of glass splinters, and when I tried to reach her, the flowers turned to heads that shouted threats and the branches were arms that grabbed at me, and shook me—

Hands shook me awake; lights shone in my face. Men with neat uniforms and unholstered nerve-guns took me along passages and up stairs to a room where Roosevelt waited, rigged out in purple velvet and ermine and loops of gold cord. A jewel-covered sword as big as a cased garrison flag hung at his sides as if it belonged there. He didn’t talk, and neither did I. Nobody was interested in the condemned man’s last words.

Servants clustered around, fitting me with heavy garments of silk and satin and gold thread. A barber trimmed my hair, and poured perfume on me. Someone fitted red leather shoes to my feet. Roosevelt himself strapped a wide, brocaded baldric around my waist, and the tailor’s helper attached a jeweled scabbard to it. The hilt that projected from it was unadorned and battered. It was my old knife, looking out of place in all this magnificence. The armorer complained, offered a shiny sword, but Roosevelt waved him away.

“Your sole possession, eh, Curlon?” he said. “It shares your aura strongly. You’ll keep it by you—in your moment of glory.”

A procession formed up in the wide corridor outside, with the gun-handlers sticking unobtrusively close to me. Roosevelt was beside me as we walked up a wide staircase into an echoing hall hung with spears and banners and grim-faced paintings. Wigged and spangled and beribboned people filled the room. Beyond an arched opening, I saw a high, stained-glass window above a canopied altar. I knew where I was then.

I was standing in the spot where I had stood with Ironel, with the griffin, Vrodelix, beside us, just before Roosevelt had tried the first time to reach the altar. Now the floor was carpeted in gold rose, and there was an odor of incense in the air, and the woodwork gleamed with the dull shine of wax—but it was the same room—and not the same. Not by a thousand years of history.

We halted, and priests in red robes and dry-faced old men in ribbons and fluffy little wigs went into action, handing ritual objects back and forth, ducking their heads at each other, mumbling incantations. I suppose it was an impressive ceremony, there in the ancient room under the damask-draped, age-blackened beams, but I hardly noticed it. I kept remembering Ironel, leading Roosevelt to her Pretty Place, so that he could destroy it.

The odor of incense was strong; strong enough to burn my eyes. I sniffed harder and realized I was smelling something more than scented smoke; it was the real kind, that comes from burning wood and cloth and paint. There was a faint, brassy haze in the air. Roosevelt was looking back; the head priest interrupted his spiel. The gun-handlers jostled in close to me, looking worried., Roosevelt snapped off some orders, and I heard yells from outside the big room. A wave of heat rolled at us then, and the party broke up. Four guns prodded me toward the archway. If this was a signal, it was a dandy, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The nerve-gun squad cut a path through the notables who were dithering, coughing, half headed one way and half the other. We reached the low steps, and two new guards came in from the flank and there was some fast footwork, and they were close to me, and the crowd was closing around us, fighting for position. An old boy in pink and gold, with his wig askew, thrust his face close to mine.

“Favor the left, y’r Grace,” he hissed in my ear. I was still working on that one when I saw the nearest guard put his nerve-gun in his partner’s kidney and press the button. Two more men in uniform came from somewhere; I heard a thud behind me, and then we were clear, peeling off from the edge of the main crowd, heading right into the smoke.

“Only a few yards, y’r Grace,” the little old man squeaked. A door opened and we were in a cramped stairway, leading down. On the landing, all four guards stripped off their uniform jackets and tossed their caps aside and pulled on workmen’s coveralls from a stack behind the door. The old fellow ditched his wig and cape and was in a footman’s black livery. They handed me a long gray cloak. The whole operation was like a well-practiced ballet. It didn’t take twenty seconds.

On the next floor down, we pushed out into a concourse full of spectators, firemen, a few belted earls and mitred priests, none of them looking at a repair crew in dirty overalls. The old man led the way to a passage where a lone sentry stood, looking anxious. He stepped in front of us, and the old boy raised a finger and drew him around to the right while one of the others expertly sapped him back of the ear. Then we were in the passage and running.

Two startled scrubwomen watched us cross the kitchen and duck out a door between garbage cans into an unlit alley. The truck parked there started up with a lot of valve click and black kerosene exhaust. I went over the tailgate and the old man scrambled up behind me and pulled the canvas flap down as the truck pulled away. Three minutes later, it slowed, stopped. I heard voices up front, the clatter of a gun, leather boots on cobbles. After a minute, gears clashed and we went on. On the bench opposite, my new friend let out a held breath and grinned from ear to ear.

“Worked like a charm,” he said. He cackled and rubbed his hands together. “Like a bloody charm, beggin’ y’r Grace’s pardon.”

The old man’s name was Wilibald. “Our friends are waiting for y’r Grace,” he said. “True Britons, they are, every man Jock o’ ’em. Simple men, y’r Grace, but honest! Not like those treasonous palace blackguards in their silks and jewels!” He gnashed his gums and wagged his head.

“That was a neat play, Wilibald,” I said. “How did you manage it?”

“There’s true men among the Bluecoats, y’r Grace. The jailor was one. He tried to lodge y’r Grace in a safe cell—one we’d a tunnel to—but his high and mightiness the Baron would ha’ none o’t. So it took a little longer. But here y’r Grace be now, all the same!” He cackled and rasped his hands together like a cricket’s wings.

“You’re with the rebel party?”

“Some call us rebels, y’r Grace—but to honest men, we’re patriots, pledged to rid these islands o’ the French pox!”

“Why did you spring me?”

“Why? Why?” the old man looked astonished. “When word went abroad the Plantagenet was housed in the viceregal tombs, what other course could a loyal Briton follow, y’r Grace? Did y’r Grace deem we’d leave ye there to rot?”

“But I’m not—” I started and left it hanging.

“Not what, y’r Grace?” Wilibald asked. “Not surprised? Of course not. There’s ten million Britons in this island, sworm to free the land o’ tyranny!”

“Not going to waste any time,” I finished. “We’ll strike immediately.”

The traffic on the road was a mixed bag of horse carts, big solid-tired trucks with open cabs, little droop-snoot cars that looked as if they came in cereal boxes and more than a sprinkling of blue-painted military vehicles. According to Wili, the viceroy was concentrating his forces around the fortified ports, ready to cover the landing of reinforcements if the talk of rebellion crystalized into action. The place we were headed for was the country seat of Sir John Lackland.

“A dark-avised gentleman,” Wili said. “But moneyed, and of the ancient stock.” He rambled on for the next hour, filling me in on the local situation. The rebels, he swore, were ready to move. And according to Roosevelt, if they moved, they’d win.

“You’ll see,” Wili told me. “Loyal Britons will rise to a man and flock to y’r Grace’s standard!”

After an hour’s run, we turned down a side road and swung in between brick pillars, went along a drive that led through tended woods into a cobbled yard fronting a three-story house with flower boxes and leaded windows and half-timbered gables that looked like the real thing. Steps went up to a broad veranda. An old man in a fancy vest and black pants and house slippers let us in. His eyes bugged when he saw me.

“ ’Is Grace must see Sir John at once,” Wili said.

“Sir John’s been abed this twoday wi’ a touch o’ the ague. He’s had no callers—”

“He has now,” Wili cut him off.

