"It wasn't easy, old boy," Dzok said, offering me a second cup of a coffee-like drink he had brewed over the small fire he had built. "I can assure you I was in bad odor with the Council for my part in bringing you to Xonijeel. However, the best offense is a good defense, as the saying goes. I countered by preferring charges against Minister Sphogeel for compromise of an official TDP position, illegal challenge of an Agent's competence, failure to refer a matter of Authoritarian security to a full Board meeting—"
"I don't quite get the picture, Dzok," I interrupted. "You conned me into going to Xonijeel by promising me help against the Hagroon—"
"Really, Bayard, I promised no more than that I'd do my best. It was a piece of ill luck that old Sphogeel was on the Council that week. He's a notorious xenophobe. I never dreamed he'd go so far as to consign you to exile on the basis of a kangaroo hearing—"
"You were the one who grabbed my gun," I pointed out.
"Lucky thing, too. If you'd managed to kill someone, there'd have been nothing I could do to save you from being burned down on the spot. And I'm not sure I'd have wanted to. You are a bloodthirsty blighter, you know."
"So you followed me to B-I Four . . ."
"As quickly as I could. Managed to get myself assigned as escort to a recruitment group—all native chaps, of course—"
"Native chaps?"
"Ahhh . . . Anglics, like yourself, captured as cubs . . . er . . . babies, that is. Cute little fellows, Anglic cubs. Can't help warming to them. Easy to train, too, and damnably human—"
"Okay, you can skip the propaganda. Somehow it doesn't help my morale to picture human slaves as lovable whities."
Dzok cleared his throat. "Of course, old chap. Sorry. I merely meant—well, hang it, man, what can I say? We treated you badly! I admit it! But—" he flashed me a sly smile. "I neglected to mention your rather sturdy hypnotic defenses against conditioning. I daresay you'd have had a bit more trouble throwing off your false memories if they'd known, and modified their indoctrination accordingly. And to make amends I came after you, only to find you'd flown the coop—"
"Why so mysterious? Why not come right up and knock on the door and say all was forgiven?"
Dzok chuckled. "Now, now, dear boy, can you imagine the reaction of a typical Anglic villager to my face appearing at the door, inquiring after a misplaced chum?
I scratched at my jaw, itchy with two day's stubble. "All right, you had to be circumspect. But you could have phoned—"
"I could have remained hidden in the garret until after dark, then ventured out to reconnoiter, which is precisely what I did," Dzok said firmly. "I was ready to approach you at Mrs. Rogers' house, when you slipped away from me. I located you again at the cottage at the edge of the woods, but again you moved too quickly—"
"We spotted you creeping around," I told him. "I thought it was the Xonijeelian Gestapo getting ready to revise the sentence to something more permanent than exile."
"Again, I was about to speak to you on the road, when that fellow in the cocked hat interfered. Then you fooled me by taking a train. Had a devil of a time learning where you'd gone. I had to return to Xonijeel, travel to Rome, reshuttle to your so-called B-I Four line, then set about locating you. Fortunately, we maintain a permanent station in Italy, with a number of trusties—"
"More natives, I presume?"
"Quite. I say, old man, you're developing something of a persecution complex, I'm afraid—"
"That's easy, when you're persecuted."
"Nonsense. Why, you know I've always dealt with you as an equal . . ."
"Sure, some of your best friends are people. But to hell with that. Go on."
"Umm. Yes. Of course, I had to operate under cover of darkness. Even then, it was far from easy. The Roman police are a suspicious lot. I turned you up at last, waited about outside your flat, then realized what you were about, and hurried to your shop. You know what happened there . . ." He rubbed his round skull gingerly. "Still tender, you know. Fortunately for me I was well wrapped up—"
"If you'd just said something . . ." I countered.
"Just as I opened my mouth, you hit me."
"All right, I'm sorry—sorrier than you know, considering what I went through after that. How the hell did you trail me here?"
