by Simon Hawke
He had to go back.
Chapter 4
Capt. Reese Hunter had become separated from his unit. In fact, he was about as far separated from his unit as it was possible to get. They were an entire universe apart and Reese Hunter was in the wrong one. The planet he was on was known as
Earth, but it was not the Earth he came from. He was a.~ thoroughly alien here as if he'd been a creature from another' galaxy. Which, in fact, he was. His was a mirror-image galaxy, a parallel universe in a congruent timeline. The same, and yet, profoundly different. Hunter was behind enemy lines.. and there was no way back.
He had been taken prisoner by a team of temporal agents who had crossed over into his universe. He had been unconscious when Andre Cross, Creed Steiger and
Finn Delaney had brought him through the confluence point.. When he had escaped from them, using a stolen warp disc, he hadn't realised that they had brought him back into their own time line. It was only after he had clocked in at Pendleton
Base, at the present transition co-ordinates the warp disc had been programmed with, that he suddenly realised, as Dorothy would have said, that he was not in
Kansas anymore. Fortunately for him, no one at Pendleton Base had expected an escaped prisoner with a stolen warp disc to be clocking in, least of all an officer of the S. O. G. 's Counter Insurgency Section. As a result, he'd been able to bluff his way through, buying himself just enough time to program a new set of transition co-ordinates into the stolen disc. It had been one hell of a big risk.
The discs used by his people were not quite the same and he hadn't really been sure of what he was doing.
He didn't know if they'd be able to trace him through the disc or not, but he had known that he could not afford to wait around and find out. It would have been only a matter of time, perhaps only moments, before the alarm was given and they'd be looking for him. He had no intention of being anywhere near Pendleton
Base when that happened. So he had clocked out once again. Unfortunately, now he had no idea where he was. Which was rather ironic, since he knew exactly where he was.
He knew he was in New York City, but that really wasn't much help at all because this New York City did not correspond exactly to the one in the universe from which he came. He had learned, from picking up a copy of the Daily News, that it was the 20th century, but he could take no comfort in that knowledge, either.
Events in this timeline did not correspond exactly with the events in his. The president of the United States in 1989 was not a woman, as in his timeline. The mayor of New York City wasn't black. And the citizens were apparently not allowed to carry weapons.
Hunter had, at best, only a sketchy knowledge of the history of this timeline, supplied by S.O.G. agents who had crossed over and infiltrated the Temporal Army Archives Section. Their mission had been sabotage and intelligence gathering and they had managed to get a great deal of information through before they had been caught, among which was a detailed explanation of the failsafe systems the
Temporal Corps used on their warp discs. Hunter had benefited from all that, but still, it was nowhere near enough, not when even one slight misstep could get him into trouble. Paranoia had welled up within him. He felt like a bleeding swimmer treading water in the middle of a school of sharks.
There was only one way for Hunter to get home. Some-where, he had to find a confluence point. The trouble was, he didn't even know how to begin to look for one. A confluence point wasn't something you could see. When they were found, they were usually discovered by accident. You simply turned a corner and you were in another universe. If you could keep your head about you and retrace your steps exactly, you could get back home. But Hunter didn't even know where the corner was in this case. Because he had been unconscious when he was brought through, he had no idea where they had crossed over, not even in what country or what time period. Instinctively, the first thing he had done when he had regained his senses was to attempt escape. The attempt had been successful. The only trouble was, now he was trapped in the wrong universe and he had no idea how to get back home.
Part of the problem was that confluence points were completely unpredictable.
There were no scientific principles governing their behaviour that anybody knew of, much less understood. With sophisticated instruments, it was possible to detect the energy field of a confluence, but you had to be practically on top of it. And there was no way of knowing where a confluence point would lead to. They did not correspond in space and time. Hunter knew that a confluence point located in his own universe in the 27th century could intersect with this timeline in such a manner that crossing over would result in entering a completely different century in a completely different geographical location. Conceivably, a confluence point located in Paris, France in one universe could open onto' the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the other. Theoretically, it was entirely possible for a confluence point occurring on Earth in one timeline to open onto deep space in the other, although the vacuum on one side would probably act as a miniature black hole, sucking through everything from the other side where there was an atmosphere, resulting in a devastating temporal whirlpool that would last until the confluence point shifted.
And there was no way of telling when that could occur.
Hunter didn't even want to think about what would happen if he were to cross over at the moment a confluence point shifted. He still remembered the disaster that occurred when S.O.G. troops had launched an invasion of this timeline through a confluence point located in the Khyber Pass. At the crucial moment, the confluence point had shifted without warning in a rippling effect that had continued down the timelines as temporal stability had been restored to that location. An entire battalion of soldiers had been caught in the middle of the shift. None of them were ever seen again. They had been trapped forever in the limbo of non-specific time known as the dead zone.
