The sheriff stopped frowning and shrugged.
Irving sighed. "Very well. I will explain it to you. And you will feel heartily ashamed for not seeing it yourself. Why is it that you have had so little success in bringing the Saxon outlaws to justice?"
"Because they are led by the cleverest shrew who ever—"
"Spare me. I have no desire to hear of your marital difficulties. They enjoy their liberty only because they know the forests better than your men at arms and because they are supported by the people, who see them as figures of romance."
"Yes, I've heard those silly songs about their robbing from the rich and giving to the poor," said Guy. "Alan-a-dale should be hung for his minstrelcy if for nothing else. Yet, those songs always fail to mention that these wolf's heads deduct a goodly percentage of their plunder for themselves."
"Be that as it may," said Irving, "the people love them because they rob the Normans. The Saxons are taxed into penury and they are grateful to see their oppressors suffer any disadvantage. Occasionally, these outlaws might beard some wealthy Saxon, but it is another thing entirely if it should become known that they have taken to working hand in hand with mercenary knights, abducting Saxon women and holding them for ransom. And rest assured, we will make it known. In such an event, the affection that the people bear these outlaws would begin to wane somewhat, would it not?"
"How does that help us?" said Sir Guy.
"It prepares the people to greet us with open arms when we come to free them from such tyranny," said Irving. "It also puts the forest outlaws at a disadvantage. They would have to prove themselves innocent. What better way to do this than to confront De Bracy?"
"But Sir Maurice will deny it all."
"Do you expect the Saxons to believe him?"
"So while De Bracy and his Free Companions are beset by outlaws, we move against Prince John with the odds for our success being much improved."
"There, you see? Was that so difficult to reason out?"
"But there still remains a problem," said Sir Guy. "Cedric and his party will know the truth of the matter."
"Will they?" Irving said. "Even as we speak, de la Croix delivers Cedric and his party to Nottingham Castle. The Saxons will be bound and blindfolded. They will have no idea where they are. Andre de la Croix, in the guise of Sir Maurice, will see to it that they are safely locked away within our dungeons. They will never know that it was not De Bracy who had taken them."
"But surely De Bracy will have some response when he is accused?" the sheriff said.
"What does that matter? By that time, it will be too late. Of course, there is always the possibility that the truth will eventually emerge. But then, the dead do not tell tales, do they? The prisoners will have to be dispatched when the time comes. It is regrettable, but their lives will have to be forfeit to affairs of state. We are fighting for a throne and the welfare of England is at stake. As for De Bracy, you leave him to de la Croix."
The sheriff shook his head in admiration. "You seem to have thought of everything, Sire."
"Not quite everything," said Irving. "At least, not yet. There are other matters I must see to presently, for which purpose I must now retire and contemplate. See to it that I am not disturbed."
"As you command, Sire."
Irving left the sheriff and made his way to his private chambers in the castle tower. His remark to Sir Guy had not been merely an excuse; he needed time to think. He was growing worried. He reached his chambers and closed the door behind him, then shot the bolt. Wearily, he threw himself down upon the bed.
He had to tread with extreme care. If possible, he needed to take at least one of the adjustment team alive. That opportunity had not yet presented itself. He needed enough time to make the snatch, and to convey one of them to Nottingham, where he could use the fine equipment in the dungeons to discover the location of the adjustment referee. Once he accomplished that, it would all be over. But he had to be extremely careful. He had failed each time before. The men had died before divulging the necessary information.
His past was absolute. He knew that clocking back once more would not create a paradox if history remained unchanged. Yet, that was the very game that he was playing. He had to be supremely cautious, staying within the limits he had set for himself.
He knew that small actions taken in the past were canceled out in the flow of time. Any small ripple in the timeline became evened out through the inertia of the flow. Traveling back into the past and taking an action that would significantly change history, or clocking back to confront oneself would cause a more significant ripple in the timestream. At that point, the timeline would be split, creating an alternate timeline running parallel with the absolute past. Each such instance created yet another parallel timeline and, theoretically, this could go on ad infinitum. However, a split timeline had to eventually rejoin. This action would occur at some point beyond the action taken to create the split.
