The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (32 page)

“Our command was: bring information and more information about the present sphere of time and everything connected with it; and you dare to enter this room with your suspicions! You can go
to the devil with your crazy notions! We want facts and nothing but facts.”

“Very well, Your Majesty, but don’t forget the seal on Operations Base 7, an intervention by
WHITE
which made our work extremely difficult and thwarted our
action in the decisive years.”

“That may very well be. Perhaps there was at that moment a historical event of great importance. As you said, there was a war at the time. Perhaps our intervention would have endangered a
politician or scientist of top-ranking future valence, or the great-grandfather of a politician or scientist, or heaven knows who. But that is all irrelevant. What is going to happen here and now
in a few seconds? That is the only thing that matters.”

Time was slipping by.

The guards came and went, came and went, dots on the temporal strip.

The king leaned back, breathing heavily. He was as white as chalk and dripped with sweat.

“Thirty more seconds, Your Majesty.”

“Collins!” The king’s eyes were fixed upon him beseechingly; they were filled with tears. “Collins! Keep your eyes on me! Do you hear? Don’t lose sight of me for a
single moment! Take note of everything, everything!”

He was leaning far forward, and his eyes swept panic-stricken across the room. He began to see dolls everywhere. They crept out from beneath his throne, came out of the walls, slipped down from
the ceiling on threads. Everywhere he saw dangling limbs, expressionless plastic faces, beady glass eyes that glared maliciously at him, tiny fists that brandished daggers as big as needles or
aimed minute laser pistols at him.

The king trembled and gnawed incessantly at his lower lip. Fear had complete mastery over him now. It was suffocating him. He felt as if he must either crawl off into a hole somewhere or else
scream and shoot about him in blind rage.

The minister gave him a worried look.

“I can’t bear this any longer, Collins!” shrieked His Majesty. “Don’t just stand idly about – do something!”

His shrill voice burst into thousands of tiny splinter-sharp fragments.

Collins followed the second hand of his watch as it ticked nearer and nearer to the critical moment.

“Now.”

The mirror went blank.

The minister looked carefully about the room, then fixed his gaze upon the king. The king suddenly leaned back, crossed his legs, and put aside his pistol so that both hands were free to
straighten out the clothing of a small plain doll which he was holding.

The minister blinked and shook his head to dispel the optical illusion, but the doll was still there. It hadn’t been there before and now it was there. He tried without success to cope
with this new situation. The brain refused to accept what the eyes clearly saw. His Majesty was sitting comfortably on the throne, smoothing out the dress of this small mechanical figure, and
smiling delightedly.

“Come, Collins, why are you staring so aghast at us? Have you never seen a doll before? A pretty little toy, don’t you think? A dollmaker’s masterpiece.”

The ten seconds were over. The mirror glowed once again and the first guard stepped out into the room.

“Hello, how are you? Have a nice trip?” the king asked him in good humor.

“He-hello,” stammered the bewildered man, and fled back into the mirror.

“Good morning,” the king greeted the next guard who appeared.

“G-good morning, Your Majesty,” he managed to stutter, and stumbled over his feet in his haste to find the mirror and disappear into it.

“This is quite an amazing doll, Collins. Go ahead and take a closer look at it.”

The minister approached hesitantly.

“Would Your Majesty deign . . . an explanation . . . the rapid transformation I mean, I beg Your Majesty’s pardon, but I find it incomprehensible that all of a sudden Your Majesty is
. . .”

“. . . Like a new man, you wanted to say?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You will get your explanation soon enough, in a half hour or so, when this spying finally stops.” He pointed to the mirror.

“But, Your Majesty, time is running out. Your Majesty’s only chance is to explain the whole situation to me immediately, so that we can undertake a fracture and take all other
necessary measures, so that all may still turn out for the best. I beseech Your Majesty, this is possible for only a few minutes longer.”

The king let out a peal of laughter.

“What for, Collins? Everything is turning out for the best. Why are you so nervous? Fetch a chair and sit down! Aren’t there any chairs here?”