He grinned, showing too many even white teeth. "Your apparatus, old boy. Fantastically inefficient. Left a trail across the Web I could have followed on a bicycle."
"You came to B-I four ostensibly on a recruitment mission, you said?"
"Yes. I could hardly reveal what I had in mind—and it seemed a likely spot to find some eager volunteers for Anglic Sector duty—"
"I thought you had plenty of trusties you'd raised from cubs."
"We need a large quota of native recruited personnel for our Special Forces, chaps who know the languages and more of the Anglic lines. We're able to offer these lads an exciting career, good pay, retirement. It's not a bad life, as members of an elite corps—"
"Won't it look a little strange when you come back without your recruits?"
"Ah, but I have my recruits, dear boy! Twenty picked men, waiting at the depot at Rome B-I Four."
I took a breath and asked The Question: "So you came to make amends? What kind of amends? Are you offering me a ride home?"
"Look here, Bayard," Dzok said earnestly. "I've looked into the business of Sphogeel's photogram—the one which clearly indicated that there is no normal A-line at the Web coordinates you mentioned—"
"So you think I'm nuts too?"
He shook his head. "It's not so simple as that . . ."
"What's that supposed to mean?" My pulse was picking up, getting ready for bad news.
"I checked the records, Bayard. Three weeks ago—at the time you departed your home line in the Hagroon shuttle—your Zero-zero line was there, just as you said. Less than twelve hours later—nothing."
I gaped at him.
"It can mean only one thing . . . I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it appears there's been an unauthorized use of a device known as a discontinuity engine."
"Go on," I growled.
"Our own technicians devised the apparatus over a hundred years ago. It was used in a war with a rebellious province . . ."
I just looked at him, waiting.
"I can hardly play the role of apologist for the actions of the previous generation, Bayard," Dzok said stiffly. "Suffice it to say that the machine was outlawed by unanimous vote of the High Board of the Authority, and never used again. By us, that is. But now it seems that the Hagroon have stolen the secret—"
"What does a discontinuity engine do?" I demanded. "How could it conceal the existence of an A-line from your instruments?"
"The device," Dzok said unhappily, "once set up in any A-line, releases the entropic energy of that line in random fashion. A ring of energy travels outward, creating what we've termed a probability storm in each A-line as the wave front passes. As for your Zero-zero line—it's gone, old man, snuffed out of existence. It no longer exists . . ."
I got to my feet, feeling light-headed, dizzy. Dzok's voice went on, but I wasn't listening. I was picturing the Hagroon stringing wire in the deserted garages of the Net Terminal; quietly, methodically preparing to destroy a world . . .
"Why?" I yelled. "Why? We had no quarrel with them . . ."
"They discovered your Net capabilities. You were a threat to be eliminated—"
"Wait a minute! You said your bunch invented this discontinuity whatzit. How did the Hagroon get hold of it?"
"That, I don't know—but I intend to find out."
"Are you telling me they just put on false whiskers and walked in and lifted it when nobody was looking? That's a little hard to swallow whole, Dzok. I think it's a lot easier to believe you boys worked along with the Hagroon, hired them to do your dirty work—"
"If that were the case, why would I be here now?" Dzok demanded.
"I don't know. Why are you here?"
"I've come to help you, Bayard. To do what I can—"
"What would that be—another one-way ticket to some nice dead end where I can set up housekeeping and plant a garden and forget all about what might have been, once, in a world that doesn't exist anymore because some people with too much hair decided we might be a nuisance and didn't want to take the chance—" I was advancing on Dzok, with ideas of seeing if his throat was as easy to squeeze as it looked . . .
Dzok sat where he was, staring at me. "You don't have to behave like a complete idiot, Bayard, in spite of your race's unhappy reputation for blind ferocity—besides which, I happen to be stronger than you . . ." He took something from the pocket of his trim white jacket, tossed it at my feet. It was my slug gun. I scooped it up.
"Still, if you actually are a homicidal maniac, go ahead. Don't bother to listen to what I have to say, or to wonder why I came here."
