Up The Line

59.

He came back on time, looking disgusted, and said, “We’re all waiting for you on August 9, 1100, by the land wall back of Blachernae, about a hundred meters to the right of the first gate.”

“What’s the story?”

“Go and see for yourself. It makes me sick to think about it. Go, and do what has to be done, and then this filthy lunacy will be over. Go on. Jump up and join us there.”

“What time of day?” I asked.

He pondered a moment. “Twenty past noon, I’d say.”

I went out of the inn and walked to the land wall, and set my timer with care, and jumped. The transition from late-night darkness to midday brightness left me blinded for an instant; when I stopped blinking I found myself standing before a grim-faced trio: Sam, Metaxas — and Jud B.

“Jesus,” I said, “Don’t tell me we’ve committed another duplication!”

“This time it’s only the Paradox of Temporal Accumulation,” my alter ego said. “Nothing serious.”

I was too muddled to reason it through. “But if we’re both here, who’s watching our tourists down in 1204?”

“Idiot,” he said fiercely, “think four-dimensionally! How can you be so stupid if you’re identical to me? Look, I jumped here from one point in that night in 1204, and you jumped from another point fifteen minutes away. When we go back, we each go to our proper starting point in the sequence. I’m due to arrive at half past three, and you aren’t suppose to be there until quarter to four, but that doesn’t mean that neither of us is there right now. Or all these others of us.”

I looked around. I saw at least five groups of Metaxas-Sam-me arranged in a wide arc near the wall. Obviously they had been monitoring this time point closely, making repeated short-run shunts to check on the sequence of events, and the Cumulative Paradox was building up a multitude of them.

“Even so,” I said dimly, “it somehow seems that I’m not correctly perceiving the linear chain of—”

“Stuff the linear chain of!” the other Jud snarled at me. “Will you look over there? There, on the far side of the gate!”

He pointed.

I looked.

I saw a gray-haired woman in simple clothes. I recognized her as a somewhat younger version of the woman whom I had seen escorting Pulcheria Ducas into the shop of sweets and spices that day, seemingly so long ago, five years down the line in 1105. The duenna was propped up against the city wall, giggling to herself. Her eyes were closed.

A short distance from her was a girl of about twelve, who could only have been Pulcheria’s younger self. The resemblance was unmistakable. This girl still had a child’s unformed features, and her breasts were only gentle bumps under her tunic, but the raw materials of Pulcheria’s beauty were there.

Next to the girl was Conrad Sauerabend, in Byzantine lower-middle-class clothes.

Sauerabend was cooing in the girl’s ear. He was dangling before her face a little twenty-first century gimcrack, a gyroscopic pendant or something like that. His other hand was under her tunic and visibly groping in the vicinity of her thighs. Pulcheria was frowning, but yet she wasn’t making any move to get the hand out of her crotch. She seemed a little uncertain about what Sauerabend was up to, but she was altogether fascinated by the toy, and perhaps didn’t mind the wandering fingers, either.

Metaxas said, “He’s been living in Constantinople for a little less than a year, and commuting frequently to 2059 to drop off marketable artifacts. He’s been coming by the wall every day to watch the little girl and her duenna take their noontime stroll. The girl is Pulcheria Botaniates, and that’s the Botaniates palace just over there. About half an hour ago Sauerabend came along and saw the two of them. He gave the duenna a floater and she’s been up high ever since. Then he sat down next to the girl and began to charm her. He’s really very slick with little girls.”

“It’s his hobby,” I said.

“Watch what happens now,” said Metaxas.

Sauerabend and Pulcheria rose and walked toward the gate in the wall. We faded back into the shadows to remain unobserved. Most of our paradoxical duplicates had disappeared, evidently shunting to other positions along the line to monitor the events. We watched as the fat man and the lovely little girl strolled through the gate, into the country-side just beyond the city boundary.

I started to follow.

“Wait,” said Sam. “See who’s coming now? That’s Pulcheria’s older brother Andronicus.”

A young man, perhaps eighteen, was approaching. He halted and stared in broad disbelief at the giggling duenna. We saw him rush toward her, shake her, yank her to her feet. The woman tumbled down again, helpless.

“Where’s Pulcheria?” he roared. “Where is she?”

The duenna laughed.

Young Botaniates, desperate, rushed about the deserted sunbaked street, yelling for his maiden sister. Then he hurried through the gate.

“We follow him,” Metaxas said. Several other groups of us were already outside the gate, I discovered when we got there. Andronicus Botaniates ran hither and thither. I heard the sound of girlish laughter coming from, seemingly, the wall itself.

Andronicus heard it too. There was a breach in the wall, a shallow cavelike opening at ground level, perhaps five meters deep. He ran toward it. We ran toward it too, jostling with a mob that consisted entirely of our duplicated selves. There must have been fifteen of us — five of each.

Andronicus entered the breach in the wall and let out a terrible howl. A moment later I peered in.

Pulcheria, naked, her tunic down near her ankles, stood in the classic position of modesty, with one hand flung across her budding breasts and the other spread over her loins. Next to her was Sauerabend, with his clothes open. He had his tool out and ready for business. I suppose he had been in the process of maneuvering Pulcheria into a suitable position when the interruption came.

“Outrage!” cried Andronicus. “Foulness! Seduction of a virgin maiden! I call you all to witness! Look at this, this monstrosity, this criminal deed!”

And he caught Sauerabend by one hand and his sister by the other, and tugged them both out into the open.

“Bear witness!” he bellowed. We got out of the way before Sauerabend could recognize us, although I think he was too terrified to see anyone. Pitiful Pulcheria, trying to hide all of herself at once, was huddled into a ball at her brother’s feet; but he kept pulling her up, exposing her, crying, “Look at the little whore! Look at her! Look, look, look!”

And a considerable crowd came to look.

We moved to one side. I felt like throwing up. That vile molester of children, that Humbert of stockbrokers — exposing his swollen red thing to Pulcheria, involving her in this scandal—

Now Andronicus had drawn his sword and was trying to kill either Sauerabend or Pulcheria or both. But the onlookers prevented him, bearing him to the ground and taking away his weapon. Pulcheria, in frantic dismay at having her nakedness exposed to such a multitude, grabbed a dagger from someone else and attempted to kill herself, but was stopped in time; finally an old man threw his cloak about her. All was confusion.

Metaxas said calmly, “We followed the rest of the sequence from here before you arrived, then doubled back to wait for you. Here’s what happened: The girl was engaged to Leo Ducas, but of course it was impossible for him to marry her after half of Byzantium had seen her naked like this. Besides, she was considered tainted, even though Sauerabend didn’t actually have time to get into her. The marriage was called off. Her family, blaming her for letting Sauerabend charm her into taking off her clothes, disowned her. Meanwhile, Sauerabend was given the choice of marrying the girl he dishonored, or suffering the usual penalty.”

“Which was?”

“Castration,” said Metaxas. “And so, as Heracles Photis, Sauerabend married her, changing the pattern of history at least to the extent of depriving you of your proper ancestral line. Which we’re now going to correct.”

“Not me,” said Jud B. “I’ve seen all I can stand. I’m going back to 1204. I’m due there at half past three in the morning to tell this guy to come back here and watch things.”

“But—” I said.

“Never mind figuring out the paradoxes,” Sam said. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Relieve me at quarter to four,” said Jud B, and shunted.

Metaxas and Sam and I coordinated our timers. “We go up the line,” said Metaxas, “by exactly one hour. To finish the comedy.” We shunted.