Rapture, having made a genuine effort to find a place for herself in the mortal world, had found one. She was to be a part-time consultant on Indian Culture for the University of Kilvarough. Luna, when asked, had been of considerable help, and Rapture was pleased. She was well qualified for this position, as she spoke both English and the languages of several Indian Kingdoms and was excellently versed in the conventions and artifacts of them. The money she would earn would enable her to pay a nominal rental for her stay at Luna's house, which gave her a sense of independence that she had never enjoyed before. Thanatos, true to his word, brought her to and from the Castle of War each day. At first she had been leery of the skeletal figure, but acquaintance with Luna had reassured her. "Zane," Luna had told her that was the name she called Thanatos"is not really the Grim Reaper. He is an ordinary man with a difficult job and a great deal of compassion."
Compassion. It was, in its way, a magic word. A dependent person valued that quality in others. So she came to respect Thanatos, without being any more thrilled by the nature of his employment than she was with Mym's.
And that employment was a continuing wedge between them. Rapture did not argue the case or make demands on him, but he could feel the tension in her whenever the subject of his work came up. He learned not to tell her of the details of his day's work, because that made her uncomfortable, and she grew cold without being conscious of it. Their lovemaking became awkward. Yet what could he do? He had reservations of his own about his office, but had thrashed it out with himself and concluded that his best course was to stick with it. It was ironic that the same office that had enabled him to rescue himself and Rapture from the heartbreak that had awaited them in the mortal realm was now inexorably separating them.
There came a night when Rapture did not appear. It seemed that there was a special late seminar at the University that required her presence, so it was easier to stay over at Luna's so that she would not be late the following morning. She would see him the next evening.
This was all clear and sensible but Mym did not like being alone at night. Out of sorts, he walked again in the garden.
There was Lila, of course. "I think you are ready for a concubine," she said. "Give me leave to enter your premises, and I will serve in any manner you desire."
Mym looked at her. She was garbed in a slightly iridescent, slightly luminescent, slightly translucent robe that enhanced a figure he knew was crafted in Hell. Her face was classic in its perfection, and her lustrous hair flowed down across her shoulders like a midnight river of silk.
But he had seen and possessed beautiful women before and he still distrusted the motives of the creatures of Satan. He did not want any of them having access to his Incarnation premises. "You," he said shortly, again able to speak without stuttering in this region. "You were the one who gave Rapture notions of independence!"
Lila's eyes widened innocently. "Why, we talked, and she inquired about the ways of western women," she protested. "I told her nothing that was not true."
"Such as the relationship between Luna and Orb?"
'They are both good women."
"And you are not."
"And I am not," she agreed.
"You told Rapture that you were in Hell on a 'bum rap.' I am sure that's not true."
"She misunderstood. I was speaking of another. I am a demoness. I never had a mortal existence. But for that reason, I lack the modesty of true spirits. I can provide you with the kinkiest types of passion that a decent woman would never"
Angry, he caught her by the arm, not certain what to do with her. She came readily in close, the musky perfume of her body manifesting. "You may hit me if you wish," she murmured. "Or whatever else may please you. Anything at all..."
He cast her loose. "Nothing about you pleases me!" he snapped, turned about, and stomped back toward the Castle.
"Each lie you tell," she called dulcetly after him, "brings you closer to Satan, the Father of Lies."
He ignored that gibe. But as he returned to his solitary room and tried to settle down for sleep, the barb returned to haunt him. Five Rings had advised him not to think dishonestly, but he had lied, for Lila's body, if not her nature, pleased him quite well. And actually her nature, her willingness to be with him and to serve his needs, was also quite tempting. He was not looking for a wife, just a concubine; why hadn't he taken her?
Because of what Lachesis had said about Satan. If Satan had really conspired to deprive Mym first of Orb, and then of Rapture, the second plot foiled only by Mym's accession as Mars then Mym wanted no further association with the Incarnation of Evil. Indeed, Satan had been using his agent Lila to subvert Rapture's mind, putting female-suffrage notions in her head; he was glad he had gotten her away from Lila. Was he now to be with Lila himself? Obviously not.
