"'Kid'?" Yorick lifted an eyebrow. "Why not an adult?"
Angus gave him a quick look of disgust. "Look, it's hard enough for me to get used to the idea of a time machine, and I'm supposed to be inventing it! The older they are, the harder it'll be for 'em to accept the concept without going bananas!"
"Hmm..." Yorick pursed his lips. "So—the younger we get 'em, the better. Which means..."
"That we're going to be running a home for the youthful and dead," Angus groaned. "Oh well, they matured fast, in the old days..." He suddenly stiffened, staring straight ahead. "Hey!"
"It's made out of grass," Yorick supplied helpfully.
Angus glared at him. "When I need bad punch lines, I can supply them myself. ...Look, we'll need people who won't have any future life to affect other people, right?"
"Right." Yorick nodded. "That's the big thing—that your ideal time agent won't have had even the slightest affect on history after the time we grab him."
"Not to mention the time he dies." Angus smiled sourly. "He can't affect anybody. Right?"
Yorick nodded, puzzled.
Angus's mouth worked. "How many parents do you know who aren't affected by a child's death?"
Yorick's face went into neutral. "I've heard of some. So we've gotta steal a kid that nobody cares about, huh?"
"An orphan," Angus growled.
"That'd be the best," Yorick agreed. "An eight-year-old kid with no living relatives. We oughta do real well if we scout around the edges of the Bubonic Plague."
Angus shuddered. "I hate to admit it, but you're probably right; the Black Death would be an excellent recruiting locus. A kid whose relatives are already dead, and who's just about to die himself... Then we wouldn't even be killing any scavengers that ate him, 'cause the only things that did were the worms in the mass graves, and the grass that grew out of them—and I don't think the worms and the grass would miss one small body all that much... Gak! Am I really saying this stuff?"
"You are," Yorick commiserated, "but I don't think it has to be all that morbid, Ang."
"Oh?" Angus gave him a jaundiced glare. "Got any better ideas?"
"Sure." Yorick knocked back the rest of his drink. "Say we took a hunter who was just about to be killed and eaten by a tiger..."
"We'd be depriving the tiger of dinner," Angus snapped, "and who knows? Maybe that tiger changed history."
"Yeah, he might've been Shere Khan," Yorick mused, "and if we caused him to die of starvation, what'd happen to Kipling's Jungle Book?"
"Just so," Angus grunted.
"But," Yorick demurred, "if the hunter was going to kill the tiger while the tiger was killing him..."
Angus stared.
"Who're we depriving then, Ang?" Yorick asked softly.
"Maybe some vultures," Angus muttered.
Yorick grimaced with impatience and disgust. "So leave 'em an equivalent mass of hamburger! And a plastic skeleton for any passersby to see, if you're really all that worried. But I don't think one vulture more or less is really gonna make all that much difference to history, Ang."
"Maybe not," Angus said thoughtfully, "but the plastic skeleton might not be such a bad idea... Oughta be some mortal remains, or we'll have a witch-hunt started on our account..."
Yorick shrugged. "Plenty of legends about elves stealing kids already, Ang. What's one more? Or less, for that matter. But sure, we can make up some good plastic bones if we have to. Cheaper than the real thing, come to think of it."
Angus was nodding faster and faster. "That might, just might, work! A kid, who dies out someplace alone, without witnesses, in such a way that he doesn't affect any other living beings... And the circumstances of his death exactly duplicated..." He froze a moment, then turned slowly to Yorick, glaring. "You knew all this already, didn't you?"
"Sure." Yorick spread his heads. "But you had to think it up, Ang. The circle has to start someplace. What would happen to those kids if you don't invent the time machine?"
"But what will happen to other people if I do?" Angus whispered.
Yorick waited.
"The military," Angus muttered. "Organized crime. What if they got hold of time machines? Or even matter transmitters?"
"Make sure they don't then," Yorick said quietly. "Security."
Angus gave an impatient twist of the head. "It always breaks down."
"Who's going to get in here without a matter transmitter?" Yorick asked. "No one can steal this secret, Ang."
