He involuntarily stopped. Or, rather, he tried to stop. The door propelled him forward from the night outside into the bright interior. Several people brushed past him. It was a narrow place, and Caxton was at the counter and handing his bag to the attendant before he was able to remember again.

  The recollection seemed a little vaguer now.

  ‘You’ll have to hurry, sir,’ the clerk’s voice came through to him. ‘The plane leaves in four minutes. Better just carry your bag.’

  So there he was running along a corridor and out across a stretch of concrete to the plane. Up the escalator and into the machine, last one aboard, breathless.

  Where did the time go? I thought I was in plenty of time.

  The door wheezed shut behind him. A brief conversation with the stewardess, and then into a seat beside a man who tried to sell him insurance.

  And every minute, what had happened seemed further away, yet not untrue, as if it were something at a distance in his past.

  Shortly after ten the next morning, Caxton turned in at the gate of the address in Lakeside, where Daniel Magoelson lived. As he made his way to the door, he saw that it was an elegant mansion on a large lot. At the door he paused. For long moments, then, he stood there, Peter Caxton, filled with his purposes, stiffening himself for the confrontation, a man who had, as a person, almost nothing but his subjectiveness to offer any situation; but who never ceased trying to force to where he wanted to be.

  Trouble-maker, determined lover, creative in his specialty, a destroyer in most other situations. Wherever he was there was some kind of turmoil that, traced back, turned out to have been caused by him.

  But he was alive, and he had his right to his three score and ten - or more if he could get it. He was charming with women, and quite a few had loved him, mistaking his selfishness for firmness of character.

  The door was opening.

  XXIX

  Instants later, the man who stood enframed in the doorway said, ‘Yes, I am Dan Magoelson.’ Oddly, Caxton had no immediate reaction. He was noticing that Magoelson was tall, friendly of manner, and at ease. The Possessor looked to be about thirty years old.

  It was that neutral, the first contact, and that rigid. Caxton parted his lips to speak his prepared opening lines: ‘Magoelson, I’ve been following you for thirteen hundred years -’ He never said them, for Magoelson spoke first.

  ‘Come in, Peter,’ he said, ‘but please excuse me if I don’t let you too close.’ The Possessor smiled. ‘All that time energy needs to be not less than four, preferably six, feet away from a Possessor, you’ll agree.’

  The words, with their instant understanding of the danger he represented, brought Caxton the sudden fear that at this twelfth hour he might still lose. He poised there, slightly bent forward as if to walk, yet not daring to say anything, or move.

  Magoelson continued, ‘We’ve been expecting you. Your friends are here.’

  That reached through the intense caution. ‘My - friends?’ Caxton echoed. And then, again, he froze. In his taut state the meaning of that was … blank. He could not imagine friends. He was a lifetime loner. He had nobody he called by the name of friend.

  Magoelson had stepped back. He beckoned. Automatically, Caxton walked forward into the hallway, and, at the other man’s gesture, moved on almost timidly to the entrance of a large living room. There he came to a teetering halt.

  He stood there. He stared. He tried to speak, but no words would come. Finally Renfrew and Blake must have realised that the shock was too great, and they hurried over in alarm and both said something like, ‘Peter, take it easy. Easy does it.’

  The first distant, conscious thought that came to Caxton was that he was in the position of the amateur criminal who has been caught red-handed at the scene of the crime. Through his mind flashed a kaleidoscope of all of his secret actions and the lies that he had initiated in his relationship with those two men.

  And stronger than before was the reaction: too much… He was the outwardly respectable banker of a small town caught in a criminal act, and it was too much….

  Caxton stood there, and the tears started to his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Then he stumbled over to a couch, dimly aware that Blake and Renfrew were assisting him. But their help made no difference. The tears flowed unchecked.

  Too much. Five hundred years to Centaurus in a cataleptic state, then over eight hundred years from the seventeenth century up, again, to 2476 A.D., a frozen body. And now, this abrupt exposure…. For God’s sake, how much can a human being stand?