Finally he slept and dreamed that Lila had come to his bed, her flesh quivering lusciously. He woke, angry, and found himself alone. And could not get to sleep again.
The next action requiring his attention was in Cush, a kingdom in Africa. It seemed that a tribe of Nubians in its northern section were rebelling and that the government was using its troops to combat this uprising.
Of course it was more complicated than that, because Mars did not need to supervise every battle personally, any more than Thanatos needed to supervise every death personally. It was only when something special was happening that he had to attend. Wars and battles were going on continually in scattered regions of the world; if they ever all stopped at one time, Mym would be retired.
"So what's the situation, this time?" he asked Conquest as they rode to the site.
"Interesting that you should say 'this time,'" the white-cloaked Incarnation replied. "It does seem to involve time, though we aren't sure how."
The subsidiary Incarnations never seemed to have full information; Mym realized that that was probably one reason they were subsidiary. It would be up to him, again, to ascertain the precise situation and decide what action should be taken. If it really involved time, he would have to consult with Chronos.
They came down to Earth and galloped across the hot terrain. The earth was sere and barren; there had been a bad drought, destroying the crops. What a time to fight a war!
They arrived at the site. The battle was about to begin; the government troops were converging on a rebel site. There were mounds and trenches around the village, so it was evidently defended. But there was no sign of anything unusual.
"I will investigate," Mym said. He dismounted and strode across to the village perimeter.
He stepped down into the first defensive emplacement he saw and phased in to the man there. The initial confusion was milder and shorter than before; he was learning how to minimize this, as he gained experience. In just a few minutes he identified reasonably well with the man and could understand what the man heard in his own language, though it was foreign to Mym himself.
This man had been a small farmer, doing not well but adequately, back in the years when the weather was better and the crops grew satisfactorily. Then the government had been taken over by the Communists and American aid had stopped and the drought had come, making it impossible to farm effectively. This man's farm had not made its quotas and had been expropriated; rather than serve as a laborer on what he had once owned, he had joined the opposition. Many others had done the same. But the same government that said it lacked the resources to hire magic for rainmaking to save the crops seemed to have plenty of resources to send troops to harass the common folk who tried to stand up for their rights.
The only weapon this man had was a spear, while the soldiers had rifles. He was hungry, while they were well fed. But he knew he was right, while they were wrong, and he had nothing left to lose. His children had starved to death, and his wife had died of dysentery. He had survived only because, as part of the rebellion, he had been in a position to capture and pillage a government outpost. He had carried two pounds of grain back to his wife, only to discover that the weeks he had been in the field had been too long, and she was dead. Friends had taken care of the disposition of the body, and for that much he was grateful. He had seen what dysentery did to others the pain, the vomiting, the blood-suffused diarrhea. The thought of seeing his wife like that, and of being unable to help herno, it was better that he had been spared that.
But the troops that were to come at him! He would glory in their blood! He hoped to take several with him before he died. He knew that their bullets would make holes in his body, but he also knew that the first shot was seldom immediately fatal. He steeled himself to keep going, no matter what the pain, until he could ram his spear point into the eye of the enemy, and into the eye of a second if he could, and a third. Whatever he could manage before he dropped, that would be good enough. He knew that on either side of him his companions in the defense of their common soil were similarly determined. Their last supplies of food had been exhausted the day before, despite fractional rations; honorable death was all that remained.
Now the first soldier appeared, a head bobbing near the ground, coming toward him. If only he had a gun, he could put a bullet through it now, if he had a bullet. If he knew how to work a gun.
The bobbing head was joined by another and a third. They were coming rapidly; now they were almost upon the trench. The man braced himself for his final effort, offering up a prayer for the souls of his dead wife and children and for his own.
A stone flew from the right, striking the lead soldier on the shoulder. The hit was a nuisance, no more, but the soldier turned to fire at the source and didn't watch where his feet were going. As a result, he stumbled right into the trench, issuing a cry of dismay as he fell.