“But certainly Your Majesty will explain . . .”

“All in good time, Collins, all in good time. Not now. Let us first take a look at this doll. It seems to be an old piece, doesn’t it, perhaps thousands of years old, but still in
quite good shape. I believe it even can dance. It has probably made a long trip, we should say a very long trip, but it is still fully intact. Hard to believe what can fit into this little head, if
one only knows how to go about filling it properly!” He held the small metal head of the doll between thumb and forefinger and smiled pensively.

“But, Your Majesty, I don’t understand. What does this all mean?”

“Be patient, Collins, be patient. You will find out. There are just twenty minutes left. In the meantime, let us watch the review of your troops. Then we will tell you a story, a very
ordinary story, but we think it will interest you nevertheless. We would wager on it.”

“I am breathless with anticipation, Your Majesty.”

Meanwhile, the king continued to greet with a gracious wave of the hand the guards who appeared and disappeared, as if he were holding an audience. The men gave the minister a questioning look,
which he answered with a regretful shrug of his shoulders and a resigned sigh. His Majesty continued to play with the doll and seemed to be in unusually high spirits, as if all this was great
fun.

Now it was Collins’s turn to become nervous. He found that he had torn the temporal strip in his hand to shreds. The king said to his minister, as if he too had noticed this, “That
doesn’t matter, Collins. We don’t need it anymore. In a quarter of an hour the stream of dots will stop anyway.”

“Well, that’s that, Collins. Your guards can’t penetrate the mirror anymore.”

The mirror was not blank. It continued to flicker, but no one stepped out from it. The minister stared in astonishment first at the instrument, then at His Majesty.

“Surprises you, doesn’t it?” laughed the king.

“Indeed it does,” admitted Collins. “But how is it possible?”

“Let us not anticipate.”

“As Your Majesty wishes. But it has always been my task to anticipate.”

“You are right. Very well, then let us begin.” The king settled comfortably into his throne and cleared his throat. “Collins, you are a clever man.”

“Your Majesty honors me.”

“But you have made several mistakes.”

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon, but what mistakes?”

“First of all, you shouldn’t have taken your eyes off the mirror for one single instant, for then you would have noticed that it wasn’t blank for the entire ten seconds. Not
that there was anything you could have done, but you might have gained some information which would have led you to make certain further considerations. And at times you were damned close to having
the answer. You almost beat us in our little game.”

“Perhaps, Your Majesty. It is not clear to me – what could I have done?”

“You should have thought out the problem more carefully. Fortunately for us, you didn’t. You could for instance have given more consideration to the meaning of this seal and the
intervention of
WHITE
.”

“I considered the seal a protection of important timeline intersections, where a fracture could have devastating consequences.”

“All of which is true, Collins. And
WHITE
has to intervene, because sometimes time fissures spread underneath the seals, as a result of imprudent operations, and
make repairs necessary, in order to guarantee the safety of the future, our universe, and thereby the very existence of
WHITE
itself.”

“I understand, but why didn’t
WHITE
seal off the entire timeline and cut off all operations of the patrol?”

“A good question. Why not? Think hard, Collins. You have a good head on your shoulders.”

“Of course. Your Majesty is right. That would mean cutting off all time travel, which would in turn mean no invention of time travel, as there could be no experiments, and then the
existence of
WHITE
would be impossible.”

“Very good! Therefore,
WHITE
interferes only when its existence is at stake.”

“But what about my mistakes, Your Majesty?”

“Without this future power, which we call
WHITE
, the course of our planet would speedily deteriorate into a state of hopeless confusion.
WHITE
was actually your opponent, Collins, but you were always looking for an opponent elsewhere. And you didn’t know where to look.”

“At times I suspected it, but I thought it more probable that certain political-interest groups in the empire, perhaps operating from a base in the future, were giving us trouble. But Your
Majesty spoke of several mistakes.”

