The Time Traveller's Ball (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 1)

Chapter 7

VII

“No. Sorry. I still don’t get it,” said Chris Venus, his brow furrowed. “And where does Minkwood fit in?”

            “It is not as complicated as it sounds,” I said. “There is no Edward Minkwood. I posed as Minkwood to give you the business card in the past, so you would have it to give to me in the present, so I could travel back and give it to you in the past.”

            “OK. I still don’t get it,” said Venus. “And where did the business card come from, like, originally? It must have been made or, or printed somewhere.”

            “It should have, but it wasn’t,” I said. “You had it to give to me, so I could travel back and give it to you. One of us always had it and gave it to the other in a closed circle. The time loop is self contained and the business card is a part of it. It just appeared out of nowhere. Think of it like that.”

            “And in a way, it didn’t even do that,” said Lucian Hell, who holding the wine bottle up to the light with a delighted smile. “Thanks for this by the way, Sergeant. I knew it was important. Not only did one of you always have the business card, there was never a point when neither of you had it. It never appeared, because it always existed. And it still does. Right now, Mr Venus, your past self is walking around with it in his pocket, waiting for the Sergeant to arrive from Luna...”

            “My head hurts!” said Venus.

            “A little of this will fix that right up,” said Lucian Hell, setting the bottle down on the nearest table and passing Venus a glass. “Anyone else.”

            “I can’t believe you actually went to the trouble of finding that,” said Mirabi, who was handing me back my helmet, weapons and gear. “How long where you really gone for?”

            “Fifteen to twenty minutes, I told you,” I said, closing my tunic which was now the right way out. I had forstepped, rather than backstepped, to return from the past and had arrived in the future; five seconds after I had left the present. It was one of the weird, illogical, but binding rules of time travel. You could be in two places at once, but it was not a good idea to have two versions of yourself in the same place. If I had returned to the exact time I had left and re-materialised on the pad just as my past self was de-materialising from it, we could have crossed atoms with some nasty negative energy explosive results.

            “And you still found time to hunt through the wine selection?”

            “No, I brought it back because I saw it. I didn’t want to risk it.”

            “Well, the universe still seems to be with us. I think we’re clear of paradoxes,” said Lucian Hell, looking out of the Ballroom windows. “Who wants a glass? Where are all the corkscrews?”

            “No, thanks. On duty,” said Mirabi. “So you actually met him? Freaky.”