Universe 14 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  “The screening process is going on now. The problem, of course, is that while we know the time of the assassination, we do not know the time the explosives were planted. The President’s trip to open the Three Power peace conference had been laid on for over six months, with parts of the route a virtual certainty to any thinking man. Indeed, there may be other explosive caches under alternate routes. So we have had to set up our temporal cameras over a span of six months or more. Even with super-speed scanning, we have six months of real time to wade through.

  “Within a day, or two at the most, we expect to pinpoint the time of the explosive implantation. It will be filmed and the film held in no-time stasis. We shall then arrest the assassins and remove the explosives. Your story will, of course, be a different one then. It will be the story of an unsuccessful assassination, the perpetrators known for some months. The President will be with us again. The peace conference, which has been in adjournment, will in this repaired reality have been ongoing for several days.

  “I will now answer those of your questions that I can. Please identify yourself and ask away.”

  The commotion—the waving of hands, arms, and bodies to attract attention—was prodigious. The director stabbed his finger.

  “Roy Thorner, Associated Press. Mr. Director, the several-day delay in real time will result in dislocations— changes in the future that we will experience relative to what would have been had you avoided the assassination by simply rerouting the President’s approach to the conference hall. Why was that not done?”

  “We considered the positive advantages of avoiding this dislocation. We considered it more important to apprehend the assassins. Otherwise, they might well do it again elsewhere, elsewhen. If we had done as you say, the assassination would not actually have taken place in the reality we are now living, and we’d not have known of the attempt. One of the common paradoxes we have to deal with.”

  The director paused and extended a finger across the room.

  “Valerie Townsend, St. LouisPost-Dispatch. Can you hazard why this assassination was attempted—done, actually? Surely the assassins know that they’ll be caught and the assassination reversed.”

  The director pulled on his pipe. “As you say, we can only hazard. We could be dealing with mentalities that are savoring these few days of grisly success as reward enough— even knowing that these memories will be soon reversed. Or they could be counting on the lesser ‘success’ of being arrested and tried publicly for what will be the attempt, not the fruition, of such an assassination. We can only guess at this point, which makes us even more anxious to catch the criminals. Does that answer your question?”

  “Could it be,” the St. Louis reporter persisted, “that another major power could have engineered this assassination to test our readiness while without our elected President, or even to attack us while we are leaderless—hoping to obliterate San Francisco and preclude a reversal of the assassination?”

  It was minutes before the director could speak over the ensuing uproar.

  “I cannot answer that question directly. I can say that our armed forces were on full combat alert at the time of the assassination. This alert had been ordered by the President based on the warning of one of our prescients, who, however, could not zero in on any specifics for his concerns. It could have been the assassination. It could have been something else. We’ll never know. And if it were as you hypothesize, all the more reason that the peace conference proceed.”

  Another reporter had his turn. “Brent Curley, Washington Post. Do you see any tie-in between the recent stadium murder and the assassination?”

  The mayor caught Torrance’s eye as the director spoke.

  “We’ve discovered no linkage as yet, and, frankly, have no reason to pursue that line of inquiry. Police detective Torrance is with us, however; he has prime responsibility for that investigation. I’ll ask him to present his findings.”

  Torrance winced at the introduction and slowly rose to his feet. “Mr. Curley, our findings are minimal. You’ve seen the accounts of the stadium murder; perhaps you’ve written one. No one in the vicinity of the weapon noticed anything out of the ordinary, and the temporal camera tells us nothing of use in that darkened arena. We have hypothesized that the assassination of the President may have stimulated a copycat crime, except that they’re not similar in one most important regard. The President’s assassination was a well-directed crime. The stadium murder was a random one.”

  “How do you know that?” Curley followed up, taking his glasses away from his craggy face as if to emphasize the point.

  “Failing to locate the killer, we saved the victim in order to determine whether he was the specific object of the attack. He wasn’t. Mr. Hansen died in his stead.”

  “So the murderer actually killed twice?”

  “Yes.” And more, friend, Torrance thought, relieved at the question’s phrase. “But neither of these victims seems to relate to the assassination.”

  A lady by Curley’s side broke in, “Could it be that they were of the assassination group, being killed to avoid later interrogation?”

  “No sense to that. If, unlikely though it seems, one of them is of the assassination conspiracy, we’ll step back and arrest him before he is killed in the arena.”

  Another man rose nearby. “Carl Brody, Texarkana Sentinel. Why wasn’t there a forward probe of the President’s movements to head off the assassination?”

  A collective groan and wave of laughter swept the room. Torrance gestured to the director, though he could as well have answered. So could ninety-five percent of those in the room, Brody not among them.