The old fellow dithered, then led the way into a dark room full of books, and shuffled away.

I looked at the books on the shelves, mostly leather-bound volumes with titles like Historic Courts and Campaigns Among the Quanecticott. After five minutes or so the door opened and the old fellow was back, piping that Sir John would see us now.

The master of the house was in a bedroom on the top floor, a lean-faced sharp-nosed old aristocrat with a silky black eyebrow-moustache and a matching fringe of hair around a high bald dome. He was propped up in a bed no larger than a skating rink, half buried in a violet satin pillow with an embroidered monogram and more lace than a Hollywood bishop. He had a tan woolen bathrobe with satin lapels wrapped around him, and a knitted shawl over that, and even so, the end of his nose looked cold. When he saw me, he nearly jumped out of bed.

“What—now…?” he stared from me to Wili and back. “Why did you come here—of all places?”

“Where else would I be more likely to find friends?” I came back.

“Friends? I’d heard that the viceregent had declared a pretender heir to the dukedom, but I scarce expected to see him present himself here in that guise.”

“How do you know I’m the man—or that I’m an imposter?”

“Why—why—who else would you be?”

“You mean you’re accepting me as genuine? I’m glad, Sir John. Because the time has come for action.”

“Action? What action?”

“The liberation of Briton.”

“Are you mad? You’d bring destruction down on my house—on all of us! We Plantagenets have always lived on sufferance! The murder of Duke Richard shows us all how precarious our position is—”

“Who killed him?”

“Why—Garrone’s men, of course.”

“I wonder about that. From the viceroy’s point of view, it was a foolish move. It aligned the Britons against him more solidly than Richard ever did alive.”

“Conjecture. Idle conjecture,” Sir John barked. “You come here, unbidden, preaching treason! What do I know about you? You imagine I’ll place our trust in an upstart, a stranger?

“Hardly that, Sir John,” Wili said indignantly. “One glance at him—”

“What do you know of him, fellow? Is any oversized carrot-locked bumpkin who cares to lay claim to the dukedom to be accepted without question?”

“That’s hardly fair, Sir John—”

“Enough! The matter will have to wait for resolution until I can summon certain influential men! In the meantime, I’ll give you sanctuary. I can do no more.” Lackland gave me a look like a dagger in the ribs and yanked at his bellcord. The old footman popped in with a speed that suggested he’d been standing by not far away.

“Show milord to his suite,” Lackland got out between lips as stiff as a Hoover collar. “And quarter Master Wilibald below stairs.”

I followed my guide along the corridor to a high-ceilinged, airy room with big windows and a sitting room and bath opening from it. The old fellow showed me the soap and towel and then paused at the door and gave me a sly look.

“It did me heart proud to hear y’r honor gi’ a bit o’ the rough to his Lordship,” he cackled. “It’s been a weary time since a real fighting duke put foot o’ these old boards, beggin’ y’r Honor’s pardon.”

“You listen at keyholes, eh?” But I grinned at him. “Wake me as soon as the clan’s gathered. I wouldn’t want to miss anything.”

“Rely on me, y’r Grace,” he said and went out and I pulled off my boots and lay in the dark and slid off into a dream about knights on horseback riding with leveled lances into the fire of massed machine guns.

I came back from somewhere a long way off with a hand shaking my shoulder and a thin old voice saying, “They’re here, y’r Grace! Milord Lackland’s wi’ ’em i’ the study this minute—and unless I mistake me, there’s mischief afoot!”

“Does Lackland know you’re here?”

“Not ’em, y’r Grace.”

We went down the stairs and across the hall to a door that was standing ajar. When Wili got close he turned and gave me a quick jerk of the head, cupping his ear.

“…imposter, gentlemen,” Lackland was saying. “No true Briton, but a hireling of Garrone, bought with French gold and sent here to betray us all—”

I pushed the door open and walked in. The talk cut off as if a switch had been thrown. There were about a dozen men grouped around a long table with Lackland seated at the head. They were dressed in a variety of costumes, but all of them featured fur and brocades and a sword slung at the hip. The nearest was a big, wide-shouldered, neckless man with a curly black beard and ferocious eyes. He took a step back when he saw me, looked me up and down, surprised.

“Don’t be beguiled by his face and stature!” Lackland spat the words. “He’d seize control of the rebellion, and turn coat, come to terms with Garrone! Can he deny it?” He was pointing at me with a finger that quivered with rage.

I didn’t answer immediately. What he was saying was precisely what Roosevelt had proposed. There seemed to be a message for me in that somewhere, but it wouldn’t come clear.

“You see?” Lackland crowed. “The treacher dares not deny it!”

The black-bearded man drew his sword with a skin-crawling rasp.

“A shrewd stroke!” he said in a high, rasping voice. “With a Plantagenet puppet to dance on his strings, he’d accomplish what the Louis have dreamed of for seven centuries! The total subjugation of Briton!” More swords were out now, ringing me in.

“Spit him, Tudor!” Lackland screeched.

“Stop!” Wilibald stood in the doorway with fire in his old eye. “Would you murder our Duke in cold blood? In the name of Free Briton, I say he deserves a better hearing at your Lordship’s hands than this!”

For an instant, nobody moved—and in the silence I heard a droning sound, far away but coming closer. The others heard it, too. Eyes swiveled to stare at the ceiling as if they could see through it. A man rushed to the window, threw back the long drapes to stare out.

Another jumped for a wall switch. Tudor didn’t move as the chandelier went dark, leaving just what light filtered in from the hall.

“An aircraft!” a man at the window called. “Coming straight in over us!”

“It was a trick to get us here together!” a lean man in yellow snarled, and drew back his sword for a cut. I saw this from the corner of my eye; it was Tudor I was watching. His jaw had set harder, and the tendons beside his neck tensed and I knew the thrust was coming.

I twisted sideways and leaned back and the point ripped through the ruffles on the front of my shirt; my back-handed swing caught him across the cheekbone, knocked him backward into the table as the room went pitch dark. The engines sounded as if they were right down the chimney. A piece of bric-a-brac fell from the mantle.

The to-to! to-to! Inarched across off to the right and the engine sound was deafening, and then receding. I heard glass tinkling, but the ceiling didn’t fall in. I slid along the wall toward the door and heard feet break for it and a chair went over. Somebody slammed into me and I grabbed him and threw him ahead of me. I found the door and got through it, and could see the big hall faintly by the moonlight coming through the stained glass along the gallery. There was a lot of yelling that was drowned by the bomber’s engines. Then a flash lit the room and the wall seemed to jump outward about a foot. When things stopped falling, I was bruised, but still alive. Wilibald was lying a few feet away, covered with dust and brick chips. There was a timber across his legs above the ankle; by the time I got it clear the plane was making its third run. With the old man over my shoulder, I reached the rear hall just as the front of the house blew in. I made it out through the kitchen door, went across grass that was littered with bricks. Blood from a cut on my scalp was running into my eyes. I made it to a line of trees before my legs folded.

The roof was gone from the house and flames were leaping up a hundred feet high and boiling into smoke clouds that glowed orange on their undersides. The shells of the walls that were still standing stood up in black silhouetted against the fire, and the windows were bright orange rectangles cut in the black.