Or at least that was the theory. No one really knew for sure what happened to them.
The average person, in either universe, had no conception of the danger, no real understanding of the instability brought about by the congruence of two universes, instability that was magnified by the confluence of two separate timelines that intersected at various points in rime and space because of the increasing chronophysical imbalance. It occurred to Hunter that most people had never really understood the fragility of their. existence anyway, largely because they didn't want to.
The generation that had grown up with atomic weapons had clung to the idea that atomic warfare was "unthinkable," not so much because no one could win such a war (which was debatable), but because a "nuclear exchange" (how much more sanitised a term than nuclear war!) was, in reality, simply too horrifying to comprehend. So most people tried not to think: about it. That was what the word
"unthinkable" really meant. In the same manner, they had chosen not to think about the irreparable damage they were doing to their ecosystem through the pollution of their air and water and the abuse of their resources. They clung to a lunatic philosophy that held that there was no limit to growth. All criminal foolishness.
Some-one had to pay the piper in the long run, but most people never considered the long run. They took the short view, looking to their wallets at the expense of their legacy,
It had been the same with time travel, an idea that had seemed quite harmless, even quaint, alongside the specters of nuclear missiles and orbital beam particle weapons platforms. And yet, it was a thousand times more dangerous. If people ever really took the time to think: about the sort of world they lived in now, thought Hunter, it would reduce them to hysteria and raving paranoia. Nothing was certain anymore. Perhaps it never had been..
With the advent of the Time Wars, it all became a tightrope walk without a net. By far the largest percentage of troops in both timelines were now essentially non-combative Temporal Observers, assigned to lonely posts scattered throughout time-their duty to monitor historical continuity and be on the alert for temporal
anomalies. And there was a temporal Underground in Hunter's universe as well as in this one, each a loosely organised society of deserters from the future who had become frightened or disaffected and had dropped out, fled to the past on the theory that disaster was imminent, and that when it came, the worst effects would be felt further up the timeline.
The Underground, with its black market chronoplates and warp discs and its complex system of transtemporal contacts, offered a tempting mode of life. In a sense, these people had achieved the ultimate in freedom. All of time was at their beck and call. Hunter had once found himself temporarily separated from his unit, stranded in time, and the temptation to seek out the Underground had been very strong. He had held out and waited until rescue came, but his twin in this universe had succumbed to the temptation and gone over to the Under-ground. Delaney,
Cross and Steiger had said that he was dead now, murdered in 17th century France.
It had been a blow for
Hunter to-learn that, in this timeline, "he" had died
Or at least a version of himself had just as it had been a shock to encounter Finn Delaney and Andre Cross, mirror-image twins of those he had known back in his own timeline.
In Hunter's timeline, Finn and Andre had been killed. In them, he had been the one to die. It was madness.
In both timelines, the boundaries between reality and meta-physics were being blurred. Nothing was certain anymore. How many people in the past were really people from the future? How dependable was history when, at any moment, a person from the future could clock back in time and change it, altering-perhaps irrevocably-the flow of the timestream? And with the confluence phenomenon, how could anyone hope to lead anything even resembling a normal life if they knew that at any given moment, they could slip through a wrinkle in time and wind up in another universe, in another timestream, in an alternate reality?
No, it was better not to think about such things. It was easier to go through life taking the short view and passing the buck, ignoring that Sword of Damocles suspended over your head and hoping it would fall on someone else. Preferably someone you didn't know too well. Like your great, great grandchildren, for instance.
However, Hunter did not have the dubious luxury of self-deception. He was in the same position as his counterparts in this universe; he knew all too well how fragile the continuity of both timelines had become. And the war between them was only making matters worse.
It had come very close to being an all out war, especially after the scientists in Hunter's universe finally figured out where all those devastating nuclear explosions were coming from, but it didn't take long for leaders in both timelines to realise that all-out warfare between them would be equally devastating to both. Quite possibly, no one would survive. So a form of limited temporal warfare was being waged. The military scientists in Hunter's timeline believed the only way to end the confluence effect was to cross over into the congruent universe and create a temporal disruption of sufficient magnitude to bring about a timestream split. The resulting creation of another parallel timeline would then act as a sort of chronophysical "wedge" driven between the two parallel universes, forcing them apart and ending the confluence phenomenon. In theory, it would constitute a temporal buffer zone between them. In theory.
There was, however, another theory that held that a temporal disruption resulting in a timestream split in either timeline would only compound the problem by creating yet a third timeline, another parallel universe in confluence with the previous two.
And such a magnification of the confluence effect could only serve to introduce further temporal disruption into all three timelines, which could then result in even more time stream splits, creating yet a fourth parallel universe in confluence with the other three, and perhaps fifth and sixth and so on, exponentially, in a chronophysical chain reaction that would be impossible to stop. But the proponents of that theory were very much in the minority because such an event, their fellow scientists insisted, would simply be "unthinkable." There was that word again. And in any case, they said, the confluence effect was already introducing temporal disruption into both timelines. Sooner or later, the scientists insisted, something had to give. Far better that it give in their universe than ours.
