by Simon Hawke
"I'll try to keep that in mind," said Lucas. He looked around. "Where are the others'!"
"How the devil should I know? They were here when I left. At least, Miss Cross and that other fellow. were. Everyone seems to be popping off somewhere."
"Andre? Gulliver?" said Lucas. He looked in the other rooms, but the apartment was empty. "Andre wouldn't simply leave like that. And Steiger and Delaney were due back. Now there's no one here but us. That isn't like them. Something's happened…
Then he noticed the remains of the shattered wine bottle. He glanced at
Dr. Darkness with alarm.
"How much time has elapsed here since you left?"
"Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes perhaps?" said Darkness.
"I'm really not quite sure."
"What do you mean, you're not quite sure?"
"I can't be bothered with trifles, Priest," said Darkness, irritably. "When one routinely deals in light years, one doesn't sweat the occasional ten minutes..
"Well, something happened here in those ten minutes," Lucas said, tensely, "That bottle didn't break, it burst apart, as if…" his voice trailed off as he started looking around the apartment, trying to estimate trajectories, and finally, he found it-a bullet hole in the wall next to the armoire.
"Look at this!" he said. "Doc, they're in trouble! You've got to help me!"
"Look, Priest, I thought I already explained that-"
"Dammit, Doc, I haven't got time for this! I don't care about the validity of your field tests; I've got to find out what happened here. I can't fade out the way you can.
If I went back to see what happened. I'd be visible and there's no telling what I might be clocking into; but you could find out what happened without anybody seeing you."
"Yes, well, I suppose I could do that," grumbled Darkness. He grunted. "Perhaps you're right. Under the circumstances, I can't expect you to cope with all of this yourself. Do you want me to find out what became of Steiger and Delaney, as well?"..It could be important, Doc. Please."
Darkness sighed. "Very well." He grimaced wryly. "Do you think I could depend on you to remain in one place long enough for me to do that?"
"I'll try to think good thoughts, ~ said Lucas, sarcastically. "Yes, do," said Darkness. "I'll be right back."
He disappeared and almost immediately reappeared, standing directly behind
Lucas.
"I'm back."
Lucas jumped, startled. "God, don't do that!" He took a deep breath. "You certainly cut it close. You only left about a second ago!"
"So?"
"So what if you'd arrived a second earlier and seen yourself leave?"
"So what? As long as I didn't tell myself what I'd found out in order to save myself a trip so that I couldn't have found out what I told myself I'd found out in the first place, it wouldn't have caused any problems whatsoever."
"Huh? You want to run. that past me again?"
"Never mind. The important thing is that you were correct in what you had surmised. Something did happen here. Miss Cross and Gulliver were abducted at gunpoint by some character right out of a Frank Sinatra movie."
"Frank who?"
"Never mind. He looked like a 20th century gangster dressed by a Hollywood designer. His. 45 automatic was what made the bullethole you found. He shot at the bottle, apparently to impress them with the fact that he wouldn't hesitate to shoot if they resisted. They seemed sufficiently impressed. He made them surrender their warp discs, then he replaced them with some he had brought with him. Evidently, they were pre-programmed with the desired transition co-ordinates."
"What the hell is going on'?" said Lucas. "Where did they go?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," Darkness said.
"Great," said Lucas, with resignation. "Just great."
"That isn't all," said Darkness. "I tached to the 27th century, as well, to check with your headquarters. I spoke briefly with Steiger.
There's been an attempt on Forrester's life. He's critically wounded. Steiger's had to remain at headquarters’ and assume command."
"Good God," said Lucas. "What happened?"
"Steiger said a renegade T. IA. agent smuggled in a commando assault force in a briefcase and.." Darkness stopped and frowned. "In a briefcase? No, wait, that can't possibly be right…"
"Lilliputians!" Lucas said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Lilliput commandos!" Lucas said. "They murdered Steiger's brother, right here in this very room. They were after Gulliver. They must have-"
"Wait a moment!" Darkness interrupted. "Lilliputians? Gulliver' I knew I'd heard that name somewhere before.