  Somewhere in there, shame came. And because tears do stop, and muscle spasms of grief can eventually be controlled, there came a moment when he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, and dried his face; and this time when he looked up he was able to see that the other three men were sitting watching him without judgement.

  Blake shook his head as Caxton’s eyes met his, and said, ‘We’re with you, pal.’ Renfrew’s blue, blue eyes were slightly misted. ‘I guess there’re two sentimentalists here, my dear friend,’ he said.

  Magoelson, who was still looking neutral, leaned forward and said, ‘I’ve been telling Mr Blake and Mr Renfrew of your last travail.’

  Caxton waited. He assumed at once that the reference was to his time journey from 1653 A.D., and he was about to say something that would take that knowledge for granted, when the hopeful thought occurred: Maybe they don’t know!

  If they didn’t he was certainly not going to tell them.

  Blake stood up and came over, and stood smiling down at him, shaking his head chidingly. ‘If confession is good for the soul, Peter, you’ll never know that goodness.’ He went on. ‘Look, my friend, we know the main facts.’

  And as Caxton listened, astonished, Blake proceeded to give him a brief account of Caxton’s first Palace of Immortality experience, and then of the seventeenth century episode and its aftermath. And then he described how, as Renfrew and he had landed at one of the Renfrew estates, a Possessor had come aboard and persuaded them not to reveal to the world the return of the time travelers.

  He had explained to them that mechanical sensors had spotted the presence of a ship from another time. ‘They couldn’t,’ Blake added, ‘get to us before we dropped you off, but they managed to head us off.’

  And, of course, as soon as Renfrew and he had understood that even the lifeboat was big enough to create another probability world, dangerous here so close to 1977, well -

  Blake broke off at that point and concluded, ‘Peter, I’ve got to hand it to you. The way you faced me in the hotel up there in 2476 after all you’d been through was a masterpiece of deception. But you can stop all that, and remember that the main body of Possessors are good hearted people; so there’s a complete solution for all of us.’ He turned to the single Possessor in the room. ‘Tell him, Mr Magoelson.’

  Magoelson stood up slowly. He was smiling again. ‘Yes, Peter, you’ve won - let me qualify that - as much as you can win, which we hope and believe will satisfy you.’

  Swiftly, he made the series of statements that clarified his meaning:

  For Blake and Renfrew acceptance by, and admission to, the Palace of Immortality. They were both, it seemed, the type of individual (although not themselves Possessors) who fitted completely into the requirements for new members.

  ‘Eventually in our work,’ said Magoelson, ‘we would have found them and enlisted them anyway. As it is, we were delighted that they qualified, and so we are able to pay a satisfactory price for their cooperation. Now, you, Peter - ‘

  It appeared that for Caxton there could not be total acceptance ‘… for reasons which have been previously explained to you.’

  But he would be allowed periodic admission, so that he could reverse his age and maintain himself forever.

  Magoelson continued, ‘You’ll be wanting some evidence that this is all in good faith.’ He waved at the big room. ‘What do you think of this house?’ he asked.

  Caxton did not look around, did not move. What was coming, he had no idea. But he was beginning to recover from his breakdown, and beginning to remember his purpose in searching for this house. What was happening here - what he hoped to accomplish - was absolutely necessary. So he was not about to commit himself. ‘It seems to be the home of a well-to-do person,’ he said in an even tone.

  ‘It’s the entrance in this era to the Palace of Immortality,’ was the reply, ‘and this is where you will be living for the next few years while you learn the ropes.’

  Again the smile, but the tall man’s lean face was oddly tense. ‘What do you think?’ the man asked. He finished almost apologetically, ‘This is the best the other Possessors will let me do for you, Peter.’

  Caxton grew aware that all three men were watching him anxiously. Startling, that… So Renfrew and Blake have been told that I’m considered one of the twenty percent of males in this half century who are paranoid, he thought. He felt momentarily degraded by the realisation that they knew. It braced him to say what he had to. ‘I don’t really understand the restriction,’ he said. He explained, ‘In one of my lucid moments, I took a look at this whole probability complex; and so my question is, why don’t you just merge me with the grown-up version of the fourteen-year-old Caxton that Price said you Possessors would contact and split off?’