Then there was a sound and I tried to get up and made it as far as my hands and knees, and three men with singed beards and torn finery and bare swords in their hands came out of the darkness to surround me.

One of the men was Tudor; he stepped in close and drew his arm back, and I was bracing myself for the thrust when all three of them turned and looked toward the house. Light flickered from among the trees lining the drive; pieces of bark jumped from the bole of the tree beside me and the man nearest it went over backward and the man beside him spun and fell, and Tudor turned to run, but it was the wrong reflex. I saw the bullets smack into him, throw him six feet onto his face.

There were men on the drive, coming up at a run—men in blue uniforms. I started to crawl and suddenly old Wilibald was there, his thin hair wild, soot on his face. He had been below the line of fire, like me; he was all right.

“Run, Wili!” I yelled. He hesitated for a moment, then turned and disappeared into the woods. Then the soldiers were all around me, grim and helmeted, smoking guns ready. And I waited for what came next.

This time, I got to ride up front. The countryside was pretty, but the towns were as deserted as Mexican villages at siesta time. You could feel in the air that a storm was about to break, and the populace had taken cover. If the rebels were as strong as Roosevelt said, it didn’t show. The roads were full of military traffic in the blue paint of the French king. I wondered how much my short-lived escape had to do with that. I tried to pump the man beside me, but he didn’t answer.

When we rolled into the outskirts of Londres, the town was carrying on some semblance of business as usual. The shops were open, and big canvas-topped buses rumbled along the streets, half full. We passed a big market square, lined with stalls with bright-colored awnings and displays of flowers and vegetables. At one side a raised platform was roped off. Half a dozen downcast-looking men and women in drab gray stood there, under a sign above the platform that said BULLMAN & WINDROW—CHATTELS. It was a slave market.

We swung into a cobbled courtyard ringed in by high walls. I was hustled inside, along a corridor full of the smell of government offices.

An officer in shirt-sleeves stepped out of a door ahead, swiveled hard when he saw me. He rattled off a question in strange-sounding French that sounded like “Where are you taking him?”

“A la genéral, mon major.”

“No, c’est la province du demiregent. Laissez les cordes!”

“J’ai les ordeurs direct—”

“A diable avec vos ordeurs! Fait que je dit, vite!”

The sergeant in charge of my detail put a hand on his holstered pistol. The major shouted to someone inside the room. Two sharp-looking lads in khaki with holstered side arms appeared behind him. That ended the argument. One of the new men cut the ropes off. Then they formed up a new procession and marched me off in a new direction.

We rode up in an elevator, went along a lushly carpeted hall, into a fancy outer office. A young fellow in a shiny blue uniform with aide’s aglets ducked in through the inner door, came back and made an ushering motion to me. I walked through and was looking at Garonne, the French viceroy.

He was a pouch-eyed fellow in his late forties or early fifties, with thick gray hair, a large, rather soft-looking mouth with a quirk at one end registering benign intentions grown weary. He wore Ben Franklin glasses over a pair of sharp black eyes. His clothes were plain, his fingers lean and competent and without rings.

“I regret the discomfort you were forced to undergo, milord,” he said, in straight New Norman without a trace of French accent. His voice was deep as a bullfrog’s. “In view of the great importance of time just now, I asked that you be brought directly to me. A discussion between us might yet retrieve the unfortunate situation that now obtains.”

“How does Baron General van Roosevelt feel about that?” I asked. It didn’t mean anything. I was just probing.

“Some of my lieutenants are overzealous,” he said cryptically. “It is a matter I must deal with. However, the business of the moment takes precedence. I am empowered, your Grace, by His Most Christian Majesty, to offer certain emoluments to loyal liegemen who support his efforts to calm the present unrest. Among them, greater internal autonomy for the island, with offices to deserving servants; various tax and import benefits, revised trade regulations, including issuance of import licenses to men of proven character. For yourself, a royal patent as Prince Imperial of the New Normandy provinces, together with the grant of estates and pensions appropriate to your station. And of course, full recognition of your status as inheritor of the ancient honors of your House.”

“What do I do to earn all this?” I stalled.

“You will accept appointment, under his Majesty, as emergency peace marshal of New Normandy. You will appear on telescreen and wireless and instruct all loyal New Normans to return to their homes, and exhort all subjects of his Majesty to observe his laws regarding assembly and bearing of arms. In short, only those acts which I feel certain your own good judgment would dictate, once freed from the pressures placed on you by incendiary elements: the exercise of your influence toward the achievement of civil stability and order.”

“In other words, just sell out the Britons.”

Garrone narrowed his eyes at me. He leaned across the desk. “Don’t waste my time. I’m sure you’ll find my offer preferable to a miserable death in the interrogation section.”

“You wouldn’t murder me, Monsieur Garonne,” I said, trying to sound as if I believed it. “I’m the people’s hero, remember?”

“We can drop all that nonsense between us,” Garonne said in a flat tone. “I’m aware of your masquerade. There was no Lady Edwinna, no secret hideaway in Scotland, no long-lost heir of the bastard honors of Plantagenet! Who are you? Where do you come from? Who sent you here?”

“Whoever I am,” I said, “you need me all in one piece.”

“Nonsense. Modern methods of persuasion don’t rely on thumbscrews. In the end you’ll babble whatever I choose for you to babble. But if you’ll act as I command—now—lives will be saved. His Majesty’s offer still stands. Now, again: Who are you? Who sent you?”

“If I’m a fake, what makes you think what I say will help you?”

“Rumors of your presence are abroad here—a Plantagenet of the Old Mark, as Duke Richard was, but without his shabby record of failure and compromise. If word spreads that you’ve been killed, the countryside will rise—and I’ll have no choice but to crush the revolt.”

“That might not be easy. The guerrillas—”

“There are no guerrillas, no irregulars, no rebel organization. These are fictions, fabricated by myself.” He nodded. “Yes, myself. Consider the facts: New Normandy has been the scene of increasing unrest for decades now, most particularly since the Continental War of 1917-1919, with its Prussian dirigible raids, and the less than glorious peace that ended it. The old cries of Saxon unity were revived—idiotic nonsense, of course, based on imaginary blood-ties. I needed a force which would bring the provinces back under tight control. Duke Richard was the perfect foil. By his loose living, he had discredited himself with the islanders, of course—but a rousing call to ancient loyalties served to unite popular sentiment behind him. Then—with all New Normandy pledged to follow him—the final stroke would have been the ‘compromise,’ granting the hollow honors he craved—and placating the revolutionary spirit with fancied autonomy. His murder destroyed a scheme ten years in the building.”

“You murdered him yourself.”

“No. It was not I who killed him! He was a valuable tool—and unless you—whoever you are, whatever your original intentions—can be brought to see the wisdom of cooperation—I foresee tragedy!”

“You have proof of this?”

“I have Duke Richard’s seal on the secret agreement between us. I have the records of payments to him, of subsidies to him and to various agents provocateurs working ostensibly for his underground organization. Of course, they might be counterfeit—how can I demonstrate otherwise? My best evidence is the inherent logic of my version of affairs, as opposed to the romantic nonsense you’ve been deluded into accepting! Face facts, man! You have the opportunity laid at your feet to spring from obscurity to princely rank overnight. Your best—your only interest lies in cooperation!”