"The machine," Angus muttered, "the one in the apartment."
"Keep it here," Yorick suggested. "A remote switch on the second machine. Press the button, and the first machine is right there before you."
"What if somebody finds the button?"
"Make it small enough to keep with you."
Angus's lips turned inward. "Agents. One of them's going to sell what he knows."
"Who'd believe him?"
Angus bowed his head.
Yorick sighed, turning away to take the pressure off Angus. "Somebody probably will sell out. SPITE and VETO had to get the machine somehow. But—the military? The Syndicate? The one's had too many cranks, the other knows too much about cons."
Angus nodded, slowly.
Yorick sat back. "That leaves SPITE and VETO—and we know they're going to get the machine. Maybe from your plans, maybe from their own inventors—we still don't know. Maybe we can't prevent them from getting it—but..." his eyes glittered "...we can make it damn tough on them when they do!"
Angus turned slowly to look at him. He nodded. "Yes. The time machine's mine. I'm going to invent it first—I've got a right to say who uses it and who doesn't—right, hell! A duty!" His fist slammed his thigh. "And anyone who pirates it..." His voice trailed off, but his face was very grim.
Their two gazes stayed locked a while, caveman and engineer, both with the same scrupled purpose—and nothing else.
Then Angus's gaze wavered; he looked down, turned away. "But... Yorick... there's a much easier, much more certain way to be sure they don't get the time machine."
Yorick closed his eyes, bowing his head in weariness, disgust, and temporary defeat.
"A much surer way," Angus murmured. "Don't invent it."
By the end of the week, using GRIPE's local bank account, they had set up a complete office in the cavern, with mahogany-veneer walls, carpeting, fluorescent lights, running water, and a coffeepot. There were also a desk, a chair, a typewriter, and a filing cabinet.
Angus liked it. It was one place where he felt he could really get away from it all.
For the rest of his life, he always intended to take a trip to the Grand Tetons by more conventional means, just to see what the mountain looked like from the outside; but somehow, he never got around to it.
With a real office (and a highly burglar-proof one), he was able to settle down to the long, slow grind of setting up the organization. He and Yorick had, of course, moved into more spacious quarters by this time—a huge old two-bedroom apartment, complete with rickety woodwork, crumbling plaster, plumbing problems, and cockroaches. But it wasn't too expensive (Angus still would not touch a penny of GRIPE's money for personal use, and wouldn't invade his own savings or investments) and had plenty of room.
Privately, Angus felt it could have been the size of a football field and still have been too small. He felt cramped by having a roommate—even though he could scarcely have asked for a more congenial one than Yorick. The stocky Neanderthal was always cheerful, always smiling, an excellent housekeeper and a good conversationalist.
It was driving Angus up a tree.
Not that he saw that much of Yorick. They both had to keep up the cover of their jobs—wouldn't do to have SPITE and VETO agents alerted by a huge and sudden change in their lifestyles—and Angus was putting in at least two hours of non-physical time travel (recruiting sentries) every night, and trying to keep up with his graduate studies. He didn't have much time for social life. Or sleep.
Yorick, for his
part, worried about all the accidents that could happen on Angus's way to work when he was groggy from lack of sleep—and the cranky one wouldn't think of hiring a limo. Nonetheless, Yorick kept smiling.
Just one frown, Angus thought, just one...
The two hours' time travel each night were fascinating, at first. Angus spent the first week just having conversations with Alasper (the older Yorick). He kept trying to pump the old caveman for information about GRIPE and the details of his own future, but if there was ever a man who was capable of being garrulous and close-mouthed at the same time, it was Yorick, no matter what his age.