  ‘It hasn’t been done yet.’

  He could have let that be the answer. If it was true, he had nothing to fear. Yet he realised that his impulse was to tell them his whole scheme, in essence. And find out right now if they could stop him.

  If they could, he had better settle for what they offered.

  Aloud, stubbornly, he said, ‘I can’t see that making any difference.’

  Magoelson said, ‘We’ll merge you as soon as Claudan Johns in his own good time releases the method for going earlier than 1977. Don’t forget you were fourteen - when? Before 1977, right?’

  ‘Makes no difference,’ persisted Caxton. ‘That Peter Caxton was contacted at a future time you and I may not know about. But starting at an age prior to his fourteen, he’s been existing in his own probability. And so he’s around somewhere. Isn’t that so?’

  Magoelson smiled his gentle smile. ‘True. But’ - he shook his head - ‘that only means that somewhere in the future a Possessor knows what probability world that Peter Caxton is in, and where it is.’

  However, he went on, here and now nobody knew. ‘But we agree,’ said Magoelson, ‘that very likely all of your potential probabilities are in existence. But we cannot contact them for you.’

  It was still a lack of understanding. ‘Listen,’ said Caxton flatly, ‘it’s all got to have happened already. In a universe of endless probabilities, they’ve already merged. So why doesn’t that totally merged Peter Caxton up there somewhere’ – he waved vaguely toward the north - ‘come back here and dissolve my paranoia?’

  Magoelson’s smile was suddenly grim. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘why haven’t you?’ He did not wait for Caxton to reply. He continued earnestly, ‘Your question is one reason why Claudan Johns remains such a stubborn experimenter. He has asked the same question.’

  ‘Is that your best answer?’ Caxton asked.

  ‘I can’t imagine a better one,’ was the reply.

  Caxton said no more. His hope had to be that the non-participating experimenter, Johns, and the good-hearted Possessors had indeed failed to analyse what seemed so obvious to a paranoid.

  He grew aware that Magoelson had turned away from him, toward Renfrew and Blake. ‘All right, gentlemen,’ he said. The two men stood up. Magoelson glanced over his shoulder at Caxton. ‘I’m taking them into the Palace,’ he explained. ‘They’ll be back in a few days. And in and out regularly from now on.’ He drew a keyring out of his pocket and placed it on the table beside the door. ‘These are for the outer door, and for the west-wing apartment’ - he gestured - ‘which we are assigning to be your private quarters.’

  Caxton walked over to the table and took the keys. Entrance to this building, he had analysed, was one of three preliminaries to action that he absolutely had to have in his control. Then he went with the trio up to the second floor and into the room where one wall was strangely misty. Through it he could see the giant stairway. He shook hands with his friends and with Magoelson, and, as he watched them go through the fog and up the steps, he was thinking: So they don’t really know after 1653 A.D. They don’t know about Bustaman and me up there at 9812.

  Idly, mind almost blank, he watched as the three men made it to the huge doors of the Palace of Immortality, opened one of them and went through it. When they were gone out of sight, and when the door had closed behind them, Caxton turned away, and thought: This is the victory they’re willing for me to have.

  He tasted it with his mind, and found it flat and unappetising.

  He explored the house, and it was all there, as beautiful inside as it had been outside. The west wing was a lovely, self-contained apartment; he presently made himself some lunch there and sat in the kitchen breakfast nook with a book from 2863 A.D. propped up before him.

  The English in which it was printed was exactly the same as twentieth century American. So it must be from a probability world where that had been maintained. The book was a novel, and it showed human beings in a sexually free society where every woman slept with every man who wanted her provided she could fit him into her schedule. And, if she couldn’t - if she just didn’t have the time - the man understood perfectly, and was not mad about it because his schedule was pretty tight, also. Except for the more universal lovingness, people did much the same thing as Caxton had always done. They ate, they worked, they studied, they slept, they played games.