I looked at him across the fire, then thrust the gun into my pocket and sat down. "Go ahead," I said. "I'm listening."
"I gave the matter considerable thought, Bayard," Dzok said calmly. He poured himself another cup of coffee, sniffed at it, balanced it on his knee. "And an idea occurred to me . . ."
I didn't say anything. It was very silent; even the night birds had stopped calling. Somewhere, far away, something bellowed. A breeze stirred the trees overhead. They sighed like an old man remembering the vanished loves of his youth.
"We've developed some interesting items in our Web Research Labs," Dzok said. "One of our most recent creations has been a special, lightweight suit, with its Web circuitry woven into the fabric itself. The generator is housed in a shoulder pack weighing only a few ounces. Its design is based on a new application of plasma mechanics, utilizing nuclear forces rather than the conventional magneto-electronic fields—"
"Sure," I snapped. "What does it have to do with me?"
"It gives the wearer Web mobility without a shuttle," Dzok continued. "The suit is the shuttle. Of course, it's necessary to attune the suit to the individual wearer's entropic quotient—but that in itself is an advantage: it creates an auto-homing feature. When the field is activated, the wearer is automatically transferred to the continuum of minimum stress—namely, his A-line of origin—or whatever other line his metabolism is attuned to."
"Swell. You've developed an improved shuttle. So what?"
"I have one here. For you." Dzok waved toward the bubble-shape of his standard Xonijeel model Web traveler—a far more sophisticated device than the clumsy machines of the Imperium. "I smuggled it into my cargo locker—after stealing it from the lab. I'm a criminal on several counts on your behalf, old fellow."
"What do I do with this suit? Go snark hunting? You've already told me my world is gone—"
"There is another development which I'm sure you'll find of interest," Dzok went on imperturbably. "In our more abstruse researches into the nature of the Web, we've turned up some new findings that place rather a new complexion on our old theories of reality. Naturally, on first discovering the nature of the Web, one was forced to accept the fact of the totality of all existence; that in a Universe of infinities, all possible things exist. But still, with the intellectual chauvinism inherent in our monolinear orientation, we assumed that the wavefront of simultaneous reality advanced everywhere at the same rate. That 'now' in one A-line was of necessity 'now' in every other—and that this was an immutable quality, as irreversible as entropy . . ."
"Well, isn't it?"
"Yes—precisely as irreversible as entropy. But now it appears that entropy can be reversed—and very easily, at that." He smiled triumphantly.
"Are you saying," I asked carefully, "that you people have developed time travel?"
Dzok laughed. "Not at all—not in the direct sense you mean. There is an inherent impossibility in reversing one's motion along one's own personal time track . . ." He looked thoughtful. "At least, I think there is—"
"Then what are you saying?"
"When one moves outward from one's own A-line, crossing other lines in their myriads, it is possible, by proper application of these newly harnessed subatomic hypermagnetic forces I mentioned to you, to set up a sort of—tacking, one might call it. Rather than traveling across the lines in a planiform temporal stasis, as is normal with more primitive drives, we found that it was possible to skew the vector—to retrogress temporally, to levels contemporaneous with the past of the line of origin—to distances proportional to the distance of normal Web displacement."
"I guess that means something," I said. "But what?"
"It means that with the suit I've brought you, you can return to your Zero-zero line—at a time prior to its disappearance!"
It was nearly daylight now. Dzok and I had spent the last few hours over a chart laid out on the tiny navigation table in his shuttle, making calculations based on the complex formulation which he said represented the relationships existing between normal entropy, E-entropy, Net displacement, the entropic quotient of the body in question—me—and other factors too numerous to mention, even if I'd understood them.
"You're a difficult case, Bayard," the agent said, shaking his head. He opened a flat case containing an instrument like a stethoscope with a fitting resembling a phonographic pickup. He took readings against my skull, compared them with the figures he had already written out.
