‘What tests did you make?’ asked Caxton, the physicist in him stirring momentarily.

  Smilingly, Johns shook his head.

  In still another conversation, Caxton asked, ‘How did you happen to let Bustaman into your experiment?’

  ‘The same way all the real Possessors came in,’ was the reply. ‘A small percentage of individuals unknowingly have the ability to go through time. That was my great discovery. As soon as I knew what the factor was, I started my long search for people who possessed it. Meanwhile, in one of my own time transformations I had discovered the Palace. And so I was finally ready for the great experiment, because in the Palace I could use people who were not themselves Possessors.’

  ‘Let me understand you,’ said Caxton. ‘There are two aspects here. One is that people who could of themselves go through time existed naturally in the world?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As a result of your ability as a Possessor,’ Caxton continued, ‘and this is a second and separate aspect, you accidentally discovered the Palace of Immortality.’

  ‘That’s correct’

  ‘The Palace was empty when you found it?’ asked Caxton.

  ‘Yes. Empty. Deserted. We might suspect it was used for a long time, and then abandoned. Abandoned for what? There’s no clue.’

  A little later that same day, Caxton ran into Johns in the corridor of the trailer. Johns said, ‘Your question about Bustaman - I’ve been thinking about him since. In his zeal, he made some interesting discoveries. He was the first to make me aware that entire probability worlds could be merged after they had been separated for a long time. For example, that probability of 2083 A.D. where you were. That was my group’s first attempt to create an idyllic everybody-loves-everybody Earth. It took Bustaman a long time, but by 2130 A.D. he had located all - at least enough - of the metal objects, and brought them back to the Palace. As the two worlds merged there was some confusion but nothing desperate.’

  Caxton had tried to follow a visual concept of what Johns was saying. But the picture of two probability worlds merging was too much for him. The implication was that most people had, except for some emotional variations, been substantially in the same places, had essentially gone the same directions, and at the moment of merging, were at the exact same spot in both probability worlds…His mind boggled at that, but could not find a point of acceptance.

  Those people in that alternate probability world of 2083 A.D. really had tried to help him. His hysteria had been disturbing to persons he impinged on. But, it was clear now, their pursuit of him had never been threatening, and in the final issue he had probably escaped because they didn’t force their assistance on anyone.

  Caxton came out of his private thoughts to realise that Johns had walked on and disappeared into his laboratory. Caxton shrugged. Such conversations had, he realised, a false interest. Such things didn’t matter. Here in 1653 A.D. everything that had happened in that out-of-reach future was abstract and pointless.

  He was sitting at the breakfast table the next morning with that negative thought still in his mind. It was raining outside, a singularly dull sound. Caxton visualised a thousand miles of rain out there - and thirty years of nothing here in this trailer.

  Boy, he thought, I’d better do something…but what? Only the future interested him, and his quest for immortality. Yet maybe he had better make his peace with the present, and actually seek out the Indians, as he had threatened.

  The thought was like a cue. He looked up at the woman. ‘Did your father tell you about my plan to live with the Indians?’

  The girl turned and stared at him. She seemed particularly fresh and young looking; Caxton felt an instant longing. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a good idea, isn’t it, all things considered?’

  The woman was silent; then: ‘What would you do there?’ she asked.

  Caxton pretended astonishment. ‘Live a normal life, for heaven’s sake. Persuade one of their women to live with me the way -’

  He stopped. He had been about to say, ‘The way you once lived with me.’

  His thought poised. He trembled.

  For all of these numerous days, it had been apparent that this, here, in the trailer, was her earliest awareness of him; and that therefore (he thought of the corollary for the very first time)the time up there in the Palace of Immortality when he had awakened in the bed beside an older Selanie, must be later.

  The implication was that for there to be a later, they must have gotten out of this predicament.

  Something of his terrible excitement as that realisation came to him must have shown in his face. Selanie said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  He told her in a shaking voice, so caught up in his own inner disturbance that he noticed her first reaction only vaguely.

  For a moment her face showed - something… . Then she seemed to steady herself. It was not just a body steadiness, but the sound of it was in her voice when she spoke.

  ‘I don’t remember such a probability. So it must have been one that Price created of me for you without my knowledge. I’ll ask Father about it. I’m convinced that Bustaman once created a probability of Father without his knowledge.’ She looked at him with the same steadiness. ‘You didn’t happen to run into Dad somewhere along the line?’

  ‘No, sorry.’ Caxton’s high hope had already dropped in the face of her deflating attitude and words; and her final question disturbed him. He asked, astonished, ‘Why would Bustaman do a thing like that?’

  ‘He has a terrible false pride,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he felt that only he has pure motives; and so, when he discovered that Father had remained outside of the experiment, I’m sure he had to try to - ‘ She stopped. ‘Never mind that. Tell me again exactly what happened between me and you.’

  Caxton’s heart was no longer in the story. Nonetheless, he gave her the account, in detail this time. But all the time that he was speaking, he was thinking: I’ve just had a glimpse of the struggle between the two opposing forces in the Palace of Immortality, even though one of them was only one man.

