City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis
by John C. Wright
Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by John C. Wright
All rights reserved
Editor: Vox Day
Cover Design: Kirk DouPonce
Version 002
City Beyond Time
TALES OF THE FALL OF METACHRONOPOLIS
History hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.
—Sir Walter Raleigh
Murder In Metachronopolis
16.
Third beginning:
I woke up when my gun jumped into my hand. It was an Unlimited Class Paradox Proctor Special, and it was better than any alarm, better than any guard dog.
I relaxed my eyelids open just a crack. It was dark. My balcony windows were fully polarized, so the glow from the golden towers outside showed only as faint, ghostly streaks reaching from pale mist below to black sky above.
The door, the creator, and the dreambox all showed like blocky shadows in the gloom. I couldn't see more. This was one of the rooms in a lower tower, a pretty shabby affair, not far above the mist, and the tower light from outside would have been dim even if the windows had been dialed to transparent.
There. A silhouette against the glass. It was tall, with some sort of wide headgear, perhaps with a plume above.
I raised my arm very slowly, careful not to rustle the sheets.
I said, in the Control language, “Lights!”
The lights came on.
He didn't look surprised. That is a bad sign.
The joker himself was dressed like a French Musketeer from Cardinal Richelieu's time, complete with ruffles, lace, tall boots, swordbelt, and pig-sticker. There was something about him that made me think he was real, not repro. Maybe it was the battered, used look of his hilt and scabbard; maybe it was the battered, used look of his face. Maybe it was the smell. Usually you can tell preindustrial from postindustrial types in one whiff.
One anachronism was the skullplug clinging like an insect to the base of his neck. And that was wrong, all wrong, if this guy was a party-killer. There are some strange types wandering like ghosts in the Towers, from every spot of history that ever was, and a lot that never were, drifting from party to party if they still got luster, or just drifting, if they don't. Some of the strangest are the party-killers, those who do murder just to see who is going to be resurrected by the next day, and who is forgotten.
But this guy was all wrong for that. Real party-killers never used brainjacks to record their sensations. For them, death had to be live, or else it was nothing.
Second, this guy didn't look nervous or scared. He had the not-surprised look of a bad actor going through a flat rehearsal.
Third, he recognized my piece. And not many people have seen the three-dimensional cross-section of an Unlimited Special. What I had in my hand wasn't the whole weapon array, arsenal, detection and tracking gear, etc. That would fill up a room, or even a warehouse. No, all I had in hand was the aiming-guide, the firing mechanisms, and the shielding unit which protected me from backscatter.
Still. Not many people know what it's like to look into the business end of an Unlimited Special. Not many at all.
“You're a Time Warden,” I said.
“Very good, Mr. Frontino,” he said. His voice was blurry and harsh, as if he were not used to using the vocal cords he was using now. “That is the quickest you've ever come to the correct conclusion–this time around.”
“And you're going to pretend I don't remember the other versions, because of–why?”
He spread his hands awkwardly, a gesture like a puppet with a clumsy puppeteer would make. “That should be obvious, Mr. Frontino.”
“My other versions are being killed. And I suppose that if I pulled this trigger, your alternates won't remember this version we're in now either, eh?”
“Unless they were monitoring, no. They say the only way to kill a Time Warden, a careful one who looks into his past and future, is to wait for him to kill himself. But you flatliners don't have that privilege, do you?” He smiled, sort of a sickly impersonation of good humor.
“Yeah. But we don't have to sneak around, so afraid of paradoxes that we can't even show our own faces in our own city that we allegedly rule. And we don't have groups of phonies and crazies out and about pretending that they're us when they're not.”
I reached up with my other hand and made an adjustment. Dots from aiming lasers appeared on his groin and chest and the wrist of his right hand, which was a little too near the hilt of his sword for my taste.
(Think it's funny, a guy like me, armed as I was, afraid of his old-fashioned weapon, eh? People who think swords are quaint, not dangerous, never saw one used by a pro who knows his business. And the business is death by laceration, evisceration, impalement. No, swords are not quaint at all.)
I said: “There's one on the spot between your eyes, too. You can't see it.”
“I'll take your word for it, Mr. Frontino.”
I eyed him carefully up and down, looking for blurs or distortions which might indicate a timeshift. Nothing. Maybe he was actually all the way here, in this timespace, flying blind. But why? Most Time Wardens kept a version or two of themselves posted a minute or so in the future to give themselves plenty of warning for any surprises coming. Not him though. Why? Didn't make sense.
He was still waiting for my next line. He didn't just sit there and tell me what I was about to say, like most Time Wardens I'd met. Maybe he was less rude than most, or maybe he was just waiting for me to say something to let him know he was in the right version. Or, most likely, maybe he wasn't a Time Warden at all.