“I don’t believe you. The rebels can win.”

“Nonsense!” He pointed to a wall map, showing blue arrows aimed across the channel from Dunkirk to Brest.

“His Majesty’s forces are overwhelmingly powerful. The only result of war would be a murderous guerrilla delaying action, profitable to no one.”

“Why not give the Britons their independence and save all that?”

Garonne was wagging his head in a weary negative. “Milord, what you propose is, has always been, an economic and political fantasy. These islands, by their very nature, are incapable of pursuing an independent existence. Their size alone would preclude any role other than that of starveling dependent, incapable of self-support, at the mercy of any power which might choose to attempt annexation. A Free Briton, as the fanatics call it, is a pipe dream. No, milord: France will never give up her legitimate interests here. In conscience, she cannot. To discuss such fantasies is a waste of valuable time. You’ve heard His Majesty’s most gracious offer. As we sit here, time is passing—time that takes us closer to the brink of tragedy with each instant. Accept His Majesty’s generosity, and in an hour you’ll be installed in your own apartments in the town, secure in your position as chief local magistrate of New Normandy, with all the honors and privileges appertaining thereunto; refuse your duty to your sovereign, and your end will be a miserable one! The choice is yours, milord!”

He was staring across the desk at me, waiting. The ormolu clock on the marble mantel behind him ticked loudly in the silence. Things were coming at me too fast; there was something I was missing, or forgetting. I needed time to think.

The door opened; a small, dried-up footman with a little white peruke and ribbons on his knees came into the room. He doddered across to the table beside the big desk, put a tray down on it. There was a squat brown bottle, a pair of long-stemmed glasses, a big white napkin folded into a peak. The old fellow lifted the napkin, and scooped a small, flat automatic pistol from under it. He turned and fired three shots into Garonne’s chest from a distance of six feet.

I saw the stiff black brocade of the viceroy’s coat jump as the bullets hit, saw splinters of pinkish mahogany fly from the chair back, heard the dull smack of the slugs as they lodged in the plaster. The pistol had made a soft unimportant sound as it fired: a silencer, or maybe compressed gas. Garonne jerked and threw his arms up and flopped forward with his face on the fancy leather-bound blotter. The old man pulled off the peruke and I saw it was Wilibald. He shrugged out of the long-skirted coat, all gold and blue with little pink flowers. He was wearing plain gray under it, not too clean. He grinned a toothless grin and said, “We’d best be off direct, m’lord?” He tucked the gun away and went past me, around the end of the desk where a brilliant scarlet stain was growing, and pulled back the drapes gathered at the end of the big window. There was a dark opening in the paneled wall behind them. His flashlight beam showed me rough brickwork and time-blackened timber, a narrow passage leading off into darkness.

“This way, y’r Grace. No time to waste!” There was a sharp note in his voice; an impatient note. I hadn’t moved since the shots were fired.

“What’s your hurry, Wili?” I said. “No one’s going to burst in on the viceroy, in conference—except maybe a trusted servant with his ten o’clock tea.”

“How’s that? Beggin’ y’r Grace’ pardon—but that’s a dead man lying there! The penalty for murder is hanging! If y’r caught here—”

I went to him and instead of going past him into the passage I caught his wrist.

“What if we’re both caught here, Wili? Would that spoil the scheme?”

“We’d hang!” He tried to jerk free, but I held him.

“They all know I was with him. When he’s found dead, it will be an open-and-shut case, eh, Wili?”

“What matter if it is? Ye’ll be far away by then—”

“Who are you working for, Wili? Roosevelt? He let me escape last time, didn’t he? Why? So I could stir up the populace? Why did he bomb Lackland’s house? But it was a fake raid, wasn’t it? Just a flock of near misses—with the machine guns to clean up the witnesses, including Lackland.”

“It was Lackland called the attack down on the house!” Wili croaked. “He was a creeping spy and telltale for the Louis, hoping to see y’r Grace killed—but he paid for his crimes! Aye, he paid—”

“Don’t kid me—he was working for Roosevelt. I guess he’d outlived his usefulness.”

“Shameful times we’ve fell on,” Wili babbled on. “But what was he but a Black Plantagenet, eh? But now it’s needful we make our escape. I’ve a car waiting—”

“Very convenient, you and your cars. It hardly fits in what I’ve seen of the Organization here. I suppose we’ll breeze right through the police lines, just like we did last time, thanks to Roosevelt.”

“The Organization—”

“Is a lot of hot air, Wili. Roosevelt sent you here to kill Garonne, and arranged for it to look as though I’d done the job—just as he killed Duke Richard and spread the word Garonne was guilty. Why? The situation was already balanced on a knife-edge. Why did he tell me the rebels had the winning hand? That was another lie. They’re evenly matched at best. But he wants them to make their try, wants to see the country cut to pieces in a civil war that won’t end until both factions are ruined. Why, again?”

“Y’r daft!” Wili yelped. “Let go, you fool! They’ll be here at any instant—”

“Who tipped them this time, you? Better start talking, Wili—and it had better be good—”

I was watching his free hand; it dipped to his pocket and I grabbed it as it came out with the automatic. He was strong, but I was lots stronger.

“I’m going to spoil the play, Wili,” I told him. “I’m a little slow, but after awhile even I catch on. Your boss has been dancing me on the strings from the beginning, hasn’t he? Every move has been planned: getting me here on my own initiative, the dramatic escape complete with voices coming out of the walls, then letting Garonne’s men have me. What’s planned for me next? Maybe I’m supposed to get on a horse and lead the peasants into battle, is that it? But I’m breaking the chain, Wili. The moves are too subtle for me, but that doesn’t matter. A fancy knot cuts as easy as a simple one—”

His knee came up, almost fast enough. As I took it on the thigh, he put everything he had into twisting the gun around. It wasn’t enough. The muzzle was pointing to his own chest when it coughed. He went slack, fell backward into the room. He tried, tried hard to speak, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then his eyes went dull and blank. I dragged the body into the passage, felt over the wall until I found the lever that closed the panel behind me.

“Good-bye, Wili,” I said. “You were loyal to something, even if it was the wrong thing.” I left him there and started off in what I hoped was the right direction.

It was different, picking my way in the dark through the network of hidden passages that I had traced out once before in the shuttle, on half-phase. I made a wrong turning, bumped my head and barked my shins, retraced my steps and tried again. It took me hours—I don’t know how many—to find the passage I was looking for: the one that led to Roosevelt’s quarters.

I found the lever and eased the panel back and was looking down from over the fireplace into the quiet luxury of the spacious study. It was empty. Roosevelt would be fully occupied elsewhere for a while, working out an explanation of the locked-door murder of the viceroy.

It was a difficult room to search. Every door and drawer was locked, and there were a lot of them. I levered them open one by one, looked at books and papers and boxed records, and drew a blank.

The next room was the Baron’s sleeping chamber. I started in the closet, worked my way through two large bureaus and a wardrobe, and in the last drawer, found a flat, paper-wrapped bundle. It was my broken sword. I wondered what it meant to Roosevelt that had made him squirrel it away here, but that was a problem I could solve later—maybe. I buckled it on, and the weight of it felt good at my hip. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing, if they walked in and found me here.