  This is victory. This is what I shall have. This is what I fought for.

  Victory, that is, if he accepted their offer.

  It was not totally nothing, because he did like to read; always had. And so he read that novel all the way through. And then he read a second one in which the problem was that a beautiful, desirable girl got injured without anyone, including herself, knowing it. She began to reject all her lovers, and soon went into seclusion to think about life and its true meaning. In the end, the injury was discovered. Medical science rushed in to cure her, and soon she was back with her boyfriends, smiling through tears of regret at the trouble she had caused, and living a normal existence again.

  Caxton presumed that the background described was but one probability, and that others of the twenty-ninth century would show a different interrelation of people.

  But how many basic switches could there be?

  It was minutes after midnight as he had that negative consideration, and put away the second book. But, as he undressed, he nevertheless reaffirmed to himself: Okay. So it may all be just repetition. But it’s better to be alive and doing the same things than to be dead and doing nothing.

  He got into bed. Then set the alarm on a peculiar but recognisable bedside clock to wake him at about half past the third wee hour.

  It was decision.

  It was rejection of the small offer made by the Possessors.

  Afterwards, he lay wide awake, thinking: Kind of ridiculous if now I can’t sleep…

  He wakened to a sound; the alarm, a series of small bell-like tings.

  The clock showed 3:42 a.m. A good time for the beginning … Let me, he thought, call this the moment. He spoke the next words aloud: ‘My whole future shall be computed from 3:42 a.m. August 10, 1981.’

  Obvious that for the Big Thought of all time and space, there had to be an exact moment from which there was no turning back.

  ‘Okay.’ He projected the action words aloud also. ‘All right, you Peter Caxton out there. Start merging me.’

  XXX

  At 10:28 the next morning, Peter Caxton sat in the west-wing apartment kitchen eating breakfast. The sound of a door opening came from behind him.

  Without turning, he said, ‘Good morning, Mr Johns.’

  Silence.

  He’s thinking about the implications of my knowing who he is, Caxton thought, smugly.

  Aloud, still without turning, he said, ‘I’ve got a plate here for you. Why don’t you join me?’

  No answer.

  ‘You may be interested to know,’ Caxton continued, ‘that I assumed the truth of your statements, accepted literally that past time waits forever. Future time, also, of course.’

  He brought up one arm and hand. And waved vaguely to take in the horizon. ‘I assumed I was out there in every time dimension, every era between now and 9812 A.D. multiplied, well’ - he paused tolerantly - ‘since each one would somewhere take time to accomplish, and would eventually have to be created by an effort - and more important - I’d have to keep records of where they all were, I limited the number to one hundred.

  ‘So I imagine,’ went on Caxton, casually, ‘one of these centuries, I’ll start building the Palace of Immortality. You may ask, did I really build it? And my answer is, who else could it be - or will it be?’

  Still no sound from the person who had opened the rear door and come into the apartment. Suddenly, that was slightly irritating to Caxton. His voice had an edge in it, as he said, ‘The question arises, can anyone stop me now? As far as I can reason it, the answer is no. Any comments?’

  Since there was again no reply, he had his first tiny doubt. … After all he thought, it is hard to keep track. So maybe I’ve got it mixed.

  Maybe it isn’t Johns.

  Whereupon, he turned in his chair, intending to look…

  Caxton awakened to the sound of Selanie’s laughter. He opened his eyes and looked up at the trailer ceiling. When the man’s voice came gaspingly, Caxton wondered what was going on. He assumed the man was her father, because who else would it be on this second day after their arrival into 1653 A.D.?

  What was puzzling about the voice was that the man seemed to be gasping for breath. And once, in that gasping way, he said, ‘Let up, Selanie. That’s enough for a first time.’

  ‘No, sir, came the girl’s voice, ‘forty minutes.’ And she laughed again, gaily.