When Angus realized he was beginning to intensify his inferiority complex, due to being consistently outsmarted by a Neanderthal, he skipped ahead to the week before Alasper's retirement and asked the senior agent to introduce him to a promising young candidate for sentry work. The candidate in question already knew all about GRIPE and was awed and delighted to meet "Dr. McAran" first hand. He was so effusive in his protestations of loyal service that Angus cut the interview as short as possible and pulled out. Then he skipped ahead to the week before the candidate's retirement and had him introduce Angus to another candidate. The youngster's name was Balank; he was already thoroughly indoctrinated, and demonstrated even more of a puppy-dog worshipfulness than his predecessor. Angus lingered just long enough for a jury-rigged swearing-in ceremony, then pulled out, fast.
It was beginning to get him down.
And so things went all up the time line. Angus's mood was not improved by the constant references to his older self, nor by the tone of awe that went with them.
Consequently, it was very refreshing to occasionally chance across a candidate (anyone who happened to be in the time trance was fair game) that had never heard of GRIPE.
It did happen occasionally. There were a few dots of light on the time line that had not been contacted before Angus encountered them—apparently the time trance did happen accidentally, on occasion. For instance, Kiyu.
Kiyu was the oldest member of GRIPE—oldest in that he was the furthest back in prehistory, circa 200,000 BCE. In years, he was sixteen. He had deliberately eaten some mushrooms that the tribe's shaman had definitely warned everyone to avoid, and was squatting in front of the fire trying to figure out where the flames came from when Angus stepped into his mind and informed him that flames resulted from the rapid oxidation of the carbon in the wood.
Kiyu almost collapsed from shock and fright. He started making gibbering noises about a visitation from the gods (with a sub-text of "Why did it have to happen to me?"). It took Angus a while to calm him down and disabuse him of the notion (more or less). But once he got the basic concepts across, Kiyu swore unswerving loyalty for the rest of his life and, moreover, promised that his son (who was then three months old) would swear similar loyalty for the rest of his life—and his son too, and his son's son, and so on—at which point Angus cut him off and informed him that it would be up to each son as to whether or not he wanted to enlist in GRIPE.
After a rapid swearing-in ceremony (Angus was beginning to get pretty good at it: he scarcely had to think about the words any more), Angus left, rather quickly, as Kiyu was making a fervent promise to tune in every week, on the dot.
It was a little depressing. Better than being told his older self had already been there, though... Still, such accidental trances were few, and far between on the time-line.
After that first contact with Kiyu, all Angus had to do was go up the time line swearing in successors as they appeared. Kiyu was a homebody, staying pretty close to his cave near Heidelberg, but his son Lenhrang (who, as it turned out, did want to enlist in GRIPE) was a wanderer who, for thirty years of his life, rambled all over Europe, Asia Minor, and a sizeable chunk of Africa, narrowly escaping sudden death several times, and constantly enlisting new GRIPE sentries (all of whom Angus had to swear in; the personal oath was already a tradition). At the age at fifty, Lenhrang returned to Heidelberg and settled down, leaving Angus with sentries spread over most of the human-inhabited Old World, except East and Southern Asia.
However, Angus had been busy there, too. Thanks to the each-one-recruit-two plan, there were several hundred sentries spread over the Eastern Hemisphere by the time of the Bering Straits migration (Angus was processing recruits at the rate of thirty a night) and, of course, three of the migrants were GRIPE agents.
Then he had to start processing recruits from the New World, too, and... Well, it was getting to be a bit of a grind.
A lot of things had become a grind. Angus threw himself into his studies and his job at ICBM with the fervor of the hunted. Yorick sat in the living room, smiling, smoking his cigars and drinking his beer—and worrying.
He was very worried. He knew that the routine work had to be done, and that only Angus could do it at this stage; but he also knew that routine work always made Angus McAran depressed. He'd had ample time to learn it—he'd known Doc (the older Angus) for a long time. And Doc Angus had always showed his depression by becoming even more grouchy and irritable.
But this was a new Angus, and a new kind of depression. Deeper, maybe. Withdrawn.
Then one evening, when Angus finally relented and agreed to shovel in some food no matter how hungry he wasn't, and Yorick was feverishly trying to be amusing, he said something about the unreliability of VETO agents.
Angus looked up with a frown. "Seems to me I can always depend on them to try to kill me."