You're talking about a novel by Jonathan Swift, for God's sake!"
"I can explain," said Lucas. "You see, Gulliver encountered Swift after he escaped from Lilliput Island and-"
"Never mind," Darkness said, holding up his hand to stop him. "This plot is becoming positively Byzantine. I'll simply try to follow along as best I can."
"Fine. What about Delaney?"
"He should be here."
"Well, he's not."
"Obviously. "
"So where is he'?"
"How the devil should I know?"
"Didn't you ask?"
"Steiger simply said that Delaney had to go on without him,"
"Did you tell him what happened to Andre and Gulliver'?"
"No, I thought I'd keep that information to myself," Darkness said, sarcastically.
"Of course, I told him. He was understandably distressed, but he said there was nothing he could do. "
"No, of course not," Lucas said. "He's second in command, He can't leave HQ with Forrester out of. commission. Finn must have gone on ahead, assuming we’d be here when he returned from scouting Gulliver's co-ordinates for Lilliput Island.
Only he hasn't returned and Andre and Gulliver have been' captured. The question is by whom?"
"The obvious answer would be the S.O.G.," said Darkness. "Yeah," Lucas nodded,
"the Special Operations Group might have located another confluence and crossed over undetected, but there's another possibility, as well. It could be the Network,"
"The Network?" Darkness frowned. "What the devil is the Network?"
"Something I've only learned about since my return," said Lucas, grimly. "Andre was telling me about it. You know about the Underground'? Well, the Network is like an Under-ground on the inside of the T.I.A., a secret agency within a secret agency, They're like moles within Temporal Intelligence, only instead of working for some foreign power, they've struck out on their own and set up a sort of black market, transtemporal corporation."
"Enterprising of them," Darkness said. "And entirely predictable. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. "
"If you're finished with the puns, we've got to figure out what the hell to do about it," Lucas said.
"You have any suggestions?" Darkness said,
"Yeah, but it's going to be risky."
"You're talking-to a man who's liable to discorporate at any moment," Darkness said, wryly. "Don't tell me about risk. What's on your mind?"
"I want you to go back to the time Andre and Gulliver got snatched again," said Lucas. "You've got to try and read those warp discs Andre and Gulliver were given, find out where they went. But you've got to make sure nobody notices. We mustn't do anything that could disrupt the scenario. Otherwise there's no telling where they might wind up. Meanwhile, I'm going to check out those co ordinates that Gulliver gave Finn."
"You think that's wise?" said Darkness. "You still haven't fully adapted to your telempathic chronocircuitry. You've been very fortunate so far. You took a hell of a chance translocating all the way back to Earth by yourself. Suppose something had gone wrong? You might have materialised in space and died in seconds."
"What do you want me to do, Doe'! You went and turned me into a human time machine without even bothering to tell me about it. Now you want me to say
'mother, ma
y I?' every time I draw a breath just because you're worried about your precious prototype? Well, screw that. I died back in 1897 with a. 50 calibre ball through my chest, remember? The way I see it, Doe, this isn't life, it's only special effects. We'll rendezvous back here exactly five minutes from now. And if I'm not back by then, you're on your own."
Chapter 8
Finn groaned and opened his eyes. Shafts of painfully bright sunlight streamed down on him through a canopy of tree branches. He squinted against the glare and tried to turn his head. It felt as if someone had given his hair a sharp yank. He tried to raise his head and found he couldn't do that, either. In fact, he couldn't move at all. He had been bed down, immobilised by a large number of thin, crudely braided ropes that were firmly staked to the ground. He could have broken anyone of them with ease, but there were far too many of them. His floater pak had been removed and he had been dragged out of the thicket and turned over on his back, then spread-eagled on the ground in the middle of a small clearing, like a butterfly pinned to a board. He felt something moving across his chest.