“That is all part of the story which we are about to tell you. You must pay especially close attention to it for reasons which will also be made clear. But we want to anticipate a bit. You
were hunting down this dollmaker – ”

“Indeed.”

“ – And at times you made life difficult for him.”

“As Your Majesty commanded.”

“Hmm,” smiled the king.

“Although without much success, I must admit, because
WHITE
intervened with a seal.”

“Why didn’t you study the past history of this person more closely, at the very time and place in which it occurred?”

“We didn’t think it necessary. We already knew something of the man, though it was second- and third-hand information. The question didn’t seem to be worth going into more
thoroughly. It was my opinion that we had already spent too much time on him. What we had found out about him didn’t seem to be helpful enough . . .”

“Then you know that this man was born in 1594, first learned the blacksmith’s trade, then became apprenticed to a watchmaker, and afterward traveled about for five years as a
journeyman. During this time war broke out and he was captured by recruiting officers and forced to serve in the army; he spent the next two years with a band of men who had joined Tilly’s
troops . . .”

“Yes, Your Majesty, and settled down in the town which is now our Operations Base 7; he acquired money somehow, bought himself a cottage, set up a workshop, and devoted himself entirely to
his hobby of making watches and mechanical toys. He became a respected citizen of the town but refused all public offices which were offered to him; he escaped the snares of all the spinsters in
the neighborhood, having decided upon a bachelor life in order to have his evenings free to pore over blueprints and tinker with mechanical instruments. He engaged a housekeeper who cooked and
cleaned the house but was not allowed into the workshop. The watchmaker became more and more withdrawn, hardly leaving his house. Finally he became mentally deranged and in 1650 hung himself. As
Your Majesty can see, we know quite a bit about him, but nothing which appears noteworthy to me.”

“Nothing noteworthy. You are quite right, Collins. But do you also know that this man was killed in action, near Heidelberg in the year 1621? Tilly’s crowd murdered and plundered its
way through the countryside. He was killed either by farmers or by one of his fellow cutthroats, who probably fought with him over his booty or some woman.”

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?”

“You heard correctly, Collins. The man whom you supposedly investigated so carefully was no longer alive at the time Operations Base 7 was established.”

“That would have been an inexcusable error. But how does Your Majesty know this?”

“More about that later. And your third error was that you failed to have photographs taken of this man in order to examine him more closely. You would perhaps have had quite a surprise.
But you and your people had eyes only for the mechanical toys. Fortunately.”

There was a crafty smile on the king’s face.

“I considered his appearance fully irrelevant in this case, especially as I could never rid myself of the feeling that we were on the wrong track and had wasted much too much time on the
man.”

“So you yourself have never seen this Weisslinger.”

“No, Your Majesty. Why should I have seen him?”

The king shook his head in disapproval. Collins felt more and more uncertain.

“What a pity. Weisslinger is an extremely interesting man. You should have become acquainted with him; you would certainly have learned a great deal from him. He had much to tell, for he
had been through much in his life. Perhaps you would have noticed that he wore an ingenious mask, though it was no more ingenious than masks could be in that age. You know us well, Collins, and you
have a good head on your shoulders.”

“I am beginning to doubt that seriously, Your Majesty.”

“Now, now, Collins. It is never too late. Perhaps you will yet meet him.”

“How is that possible, Your Majesty? I don’t understand . . .”

“Patience, patience! Wait until you have heard our story. Then you will have to admit that you let yourself be checkmated too easily.”

“By Your Majesty’s leave, I am burning with eagerness to hear the story, for I see more and more clearly that I accomplished my task much more poorly than I had originally
thought.”

“Indeed you did, Collins. You played miserably and recklessly.”

“I most humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”

“On the other hand, you were pitted against no mean opponent. But everything in its turn.
BLACK
had the victory as good as in its pocket – the situation was
grim. Then it was
WHITE
’s turn,
WHITE
would have to be damned tricky . . . But where shall we begin? Ah yes, on the day when . . . Now pay
strict attention! One evening . . .”