  He realised that he was feeling terribly cynical.

  It seemed as if only human beings could have arrived at the quarrel that divided Bustaman from the main group occupying the Palace of Immortality. Surely, no greater insanity could be imagined. These people controlled a twist in time where, for all practical purposes, time went backward. Thus they could undo upon their own persons the years accumulated in the main time-stream - undo them over and over and over again. And, incredibly, this had become an issue of violence.

  That intense feeling came to an end, because, as he finished his retelling of his experience in the Palace, he had a thought, and he said, ‘All right. Now you tell me something. How come that probability Selanie married me?’

  The girl laughed. ‘One of these days I’ll have to have Father explain the probability thing to you. Then you’ll understand.’

  ‘But what I’ve just told you,’ said Caxton, disappointed, ‘doesn’t mean anything?’

  ‘I’ll talk to Dad about it,’ she said, and her voice was steady again, ‘and he can explain that to you, also.’

  With those words, he came back from his hope and was mentally again in the trailer with the dull sound of the rain, and the drab future of nothing as his only prospect. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said wearily, ‘what about the Indians? When shall I leave?’

  He stopped because the girl had turned away, and his final words were addressed to her retreating back. If she made any answer to his question. Caxton did not hear it. Glumly, he got up and went back to his room and lay down.

  All right, he thought, so that little game isn’t going to work. So maybe I will actually go and live with the Indians.

  Try as he would, he couldn’t really imagine that.

  He dozed, and awakened to the sound of rain. He slept again, and when he came to, there was the rain….

  Somewhere in there, he ate two more meals to the sound of rain.

  And, somewhere in there, the fantastic thought came that they would have to get out of this time. It seemed ridiculous to have such a purpose even come into his mind. Not here, in this wilderness. For, surely, there was no way up from an era that had no civilised people in it except themselves. But he had it. And it kept coming back. And he kept telling himself that up there in the 1970’s it had been impossible; yet it had happened. So, by that reasoning, it could happen also in the seventeenth century.

  That night, in the darkness of his own tiny room, he lay awake, arguing with the scientific part of his brain with his training as a physicist.

  Of course, he told himself with a faint smile, I’m only an M.A…. and it was well-known that M.A.‘s were still permitted a tiny amount of madness. They could still mingle with the people; even contemplate an occasional unproved hypothesis, without - and this was important - guilt. A fellow student at college who, like Caxton, was going to have to drop out and get a job, had even tried to persuade his friends that an M.A. status was actually better; because an M.A. was still entitled to have some fun.

  Thus reassured, Caxton continued to consider the impossible hope that had so suddenly flashed into his mind: that there had to be a way of getting back to the future.

  What presently astonished him was that, with the reaffirmation of his real goal, came the thought that he had to stop badgering that poor girl.

  The fact was, there was no logical reason which said that Selanie Johns should satisfy the sex needs of Peter Caxton, or of any other man she didn’t like.

  With that realisation, something inside him relaxed enormously.

  This time when he slept, he did not awaken until morning. He was about to turn over with a groan, when he realised that the rain sound had ceased. And when, after hastily dressing, he went out, the door was open; and through it fell a generous spray of brilliant sunshine.

  Caxton stepped gingerly down to grass that sparkled with wetness and saw that Claudan Johns was walking toward him alongside the swollen river that had been a mountain stream. The older man waved, and Caxton said, ‘Where’s your daughter, sir?’

  ‘Oh, she’s left,’ said Johns.

  It was a strange way of saying that she had gone off on her bike. Caxton felt his first ever-so-slight return of irritation with Selanie. He shook his head, thinking: Whenever I zig, she zags. Just when I’m ready to declare peace, she’s gone off somewhere. … So, that by the time she came back, who knew what new emotional disturbance he would be in in relation to her?

  He grew resigned… . Okay, so that’s the way she is. I’d better get used to it.

  ‘Selanie has some idea,’ continued Johns, ‘that Bustaman - of all people - maneuvered me into a probability world once for self-esteem reasons, without my knowing it. If that’s true, then I can be rescued also.’

  The conversation was making less and less sense. Caxton’s impression was that he was being subjected to technical chitchat, as if he understood the basic principles and could therefore fit in the missing pieces. And, of course, he could do nothing of the kind.

  He suppressed an impulse to go back into the trailer. Suppressed it because, damn it, there was nothing to do inside. He thought finally, wearily: All right, so I want to remain outside and be here when she flies back in. It would be a little ridiculous not to admit that to himself. So I’ll keep on talking.

  Aloud, he said, ‘This whole probability business is very mysterious. Apparently I’m up there in a couple of probability worlds myself.’

  Johns shook his head. ‘They won’t work,’ he said firmly. ‘We tested it while you were sleeping, and evidently what Price told you was true. You were too rigid for the probability aspect to affect you. I thought the accumulated time energy in your cells might help, but that doesn’t change the you’s up there. Too bad.’

  Caxton was parting his lips to continue with another association of his own, when it occurred to him: What this guy just said makes no sense. In fact, for several minutes I haven’t understood anything he said.