This was so unexpected that the defender did not know what to do. He squatted there, staring at the soldier. The soldier, disheveled but not hurt, hauled his face out of the dirt and brought his rifle around.
Mym acted. He lifted the spear and jammed it in the soldier's exposed ear, hard. The point broke off, for it was a flimsy, homemade weapon, but the effort sufficed; the soldier gave one hoarse scream and collapsed, blood welling out around the wound.
Mym stepped forward and caught the rifle. His experienced eye identified it as of obsolescent design, of such ancient vintage as to suggest the Czarist Empire, but serviceable nonetheless. He whipped it about and fired it at the next soldier coming at the trench, holing his heart. The soldier plunged, dead, into the trench. A third one appeared, and Mym put a bullet up his nose.
Then he stood and peered out across the field. More soldiers were coming, but the defensive farmers were giving a decent account of themselves and causing the soldiers to move with greater caution. "Take their rifles!" Mym called to the trenches to either side of him, forcing his thought through the brain and mouth of his host.' 'Get the ammunition from the bodies!
Quickly! We can hold them off!" And he shot another soldier, by way of example.
"But we don't know how to use them!" one farmer protested.
"I have figured it out!" Mym responded. "Come singly to my trench, and I will show you. It's not hard and it's better than dying! There may be food rations on some of those bodies!"
Food! That thought cut through to the deepest need of the hungry farmers. One scrambled to join Mym, who got out new ammunition, set up his rifle, showed the man the trigger, and gave it to him. "Bring it back here when it's empty," he said; it was too complicated to explain the loading mechanism.
In this manner they soon formed a formidable cell of resistance that expanded as more rifles came on-line. The farmers were terrible shots, but the fact that there was return fire caused the soldiers to lose courage, and they began a disorderly retreat. The farmers were winning the day!
Then, abruptly, it happened. The battlefield froze. No one moved. Even the bullets became anchored in air.
Mym looked about with confusion. He had not stilled the battle! How had this come about?
Obviously this was the reason he had been brought here someone else was using a supernatural method to stop the battle. And that party was the enemy, for now he saw a helicopter flying away. It was above the battlefield, evidently too high to be affected by the stasis.
Perhaps it had dropped a time bomb, freezing time.
Mym phased out of his host, for he had to be able to move. He was not affected by the stasis, because he was an Incarnation, but his host was. He touched the Sword. "Chr-Chronos," he said, his stutter back now that he was using his own vocal equipment.
Chronos appeared, sailing down from the sky, holding his glowing Hourglass aloft. He landed beside Mym. "You have a problem. Mars?"
"When an aspect of death was used without Thanatos' approval, he objected," Mym sang. "Now an aspect of time is being used without my approval; is it with yours? If so, I must inquire why you choose to interfere in my business."
"I would not interfere," Chronos said somewhat stiffly. "I assumed it was your stasis. I have no memory of such violation."
"This is the first time it has happened," Mym sang.
"My memory is of your future," Chronos reminded him.
Oh. "And this has not happened henceforth? It must be a fluke."
"Hardly. The supernatural is not incurred as a fluke. Some mortal has discovered how to interfere with time." And, indeed, Chronos was angry, now.
"Can you discover who has done this and eliminate it?" Mym asked. "That way, you will have no memory of it because it never happens again."
"That will be an awful chore," Chronos grumbled. "I can deal with the discoverer of the stasis effect when I identify him, but that's a needle in a haystack."
"You can't just trace the time bomb itself back to its origin?"
"I will have to, though it's not the bomb I want, but the person behind itand that person will be most carefully hidden. There may be deliberate false leads. They may not have expected Chronos to be tracing it down, but their mundane security provisions will be devious enough."
Now trucks rumbled up to the battle area. These ones did not freeze; they parked and disgorged active men. These men advanced on the village defensive positions.
"Spot nullification!" Chronos exclaimed indignantly. "Another infringement!"
Now the strategy of it was clear to Mym. The government, having located a point of stiff resistance, had time bombed it into stasis, then sent in special troops to nullify the enemy. Already the new troops were passing among the defenders, taking away their weapons, and restoring them to the government troops. It was obvious that when the battle resumed, the advantage would be all with the attackers. "That's outrageous!" Mym sang. "The defenders won't have any chance at all!"
