Lepidopt watched the traffic in all directions as he drove. There didn't seem to be any cars, police or otherwise, speeding up toward the truck from ahead or from side streets, and Lepidopt let his aching fingers relax on the steering wheel.
Bozzaris was dead, but Lepidopt had to concentrate on driving. He would think later about his young friend who now would not see today's sunset.
Baruch Dayan Emet, Lepidopt thought. Blessed is the Righteous Judge.
The katsa from Vienna would be landing at LAX in — he rolled his wrist to see his watch — in about an hour. Lepidopt had lost two sayanim and one agent, and had disobeyed the order to do nothing until the senior katsa's arrival. But he had got Einstein's machine.
His telephone buzzed, and he pried the receiver away from its case and switched it on.
He took a deep breath and let it out, then checked his mirrors and made sure he was following the truck closely. "Yes," he said.
"It's me," said Frank Marrity's voice. "You said to call after half an hour."
"Good," said Lepidopt. "Now call again a half hour from now."
"How long are we supposed to—"
"You'll be picked up soon," interrupted Lepidopt. "Be patient. Call me again in half an hour."
He had to hang up because he needed a free hand to wipe his eyes.
Rocking in the passenger seat as Golze drove, old Frank Marrity had to remind himself to breathe.
The movie isn't burned up if Daphne Marrity never existed.
Golze was speeding east on California, passing cars. Marrity could hear him breathing, deep and wheezing, over the battering flutter of the headwind through the broken windshield. After a couple of blocks, he cut across the right lane into another residential street, and slowed down.
"But Daphne does exist," said Marrity, talking loudly even though the headwind had now diminished.
"And you and I are having this discussion," said Golze impatiently. "In your previous lifetime — lifetimes, I guess — we never did, did we? Nothing's… written in stone."
"You'll go back in time and kill her as a baby you mean? But you don't have the machine."
"We don't need the machine to do this. This is Einstein's other weapon, the one he couldn't bring himself to tell FDR about. The atom bomb was within Einstein's conscience, but he couldn't tell Roosevelt how to… unmake people, delete them from reality entirely. Not even if it was to be Nazis." Golze started a laugh, but choked it off with a fierce scowl after one syllable. "Einstein was okay with ending people's lives, but he had qualms about making them never have had lives at all — never born, never conceived."
Marrity's eyes were squinting and watering, and he wished he'd brought sunglasses. The car was still moving slowly down the block, passing old houses and lawns that stirred his memories.
Can these people do that? wondered Marrity. If Daphne never existed…
But even as of 1987, twelve years of Marrity's life had been tied up with her; even in his previous good life, he had been her father. Who would he be, if he had never had a daughter?
And Marrity hated Daphne, the one he knew best, the one he had known since 1987, the one who had backed the car over him, but did he really want to condemn her to… never having existed at all? Not remembered by anyone? Did the little girl he had seen on Grammar's back porch this morning deserve that?
And even though Lucy, Daphne's mother, was dead, he'd be depriving her of Daphne too. Suddenly Lucy's terminated life would never have included a child, that particular little girl.
What would become of Daphne's soul? he thought.
What will become of mine?
"It's risky," said Golze, his eyes half closed, possibly talking to himself. "Even with a twelve-year-old who hasn't ever done much of anything. These past three days, at least, will turn out to have happened differently, since she'll never have been a player. Risky. But ahh—" He exhaled gingerly. "I'm shot, Rascasse is probably dead, the movie's burned, the Mossad has the machine — if there was ever time for a re-deal, this is it."
The radio sputtered. "Prime," said a voice. It was oddly flat, with no resonance behind it.
Golze's white face jerked toward the radio, and though he instantly looked back at the street ahead of him, his hand moved only very slowly toward the receiver.
At last he lifted it off the hook. "Seconde," he said.
"Get back here to the bus," said Rascasse's synthesized voice. "We need to get — the Daphne child right now, which only can — be done from here." The voice became louder, as if a volume knob had been turned up: "And bring the hatband too. Don't lose it! And get Charlotte here as well. And — mother's little helper — do it fast."
Golze peevishly leaned forward and changed the frequency setting and didn't take his hand off it. "I can't get Charlotte. You get her. I need a doctor, I've been shot, sympathy for the Devil." He switched to the next frequency and leaned back, clearing his throat gingerly. The car was moving at barely five miles an hour now.
"Take off the — hatband," said the depthless voice on the radio.
"I'm driving, I can't—"
"Take it off. Or have — the old man take it off, if you cannot."
"For Chrissakes—" Golze reached up behind his ear and tugged the black choker, and with a snap it came loose. He tossed it into the backseat. "I wasn't getting blood on it," he began, but Rascasse's voice cut him off.
"Be quiet now," Rascasse said; then, "The shoulder blade itself is fractured; but the artery below — subclavian — is fine. Infection is of course a likely outcome, but before that happens, all this time line will be gone."
Golze paused, his mouth open as he stared at the street through the hole in the windshield. Then he smiled, exposing yellow teeth. "Well, good point. It'll be a long drive to — can't always get what you want." After changing the frequency again, he said, "To Palm Springs. But you have to pick up me and my companion, this car isn't driveable. I'm at—"
"Don't bother changing frequency, my sight includes you. Park the car. We'll pick you up."
Golze hung up the microphone and squirmed on the seat, his face gray. "I hate it when he looks inside me," he muttered. "I swear I feel heat when he does it." He steered the car to the curb in front of a house with a real estate sign in the front yard, and shifted into neutral. "He doesn't have a French accent when he's not speaking through his actual mouth, did you notice? Odd phrasing still, but American pronunciation. Accent must have to do with the tongue muscles."
The car was stopped. Marrity clasped his hands to keep them from trembling. "If Daphne—" he began.
"You won't have to worry about her anymore," Golze said, wincing as he leaned back in the seat. "And we won't need to bother you at all — in this new time line, you'll never meet us."
"Won't you still need to learn about the machine?" asked Marrity. "From me?"
"Rascasse will manage to interrogate you somehow before we do it, and he'll remember this time line, even after it's collapsed to nonexistence. He'll be the only one who does. I think he's the one who erased Nobodaddy, if there ever really was such a person, in any time line. Though how an organization can exist if its founder didn't is a puzzle."
"I — won't remember her?"
Golze was sweating, and his face was gray, but he stared at Marrity with evident curiosity.