Ten minutes later, in a cubicle almost hidden in a shadowy corner, I found what I was looking for: the silver-mounted reliquary box that Roosevelt had destroyed a world to get.

There was a silver lock on the silver hasp that closed the lid. I hated to destroy such a handsome piece of workmanship, but I put the edge of the sword under it and levered and it shattered. The lid came up; inside, in a bed of yellowed satin, lay a rusted slab of steel, a foot long, three inches wide, beveled on both edges. It was another piece of the broken sword.

I picked it up, felt the same premonitory tingle in my hand that I’d felt that other time, in the underground room beneath the old chateau. Like that time, I brought the scrap of metal to the broken blade, saw the long, blue spark jump between them as they came together—

The world exploded in my face.

I sat astride a great war-horse, in the early morning. I felt the weight of the chain armor on my back, the drag of the new-forged sword at my side. Beside me, Trumping-ton turned in his saddle to look across at me. He spoke, but I gave him no answer. A strange vision was on me. Though I was here, a part of me was elsewhere, observing…

My vision widened, and I seemed to see myself riding away from the field of Chaluz, my mind unbloodied. More ghostly images flocked in my mind. I saw the lean face of John my brother, hungry-eyed, silky-bearded, as he knelt before me, pleading for his life. And the sudden look of fear, as I, who had always before been merciful of his treacheries, hardened my heart.

I heard the thunk of the headsman’s ax…

Then it seemed I sat in my pavilion on the island of Runnymede, summoned there by my rebellious barons. They stood before me in their arrogance, and presented to me, their sovereign lord, the perfidious writing of their demands. And again, I saw their looks a triumph change to the knowledge of death as my hidden bowmen stepped forth and loosed their clothyard shafts into the false hearts of my forsworn vassals…

Scenes of warfare passed before my eyes. I saw the walls of Paris go down before me, saw the fires that blazed up from the cathedrals of Madrid, saw the head of him who once had been a king, impaled on a pike and borne before me. Faces crowded around me, fair women and ambitious men, praising me. There was revelry, and riding behind the baying hounds, and roasted venison before the roaring blaze; and tuns of wine broached, and the passing of days, years of gluttony and lechery and sloth, until the time when my hand no longer sought the sword. Swollen with excess, rotten with disease, I cowered in my palace while my picked retainers parleyed with the invaders at my gates. Parleyed, and sold their kingdom and its king for their own vile lives. But no viler than mine, when I knelt, weeping, at the feet of the stripling whose father I had hanged to his own gates, and swore to him on my sword the eternal servility of all my house…

I swam back from across a gulf wider than the Universe and was standing in the room I remembered from an eon—or a second—before. The sword burned hot in my hand—no longer an awkward stub, but a blade four feet long, ending in a blunt, broken tip. The cross-guard was different: longer, the quillons curving out above carved knuckle-bows. There were traces of gold on the grip, and a single jewel glinted in the pommel. It was the same magic I’d seen before, all the talk in the world about probability stresses and the reshaping of reality couldn’t make it anything else for me. I groped after the dream that had filled my head a moment before: a panorama of faces and sounds and vain regrets; but it faded, as dreams do, and was gone. Then my reverie was shattered into small pieces as the door to the next room slammed open and feet came across the rug toward the bedroom.

“Milord Baron,” a familiar voice called. “An emergency in the Net! The stasis has been broken! The probability storm will strike within hours!”

His rush had carried him past me where I had flattened myself to the wall beside the door. He halted when he saw the room was empty, spun, saw me, yelled.

“Thanks for the information, Renata,” I said, and laid the flat of the sword against the side of his head with all the power in my arm. I didn’t wait to see if I had broken his skull. I went across the study and was back inside my private tunnel before the first of his men had gotten up his nerve to enter without knocking.

An hour or two of exploring the tunnel system turned up plenty of side-branches, some secret rooms with tables and rotted bedding, a cramped stairway leading down to ground level; but there seemed to be no direct way into the other wing of the palace and the exit behind the rhododendrons. I thought about coming out and trying it in the open, but there were too many sounds of activity beyond the walls to make that seem really attractive. The whole building seemed to be in a state of uproar. That wasn’t too hard to understand. With a dead viceroy to handle, and a probability storm coming on, it looked like a busy day.

My break came when I found a shaft with a rusty ladder bolted inside it.

The rungs were too close together, and scaled with rust, and the bore was barely big enough to give me operating space. It seemed to get smaller as I went down. It ended on a damp floor that I recognized as running behind the rank of cells where I’d once been a guest. I started along the two-foot-wide passage, in near pitch-dark. What light there was came from chinks in the mortar between the stones. If night fell while I was still here, the going would be rough.

I followed the passage fifty feet to a dead end. I turned back, and after thirty feet, encountered an intersection that I would have sworn hadn’t been there two minutes 4 before. The right-hand branch led to an uncovered pit that I discovered by almost falling in it. The other spiraled down, debouched into a circular room lined with dark openings. I turned my back, and when I looked again, everything had changed. This time I was sure; where the passage I had entered by had been there was a solid wall of stone. I knew now what Roosevelt meant by a probability storm. Subjective reality had turned as insubstantial as a dream.

The next passage I tried ended in a blank wall of wet clay. When I came back into the circular room it was square, and there were only two exits now. One led to a massive iron-bound door, locked and barred. I retraced my steps, but instead of a room I came into a cave with water trickling across its floor and a single dark opening on the far side. I went into it, and it widened and was a carpeted hall, faced with white doors, all locked. When I looked back, there was only a gray tunnel, cut through solid rock.

For a long time, I wandered through dark passages that closed behind me, looking for a way up. And then, in a tunnel so low that I had to duck my head, I heard the clank of chains, not far away.

I listened hard, heard heavy breathing, the rasp of feet on stone, another clank. It wasn’t what would ordinarily be considered an inviting sound, but under the circumstances I was willing to take the risk. I pushed ahead ten feet and saw dim light coming through a crack in the wall. It was a loose stone slab, three feet on a side. I put my eye to the crack and looked into a cell with windowless walls, a candle on a table, a straw pallet. An old man stood in the center of the room. He was as tall as I was, wide through the shoulders, with big, gnarled hands, a weather-beaten complexion, pale blue eyes with a hunted look. He was dressed in tattered blue satin knee-pants, a wine and rose brocaded coat with wide fur lapels, a flowered vest, scuffed and worn shoes that had once been red. The chains were on his ankles. He looked around, scanning the walls as if he knew I was there.

“Geoffrey,” he said, in a hoarse, old voice that I’d heard before, in a dream, “I feel you near me.”

I got a grip on the stone and slid it aside and was looking through a barred opening. The old man turned slowly. His mouth opened and closed.

“Geoffrey,” he said. “My boy…” He put out a hand, then drew it back. “But my boy is dead,” he told himself. “Forever dead.” A tear ran down the leathery cheek. “Who are you, then? His cousin, Henry? Or Edward? Name yourself, then!”

“Curlon is my name. I’m lost. Is there a way out of here?”