"A minor matter," Chronos said. "What's important is their infringement of supernatural prerogatives."
"Oh, forget the prerogatives!" Mym snapped in song. "It's a clean device to conclude a battle without bloodshed. If it weren't so unfair, I would hardly be concerned."
"Well, I am not concerned with the 'fairness' of anything as appalling as physical combat," Chronos retorted. "But when mortals start interfering with"
"I should think your effort would be better spent arranging for food for the starving," Mym sang, nettled by this slight on his office.
"Without your effort, and that of your cohorts, few would be starving," Chronos reminded him. "Look at Famine over there, eager to reap his bitter harvest!"
"I'm trying to reduce his business," Mym sang. "But there is starvation here because of the drought, not because of the war."
"We are drifting from the point," Chronos said. "We have a problem here."
True. Mym didn't want to argue with yet another Incarnation. "I was caught by surprise by this manifestation of the Void."
"The void?"
Mym smiled, "My predecessor left me a book, Five Rings, that aligns the basic concepts as Ground, Water, Fire, Wind, and the Void. I find myself thinking of them as the Incarnations, with my office being the fire of War, and yours being the void of eternity no beginning and no end. It is the most difficult concept to grasp. I meant no offense."
Chronos returned the smile. "None taken. Mars. I like that concept. I shall have to look at that book, unless it has ceased to exist."
"Ceased to exist?"
"To you, a book may be published at a certain date, and exists thereafter. To me, that same date represents its cessation."
"Have no concern, Chronos! That book was written in 1645."
"Then it should indeed be available to me for some time yet. When I have leisure, I shall peruse it."
"You are welcome to borrow my copy."
"By the time I get to it, I suspect, I shall have to ask your predecessor."
"I'm sure he will agree." Mym considered for a moment. "I think I could do something to locate that man you want, because I can phase into minds and learn then thoughts."
Chronos brightened. "Yes, I had forgotten! If you would do that"
"It might take a little time, no pun intended."
"I can give you time," Chronos said with a smile. "In fact, I could arrange for a shipment of grain to be delivered here, by changing the time frame."
"Then why don't I try to spot your man, while you see to the grain?" Mym sang, pleased.
"We can do each other some good, which is the way it should be."
"The way it should be," Chronos agreed. "But first" He lifted his Hourglass, and Mym saw the trickle of sand within it change color. The moving men froze, joining the already-frozen ones. There would be no action here until the Incarnations were finished.
Mym mounted his steed, and they trotted after the departed helicopter. The horse climbed the air as if it were a mountain; when they had sufficient elevation, Mym was able to see the flying machine in the distance. "Follow that scientific device," he told the horse.
Werre accelerated, churning up fleeting contrails as he galloped. Mym wondered whether any mortals were watching this part of the sky from below; what would they think of those cloudlets?
But probably the divots were no more visible than the horse and rider were. Mortals simply couldn't see the supernatural, ordinarily.
They overhauled the helicopter and entered it. Werre stood on its deck, part of him overlapping the wall. Of course it didn't matter; the horse related only casually to the mortal world. Otherwise his weight would have caused the helicopter to skew and lose altitude.
Mym sat in the pilot's lap and sank into his body, phasing in. Soon he was reading the thoughts. The man had no knowledge of the nature of the bomb he had dropped; he thought it was some kind of gas to immobilize the enemy. Where had he picked up the bomb? From a guarded military truck that had driven onto the military airport and departed forthwith.
Dead lead, there. But Mym knew how a military operation worked. There would have had to be clearance for that truck, and the officer in charge of airport security would know about that. So he disengaged from the pilot, remounted Werre, and headed for the airport.
As it happened, the security officer was on one of his frequent coffee breaks when Mym found him. That was no problem; Mym phased in and drank spiked coffee with him. He introduced the thought: What about that truck? Had the clearance been tight? Yes, it had been; that truck had come directly from the New Devices Lab, and all was in order.