Whatever. “Spill it. Whatever you're here to say. Say it. Then get out.”
“I'm here to hire you to solve a murder, Mr. Frontino.”
“And you're pretending to be a Time Warden? Walk back into the past and look for yourself.”
“It hasn't happened yet.” Again, the crooked smile.
“Cute. And are you going to stop it if I solve it?”
“Not me. Not that I foresee.” Again, the smile.
“Solve a crime and let it happen anyway, is that the plan? Sorry. Not interested. I'm retired. 'Bye.”
“Retired? But aren't you the only Private Investigator in Metachronopolis? You've even got a fedora and a trenchcoat!”
“Everyone dressed like that when I'm from. And I'm retired as far as Time Wardens are concerned. Time Warden wants to solve a crime? Look it up in history book. Step into the past or future when its already been solved. What do you need mere mortals for? Manpower? Double yourself up a hundred times.”
“There are limits to our powers. Grim limits. Though, sometimes, where exactly those boundaries lie are… misty.”
He seemed to think that was funny. Before things got too humorous, I decided to cut things short. I opened the firing aperture with a twist of the wrist to maximum cone-of-blast and let him see me set the timer. The timer s
tarted beeping a countdown.
“I don't take cases from Time Wardens, see? All you guys are the same. The murderer turns out to be yourself, or you when you were younger. Or me. Or an alternate version of me, or you who turns out to be your own father fighting yourself for no reason except that is the way it was when the whole thing started. And there's no beginning and no reason for any of it. Oh, brother, you Time Wardens make me sick.”
He drew himself up, all smiles gone now, all pretense at seeming human gone, too. My guess was it was not even his real body that he was wearing, just the corpse of some poor sap he murdered in order to have his personality jacked into the guy's brain. Perfect disguise. No fingerprints, no retina prints, no nothing. Just another flatliner dead for the convenience of the Time Wardens.
“Why did you retire from our service, Mr. Frontino?”
“Let's just say I was sick of cleaning up after all the messes you guys leave across all your pasts and futures. You'd think when you were done, you'd at least have the common decency to put everything back the way you found it.”
“Everything? Absolutely everything?” His eyes were glittering now. “Be careful what you say, Mr. Frontino. Ideas have consequences.”
The timer on my gun was entering its final cycle, chiming like a little tiny bit of Doomsday. “My friend here says you have about fifty seconds to leave. You have just enough time to try to scare me into taking the case by saying someone is knocking off these so-called 'other versions' of mine to stop me from taking it.”
“No need for me to say it, Mr. Frontino. You're performing admirably.”
“Forty seconds… Unless you want to admit you're not a Time Warden after all and tell me what this is really all about.”
“No, Mr. Frontino. You will be convinced I am a Time Warden. And, before I forget to mention, you yourself will be the murder victim. I trust your interest in the case has increased? And should you still doubt my bona fides, here. I will leave a card.”
And then he was gone. Something glittered in midair where he had been standing, the size of a playing card made of crystal, and fell with a chime of noise to my floor.
0.
Stories about Metachronopolis, the shining city outside of time, have many beginnings, they say. And I say that all come to the same miserable end. If you ask me. If there is anyone out there left to ask me.
29.
Let's start with the ending. I want you to imagine tumbling end over end in a featureless gray mist, no gravity, no nothing, watching in horror as your fingers dissolve.
You don't remember what this means or how you got here, of course, unless you've got special memory like mine. Hardened memory. A memory that remembers things that didn't happen, not in your timeline, anyway.
If you've got hardened memory, like mine, you can torment yourself to ease the boredom while you get erased, by going back over and over the stupid things you'd done, telling yourself that if you had the chance, just one more chance, you'd do it all differently next time around.
And if you're not too bright, it won't even occur to you that that's exactly the kind of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place.
(Except which place is the first place, anyway?)
1.
First beginning:
I regretted the words the moment I said them. But there are some things, once said, you can't take back.
I was opening my mouth to begin to apologize when she slapped my face. She leaned into the blow and gave me a good wallop, for a girl. Then she stood a moment, watching me with those beautiful hazel-gray eyes of hers. Beneath half-closed lids, her eyes were like sparks of luminous fire. She stood, lips pouted, one eyebrow arched, coldly studying the effect on me.
I raised my hand to rub my aching jaw. Maybe I didn't look sorry enough, or maybe I looked too sorry. Never can tell with women.
She turned on her heels and swayed over to the door. She gave me one last burning look over her shoulder.