He ignored the question. “Who sent you here? The black-hearted rogues who slew Geoffrey?” He caught at the bars, and the sleeve of his coat fell back. There was a welted, two-inch-wide scar all the way around his wrist.

“No one sent me,” I said. “I managed it on my own.”

He stared at me and nodded. “Aye—you’re of the blood—I see it in your face. Are you, too, caught in his traps?”

“It looks that way,” I said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“Henry Planget is my name. I claim no other honor. But I’ll not fall in with his schemes, though all the devils in hell come to haunt me!” He shook his fist at the wall. “Do your damnedest, rascals! But spare the boy!”

“Snap out of it, old man!” I said roughly. “I need your help! Is there a way out of here?”

He didn’t answer. I drew the broken sword and levered at the bars. They were solid, an inch thick, set in barred sockets.

“My help?” His rheumy eyes held on mine. “A Planget never calls for help—and yet… and yet, perhaps it would have been better if we had, so long ago…”

“Listen, to me, Henry. There’s a man called Roosevelt—Baron General Pieter van Roosevelt. He’s crazy enough to think he can remake the Universe according to a private set of specifications and I’m crazy enough to believe him. I’d like to stop him, if I can. But first, I have to break out of this maze. If you know the | way—tell me!”

“The maze?” The old man looked at me vaguely; then as if he were shaking off a weight, he straightened his back; his eyes cleared and vitality came into them.

“The maze of life,” he said. “The maze of fate. Yes, we must break out!” He stopped, staring at the broken sword. His hand went out to it, but stopped, not touching it.

“You bear Balingore?” his voice quavered. His eyes met mine, and now fire flashed in them. “A miracle passes before my eyes! For these same eyes saw Balingore broken and cast into the sea! And now… he lives again!”

“I’m afraid it’s just a broken sword,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

“Balingore lives again!” he quavered. “His strength runs in you, lad! I sense it! And still the powers draw at you across the veils of the worlds! I’ve seen them—yes, he showed me, long ago, when he plied me with fine words and talk of glories vanished. There are more worlds than one, and they call to me—and to you, too! Can you feel them, the voices that cry out of darkness, summoning you? Go! Go to them! Break the ring of fate that forever doomed our house!”

“How do I do that, Henry?”

He clung to the bars and I could see the fight he was having to hold to the glimmer of sanity that had come to him—if that was what it was.

“I must speak quickly, before the veils descend again,” he said. His voice was steadier now. “This is the tale that he told me:

“Long ago, a king of our line bore Balingore into battle, and with him built a mighty empire across the world. But in the end, he turned aside from honor. Balingore passed to the hands of another, and for seven centuries, served the cause of evil. But at last the usurper’s greed undid him. His wise men built a strange machine in which a man might leave his proper frame of fate and walk in worlds of might-have-been. He sought to use this wonder as a weapon, to spread his black dream of empire—but he failed. And in his failure, he brought down the very skies about him!”

“The machine was called a shuttle,” I said. “It used the MC-drive to move across the alternate world-lines. I’ve heard that the Blight was caused by the drive running out of control.”

“Nay—it was no accidental havoc! Van Roosevelt knew what he did when he unleashed its power on the world! And now his spawn seeks again to mold the cosmos to his liking! But this is a task too great for him alone! He needs the might of Angevin beside him. This much he told me when he snatched me from my manor house in the far world of my birth. But I defied him! As you must!”

“Who is he, Henry? What is he?”

“A fallen angel; a man so evil that the world cannot contain his malice! Even now it melts and flows—as I have seen it melt and flow before! Run, lad! Flee this pit of horrors before you find yourself forever lost… as I was lost, so long ago…”

“You were telling me about the sword,” I reminded him.

“Many things have I learned, strange beyond belief,” Henry mumbled. “And yet you must believe them!” The fire came back into his tone. “There are many worlds, many lines of fate that grow across the walls of time like so many vines of ivy! Once there were many Balingores, each holding some fraction of the power that was once welded into one. But in the disaster that overtook the world, all were lost, save two: One, in the hands of the devil, Roosevelt. And another, which hung on the high wall of my house, in a far land I shall never see again!” Knuckles whitened as he gripped the bars. “Once, this was my house, these chambers my cellars. Then he came. His talk beguiled me, in my ignorance. At his behest, I took down the ancient blade of my ancestors, and would have put it in his hand. But at his touch, it shattered.

“He raged, blamed me for the miracle. But I took new pride from the sign given me. I defied him, then! Too late, I defied him! He brought me here, told me his tale—and his lies. He swore I was the key to his greatness, that together we would rebuild his world—that other world, so like mine, and yet so different. I would not listen. I saw the sword he bore—the other Balingore, so long ago dishonored—but I sensed that the true power flowed not in it. He needed me, in truth—but what he did not know was that I had saved one fragment of the true sword. I hid it away from him, and when he scattered the shards in the salt sea, there to corrode to nothing, one piece was left behind…”

“There were more than two Balingores,” I said. “I have part of one. And I found another part, in a ruined city in the Blight—”

“Listen to me!” Henry’s voice shook. “I feel the red darkness returning! Time is short! Go to my world, Curlon! Find my house of the high stone walls and the red towers; and there, in the chapel dedicated to St. Richard, search beneath the altar-stone. But beware the False Balingore! Now go—before the world melts away into a tortured dream!”

“I’ll try, Henry,” I said. “But I can’t leave you here. I’ll try to find something—some way to release you.” I went back along the passage, feeling the walls, with the vague idea I might find a ring of keys hanging there; but there was nothing.

When I came back to the barred window, the candle still burned on the table; but the room was empty. Only the rusted shackles lay on the floor among scattered bones.

For a long time, I stood in the dark, watching the candle burn down and gutter out. Then I went on. I don’t know how many hours later it was that I came into a room where light filtered down from a heavy oak door, half-smashed from its hinges. I went up stone steps into late afternoon light in a kitchen that looked as though it had been fought through. There was shooting going on outside, not far away.

The door opened into a bricked alley under high walls. A dead man in a blue uniform lay on his back a few feet from it. I picked up his gun and moved up to cross the street without any unnecessary noise. In the distance, big guns rumbled and boomed, and flashes showed against the colors of early dusk. I knew where I was now. I had covered several city blocks, underground. The viceregal palace was in the next square, a hundred yards away.

A sudden burst of gunfire nearby made me flatten myself against the wall. I heard running feet, and three blue-uniformed Imperial guards dashed out of a doorway, heading across the street. There was more gunfire, from up high, and one of them fell. A shell shrieked, and a section of street blew up and blanketed the scene with dust. When it cleared, a dead civilian with a bandolier across his shoulders lay near the dead soldier. The revolution was in full swing, but somehow I had a feeling that in spite of that, things hadn’t turned out the way Roosevelt had wanted them. The thought warmed me, and turned my mind to what I had to do next.

I left my cubbyhole, made it across the street, and into a narrow street that led to the delivery yard at the back of the palace. I went along it with the machine pistol ready; I didn’t want to be gunned down, by either side. Near the gate, I heard feet coming up behind me. I threw the gun away and went over the wall and was in the viceregal gardens, fifty feet from the spot where I had left the shuttle on half-phase.

