“Jesus. Where would it all end?”
“You’ve got me. What’s the absolute opposite of entropy?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“I don’t know either. Could be the Big Bang all over again.”
“So what the hell do we do?”
“Dr. Darkness does not, alas, know everything,” the scientist said, sighing heavily. “I must admit to a certain morbid fascination with all this. What an incredible opportunity for research. This could enable us to quantify Zen physics. We could be in a position to actually observe—”
“‘Doc!”
“What? Oh, sorry. You must forgive my enthusiasm. Occupational hazard. I’ll try to keep a lid on it.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“What’s the question?”
“What do we do about this mess?”
“Stall.”
“What do you mean, stall? How?”
“Well, since no clear-cut solution seems to present itself, the most we can do under the circumstances is to maintain the status quo as long as possible,” said Darkness. “The people from the alternate timeline are obviously attempting to hit us with a massive temporal first strike, trying to cause a significant historical disruption that might lead to a timestream split in our own timeline. We must not only prevent that, we must strike back at them in the same way. They interfere with our history, we interfere with theirs; each of us tries to adjust for the disruptions and maintain the instability as long as possible while trying to preserve a reasonable amount of temporal integrity on both sides.”
Phoenix stared at him, slack-jawed. “Are you serious?
“I’m very serious. It doesn’t solve the problem, admittedly, but it might keep it from getting worse. And it does have the added benefit of giving everyone a common enemy. No more temporal conflicts between nations. Everyone will be too busy fighting against the other timeline. It could have considerable domestic advantages. Now we’ll really have a Time War on our hands.”
“And just how long do we keep this up?” said Phoenix.
Darkness shrugged.
“Christ. I think I need another drink.”
Chapter 9
They were taken to a large chamber in the temple and locked inside. The massive wooden door was thick, bolted, and reinforced with iron. There were no windows in the chamber, but light filtered in from the top of a short flight of stairs. There were two large, thick pillars in the center of the room, supporting the ceiling. The walls were mortared stone. Learoyd, Ortheris, and Mulvaney had already been brought there, but they were still unconscious. Gunga Din climbed the flight of stairs, and a moment later they heard him call out. They followed him up the stairs.
“Sahib Finn! Memsahib Cross! Look!”
The stairs ended on a parapet built out of the side of a mountain cliff. Below them was an abyss, a sheer drop to the bottom of the Khyber Pass.
“It’s a long way down,” said Finn.
“Looks like we’re stuck,” said Andre.
“Sahib Finn, how we come here? Who are these people?”
“I don’t know how to tell you, Din,” said Finn.
“They are demon
s!”
“No, Din, they’re not demons. Just … powerful fakirs.”He shrugged. How else could he explain it?