  Caxton began, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, this conversation seems to have passed me by. Is it all right if we start again?’

  Johns gave him a startled look.

  Caxton hesitated; then: ‘What did you do to me in my sleep?’

  Johns was calm again. ‘We tried to merge you from here with one of those probability you’s.’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t take for the reasons, no doubt, that Price gave you. Too bad.’

  ‘Merge me?’ echoed Caxton. He had an awful, sinking sensation.

  ‘I seem to remember something about this now,’ Johns chattered on. ‘About fifty years ago in my life - ‘ He broke off, apologetically. ‘I’m in and out of the Palace, living somewhere for a while adding years to my life, and then taking them off again. Fortunately, there’s never been any hurry. Past time, you know, waits forever for those who can move freely through time. … So, anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’m reminded that Price had me go back in time and set up an early probability for somebody from his teen period before 1977. So then I went up to that same person at age thirty - that was in the later 1960’s - picked him up and took him forward in time and handed him over to Price. Afterward, Price told me that they were unable to merge the older with the younger in terms of personality, but that the younger had to be merged with the older, and that the merging had no effect on the older. After what you told Selanie, I suddenly realised that must have been you.’ He was apologetic again. ‘Such details tend to slip away from the forefront of the mind.’

  He finished, ‘Anyway, that’s still the problem. Before I merged Selanie with the Selanie probability you told her about, she suggested I try it on you - but yours didn’t work, as I told you. And that’s too bad. You see, if she’s right about having created a probability of me, then if I merged with up there, you’d be left here alone. That bothered Selanie,’ said Claudan Johns.

  XXIV

  Glands can only be stimulated so long; fear fades into apathy; shock can renew so many times only.

  At last the man about to be hanged climbs up to the gallows, and stands there dully. When the trap door is sprung, he does not even notice the exact moment.

  A parallel darkness descended on Caxton’s mind for a timeless period after Claudan John’s words hit him with their meaning.

  During the entire trauma, Johns kept talking; and what finally penetrated of that continuing monologue was, ‘ … If you want to take the chance, we’ll have to hurry. Selanie said she would allow ten days before she merged me.’

  It sounded like nonsense, but the sense did come through finally. Caxton nodded. For the first time he was aware of a vague bitterness. At least it was an emotion and not physiologic devastation. The feeling took no form, pointed at no one; simply lay there in his body like the first stirring of return of consciousness.

  ‘I’ll make breakfast,’ he said at that point. He added, ‘And I might as well find out how the trailer equipment works, since I’ll be here alone.’

  He turned, and went inside; and he was busily doing what he had often seen Selanie do with the cooking utensils, when a thought touched him. He had no recollection of going in search of Johns but there he was suddenly standing in the laboratory doorway, and saying, ‘If you merge with another Claudan Johns up there, you’ll recover your ability to move through time. Why don’t you come back for me then?’

  ‘That’ll be a different probability world,’ said Johns, ‘so I wouldn’t know how to get back here.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ exploded Caxton, ‘this is the real world. You’ve got to get back to it sooner or later.’

  There was a long silence. The lean man had straightened. His gray eyes, flecked with tiny darknesses, gazed into Caxton’s haunted face. ‘Peter,’ he said soberly, ‘you don’t understand. There is no real world. You evidently haven’t grasped the enormousness of what we’re dealing with. I thought you told Selanie that Price had described the probability thing to you. Listen! There are an infinite number of probability worlds. That’s one of our difficulties. For example, we can’t find the timefold when it presumably starts forward again in 1977, and we can’t find anything that goes forward after 9812 A.D. where the backfold begins. So far as we know, the world ends November fourteenth of that year on every probability.’

  Startled, Caxton parted his lips to say, ‘But that’s ridiculous. Obviously, the world goes on.’ He didn’t say it, because it was suddenly not so obvious.

  Finally, a logical sequence occurred to him, and he said lamely, ‘How does your daughter expect to discover that accidental probability of you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Johns had started to bend again over a long, transparent box that he had on the floor of the trailer. At Caxton’s question, he straightened once more and he said, ‘Let’s see if we can’t get this all clear for you. There are two clues. One is something Bustaman said before he made his break with us. He said that he was now - at that time - the only Possessor without a probability self somewhere. When somebody pointed at me, he merely laughed significantly and refused to discuss it. Selanie believes that he had a paranoid need to put me in the wrong and to satisfy himself that his ideal was an exclusive condition.’ The older man’s eyes sought to fixate Caxton. He asked, ‘Got it that far?’

  He was being spoken to as if he were a six-year-old, but maybe - Caxton smiled wanly as he recalled the vague period since he had first heard of Selanie ‘leaving’ - maybe he deserved it.

  Johns went on, ‘The second clue is, one of our people told my daughter that she had seen me in a probability world. Selanie is going to find out from that woman where this was. The women will go there, and give the information to that Claudan Johns, whereupon he will merge me, and then that will be me. So the next time I come back to the seventeenth century, it won’t be in this probability world; it will be in that one, and you’re not in that one. So you’d better just do what I suggested.’