because, quite simply, he wants to live. When you're already predisposed toward one condition, your mind will tend to avoid considering any possible alternatives.'
'I suppose you're probably right,' said Bobby. 'He seized on that bit of double-talk you fed him and hung onto it for all he was worth. He kept telling me how careful he was going to be, how he was going to refine paranoia to an art. He tried to make light of it, but he's pretty scared.'
'Wouldn't you be?'
'I honestly don't know. I've been trying to put myself in his place and I just can't do it. I get sick just thinking about it.'
'That's good,' said Finn. 'Keep thinking about it. It'll help you deal with Goldblum when the time comes.'
'Yeah. I don't even know the man and I already hate him more than I've ever hated anyone in my entire life.'
Finn nodded.
'But then I find myself thinking, perhaps he's really not to blame. What he's done is not the act of a rational man. He's sick, Finn. He's insane.'
'Don't leave any room inside yourself for pity,' Finn said. 'Within the framework of their own insanity, people like that can be very rational, indeed. He's smarter than you are. Otherwise he'd never have made it as a referee. Don't ever make the mistake of underestimating your enemy or feeling sorry for him. That's giving your enemy an advantage over you and Goldblum already has us pretty well outgunned.'
'Yeah, tell me about it.'
'Wish to hell we could get our hands on a chronoplate,' said Finn. 'Let me know if you see any lying around.'
'Lousy army,' Bobby said.
'It's a living.'
Bobby was silent for a moment. 'It's more than that for you,' he said after a moment. 'It's a way of life, isn't it? I can't conceive of myself finishing up my tour of duty and then re-upping. To me, that's crazy.'
'I guess maybe it is,' said Finn.
'How old are you, Finn?'
'A hundred and six.'
Bobby snorted. 'I'm only sixty. And Hooker, Christ, nineteen years old! To have to go that young… I wish to God there was some other way.'
'So do I,' said Finn.
'Why do we do it?'
'I can't come up with any answer better than Lord Tennyson's,' said Finn.
'I don't mean that,' said Bobby. 'I don't mean why do we do it, I mean why continue with these crazy time wars? Considering the risks involved, I just can't understand why they continue. Why can't we just stop it before something really nasty happens?'
'It may already have happened,' said Finn. 'That's why we're here. As far as stopping it goes, figure out when the arms race started, whenever in hell that was, and ask yourself why they didn't stop it then. Somebody would have had to stop it first. Your trouble is that you're thinking like a rational human being, not like a politician. Go back as far as you like, to the Belter Wars, the nuclear arms race, the first atomic bomb… Okay, we've got the technology and we know how dangerous it is and how dangerous it is to escalate. To continue on the same course would be insane. But if we stop, there's no guarantee that they will stop and so the game of leapfrog continues. The trouble is that the people who make those damn decisions are never the ones most qualified to make them. Back when the time wars started, nobody fully understood the risks. You can't change history, right? You can't change the past, it's absolute. Anything you do back in the past will have to be canceled out one way or another by the inertia of time. And that's correct, but it's only partially correct. It's like I told Lucas before about diverting the river. Follow the analogy. You drop a big rock in the river, you're going to create a splash and make some eddies, which will dissipate in the flow eventually. That's why if you kill some poor redcoat at Breed's Hill, you're not taking much of a risk of changing the course of history.'
'Unless you went back to the time of the Revolutionary War and snuffed George Washington,' said Bobby.
'True,' said Finn, 'but nobody believed that was possible. They thought something would have happened to prevent it. But then there were anomalies, such as the Bathurst Incident, which Mensinger cited, the case of the British diplomat in Austria whose carriage dropped him off in an open courtyard. He walked around in front of the horses and simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. It didn't change the course of history, perhaps, but how do you ever really know for sure? Mensinger proved that parallel timelines could exist and that a split timeline will eventually rejoin. You take an even bigger boulder, some huge goddamn piece of rock, and drop it in the river and it will split the river, but the water will flow around the boulder and the twin streams will rejoin, forming a single stream once again. It's what happens during that split that scares the shit out of everybody. That's when they started getting really paranoid, but they were just as paranoid that the other side wouldn't stop if they did. So the Referee Corps got more power, they got really strict about soldiers killed in action… You've got to bring back your dead because you never know just what might happen. You've got to send your Search and Retrieve units back to find your MIAs and you worry like hell when they can't. So you're sitting on a powder keg that could blow up beneath you. Does that worry anybody? Some, but not enough. You give 'em that argument and they'll say that that's what people said about nuclear waste and radioactive fallout, they said it about the hydrogen bomb, they said that sparks from the smokestacks of trains would burn down the countryside, they even predicted that the world would end in violence when the crossbow was invented. And we're all still here.'
'So what's the answer?' Bobby said.
Finn laughed. 'Well, we could always go back and kill the son of a bitch who invented the crossbow.'
He yelped suddenly as an arrow embedded itself in the tree trunk against which he leaned. It pierced his left sleeve, grazing his arm and cutting it.
'Stand and deliver!'
Three men appeared, each holding a drawn longbow pointed in their direction. Both men jumped to their feet, Finn first yanking the arrow free and throwing it down upon the ground furiously.
'It's Little John and Robin,' one of the men said, lowering his bow. The other two followed suit.
'Damn, Will, you could've killed him!' one of them said.
'Sorry, John,' the one named Will said. 'I couldn't see that it was you.'
Finn glowered at him. 'Come here, you…'
Will Scarlet approached hesitantly. 'Now don't get mad, John. Could've happened to anyone, y'know.'
Delaney struck him squarely on the jaw and Will Scarlet collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The other two began to back away.
'Stand fast!' said Delaney.
They froze.
'Now, you two eagle-eyed marksmen, I want you to cut me a staff, a nice-sized one, and then you truss up sleeping beauty here and hang him from it like a stag. Then you can carry him to camp that way.'
Anxious not to provoke him any further, the two merry men hurried to comply with his orders.
'We're going to start whipping these cretins into shape right now,' Delaney said. 'Their cozy little forest retreat is about to become Finn Delaney's boot camp!'
Discretion seemed the better part of valor. Although he was tempted to reveal himself at Ashby, Lucas chose to postpone the return of Ivanhoe until a more opportune time. What he needed now was Cedric's protection. Ashby would provide a good opportunity to make it up with his 'father,' but not during the banquet. His arrival at the feast would have caused quite a stir, especially if he attempted to reclaim his fief and announced that Richard had returned to England, as had been his plan. Such an announcement, he had believed, would have thrown John for a loop. He guessed that the prince would have stalled for time. With many people at the banquet still loyal to Richard, the very people John was determined to win over to his side, Lucas thought that John would have made a show of loyalty himself by returning to Ivanhoe his fief and welcoming his brother's return. It would be so much lip service and nothing more. Returning Ivanhoe's possessions would have been a small sacrifice and a wise political decision. Meanwhile, John would doubtless send armed parties abroad in search of Richard, to find him and to do away with