And what did he really know about that Lab, Mym mused, inserting the thought. Well, not much, but its clearances were of the highest nature. The General in charge of it brooked no interference by any other department and was a very bad man to cross.
Mym got the name and address of the General and rode there. He didn't know how long this would take, and there was a fine green lawn outside the building there might be a drought in the farmlands, but they found plenty of water for the military premises so he turned Werre loose to graze and used the Sword to move himself inside.
The General was watching the battle. He had a closed circuit television system, with pickups stationed beyond the freeze-zone, and was using his controls to switch from one camera to another. Even with telephoto lenses he was having trouble getting a clear picture; nothing seemed to be happening.
Mym phased in and tuned in to the General's thoughts. The man was frustrated. Obviously the bomb was working but why weren't the backup forces moving? They had nullifiers! Curse this inadequate equipment!
Mym had no sympathy for the man's frustration; he only wanted the source of the technological breakthrough. He shaped a thought and adapted it to the General's train of thoughts so that it seemed a natural bypath. Could there be some flaw in the system? What did he know about the designer? Could the man really be trusted? If the equipment had some secret liability -?
The General was of a naturally paranoid turn of mind, so this thought took hold readily.
He plunged into a review of what he knew about the somewhat oddball genius who had abruptly come up with the time bomb, when the horrendously financed laboratories of nations far, far wealthier than Cush had been unable to make this breakthrough. The time bomb promised to be the key to suppression of the Nubian rebels now and conquest of the world tomorrow. But only if it worked perfectly. The individual who had devised it was, ironically, a Nubian himself, a refugee from the drought who had sought whatever employment he could get and turned out to be extraordinarily clever with electronics meshed with magic. No one else really understood what he was doing; indeed, the device seemed impossible on the face of it. But they had tested it on an isolated peaceful village, and it had worked: the villagers had remained in absolute stasis for six hours, then abruptly resumed activity as the effect wore off. They had been amazed at the sudden jump forward by the sun, not realizing that the world had lived through six hours in the seeming blink of an eye. Then came the companion discovery how to protect men from the stasis. That had worked too.
But now they were using both for the first time in the field and something was wrong.
The protected troops seemed to have succumbed the same as the unprotected ones. If this were betrayal --
Mym phased out, having gotten what he wanted the identity of the scientist who had made the breakthrough. The General had no notion of the technology; all he knew was that the devices worked up to a point. The scientist was the real key.
The man was not in the lab today. He had been granted leave to work at home, because that was where he worked best. They had tried to keep him at the lab full time, but that had led to no accomplishments. Because the erratic genius was his, they had to let the man operate in his own fashion.
Mym went to the man's home. It was unpretentious, not even in the better section of the city.
The man looked just like an unemployed farmer. He was in patched, baggy clothes and he was asleep on his battered couch. This was the genius scientist?
Mym hesitated. Should he try to phase in to the sleeping man? He had never tried that before.
He lay on the man, sank into him, and phased in. He was getting expert at positioning himself so that all senses aligned, but still it always took a while to get the complete mind tuned in. The mind was much more than the physical brain, and the brain was no simple mass of tissue! Each brain had its own idiosyncratic patterns, no two even remotely similar in the cellular detail of the routines, and he simply had to discover the way of each one by guess and error.
And this one was different, not in configuration, but because it was asleep. Sleep was a whole new mode. Furthermore, it was dreaming. It was hard enough to adjust to the particular brain and mind, but harder yet to grasp that alternate reality that was the dream state. Some folk presumed that dreams were simply an alternate consciousness, governed by the same rules as those of the waking state, as if the person merely stopped from one room into another. It was not so!
Mym was the man and the man was walking through a section of a park. There was an overhanging tree, its branch seeming very large and heavy. Then there was a face, the face of a woman, eclipsing the tree; in fact the tree was gone, sloughed off without further attention. The woman was the man's mother. But she was dead and now there was a grave site, and across it walked a bird of some sort. And now a bowl of rice, but there was not enough; the bowl was almost empty. Memory of hunger surged up years of hunger. A dog appeared and a stone flung out, catching the dog on the rump, and it ran away. Anger; the animal had escaped. Poor aim; the stone should have struck its head, knocking it out. Water, a large lake, remembered from long ago, a wonder redoubled in this time of drought.