This was what Mensinger had cited in his famous work on "The Fate Fa
ctor." He had used the "grandfather paradox" to illustrate his point. The grandfather paradox postulated a fascinating dilemma, a riddle that had not been solved until Mensinger had proved the potential for parallel timelines. The paradox stated that if you went back into the past and altered the history of your grandfather, killing him before he ever met your grandmother, then he would never have met and married your grandmother. Your father, then, would not have been born and, consequently, you would not have been born. And if you were never born, how could you go back into the past to kill your grandfather?
Conventional wisdom had held that it was impossible to create such a paradox, at least until Mensinger had proved that it was. It had been believed that since you were born and since your past was absolute, something in the past would have prevented your taking your grandfather's life. However, given the potential for parallel timelines, it was very possible, indeed.
Mensinger hypothesized that if you went back into the past to kill your grandfather and succeeded in so doing, the action would create a ripple in the timestream, a split in the timeline. Since there had to exist an absolute past in which your grandfather did not die, a past in which he met your grandmother, married her and procreated your father, which action led to your own birth; that past was absolute for you taking the action and could not be changed, since the past had to occur before you took action to change it. Once you took that action, a parallel timeline was created, one in which your grandfather had died. These two timelines, the one which represented your absolute past and the one which you had created by your action, ran parallel to one another in a linear fashion.
Yet, these two timelines had to rejoin at some point in the future. The danger therein lay in the fact that in the timeline in which your grandfather had died, there existed the distinct possibility that your grandmother would marry someone else. She could very possibly give birth to someone other than your father, which action progressively led to other events. Theoretically, wrote Mensinger, the timelines would become rejoined when the traveler to the past returned to the future (or the present) from which he came. However, he wrote, given some common degree of longevity on the part of the two grandmothers in the parallel timelines, when these timelines rejoined, there existed the possibility that grandmother would be duplicated, sharing with her twin an absolute past prior to the split. This raised all sorts of fascinating possibilities.
Mensinger's "Fate Factor" came into play at the point at which the split in the timeline was created. The moment that the action taken to create the split occurred, the future was in flux, creating an infinite number of potential scenarios. Any disruption in the timestream, like eddies caused by throwing a rock into the water, had to eventually respond to the inertia of the flow. The inertia of time, on the grand scale, worked to minimize the effects of such disruptions. This was the "Fate Factor." However, according to Mensinger, the grand scale in terms of time was not necessarily what would be defined as a grand scale in human terms. Disasters on the human scale were possible. Significant changes at the point of the rejoining could occur.
Irving had thought that he had spotted a flaw in Mensinger's theory. He had become obsessed with it. Mensinger had postulated that parallel timelines would rejoin when the traveler to the past returned to the time from which he came. In such an instance, the rejoining of the timelines would most likely have abrupt and jarring effects. However, what would happen if the traveler to the past did not return at all to the time from which he came? Suppose this traveler lived out the remainder of his life in the parallel timeline which he created. Would it not be possible, in that event, for the timelines to eventually rejoin at some point far beyond the point from which the time traveler departed? On the grand scale of time, there had to be a point at which past history was insignificant, unknown completely to the people living in that time, much as the history of man in his most primitive stages was totally unknown to modern scholars. Under such circumstances, could history not be changed to the benefit of all mankind? Irving had discussed his theory with other referees, which he now knew had been a great mistake. He had expected that they would agree with him wholeheartedly, but such had not been the case. They had argued that taking such an action could have disastrous consequences, that he had misinterpreted Mensinger's work. In order for his theory to prove valid, they had argued, it would be necessary for him to exert a continuous influence upon the timeline. Even though, as he hypothesized, he would travel into the past never to return, the parallel timelines would have to come together the moment his splitting influence ceased to become a factor. The moment that he died, they said, the rejoining would occur. There was no chance of the grand scale split which he proposed.