“Babydoll, come back,” I said. "I can make it right between us. Like none of that stuff ever happened. Like none of it ever had to happen…”
Maybe it sounded like I was whining, or maybe it sounded like I wasn't whining hard enough. Whatever, it was the wrong thing to say.
Disdain curled her perfect red lips. “You're a smart boy, Jake,” she said, her voice husky and low and dripping with carefully chosen notes of contempt. “Smart enough to weasel out of some things. But not smart enough to know you can't weasel out of everything. Actions have consequences. Like this one. Watch me. Goodbye.”
She swirled out the door, graceful as a lynx, and slammed it shut so sharply that the glass rattled. I saw her slim silhouette against the glass for a moment, and heard the bright clatter of her heels against the floorboards receding down the hallway toward the elevators.
Then she was gone.
17.
There wasn't any real government in this city, except for the hidden Time Wardens. But some of the important statesmen, Jefferson and Machiavelli and Caesar and a few guys like that, had thrown together a militia. Sometimes the militia circulated papers on unsavory characters, from petty thieves and party-crashers to the odd rapist or kidnapper who managed to get his hands on one of the famous women from history, Helen of Troy, or Cleopatra, that some of the Time Wardens kept around in their harems.
And then there was me. Why hadn't the Time Wardens shut me down long ago? No one knows why they do anything.
I pulled on my trousers and tucked in the tails of the shirt I hadn't bothered to take off when I sacked out on the couch. I whistled a command code toward the wardrobe and serving-beams draped my trenchcoat around my shoulders. Not that I expected to be cold in my own apartment; the fabric is woven with defensive webbing and detection-reaction cells. It's my own shabby version of a knight's shining armor.
Then the wardrobe slapped my hat onto my head. It must have thought that if I needed my coat, I needed my hat, right? Like I said, this was a low-tower apartment, and the circuits here were kind of dim.
I walked over slowly to where the Time Warden had been standing. Something was shining on the floor.
The card lay between my feet, glittering like a lake of deep ice. Distant shapes, like drowned buildings seen at the bottom of a clear lake, hovered in the cloudy reflection. I reached down…
18.
Perhaps I wasn't thinking. Perhaps it was what flatliners call a coincidence. Only I don't believe in coincidences. I know there are Time Wardens.
I had actually bent over and was reaching my hand down toward the damn thing when my smartgun emitted its shrieking chronodistortion alarm. It jumped out of its holster and into my hand. The grip tingled where the energy field had to grab my fingers and fold them around the stock.
By then it was too late. My eyes had focused on the image floating deep below the mirrored surface of the card. This one was attention-activated.
Whenever a human brain pays attention to any event, the possible timelines radiating from that point multiply, since that observation affects the human's actions. There are circuits that can detect these multiplications, though I'd never heard of one being focused through a destiny card.
You look. You're trapped. Very neat, very tidy.
It was a picture of a wide, high place surrounded by pillars. Of course I recognized it. The Pyrtaneum of the Time Wardens. And then I was there.
19.
“Welcome to the crime scene, Mr. Frontino.”
3.
Second beginning. This one brighter than the others:
I recall my first view of the city.
I thought it was a job interview. I had no other work, no future, and the best woman I had ever laid eyes on walked out on me the night before. I wasn't in a great mood, but, at that point, I was willing to listen to anything.
Almost anything.
“Time travelers?” I said, trying to look chipper. I was trying to think of a polite way to say goodbye and get lost.
He didn't look crazy. (The real crazies never do). Mr. Iapetus was a foreign-looking fellow in a long red coat of a fabric I didn't recognize. He had dark, magnetic eyes, high cheekbones, and wore a narrow goatee.
His office was appointed with severe and restrained elegance. To one side, a row of dark bookshelves loomed; in the center was a wide mahogany desk, polished surface gleaming; to the other side, heavy drapes blocked a hidden length of window. I did not think it odd at the time to see bright sunlight shining from the carpet at the lower hem of the window drapes. But it had been raining outside when I entered the lobby just behind me.
Mr. Iapetus was standing by the window. He took up a fold of drapes in his hand. “I believe in what you might call the shock therapy method of indoctrination. It helps make the tedious period of disbelief more brief.”
A wide yank of his arm threw the drapes aside. A spill of blinding sunlight washed around me.
Blinking, I saw I was high up, overlooking a shining city. I had been on the ground floor when I came in. Now, I was miles up in the air. And glory was underfoot.
4.
“Behold Metachronopolis, the city beyond the reach of time!”
Towers made of gleaming gold, taller than tall mountains, rose in streamlined ramparts all around me, like swords held up in high salute. Far underfoot, in the canyons and gulfs between the towers, cloudbanks drifted, stained cerise and gold from the light shed by the towers.