Time and Time Again. Robert Silverberg

retouch, to correct, to emend. To Mikkelsen that was crazy, but also somehow charming. Hambleton was nothing if not charming. And Mikkelsen admired anyone who could invent his own new species of obsessive behavior, instead of going in for the standard hand-washing routines, or stamp-collecting, or sitting with your back to the wall in restaurants.

      The moment Mikkelsen arrived, Hambleton punched the autobar for cocktails and said, “Splendid to see you, Mikkelsen. How’s the elegant Janine?”

      “Elegant.”

      “What a lucky man you are. The one great mistake of my life was letting that woman slip through my grasp.”

      “For which I remain forever grateful, Tommy. I’ve been working hard lately to hang on to her, too.”

      Hambleton’s eyes widened. “Yes? Are you two having problems?”

      “Not with each other. Time track troubles. You know, we were caught in a couple of phasings last year. Pretty serious ones. Now there’s been another one. We lost five months of our marriage.”

      “Ah, the little annoyances of—”

      “—modern life,” Mikkelsen said. “Yes. A very familiar phrase. But these are what I’d call frightening annoyances. I don’t need to tell you, of all people, what a splendid woman Janine is, how terrifying it is to me to think of losing her in some random twitch of the time track.”

      “Of course. I quite understand.”

      “I wish I understood these phasings. They’re driving us crazy. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

      He studied Hambleton closely, searching for some trace of guilt or at least uneasiness. But Hambleton remained serene.

      “How can I be of help?”

      Mikkelsen said, “I thought that perhaps you, with all your vast experience in the theory and practice of time-jaunting, could give me some clue as to what’s causing them, so that I can head the next one off.”

      Hambleton shrugged elaborately. “My dear Nick, it could be anything! There’s no reliable way of tracing phasing effects back to their cause. All our lives are interconnected in ways we never suspect. You say this last phasing delayed your marriage by a few months? Well, then, suppose that as a result of the phasing you decided to take a last bachelor fling and went off for a weekend in Banff, say, and met some lovely person with whom you spent three absolutely casual and nonsignificant but delightful days, thereby preventing her from meeting someone else that weekend with whom in the original time track she had fallen in love and married. You then went home and married Janine, a little later than originally scheduled, and lived happily ever after; but the Banff woman’s life was totally switched around, all as a consequence of the phasing that delayed your wedding. Do you see? There’s never any telling how a shift in one chain of events can cause interlocking upheavals in the lives of utter strangers.”

      “So I realize. But why should we be hit with three phasings in a year, each one jeopardizing the whole structure of our marriage?”

      “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Hambleton. “I suppose it’s just bad luck, and bad luck always changes, don’t you think? Probably you’ve been at the edge of some nexus of negative phases that has just about run its course.” He smiled dazzlingly. “Let’s hope so, anyway. Would you care for another filtered rum?”

      He was smooth, Mikkelsen thought. And impervious. There was no way to slip past his defenses, and even a direct attack—an outright accusation that he was the one causing the phasings—would most likely bring into play a whole new line of defense. Mikkelsen did not intend to risk that. A man who used time jaunting so ruthlessly to tidy up his past was too slippery to confront. Pressed, Hambleton would simply deny everything and hasten backward to clear away any traces of his crime that might remain. In any case, making an accusation of time-crime stick was exceedingly difficult, because the crime by definition had to have taken place on a track that no longer existed. Mikkelsen chose to retreat. He accepted another drink from Hambleton; they talked in a desultory way for a while about phasing theory, the weather, the stock market, the excellences of the woman they both had married, and the good old days of 2014 or so when they all used to hang out down in dear old La Jolla, living golden lives of wondrous irresponsibility. Then he extricated himself from the conversation and headed for home in a dark and brooding mood. He had no doubt that Hambleton would strike again, perhaps quite soon. How could he be held at bay? Some sort of preemptive strike, Mikkelsen wondered? Some bold leap into the past that would neutralize the menace of Tommy Hambleton forever? Chancy, Mikkelsen thought. You could lose as much as you gained, sometimes, in that sort of maneuver. But perhaps it was the only hope.

      He spent the next few days trying to work out a strategy. Something that would get rid of Hambleton without disrupting the frail chain of circumstance that bound his own life to that of Janine—was it possible? Mikkelsen sketched out ideas, rejected them, and tried again. He began to think he saw a way.

      Then came a new phasing on a warm and brilliantly sunny morning that struck him like a thunderbolt and left him dazed and numbed. When he finally shook away the grogginess, he found himself in a bachelor flat ninety stories above Mission Bay, a thick taste of cotton in his mouth, and bewildering memories already growing thin of a lovely wife and two kids and a cat and a sweet home in mellow old Corona del Mar.

      Janine? Dana? Elise? Minibelle?

      Gone. All gone. He knew that he had been living in this condo since ’22, after the breakup with Yvonne, and that Melanie was supposed to be dropping in about six. That much was reality. And yet another reality still lingered in his mind, fading vanishing.

      So it had happened. Hambleton had really done it this time.

      THERE WAS NO TIME FOR panic or even for pain. He spent the first half hour desperately scribbling down notes, every detail of his lost life that he still remembered, phone numbers, addresses, names, descriptions. He set down whatever he could recall of his life with Janine and of the series of phasings that had led up to this one. Just as he was running dry the telephone rang. Janine, he prayed.

      But it was Gus Stark. “Listen,” he began, “Donna and I got to cancel for tonight, on account of she’s got a bad headache, but I hope you and Melanie aren’t too disappointed, and—” He paused. “Hey, guy, are you okay?”

      “There’s been a bad phasing,” Mikkelsen said.

      “Uh-oh.”

      “I’ve got to find Janine.”

      “Janine?”

      “Janine—Carter,” Mikkelsen said. “Slender, high cheekbones, dark hair—you know.”

      “Janine,” said Stark. “Do I know a Janine? Hey, you and Melanie on the outs? I thought—”

      “This has nothing to do with Melanie,” said Mikkelsen.

      “Janine Carter.” Gus grinned. “You mean Tommy Hambleton’s girl? The little rich guy who was part of the La Jolla crowd ten-twelve years back when—”

      “That’s the one. Where do you think I’d find her now?”

      “Married Hambleton, I think. Moved to the Riviera, unless I’m mistaken. Look, about tonight, Nick—”

      “Screw tonight,” Mikkelsen said. “Get off the phone. I’ll talk to you later.”

      He broke the circuit and put the phone into search mode, all directories worldwide, Thomas and Janine Hambleton. While he waited, the shock and anguish of loss began at last to get to him, and he started to sweat, his hands shook, his heart raced in double time. I won’t find her, he thought. He’s got her hidden behind seven layers of privacy networks and it’s crazy to think the phone number is listed, for Christ’s sake, and—

      The telephone. He hit the button. Janine calling, this time.

      She looked stunned and disoriented, as though she were working hard to keep her eyes in focus. “Nick?” she said faintly.