was not a threat to its future. Kaczynski had not considered that a future technology would erase his deeds.
Kaczynski’s surprised gasp lay behind him now. He decided, since his controls allowed him to choose among the braided timelines, to save as many victims as he could. His own time was growing short.
He scanned through the gallery of mass murder, trying to relax as the flux cage popped and hummed with stresses. Sex was the primary motive of lust killers, whether or not the victims were dead, and fantasy played strongly in their killings. The worst felt that their gratification depended on torture and mutilation, using weapons in close contact with the victims—knives, hammers, or just hands. Such lust killers often had a higher cause they could recite, but as they continued, intervals between killings decreased and the craving for stimulation increased.
He considered Coral Watts, a rural murderer. A surviving victim had described him as “excited and hyper and clappin’ and just making noises like he was excited, that this was gonna be fun.” Watts killed by slashing, stabbing, hanging, drowning, asphyxiating, and strangling. But when Warren singled out the coordinates for Watts, the software warned him that the target timeline was beyond his energy reserves.
The pain was worse now, shooting searing fingers up into his chest. He braced himself in the acceleration chair and took an injection his doctors had given him, slipping the needle into an elbow vein. It helped a bit, a soothing warmth spreading through him. He put aside the pain and concentrated, lips set in a thin white line.
His team had given him choices in the space-time coordinates. The pain told him that he would not have time enough to visit them all and bring his good work to the souls who had suffered in those realms. Plainly, he should act to cause the greatest good, downstream in time from his intervention.
He emerged on a bare rock shelf in Chatsworth, north of the valley bordering, the Los Angeles megaplex. He savoured the view as the flux cage relaxed around him, its gravitational ripples easing away. Night in the valley: streaks of actinic boulevard streetlights, crisp dry air flavoured of desert and combustion. The opulence of the era struck him immediately: blaring electric lights lacing everywhere, thundering hordes of automobiles on the highways, the sharp sting of smog, and large homes of glass and wood, poorly insulated. His era termed this the Age of Appetite, and so it was.
But it was the beginning of a time of mercies. The crimes the Manson gang was to commit did not cost the lot of them their lives. California had briefly instituted an interval with no death penalty while the Manson cases wound through their lethargic system. The guilty then received lifelong support, living in comfortable surrounds and watching television and movies, labouring a bit, writing books about their crimes, giving interviews and finally passing away from various diseases. This era thought that a life of constrained ease was the worst punishment it could ethically impose.
Manson and Bundy were small-scale murderers, compared with Hitler, Mao, and others of this slaughterhouse century. But the serial killers Warren could reach and escape undetected. Also, he loathed them with a special rage.
He hiked across a field of enormous boulders in the semi-night of city glow, heading north. Two days ahead in this future, on July 1, 1969, Manson would shoot a black drug dealer named “Lotsapoppa” Crowe at a Hollywood apartment. He would retreat to the rambling farm buildings Warren could make out ahead, the Spahn Ranch in Topanga Canyon. Manson would then turn Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, with night patrols of armed guards. Now was the last possible moment to end this gathering catastrophe, silence its cultural impact, save its many victims.
Warren approached cautiously, using the rugged rocks as cover. He studied the ramshackle buildings, windows showing pale lighting. His background said this was no longer a functioning ranch, but instead a set for moving pictures. He wondered why anyone would bother making such dramas on location, when computer graphics were much simpler; or was this time so far back that that technology did not exist? The past was a mysterious, unknowingly wealthy land.
Near the wooden barns and stables ahead, a bonfire licked at the sky. Warren moved to his right, going uphill behind a rough rock scree to get a better view. Around the fire were a dozen people sitting, their rapt faces lit in dancing orange firelight, focused on the one figure who stood, the centre of attention.
Warren eased closer to catch the voices. Manson’s darting eyes caught the flickering firelight. The circle of faces seemed like moons orbiting the long-haired man.
Warren felt a tap on his shoulder. He whirled, the 0.22 coming naturally into his hand. A small woman held her palms up, shaking her head. Then a finger to her lips,
He hesitated. They were close enough that a shot might be heard. Warren elected to follow the woman’s hand signals, settling down into a crouch beside her.
She whispered into his ear, “No fear. I am here for the same reason.”
Warren said, “What reason? Who the hell are you?”
“To prevent the Tate murders. I’m Serafina.” Her blonde hair caught the fire glow.
Warren whispered, “You’re from—”
“From a time well beyond yours.”
“You … side-slipped?”
“Following your lead. Your innovation.” Her angular features sharpened, eyes alive. “I am here to help you with your greatest mercy.”
“How did you—”
“You are famous, of course. Some of us sought to emulate you. To bring mercy to as many timelines as possible.”
“Famous?” Warren had kept all this secret, except for his—ah, of course, the team. Once he vanished from his native timeline, they would talk. Perhaps they could track him in his sideslips; they had incredible skills he would never understand. In all this, he had never thought of what would happen once he left his timeline, gone forever.
“You are a legend. The greatest giver of mercies.” She smiled, extending a slender hand. “It is an honour.”
He managed to take her hand, which seemed impossibly warm. Which meant that he was chilled, blood rushing to his centre, where the pain danced.
“I … thank you. Uh, help, you said? How—”
She raised the silencing finger again. “Listen.”
They rose a bit on their haunches, and now Warren heard the strong voice of the standing man. Shaggy, bearded, arms spread wide, the fierce eyes showed white.
“We are the
“The blacks will soon
Warren felt the impact of Manson’s voice, seductive: he detested it. In that rolling, powerful chant lay the deaths to come at 10050 Cielo Drive. Sharon Tate, eight and a half months pregnant. Her friend and former lover Jay Sebring. Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. Others, too, all innocents. Roman Polanski, one of the great drama makers of this era and Tate’s husband, was in London at work on a film project or else he would have shared their fate, with others still—
The thought struck him—what if, in this timeline, Roman Polanski was there at 10050 Cielo Drive? Would he die, too? If so, Warren’s mission was even more a mercy for this era.
Manson went on, voice resounding above the flickering flames, hands and eyes working the circle of rapt acolytes. “We’ll be movin’ soon.
