“Yes, I suppose I knew that, but my memory has started to break down. It’s like Alzheimer’s, only it’snotAlzheimer’s. It’s because the brain can’t help trying to reconcile all those thin overlays of reality. The strings create multiple images of the future. Some are clear, most are hazy. That’s probably why Kyle thought your name was Jimla. He must have heard it along one of the strings.”
He didn’t hear it,I thought.He saw it on some kind of String-O-Vision. On a billboard in Texas. Maybe even through my eyes.
“You don’t know how lucky you are, Jake. For you, time-travel is simple.”
Not allthatsimple,I thought.
“Therewereparadoxes,” I said. “All kinds of them. Weren’t there?”
“No, that’s the wrong word. It’sresidue.Didn’t I just tell you that?” He honestly didn’t seem sure. “It gums up the machine. Eventually a point will come where the machine simply… stops.”
I thought of how the engine had blown in the Studebaker Sadie and I had stolen.
“Buying meat over and over again in 1958 wasn’t so bad,” Zack Lang said. “Oh, it was causing trouble down the line, but it was bearable. Then thebigchanges started. Saving Kennedy was the biggest of all.”
I tried to speak and couldn’t.
“Are you beginning to understand?”
Not entirely, but I could see the general outline, and it scared the living hell out of me. The future was on strings. Like a puppet. Good God.
“The earthquake… Ididcause it. When I saved Kennedy, I… what? Ripped the time-space continuum?” That should have come out sounding stupid, but it didn’t. It sounded very grave. My head began to throb.
“You need to go back now, Jake.” He spoke gently. “You need to go back and see exactly what you’ve done. What all your hard and no doubt well-meaning work has accomplished.”
I said nothing. I had been worried about going back, but now I was afraid, as well. Is there any phrase more ominous thanyou need to see exactly what you’ve done? I couldn’t think of one offhand.
“Go. Have a look. Spend a little time. But only a little. If this isn’t put right soon, there’s going to be a catastrophe.”
“How big?”
He spoke calmly. “It could destroy everything.”
“The world? The solar system?” I had to put my hand on the side of the drying shed to hold myself up. “The galaxy? The universe?”
“Bigger than that.” He paused, wanting to make sure I understood. The card in his hatband swirled, turned yellow, swirled back toward green. “Reality itself.”
6
I walked to the chain. The sign readingNO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL SEWER PIPE IS REPAIREDsqueaked in the wind. I looked back at Zack Lang, that traveler from who knew when. He looked at me without expression, the hem of his black overcoat flapping around his shins.
“Lang! The harmonies… I caused them all. Didn’t I?”
He might have nodded. I’m not sure.
The past fought change because it was destructive to the future. Change created—
I thought of an old ad for Memorex audiotape. It showed a crystal glass being shattered by sound vibrations. By pure harmonics.
“And with every change I succeeded in making, those harmonies increased.That’sthe real danger, isn’t it? Those fucking harmonies.”
No answer. Perhaps he had known and forgotten; perhaps he had never known at all.
Easy,I told myself… as I had five years before, when the first strands of gray had yet to show up in my hair.Just take it easy.
I ducked under the chain, my left knee yipping, then stood for a second with the high green side of the drying shed on my left. This time there was no chunk of concrete to mark the spot where the invisible stairs began. How far away from the chain had they been? I couldn’t remember.
I walked slowly, slowly, my shoes gritting on the cracked concrete.Shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH,said the weaving flats… and then, as I took my sixth step, and the seventh, the sound changed totoo-FAR, too-FAR.I took another step. Then another. Soon I’d reach the end of the drying shed and be in the courtyard beyond. It was gone. The bubble had burst.