Footsteps.
A tiny figure moved across his chest and stood silhouetted against the sunlight, looking down at him. Then two more little figures came up to stand beside the first one. He could not make out their features. All he could see were three shadowy figures, no more than six inches tall, standing on his chest.
Two of them were aiming miniature laser rifles at him.
"Who are you?" one of them said, raising his small voice so that Finn could hear him clearly.
"Who the hell are you?" countered Finn.
The tiny man crouched down on Finn's chest and a second later, Finn yelped with pain. The Lilliputian had taken a fistful of his chest hair and yanked it out.
"You little son of a-"
One of the other Lilliputians whacked him in the chin with the butt of his tiny rifle, then brought it up to his shoulder and aimed right between Finn's eyes.
"Now you just lie very, very still, answer my questions and speak softly," said the first Lilliputian, crouching on one knee on Finn's chest, "or my men will start shaving off pieces of your anatomy with their lasers. You understand?"
Finn grunted.
"I'll take that as a yes," the Lilliputian said.
Finn strained to raise his head a little against the restraining ropes, so that he could see his tiny interrogators better. The little man doing all the talking had long, black, wavy hair that fell down to his shoulders like a lion's mane and was held in place by a cloth headband. He was bearded and shirtless, wearing a black shoulder harness resembling crossed bandoleers. It held a miniature laser pistol on one side and several power magazines in loops on the other. He was dressed in loose camouflage trousers bloused over tiny jungle boots. His small physique was lean and heavily muscled, ripped to the bone. His two companions looked about the same, like jungle commandos who had been out in the bush too long.
"One more time," the Lilliputian said, "who are you? "Capt. Finn Delaney, Temporal Intelligence. You want my serial number, too?'
"That won't be necessary," said the Lilliputian, with a smile. "I believe you.
However, if I stop believing you, my men will start causing you considerable pain.
Now then, Captain Delaney, what are you doing here?”
"I came looking for you, you.-little pipsqueak-Aahhh!"
One of the other Lilliputians had fired his laser, barely grazing Finn's left ear. Finn strained hard against the ropes and the little commandos on his chest danced a jig to keep their balance. Almost immediately, Finn heard a multitude of rapid little tapping sounds on either side of him. With his peripheral vision, he could see other Lilliputians on the ground, using tiny sledgehammers to pound in the stakes he had loosened with his movements. The one who seemed to be the leader let go of Finn's chest hair, which he had seized with both hands to keep his balance when Finn had started to strain against the ropes.
"Please don't do that again, Captain," the Lilliputian said. "I don't really want to kill you, but I will if you leave me no choice."
Delaney couldn't believe it. He was being threatened by a man who was smaller than his shoe size.
"How did you find us?" the Lilliputians said. "How did you locate the confluence?". "Gulliver gave me the position of the island," Finn said.
"Gulliver? Impossible. He didn't know anything about the confluence. "
"Of course, he had no way of knowing about the confluence," said Finn. "He must have simply sailed right through it without realising he was crossing over from one universe into another. He took a sextant reading when he escaped from here. He must have done it the moment he came through the confluence. The thing I can't figure out is which timeline he came from in the first place. I don't suppose you'd happen to know?"
"No, Captain, I wouldn't. And at the moment, I don't really care. My main concern right now is deciding what to do with you. What, precisely, were your orders?"
"'What orders?"
"Come on, don't play stupid. You're an advance scout for an invasion force. How many others were sent out with you? How long before you're overdue?"
"I came here alone."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I don't really give a damn what you believe," Delaney said. "If the Temporal Army was going to invade this island, they'd have been on you like a fox on a duck by now. And if you really believed there was going to be an invasion, you wouldn't still be here. You'd have killed me and gotten the hell out."
