The Dark World | Page 6

shrouded head at a landscape I have never seen before.
Or had I?
Under a dull, crimson sun the rolling forest below lay bathed in bloody light. I was looking down from a considerable height, and could not make out details, but it seemed to me that the trees were oddly shaped and that they were moving. A river ran toward distant hills. A few white towers rose from the forest. That was all. Yet the scarlet, huge sun had told me enough. This was not the Earth I knew.
"Another planet?"
"More than that," she said. "Few in the Dark World know this. But I know -- and there are some others who have learned, unluckily for you. There are worlds of probability, divergent in the stream of time, but identical almost, until the branches diverge too far."
"I don't understand that."
"Worlds coexistent in time and space -- but separated by another dimension, the variant of probability. This is the world that might have been yours had something not happened, long ago. Originally the Dark World and the Earth-world were one, in space and time. Then a decision was made -- a very vital decision, though I am not sure what it was. From that point the time-stream branched, and two variant worlds existed where there had been only one before.
"They were utterly identical at first, except that in one of them the key decision had not been made. The results were very different. It happened hundreds of years ago, but the two variant worlds are still close together in the time stream. Eventually they will drift farther apart, and grow less like each other. Meanwhile, they are similar, so much so that a man on the Earth-world may have his twin in the Dark World."
"His twin?"
"The man he might have been, had the key decision not been made ages ago in his world. Yes, twins, Ganelon -- Edward Bond. Do you understand now?"
I returned to the couch and sat there, frowning.
'Two worlds, coexistent. I can understand that, yes. But I think you mean more -- that a double for me exists somewhere."
"You were born in the Dark World. Your double, the true Edward Bond, was born on Earth. But we have enemies here, woods-runners, rebels, and they have stolen enough knowledge to bridge the gulf between time-variants. We ourselves learned the method only lately, though once it was well-known here, among the Coven.
"The rebels reached out across the gulf and sent you -- sent Ganelon -- into the Earth-world so that Edward Bond could come here, among them. They --"
"But why?" I interrupted. "What reason could they have for that?"
Edeyrn turned her hooded head toward me, and I felt, not for the first time, remote chill as she fixed her unseen gaze upon my face.
"What reason?" she echoed in her sweet, cool voice. "Think, Ganelon. See if you remember."
I thought, I closed my eyes and tried to submerge my conscious mind, to let the memories of Ganelon rise up to the surface if they were there at all. I could not yet accept this preposterous thought in its entirety, but certainly it would explain a great deal if it were true. It would even explain -- I realized suddenly -- that strange blanking out in the plane over the Sumatra jungle, that moment from which everything had seemed so wrong.
Perhaps that was the moment when Edward Bond left Earth, and Ganelon took his place -- both twins too stunned and helpless at the change to know what had happened, or to understand.
But this was impossible!
"I don't remember!" I said harshly. "It can't have happened. I know who I am! I know everything that ever happened to Edward Bond. You can't tell me that all this is only illusion. It's too clear, too real!"
"Ganelon, Ganelon," Edeyrn crooned to me, a smile in her voice. "Think of the rebel tribes. Try, Ganelon. Try to remember why they did what they did to you. The woods-runners, Ganelon -- the disobedient little men in green. The hateful men who threatened us. Ganelon, surely you remember!"
It may have been a form of hypnotism. I thought of that later. But at that moment, a picture did swim into my mind. I could see the green-clad swarms moving through the woods, and the sight of them made me hot with sudden anger. For that instant I was Ganelon, and a great and powerful lord, defied by these underlings not fit to tie my shoe.
"Of course you hated them," murmured Edeyrn. She may have seen the look on my face. I felt the stiffness of an unfamiliar twist of feature as she spoke. I had straightened where I sat, and my shoulders had gone back arrogantly, my lip curling a feeling of scorn. So perhaps she did not read my mind