Piers, Anthony - Incarnations of Immortality 02 by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers, Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

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A B B YY.c Incarnation relates. You have no further connection with your mortal existence; that is one reason you

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are immune from any paradox involving it. So your normal backward course is one, and your jump to

our past is another."

"But I have doubled up, and interfered with my prior Chronos self-in fact, once I rescued my prior self from destruction."

She pursed her lips. "That's interesting! But it does not violate the three-person rule. It does not matter whether your doubles are together or far apart; you can not conveniently go triple."

He nodded. "Yes, I see how it applies now. But the other thing is this business of six hours. It has been a lot longer than that since-"

"I calculated it," Lachesis called, overhearing him. "Your time in Satan's frame doesn't count for this, only your time in this one. You slept for three hours, talked with Satan for half an hour, and spoke with me for an hour and a half before we realized the problem and went to join the other Incarnations an hour ago. Six hours total."

"I see," Norton said, surprised at the accuracy of her assessment. But, of course, she was Fate, the Mistress of the Threads of Life; this was her business.

"At the moment," Luna said gently, "it is enough for you to know that these six hours are barred to you by direct effort, but that you can penetrate them by an extraordinary measure."

"I land seven hours later and-what?"

"And turn back the clock," she said. "You must reverse time and take the whole world with you. That will put you in the same category as you were-would be-will be, for you-when you live through that period as Chronos. You will pre-empt that period."

"You mean, by that device I'll actually erase whatever I was doing in my normal course then?"

"We believe so. There is a risk, if that normal course covers something important, but Lachesis sees no problem in her threads. Perhaps that period has never happened for you, because of your pre-emption, so nothing is lost."

Norton's head was spinning again. "How do you know my so-called normal Chronos self will go?" he asked. "Maybe I'll actually be tripling myself. That's theoretically possible, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," she agreed with a certain reservation. "There may be an infinite progression, like a picture within a picture, or mirrors facing each other. But it is convenient for us to call it the threeperson limit. Our understanding is more restricted than yours will be; perhaps we understand only part of your nature. At any rate, we are reasonably certain that if you reverse time for the world, for those six or seven hours, you will be able to reach the moment the demon acted, despite your prior trip there, and to nullify the demon just before it acts. Then you can relax, with the world returned to its original course, the damage undone-and protected by the same three-person limit that at the moment is causing us so much difficulty.

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