The shadowy trees and bushes looked different somehow;-wild flowers of a kind I’d never seen before sprouted in the tended beds. Somewhere a nightingale was singing his heart out, ignoring the gunfire.

I was still wearing the ring Bayard had given me, the one with the miniaturized shuttle recall signaler set inside the synthetic ruby. I had left the shuttle in another world-line, with Imperial suppressor beams holding it pinned down like a butterfly on a board, but this wasn’t the time to pause and consider things like that. If the signaler worked, I was on the board for another round; if not, the game was finished now. I pressed the stone.

The bird sang. A breeze stirred the long grass. At the far side of the garden, a man stepped into view, capless, dressed in sweat-stained blues. He stopped when he saw me, shouted, and started for me at a run. He was halfway there when the shuttle shimmered and phased into solidity with a rush of displaced air. I stepped inside and flipped the half-phase switch. On the screens, the twilit garden faded to eerie blue. The man who had been running skidded to a stop, raised his gun and fired a full clip into the spot the shuttle occupied. The gun made a remote, flat sound. Then the man threw the gun down and laughed a wild laugh. He turned and wandered away. I could sympathize with him. I knew how he felt. The world had come apart around his ears, and there was no place to turn.

The telltale light on the panel was blinking on, off, on. It was the tracer that had been locked to Roosevelt’s shuttle. It still was—and the target was moving.

Again, I didn’t stop to calculate the odds. I threw in the drive lever and set off in pursuit.

I had seen it before, but it was a thing that could never lose its fascination. All around me, as the hours passed, the world changed and flowed. I knew now that what I was seeing was a simultaneous sequences of A-lines, each differing only slightly from the next, like the frames of a movie film. Nothing really moved; no normal time elapsed during a transdimensional crossing. But the eerie pseudo-activity of E-entropy went on; plants jostled each other for favorable positions; vines attacked trees; weeds swelled and crowded out other weeds. The ivy-covered walls of the palace shrank, broadened, became a fortress ringed with a moat. The walks shifted position, slid away, became footpaths. The trees moved back, gliding slowly through the turf that parted like water, until the shuttle was perched in an open field edged by an ancient forest. The fort had become a stone manor house, with mansard roofs and chimneys poking up into the unchanging sky; the chimneys drew together and merged, became towers of brick with castellated tops.

Suddenly, the hum of the drive whined down-scale and ceased. The scene stabilized. I was looking across a tilled field of grain toward the lone house occupying the top of a low rise among tall trees.

A high stone house with brick towers. Bricks would be red in normal light. Out of all the possible destinations in all the Universes, Roosevelt had led me to the house of Henry Planget.

I waited until full dark before I switched the shuttle -back to full-phase and stepped out, then shifted it back. The soft boom\ of imploding air had a lonely sound of finality.

For the past hour, a steady stream of men had come and gone around the big house. Couriers had galloped up on horseback, and others had ridden away down the unpaved road with full saddlebags slapping at their mounts’ flanks. Lights burned in all the ground-floor windows. Sentries paced in front of the main door.

Everything about the place spelled military headquarters. Somewhere inside, Roosevelt would be cooking up the last ingredients of his grand scheme for the world.

I skirted the house, came up in the shelter of a row of poplars until I could see through the nearest set of casement windows. A group of men in ornate green uniforms clustered around a table on which a map was spread, under a gas-burning chandelier. Roosevelt wasn’t among them. It was the same in the next room, except that the men wore plain khaki and were working over what might have been manning documents or supply lists. I worked my way halfway around the house, using the hedges for concealment, before I found my man. He was sitting alone at a table, writing rapidly with a ball-point pen—a curious anomaly in the old-fashioned setting. He was smiling a little as he wrote. There was a small cut on his forehead. He was still wearing the fancy outfit he had donned for the ceremony back in New Normandy, now stained and powder-burned. It seemed the general had seen some close action before he had left the scene of battle.

He finished writing and left the room. I closed in and checked the windows. It was a mild evening, and they stood open half an inch. Ten seconds later, I was inside.

I listened at the door, heard nothing, opened it, and took a look along the papered hallway glowing softly in the light of a single gas jet. A sentry stood at the far end, all shiny leather and brass, with a musket over his shoulder. I tried to pretend I was a shadow moving along the hall, sliding into the recess of a stairwell. He never turned his head.

There was red carpeting on the stairs, a polished mahogany rail. On the landing, I gave a listen, then went on up into a dark corridor, door-lined. I was standing there, waiting for instinct to whisper instructions in my ear, when I felt a touch at the hip. I came around fast, and my hand went to the sword-hilt before I understood. The touch had been the sword, tugging gently at my side. I drew it, following the direction of the pull.

At the end of the corridor, three steps led up to double doors of carved oak. I pushed through them, stood in moonlight shining through a rose window. It wasn’t a room that I had ever seen before—and yet it was. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that it was the analog of the chapel from which Roosevelt had stolen the reliquary box. This room was smaller, simpler, almost unadorned. But somehow, in the abstruse geography of the Net of alternate reality, it occupied the same position. The altar under the high window consisted of two heavy oak uprights with a flat slab of rough stone across them, but somehow, it was the same altar. In the dim light, it looked like an ancient sacrificial block. I started forward and the door made a soft sound behind me. I turned, and Roosevelt stood there. His black eyes seemed to blaze across the darkness at me, as armed men spread out behind him.

“You see, Plantagenet?” he said softly. “Struggle as you will, your fate must deliver you into my hands!”

“I misjudged you when we met,” Roosevelt said. “And again, in New Normandy. You should have seized on the chance to escape, filled with the zeal to set a nation free. The countryside would have risen at your call; you’d have ridden into glory with your followers at your back and the bright sun overhead. Why didn’t you ?”

“You’re a clever man, Roosevelt,” I said. “But not clever enough to play God. Men aren’t cardboard cutouts for you to arrange to suit yourself.”

“Men are tools,” Roosevelt said flatly. “As for you—you’re a tool that turns in the hand, and your edges are surpassingly sharp.” He shook his head. “You’re supposed to be a man of emotion and action, Plantagenet, not thought!”

“Stop second-guessing me, Roosevelt. Your scheme’s blown up in your face. You’ve failed—the way your father failed with Henry Planget.” It was a shot in the dark, just something to say. For a moment, he looked startled. Then his teeth flashed in a smile.

“It was my grandfather,” he said. “I wonder how you learned of that? But it doesn’t matter now, does it? You’ve come here, to the one place you had to come to—and found me waiting and ready.”

“Not so ready. I could have shot you while you were writing at your desk.”

“I fail to see the weapon.” He was still smiling an almost gentle smile. “No, Plantagenet, it’s not your destiny to shoot me in the back. We’ll have our meeting face to face—and the fateful time is now.” He drew the heavy longsword slung at his side. The light winked on the jewels that crusted the pommel and grip and pas-d’âne. The men behind him stood silent, drawn guns in their hands.

“You like to talk about fate, Roosevelt,” I said. “It’s a lot of hot air. A man determines his own fate.” I was watching the long blade, ready to ward off a blow with the broken weapon in my hand. Roosevelt looked at it and laughed, a low chuckle.

“Like your blade, Plantagenet, you’re incomplete! You know a little—though even that little surprises me—but not enough. Don’t you recognize the weapon you face?”