Hunter no longer knew whom to believe. If he stopped to think about it for very long, he started to get the shakes. Perhaps it was only combat fatigue. Or maybe it was the desperate fear of a rational man confronting his own ephemeral in a totally irrational world. Either way, there didn't seem to be anything that he could do about it. For now, his one imperative was to survive.
It had occurred to him that, purely by accident, he had been placed in a unique situation. Ironically, he was now in a position to become the C.I.S. 's most effective deep cover operative. Even in the event of a penetration of his counter insurgency unit by the T.I.A., nobody could blow his cover because no one knew where he was or how to get in touch with him. They didn't even know that he was still alive.
Not even he knew exactly where he was, relative to historical continuity in this timeline. However, he could learn. It would not be very difficult. All he'd have to do was clock forward a few centuries in time, purchase a microcomputer or even an cybernetic implant, and then buy himself an education-download some history and world affairs. There would be some risk of getting caught if they were expecting him to try something like that, but the risk would be extremely small.
The T.I.A. had no idea where he was, or where he might pop up or when, so the risk was slight and well within acceptable parameters. With his captured warp disc and a detailed knowledge of this timeline's history, he could become a virtually untraceable saboteur. He, might easily bring about a timestream split in this timeline all by himself and, if the scientists back home were right, he'd single-handedly end the confluence effect and be a hero.
Of course, no one back home would ever know he'd done it, because in that event, he would undoubtedly become forever trapped within the timestream split he had created. That was something he had been resigned to from the very start, when he'd become an agent of the C.I.S., yet on the other hand, what if the scientists were wrong? What if the minority view held by the so-called "lunatic fringe" academicians was the correct one? What if the creation of a timestream split served only to compound the crisis, setting off a chain reaction of temporal disruptions on a cataclysmic scale? In the absence of direct orders, Hunter had to rely upon his own initiative. And what if he made the wrong decision?
Still, there were other choices, He could do as his twin in this timeline had done and join the Temporal Underground, assuming he could find a way to get in touch with them. Or perhaps, better still, he could opt out and do it on his own. Did he really need the Underground? Even if he decided to function as a deep cover
C.I.S. saboteur within this timeline, what better way to do it than from within the Underground? But did he really owe that much to the C.I.S., who certainly would not be supporting him in any way and who would undoubtedly have already listed him as killed or missing in action? What about patriotism? Well, what about it?
Would anyone care about his patriotic motivations if the choice he made only served to make the situation worse? And what did the concept of patriotism mean, anyway, when ripples in two congruent timestreams resulted in a confluence effect that rendered even boundaries in time and space irrelevant?
He needed time to think and plan. And in order to do that, he needed money and a place to stay. Once again. it came down to bare essentials. Survival.
Fortunately, he did not look too out of place in the simple green transit fatigues he had picked up at Pendleton Base before he had clocked out again, but he needed other clothing and, most of all, he needed money. And when a soldier was trapped behind enemy lines. he had to improvise as best he could.
He picked out a likely looking prospect and mugged him in the subway, knocking him out with a sharp chop to the neck. It was a quick and efficient hit-and-run. The robbery netted him a b
rown eel skin wallet containing a driver's license, some credit cards, and forty-five dollars in cash. Not very much, but it would do for a start. He went up the stairs to Pennsylvania Station, sat down at a bar, drank some coffee and perused a copy of the Daily News. After a while, he went to the men's room, locked himself up inside a stall and clocked ahead several hours. Then he left the stall, walked out of the bar with the paper folded up under his arm and headed toward the Off Track Betting counter he had spotted earlier inside the station. He spent a short while there, noted the racing results, went back to the bar, entered the men's room once again and clocked back once more. Then he returned to the Off Track Betting counter and placed several bets. Needless to say, he did very well indeed.
His winnings enabled him to purchase a new suit of clothes and have a satisfying dinner in a Chinese restaurant. He then found a different Off Track Betting parlour and repeated the performance, placing larger bets and spreading them out more.
He slept that night in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, using the name but not the credit cards of the man whose wallet he had stolen. The next morning, he had room service send up breakfast and a copy of The Wall Street Journal.
He spent several hours looking over the stock market and commodities reports, then without leaving the room, clocked ahead one day and went out to pick up that day's copy of The Wall Street Journal, taking care to note the time so that he could avoid encountering himself the following morning. Having picked up the paper, he clocked back to the previous day and spent another several hours in the hotel comparing the performance of the various stocks and commodities. Then he took a cab to a brokerage firm on Wall Street and opened an account with twenty thousand dollars in cash, using the identity of his mugging victim, Charles Forman.