  “Because of the nature of time and the probe machine, Mr. Brody. The past exists. The future doesn’t yet. So the machine can travel only to the past and then ahead to the timepoint from which it sent the traveler, plus a few nanoseconds of relay time. It can’t probe the future beyond its own existence.”

  The press conference dissolved in the tension release of laughter and irresolution, tailing off to a ragged halt. Torrance filed out with the mayor and wondered what to do next.

  “One of the pluses of this job is that when you don’t know what to do next, someone tells you.”

  Sam Turner looked up at Torrance, who had delved a message from the day’s mail and was waving it about. Turner got up ponderously, walked over to Torrance’s battered desk, and took the message from Torrance’s hand. He walked back to his desk and creaked heavily into his seat to read it.

  “I killed Hansen at Tuesday’s burnball game. I will kill tonight during the final inning. Be in a clearly marked San Francisco Police car at the Mission Street gate following the game and I will turn myself in.”

  “Very melodramatic,” Turner observed. “But also to the point.”

  “He’ll make great detectives of us, Sam, if he’s not a burnout.”

  “You mean if he really does it? Turns himself in? Kills again? Or is he a copycat of the first copycat?”

  Torrance laughed, perhaps the appropriate response to the innumerable and sometimes absurd permutations possible. He reached for his coffee cup, whose contents had already ringed some of the day’s correspondence.

  “I assume the letter can’t be probed,” Turner went on.

  “Right. Called in on the voice-to-fax circuit from who knows where.”

  Turner’s jowly face broke into a grin.

  “I think we should go and be turned into great detectives. Particularly considering that I can’t think of a better line of action.”

  Torrance had traded his laugh for a look of perturbation.

  “Sam, there’s more to this somehow, someway. But I don’t see it. I do see that we’re being jerked around on someone else’s string. So let’s be ready for anything.”

  Turner sighed. “Peter, how do we get more ready than we are?”

  “We expect anything, not just what we’re told to expect. And we take Barbro Vik. If we can get her.”

  “Why her?
” Turner raised a heavy eyebrow.

  “She’s a psychologist. Maybe she can spot an abnormal, possibly dangerous, situation before we can.”

  “That’s a quality that might come in handy,” Turner said. “In fact, I’m willing to bet on it.”

  Police skimmers of the current era were not meant for congenial social gatherings of more than two. Barbro Vik sat in the back, a less obtrusive vantage point. The view ahead was bleak—a study of humanity in the mass as they strode, sauntered, or slouched into the arena.

  “We’ve narrowed it down,” Turner noted. “From a Bay Area of seven million to eighty thousand.”

  “None of whom we know,” Torrance grinned. “The players excepted. Maybe Willie Gervin did it. He’s having a bad season. Could use the publicity.”

  “One of them knows you,” Barbro said from the back seat.

  “Christ!” Torrance swore. “It’s one of the reporters from the news conference. I’d recognize that sharklike approach anywhere.”

  By then the man had approached the skimmer, Torrance’s side. Shambling in appearance, alert in manner, he leaned down to address Torrance through the open window.

  “Expecting a repeat performance, Lieutenant? Anything here for a hungry reporter?”

  “I thought your field was political analysis, not murder,” Torrance answered.

  “It is. But occasionally they overlap. Seems to happen a lot in San Francisco.”

  “Twice, Curley, twice,” Torrance said acerbically. “Not a lot. Two murders in twelve years.”

  “But within two days of each other. Something of a coincidence, no? And three would put it far beyond the realm of chance.”

  “Do you know something worth telling?” Torrance asked mildly. “Or are you playing at my job?”

  The reporter reached inside his rumpled tweed jacket and Torrance felt Sam’s leg stiffen beside him. Curley extracted a pipe, already filled, and proceeded to light it.

  “Reporting can be detecting, too, Lieutenant. But, no, I don’t know anything. I’m just having fun guessing. And looking forward to having fun at the game. Think Gervin can break out of his slump?”

  “He’d better, if the Seals want to make a run of it,” Torrance said equably.

  “Right,” Curley said and thumped the side of the skimmer. “See you around.”

  “The man has his points,” Barbro said, watching the reporter meld into the crowd. Torrance and Turner turned over their shoulders to look at her. “He let you off the hook.”

  “He may know as much as we do,” Turner said. “How about a copy of that letter showing up on his fax machine? Maybe the killer wants publicity this time.”

  “Could be. Any thoughts, Barbro?”

  “We may have a zealot on our hands if Sam’s right. Someone wanting a forum to argue a cause—like a public trial to spout it out.”

  “If he hasn’t already, to someone like Curley,” Turner said.

  From the innards of the arena came the crowd’s throaty roar. Turner switched on the sports band. The Seals were taking the field.

  “Do we really care whether the Seals win this one?” Torrance asked. “Whether Willie Gervin breaks out of his slump?”