“It’s a fancy piece of iron,” I said. “But a weapon is as good as the man behind it.”

“Look on Balingore!” Roosevelt held the sword out so that the blade caught the light. It was a slab of edged and polished steel, six feet long, as wide as my hand, and Roosevelt’s brawny arm held it as though it were a stick of wood. “It was forged for your once-great ancestor, Richard of the lion-heart. It served him well—but he was a greedy man. He went too far, grew fat on gold and wine. Richard Bombast, they called him in the end. He lay drunk in his chamber while the French attacked the walls of London and his people opened the gates to them. He bought his life with this. He handed it, hilt-first, to the Dutch mercenary who led the forces of Louis Augustus, and swore the submission of himself and his house, to the end of time!”

“Fairy tales,” I said.

“But a fairy tale you believe in.” Roosevelt tilted the sword, made light wink in my eyes. “I know why you’re here, Plantagenet.”

“Do you?”

He nodded somberly. “Somehow—and later you’ll tell me how—you learned that Balingore was the key object through which the lines of power run. You imagined you could steal it, and win back all that you lost, so long ago.” He shook his head. “But the weapon is mine, now! Its touch would shrivel your hand. All the probability energies built up in seven hundred years of history flow through this steel, and every erg of that titantic charge denies your claim. I offer you your last chance for life and its riches. Plantagenet! Submit to me now, and you’ll stand first below the throne in the new order. Refuse, and you’ll die in an agony beyond your comprehension!”

“Dead is dead,” I said. “The method doesn’t matter much. Why don’t you go ahead, do it now? You’ve got the weapon in your hand.”

“I should have killed you,” he said between his teeth. “I should have killed you long ago!”

“You kept me alive for a reason,” I said raggedly. “But it wasn’t your reason, Roosevelt. All along, you’ve thought you were in charge, but you weren’t. Maybe fate isn’t as easy to twist as you thought it was—”

One of the men behind Roosevelt gave a muffled yell; a rat as big as a tomcat scuttled out between his feet. Roosevelt cut at it with the sword—and I whirled and sprinted for the altar.

I expected gunfire to racket, a bullet in the spine, a wash of agony from a nerve-gun; but Roosevelt shouted an order to his men to hold their fire. I jumped up on the low platform, gripped the altar-stone, and heaved at it. I might as well have tried to lift the columns of the Parthenon. Roosevelt was coming toward me at a run. I jammed the broken sword in under the rock, felt it clash on metal—

The Universe turned to white fire that fountained round me, then dwindled away to misty gray…

“My lord, will you attack?” Trumpington’s voice came from beside. I looked up at the sun, burning through the mist. I thought of England’s green fields, and the sunny vineyards of Aquitaine, of the empire I might yet win. I looked across toward the place where the enemy waited, where I knew death waited with a message for me.

“I will attack,” I said.

“My lord,” Trumpington’s voice was troubled. “Is all well with you?”

“As well as can be with mortal man,” I said, and spurred forward toward the high gray walls of Chaluz.

The chapel of St. Richard swam back into solidity. Roosevelt was running toward me; behind him, his men were spreading out; one brought his gun up and there was a vivid flash and I felt a smashing blow in my shoulder that spun me back and down…

Roosevelt was standing over me, the bared sword in his hand.

“You can’t die yet, Plantagenet,” he said in a voice that seemed to ring and echo like a trumpet. “Get on your feet!”

I found my hands and knees, dragged them under me. My body was one pulsating agony… like the other time, when Renata had shot me with the nerve-gun. Remembering Renata helped. I stood.

“You’re a strong man and a proud one,” Roosevelt said; his voice swelled and faded. My hand burned and tingled. I remembered the sword, blinked the haze away, saw it still projecting from under the altar-stone where I had jammed it just before somebody shot me. I wished I could get my hands on it.

“You’ve run a long way, Plantagenet,” Roosevelt was saying. “I think you knew how it would end, but still you fought. I admire you for that—and soon I’ll let you rest. But first—make your submission to me!”

“You’re still afraid…” I got the words out. “You can’t swing it… on your own.”

“Listen to me,” Roosevelt said. “The storm is all around us; it will reach us here, soon. You’ve seen it, seen what the Blight is! Unless we resolve the probability flaw now, it will engulf this world-line along with all the rest! You’re holding the fault-line open with your stubbornness! In the name of the future of humanity, give up your false pride!”

“There’s another solution,” I said. “You can submit to me.”

“Not though the pit should open to swallow me alive,” Roosevelt said, and brought the sword up, poised—

I used the last ounce of strength in my legs to lunge for his wrist, caught it, held him. I reached past him, toward the scarred hilt of my weapon. His hand closed on my wrist. We stood there, locked together, his black eyes inches from mine.

“Stand back!” Roosevelt shouted as his men came close. “I’ll break him with my own hands!”

My fingers were six inches from the hilt of the sword. I could feel a current, not a physical pull, but a force as intangible as hate or love flowing from my hand to it.

“Strive, Plantagenet,” Roosevelt hissed in my ear, and threw his weight against me. My hand was forced back, away from the sword…

“Balingore!” I shouted.

The sword moved, leaped across the intervening space to my hand.

There was a sensation as though fire poured through my arm, not burning, but scouring away the fatigue. I threw Roosevelt back, and swung six feet of scarred and rusted steel in my two hands. He backed away, his eyes fixed on the old sword, nicked and blunted, but complete now. An expression passed across his face like a man who’s looked into the furnace doors of Hell. Then his eyes met mine.

“Again, I underestimated you,” he said. “Now I begin to understand who you really are, Plantagenet, what you are. But it’s far too late to turn back. We meet as we were doomed to meet, face to face, your destiny against mine!” He lunged, and the False Balingore leaped toward me, and the True Balingore flashed out to meet it. The two blades came together with a ring like a struck anvil and the sound filled the world…

…I saw the shaft leap toward me out of the dust, felt the hammer blow in my shoulder that almost struck me from the saddle.

“Sire—you’re hit!” Trumpington shouted, and reined closer to me in the press of battle. For an instant weakness swept over me, but I kept my seat, spurred forward.

“My lord—you must retire and let me tend your wounds!” Trumpington’s voice followed me; but I did not heed him. He galloped abreast, seeking to interpose himself between me and the enemy.

“Sire—turn back!” he shouted. “Even a king can die!”

For a moment we faced each other among the plunging mounts and struggling men.

“More than other men, a king knows how to die,” I said. “And when, as well.” Then the charge of the enemy host separated us, and I saw him no more…

I saw the change come into Roosevelt’s eyes, locked on mine as we strained together, chest to chest. He staggered back, staring unbelievingly at his empty hands. Under my eyes, his face withered, his cheeks collapsed, his silks and brocades turned to gray rags that dropped away to expose gaunt ribs, the yellow skin of age. He fell, and his toothless mouth mumbled words, and his hands, like the claws of a bird, scrabbled for a moment at the stone floor. Then there were only bones that dwindled to dust.

The sword burned in my hands. I looked at it and saw how the light shone along the flawless length of the perfect blade, how the jeweled hilt glittered. I sheathed it and walked down the length of the empty chapel and out into the sunlight.