"You're probably right, Captain," said the Lilliput lieutenant. "Getting off this island would have been smartest thing for us to do. Unfortunately, my men and I had no means of getting off this island, so if an invasion force is coming in hard on your heels, we're simply going to have to fight. Unless, of course, your people are planning to wipe out this entire island with a warp grenade, in which case I guess we're shit out of luck. And so are you."
"Wait a minute," Finn said. "If you have no way of getting off this island, then how the hell did you get to the 27th century to make that assault on HQ?" Delaney said.
"That wasn't us," the Lilliput lieutenant said.
"Oh, yeah, I guess it was some other bunch of Lilliputian’s,"
Finn said, sarcastically.
One of the other Lilliputians quickly raised his rifle and aimed at Finn's other ear, but the lieutenant raised his hand, holding him off. "That wasn't us, “ he repeated.
"We're stuck here. Or at least we were til you showed up with your floater pak and warp disc."
"No offence, but I don't think they'd fit you. “
"No, but they fit you and we could easily fit inside your clothing. All we have to do is kill you, program your disc, get inside your pockets and your shirt, down inside your' sleeves and trouser legs, hit the button and we're out of here."
Delaney licked his lips nervously. "Yeah, I guess that ought to work. So what's stopping you?"
"Unfortunately, none of us knows how to program a warp disc," said the Lilliputian.
"I see, “ Delaney said. "So that's why I'm still alive."
"As one soldier to another, Captain, I'm sure you can appreciate that my first responsibility is the safety of my men," the tiny commando said. "If killing you would ensure their welfare, I wouldn't hesitate to do it. However, I hope that won't be necessary."
"Yeah, I hope so, too," said Finn.
"Then perhaps we can reach an understanding," the Lilliputian said. "If you transport us off this island, somewhere safe, we'll let you go and you'll never see or hear from us again. Otherwise, we'll have no choice but to kill you and use your body to transport us, taking a chance on trying to program your warp disc without really knowing what we're doing."
"That could land you in one hell of a lot of trouble," Finn said.
"We're already in a hell of a lot of trouble," the lieutenant said. "We've been abandoned here. We're too small to build and sail a seaworthy boat or even a raft.
Stuck here on thi
s island, we're sitting ducks. There's no place we can run. We'll just have to take our chances."
"If I agreed to help you, how do you know I wouldn't turn on you the moment you set me free?" said Finn.
"Before-we cut your ropes, most of us would get inside your clothing, along with our weapons, of course. That would make things very uncomfortable for you if you tried to cross us."
"Yes, I'm sure it would," said Finn, visualising dozens of tiny lasers going off inside his clothes. He shuddered and the Lilliputians swayed to keep their balance on his chest.
"I see I've made my point," the lieutenant said.
"Yes. indeed you have," said Finn. "But what guarantee do you have that I wouldn't come after you with reinforcements? After all, if I transported you somewhere, then I'd know where you were, wouldn't I?"
"'True, but that wouldn't help you find us. On a deserted island like this, we're vulnerable. But in a crowded city, with lots of nooks and crannies for us to hide in, you could search for years and never find us."
"Makes sense," Delaney said. "Only what guarantee do I have that you'll let me live once I've taken you wherever you want to go?"
"None," said the Lilliputian. "You've only got two options. Refuse to help us and we'll kill you, take our chances trying to work your disc ourselves and use your body as an escape vehicle. Or co-operate and we might let you go. It's up to you."
"That doesn't leave me much choice, does it?" said Delaney.
"We weren't given much choice ourselves," said the Lilliputian.
"All right, you win," Delaney said, stalling for time. "Cut me loose."
"Not just yet," the Lilliputian said. He raised two fingers to his mouth and gave two shrill, piercingly high-pitched whistles.
There was a bustle of activity on either side of Finn and the next thing he knew, little wooden rung ladders crudely lashed together from twigs were put up against his sides and a score of grubby little miniature jungle commandos with tiny rifles slung across their shoulders started to climb the ladders up to his chest. They swarmed across him and crawled into his