"Yes, but they choose their own times," Yorick said. "We can't be sure exactly when they're going to take a shot at you. That's why we have to shadow you night and..." He broke off at the look of shock in Angus's face. "Ang... what's the matter, man?"
"The bomb in the table," Angus said in a hoarse voice.
Yorick froze for a tell-tale second, then relaxed way too much. "Yeah, it was just good luck I was there."
"Good luck, hell!" Angus thrust himself to his feet. "Very opportune, don't you think? A bomb ticking away right next to me when you were trying to persuade me that enemy agents were trying to kill me!"
"These things happen all the time," Yorick said desperately.
"Yeah, but not with such excellent timing!" Angus threw down his napkin. "You planted that bomb yourself!"
"Look, SPITE and VETO really are trying to murder you..."
"Oh, I believe it! They most definitely are, and they don't particularly care who else gets killed in the process! But you couldn't have depended on their making a murder attempt at just the right moment to help convince me!" Angus turned on his heel and stalked out.
"No, Ang, wait..."
But the only answer was the slam of the door.
TIME MACHINE
Part III
Down the sidewalk Angus went, through the old limestone columns that served as a gateway into the park. He was so deeply immersed in brooding anger that he didn't even remember the park could be dangerous at night.
His mind roamed, wisps of thought coming through the dark haze, brushing here, touching there. He probably could've followed a line of thought if he had wanted to, but he didn't.
He walked, and he thought, and thought, and thought, and walked, and walked...
Something in the back of his mind nagged, telling him: This is dangerous. Don't do it. Go home; get Yorick to walk with you. It's dangerous. Don't walk... but only at the back of his mind. He was accustomed to it, now—and suddenly wasn't sure that he could trust Yorick at all.
He kept walking.
A burst, a streak of scarlet crossed his face—he jumped back, startled, fear coiling in him.
A cardinal perched on a branch nearby, looked down at him, cocking its head wisely to one side. "Purty, purty, purty," it informed him.
Angus's mouth twisted with the irony.
Abruptly, he frowned; he looked around him—and saw two long files of small new houses, only an occasional tree, no sidewalks, a lot of open land between houses, lots of room. The nearest one was dark, no curtains at the windo
w.
Empty. A new tract house, waiting for a buyer.
Angus looked about, felt the sudden panic hit. He'd never been here before; he didn't even know where he was. And there was no one around, no one. Only an occasional car on the highway...
Car!
He leaped off the shoulder into the ditch, dropped to his hands and knees, cowering, trembling. He was alone; there was no one to protect him. There wasn't even a witness. They could kill him now and no one would know...
Then the steel of obstinacy clicked inside him. He lifted his head slowly, jaw tightened, glaring about him. Let them try! He'd stayed alive for thirty years before he'd met Yorick, and he would stay alive now. Let them try.
Blur of scarlet flashing down—the cardinal perched on a dry twig at the side of the ditch, head cocked, eyeing Angus with bright black eyes.
Angus's mouth twisted in a one-sided smile.
Saucy little devil...
Suddenly, his eyes widened and he lost his smile.
He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, sprang upward in a frantic leap, up out of the ditch. He landed in a dive roll and kept on rolling until he could push himself up to his feet, running as best he could.
The sky tore behind him with a flash of ball lightning. Thunder blasted his ears, picked him up, threw him thirty yards, flung him aside in disgust. He heard it rolling away, booming and cursing.
Angus lay face down, clawing at the grass, trembling.
Then, slowly, he looked up, raising himself on his elbows, turned his head to look back over his shoulder...
A crater, at least twenty feet wide, tearing out blacktop, ditch, field...
Then the shakes hit, and the sick, rolling twist in the stomach.
A cardinal.
A fake. Beautifully done, of course. Beautiful. Remote-controlled carrier for a very small bomb.
It wouldn't have had to be very big.
Close.
Too damn close.
It flashed through his mind again: the cardinal's black bead of an eye, the frantic surge out of the ditch, the roll across the field.
Mind Out of Time Page 7