Mym realized that he was seeing the cuttings from an idling consciousness those snippets of information and memory and feeling that bobble about just below the surface of thought, as if awaiting their opportunity to be drawn to full examination, and sometimes breaking through when the critical mind was relaxing. The conscious mind tried to make sense of these almost-random bits, forming them into dreams, but that sense was nonsense, like forming a story from random words, meaning sometimes seeming to manifest, but illusory. He could not afford to drift along with this; he had to discover how this man had made the time bomb breakthroughs.
So he inserted his own thought of the bomb and watched while it had its effect on the melange. The bomb a dream, in this case a dream within a dream, a memory of that. Sleep, and dream of hearing a call and walking toward it and discovering a door in the wall, one that had not been there before. Opening that door, entering a passage with a glow at the far end. This was working beautifully; it was a familiar memory, that played itself off when triggered. Walking toward that glow, discovering it to emanate from a book. Success, written in some unknown language, but in the dream he could read it as if it were his own, realizing that the pages of this book contained all that a man might need to know about improving his condition. He put his hand to the cover and drew it away, for the cover was burning hot. Indeed, flames surrounded the volume; it was from them that the glow came. But he knew that there was no other way to read the book, and that if he did not do so now, he might never have another chance. So he nerved himself and touched the cover again, and lifted it, and the flame wrapped about his hand and burned it hideously, destroying it, but now the book was open, and there were the words that would facilitate his destiny of success. And they were the words of the formula for the time bomb.
He read them, though he was illiterate, and they burned their impressions on the inner surface of his skull, never to be forgotten. He retreated and in a moment he was back in his own room. The dream faded out, and his hand was whole again, but the seared image in his skull remained.
Mym pondered, slightly shaken by the intensity of this borrowed experience. He was not illiterate; that was the farmer. But what was the true source of the information? The farmer could not have developed it from his own subconscious; the technical information was far too sophisticated.
But the formula for the time bomb was only part of it. What of the spot nullifier?
Mym nudged the sleeper toward that, and the remembered dream returned. It was similar to the first. The call came in the dream within a dream, and the door in the wall appeared. He entered and walked down the sinister passage and his right hand became a charred mass, its malady restored. He came to the dread book. Success, the alien word intelligible even to the illiterate, fire reaching up from it. The right hand was useless; he had to use the left to lift the cover, and when he did that, the flame scorched it into charcoal. But the words were there, different words, and the fire of their formulation reached in through his eyeballs and singed their imprints on the interior of his skull. Now he possessed the nullifier, and the magic was complete.
He backed away and emerged again, and once more his hands were restored, and he was awake, with the letters of fire against his pulsing brain. All he had to do was repeat those twin formulas to those who could interpret and apply them, and success was his.
Mym knew that the man had done so. He now had the excellent life he had desired. Yet now that he had it, it seemed somehow inadequate. He could not tell anyone beyond the secret project of his significance, because that would make him a target for enemy agents, so he had to pretend to be no more than a simple farmer who had come into wealth. That was unsatisfying. He desired acclaim. He wanted beautiful women to seek him for his personal attributes and charm. He wanted the heads of state to consult him, to take him seriously, and to compliment him on his knowledge.
Mym recognized the problem. The farmer had been bitten by the worm of desire for fame and could not be satisfied with only part of it. He was driven to seek more than he had, more than success.
Perhaps stirred by Mym's realization, the dreamer entered a new phase. The dream within a dream formed.
"I wouldn't do that," Mym said in the dream. But the dreamer shrugged him off. The worm of ambition was too strong; its poison had spread too far. It could not be denied.. Mym withdrew himself from the dreamer. He watched as the man made walking motions with his legs, and door opening motions with his hands.
Then more walking and the two hands curled up as if de-nerved, becoming useless claws.