"I think I've corrected properly for your various wanderings in the last few weeks," he said. "Since it's been a number of years since your last visit to your original A-line—B-I three—I think we can safely assume that you've settled into a normal entropic relationship with your adopted Zero-zero line—"
"Better run over those manual controls with me again—just in case."
"Certainly—but let's hope you have no occasion to use them. It was mad of you, old chap, to set out in that makeshift shuttle of yours, planning to navigate by the seat of your pants. It just won't work, you know. You'd never have found your target—"
"Okay, but I won't worry about that until after I find out if I'm going to survive this new trip. What kind of margin of error will I have?"
Dzok looked concerned. "Not as much as I'd like. My observations indicated that your Zero-zero line was destroyed twenty-one days ago. The maximum displacement I can give you with the suit at this range is twenty-three days. You'll have approximately forty-eight hours after your arrival to circumvent the Hagroon. How you'll do that—"
"Is my problem."
"I've given it some thought," Dzok said. "You observed them at work in null time. From your description of what they were about, it seems apparent that they were erecting a transfer portal linking the null level with its corresponding aspect of normal entropy—in other words, with the normal continuum. They'd need this, of course, in order to set up the discontinuity engine in the line itself. Your task will be to give warning, and drive them back when they make their assault."
"We can handle that," I assured him grimly. "The trick will be convincing people I'm not nuts . . ." I didn't add the disquieting thought that in view of the attitude of the Imperial authorities—at our last meeting—my own oldest friends included—it was doubtful whether I'd get the kind of hearing that could result in prompt action. But I could worry about that later too, after I'd made the trip—if I succeeded in finding my target at all.
"Now to fit the suit." Dzok lifted the lid of a wall locker, took out a limp outfit like a nylon driver's suit, held it up to me.
"A bit long in the leg, but I'll soon make that right . . ." He went to work like a skilled seamstress, using shears and a hot iron, snipping and re-sealing the soft woven plastic material. I tried it on, watched while he shortened the sleeves, and added a section down the middle of the back to accommodate my wider shoulders.
"Doesn't that hand-tailoring interfere with the circuits?" I asked, as he fussed over the helmet-to-shoulder fit.
"Not at all. The pattern of the weave's the thing—so long as I make sure the major connecting links are made up fast . . ."
He settled the fishbowl in place, then touched a stud on a plate set in the chest area of the suit, looked at the meters mounted on a small test panel on the table. He nodded, switched off.
"Now, Bayard," he said seriously. "Your controls are here . . ."
It was full daylight now. Dzok and I stood on the grassy bank above the river. He looked worried.
"You're sure you understand the spatial maneuvering controls?"
"Sure—that part's easy. I just kick off and jet—"
"You'll have to use extreme care. Of course, you won't feel the normal gravitational effects, so you'll be able to flit about as lightly as a puff of smoke—but you'll still retain normal inertia. If you collide with a tree, or rock, it will be precisely as disastrous as in a normal entropic field."
"I'll be careful, Dzok. And you do the same." I held out my hand and he took it, grinning.
"Goodbye, Bayard. Best of luck and all that. Pity we couldn't have worked out something in the way of an alliance between our respective governments, but perhaps it was a bit premature. At least now there'll be the chance of a future rapprochement."
"Sure—and thanks for everything."
He stepped back and waved. I looked around for a last glimpse of the morning sun, the greenery, Dzok's transparent shuttle, and Dzok himself, long-legged, his shiny boots mud-spattered, his whites mud-stained. He raised a hand and I pressed the lever that activated the suit. There was a moment of vertigo, a sense of pressure on all sides. Then Dzok flickered, disappeared. His shuttle winked out of sight. The strange, abnormal movement of normally immobile objects that was characteristic of Net travel started up. I watched as the trees waved, edged about in the soil, putting out groping feelers toward me as though sensing my presence.
A hop, and I was in the air, drifting ten feet above the surface. I touched the jet-control and at once a blast of cold ions hurled me forward. I took a bearing, corrected course, and settled down for a long run.
I was on my way.