  “Not I,” said Barbro.

  “Let’s have a cup of coffee,” Turner said.

  * * * *

  About the seventh inning the tension started mounting. Everyone in the car was fidgety. The game was close, and no one was leaving the arena.

  “I wish they’d break this game open,” Torrance said irritably. “It’d thin the crowd.” He thumbed the comm button to Priestly inside. “Anything doing there?”

  “Negative,” came the flat reply. “Good game, though.”

  Torrance grunted and switched off.

  The game stayed tight to the end. At the end a man was killed.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Priestly’s voice crackled testily. “By the time I can get to where I can guess it came from, the guy’ll be out of the arena along with eighty thousand others.”

  Already the first few fans were skittering down the ramps, some bounding in a victory exuberance, others merely driven to a faster pace by a desire to beat the mob out of the parking area. They clearly had no idea that a killing had taken place. The rivulet swelled to a stream of humanity, growing ever thicker as its speed slowed by its own press. A figure detached itself from the mass and started toward the police skimmer.

  “Oh, no!” Turner groaned. “Curley again!”

  “I’ll get rid of him,” Torrance said.

  Curley shambled over to the driver’s side, his jacket open and his shirt billowing over his belt. He opened his mouth, but Torrance waved him off.

  “Disappear, Curley. It’s dangerous. Watch from the sidelines if you want, but get out of the way.”

  Curley stopped short a few feet from the window, his hands moving aimlessly, then reaching inside his jacket. His voice showed no indecisiveness but flowed on slowly and evenly. “Peter ...” Barbro said at the same time, but Curley’s voice steamrollered droningly on, “You don’t have it right yet, Lieutenant. I’m your killer. Now I’m going to kill you.”

  Curley’s hand was emerging smoothly from within the jacket and was holding a gun, not a pipe. Almost excruciatingly, it leveled on Torrance’s face.

  Curley pulled the trigger. Torrance pitched forward, scorched through the eye, the beam passing through his head and diagonally down through the upholstery and out the skimmer floor.

  Turner tried to break his personal deep freeze as the lasgun swung slowly toward him.

  From the back seat Barbro Vik shot Curley through the heart.

  * * * *

  The police commissioner was there, and Barbro found his presence oppressive. This was far more than a police matter to Barbro. She found the time-consuming deferences to rank, the solicitous attendance of the underlings, hard to take. Turner was the only sympathetic face. He wanted his partner and friend back. Barbro wanted her friend and lover. The commissioner cared nothing for the emotional context. He simply wanted a policeman back and a murder to go away.

  The crackling, ozone-tinged atmosphere of the probe room didn’t help any. Everyone was milling around mentally and physically from the impact of the camera run-through of Torrance’s murder, the time-reversed picture of Curley retreating to the stadium, the backtracking to Curley’s lethal blast across the arena.

  “Quick reactions, Lieutenant,” the commissioner said to Barbro. “You were almost ahead of Curley.” He looked at Turner critically. Sam had been nowhere near his gun.

  “Something felt wrong,” Barbro said. But not wrong enough fast enough for me to save you, Peter.

  “Perhaps we should make more use of our psychologists in the field. Not keep them back at the office,” the commissioner considered. It was still a technical problem to him. He straightened and his voice became crisp. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Harding and Samuels, the arresting detail, edged forward.

  “Okay,” the commissioner said, “you’ve both got it down? You’re to wait for him at the turnstile as he arrives. You take him as he enters the arena, warn him of his rights, then bring him downtime to now.”

  They nodded and stepped through the portal. A faint blurriness, and they were back with Curley between them. The two detectives propelled the reporter forward, and Samuels produced a lasgun which he handed to the commissioner. Barbro looked at Curley and the lasgun. As of now that gun had never been fired. At least not tonight. A flood of hope and relief fought with the anger that Curley’s face aroused.

  Curley seemed neither discomfited, bewildered, nor angry. More amused. He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “Take him to the interrogation room while we locate Torrance,” the commissioner directed, then raised his hand and addressed Curley. “You’re charged with two counts of murder. You can view the run-through at the room we’re going to. You’ve had the usual rights read to you. Additionally, you have a right to a lawyer during the in
terrogation. Want one?”

  “Nope,” Curley said.

  The commissioner motioned them out, then turned to Barbro.

  “Why don’t you check Torrance’s office. He should be there—as I remember it now.”

  Barbro nodded, her opinion of the commissioner’s sensitivity rising.

  The corridor to Torrance’s office seemed interminably long. She noticed details she had never seen before— flyspecks, chipped paint, the indentations on the floor of a long-moved-away watercooler. And then there were the sounds. She stood at last at Torrance’s door and listened, ears turning to owl ears, nighttime acute. She heard a shuffling or rustling—something.