There was a pause, and Mym realized why; the man was trying to figure out how to open the magic volume of Success when both his hands were useless husks. After a moment, one leg stirred; he was lifting the cover with a toe.
Mym did not stay. He could see the progression: each additional piece of information would cost a part of the body. After both feet were gone, the man would have to open the book with his teeth, and his head would be incinerated. That would be the end of him; his mundane body might seem unchanged, but his mind would be dead.
Mym summoned Werre, mounted, and returned to the site of the battle. Chronos was there, waiting for him.
"I thought you were going to go facilitate a shipment of grain!" Mym sang, half-challengingly.
"I did last week," Chronos replied.
"But it has only been a few hours!"
"You forget my nature."
Now Mym remembered Chronos was the Incarnation of Time. Chronos could step into last week and return to the present. "Where is the shipment, then?"
Chronos sighed. "I did what I could do, but found myself balked by a greater power."
"What power is that?" Mym asked, alarmed.
"Human corruption." And Chronos explained. He had found the bottleneck, manifested, and by dint of some fast talking gotten the train moving toward its destination only to have it held up at the next station by officials who were determined to collect a decimating tax on its wares.
This was a relief train, not taxable, but they affected not to understand that, and unloaded a segment of its cargo. The same thing happened further down the line. At every stop, more was taken, until the train was empty before reaching its destination. Corrupt officials had stolen the entire cargo. Against this, Chronos was powerless; he could manipulate time, but time was not the problem here. Human greed was. Greed had defeated Time. The grain was now being sold on the black market; none of it would reach the starving folk for whom it had been intended.
"But the government!" Mym protested. "It should be protecting the train, not robbing it!"
"When the train is destined for a segment of the country that is in rebellion against that government?" Chronos asked.
There, of course, was the underlying reason. The government would not permit a rebellious province to be fed, for that could strengthen the rebellion. So it permitted the graft while protesting innocence.
Mym clenched his fist. "There is justification in war!" he sang. "To abolish governments like that!"
"Perhaps so," Chronos agreed. "It is a thesis you have made to me before."
"I have?" Mym asked, startled.
Chronos smiled. "In future years, your framework." Then he frowned. "I regret I have not fulfilled my part of the bargain. Therefore if you"
"No, you made an honest effort," Mym sang. He was learning more about the limitations of the Incarnations when meddling in human affairs. Mortals could be so determinedly shortsighted and wrong-headed! Were they really worth helping? "I have discovered the source of the technological breakthroughs on the manipulation of time or part of it. A man had a series of visions or dreams that revealed the key formulas to him. Eliminate that man slightly before he eliminates himself, and there will be no breakthroughs."
"Not a scientist?" Chronos asked, surprised.
"Not a scientist. He dreams of a special chamber in which is a fiery book labeled Success, and it bums him when he takes the information."
Chronos frowned. "All in a vision? That seems familiar."
"Oh? How?"
Chronos shook his head. "I suspect I should not burden you with my conjecture, as I am drawing on memories in your future. Let me just say that I am not sanguine about this." Mym sagged. Chronos' incidental revelations about the future had confused him before; probably it was indeed best to let this matter drop.
But what was he to do about the battle that remained frozen? He chewed on his lip as he looked out over it.
"Do not be concerned," Chronos said. "When I eliminate the breakthrough, none of this will have happened. You may supervise the battle as you choose."
Mym wasn't sure quite how that would work, but was willing to find out. "Very well." He described the location of the key man.
Abruptly the battle resumed but not as it had been. This time the defending farmers were getting the best of it, and no time bomb dropped.
"You prefer this?" Chronos inquired.
Obviously the man had been at work, traveling back and forth in time. Now reality had changed, at least for this region. The breakthrough had never happened.
Mym shook his head. "I think I have had enough of battle for today even if none of it happened. I'm going home."
"This is the way it often is in my domain," Chronos said.
Mym wondered how the man maintained his sanity. Who could guess what convolutions Chronos had endured that never happened? He made a gesture of camaraderie and mounted Werre.
