She still didn’t see where this was going.
“So, you see, we’re fighting a bloody and terrible holding action. The more destruction and death it spreads, the more terrible it is. The only way we can take them out, though, is to neutralize those nuclear bombs. To locate and deactivate or destroy every one of them. That’s our job.”
“It can be quite subtle,” Lind added. “Great caverns used for this purpose can be rendered unusable in earlier centuries, with no disruptions to humans. Even such things as soil and rain balances in certain areas can be altered so that what’s there is subjected to corrosion. Trace elements made in future labs can be added to areas so that communications on the firing bands are jumbled. A tiny flaw, subtly introduced in the program used to create the weapons’ microprocessors, can backfire on them over time, although it will test out in the short run.”
There was enough of Moosic and the Sergeant still in there that she did understand, although the scope of the project was fantastic.
“You see now,” Herb said, “that we’re in a hell of a fix. We’re not cold and immoral beings, sitting back here taking blind orders from a computer which gets its orders from nonhuman things up front. We’re trying to save the human race from extinction, here on Earth as well as what it’s become out there in space. Time’s running out, as crazy as that sounds. There is a level of battle which will cause Earthside to collapse even without the final push, and that’s approaching. Because we work in absolute time when we’re in phase—relative time is a misnomer, meaning that we are related to the edge—a year here for us advances the edge a year as well. Worse, the assassination of Karl Marx accelerated that critical point.”
“So Eric did them far more harm than good,” she commented.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. We think their plan is simple. We think they hope to buy absolute time by tracing us back and knocking this complex out of commission,” Lind told her.
“But—they already tried that, and it failed!”
“They’re not so sure it did,” Lind told her. “The attack was part of the loop that is still being worked out. They have yet to steal one of our belts, which is why, once the attack was known, we preset the homing key to bring anyone back to the old location. It would match with what they know of the geography around the complex, including what they got from you. We escaped for the same reason that we can’t lose up front—we have far more power available to us than they do. It’s more efficient, better managed, and doesn’t need to be diverted to defense.”
“The trouble is,” Herb added, “we still have years to work on the project. The number of weapons is just plain enormous, and we must make certain we neutralize as many as possible, in all the countries that had and made them. And, even with all the power we have, we are about at the maximum number of people for unrestricted and pinpoint time travel, particularly with the gear we must occasionally move. We need the time, but we have less than we need under optimum requirements. At least we need that much, to do what we can.”
She was more practical than that. “What’s this have to do with me?”
“First, we must undo the loop that made you. Karl Marx must not die in Trier. Ideally, however, Neumann must still escape to erase any chance of things going wrong. That will be tricky. To create Neumann, Alfie must be rescued. Loops are best undone in the reverse order that they were done, and very carefully. We want to create no more loops and ripples.”
“Why not just prevent the killing of Marx in London, then?” she wanted to know. “I mean, that’s a ripple.”
“But it’s a ripple in our favor,” Lind told her. “It has no major effects, but as a martyrdom it makes Earthside’s job of changing the past as Moosic knew it even harder. You’ll have to trust us on that one, but that’s why Eric and the rest had to go back to Trier. Their ripple had worked against them, so they had to undo it and tilt the scale the other way.”
She sighed. “I never really understood it all before, and I’m having more trouble now.”
“Time is a complex science. We still don’t completely understand all of the things that pop up from dealing with and changing it,” Doc said sympathetically. “Just when even we think we have it cold, some wild card comes up and smacks us in the face, telling us that we aren’t so smart after all.”
She shook her head in confusion. She really didn’t want to hear anything more, except what it all had to do with her and the kids—now. “So? You’re telling me I’m no longer welcome? That we’re in the way?”
“In a sense,” Herb replied, “but don’t take that unkindly. You are one of the innocents who always gets caught up in somebody else’s war. We need you, of course, to help undo the loops and reconcile the facts. We expect Trier to be holy hell, because they’ll expect it and have some unknown defenses set up for us. Worse, only four of us are able to make the trip at all, for reasons you probably understand.”
That much she did. The rest probably would wind up in far corners of the world, or be instantly assimilated. “Go on.”
“If Trier is successfully reversed, then you must go and free Alfie. That is as much for your sake as anything, but it helps the symmetry, or so the computer says.”
She sighed. “And once all that is done? What then?”
“Then,” said Lind, “we will attempt to prevent the very attack that got you into this. In the process, if we are lucky and it all works just right, we have a chance of trapping Eric Benoni.”
That was the one prospect she found attractive in it all, but she had a nervous thought. “But—if it’s prevented, then what happens to me? None of this will have happened. You once told me I’d be a little nothing if it all didn’t work out, Doc. Were you lying to me?”
“No,” she responded, “not really. If the loop had been broken instead of reconciled, yes. But we are putting things back, more or less, the way they were. If the loop is completed, then it happened. There’s just no sign of memory, except ours, to say it did. You will exist because it did happen. And so will the kids.”
She didn’t know quite what to believe, or whom. She’d been used and lied to so damned often it was hard to believe anything. She was, however, always practical. There was really nothing she could do about it anyway, and they were calling the shots. “And after that? What happens to me and the kids?”
The three squad members exchanged glances. Finally, Doc spoke. “It’s for the sake of the children I’m pressing this now, Dawn. You see, Ginny is pregnant—by Joseph.”
Even though she’d feared such a thing, the news shocked and stunned her.
“It’s no good, Dawn, don’t you see?” Doc continued, feeling awful as she said what she had to say. “This is no place and no life for them. Any of them.”
Dawn’s gut reaction was frustration that her fake eyes, so realistic in all other respects, could not cry. “But where will they go?”
“Uptime,” Doc told her. “It’s the only way for them to gain the knowledge, the culture, everything that they’ll need. They’re virgins to time travel, really, so it will be fairly easy to establish them as important people, maybe educated people, not the kind of random jumpers like you became.”
“It’s a matter of figuring out in advance the spot time will most conveniently put you, and putting you there at exactly the right spot in space and time,” Herb explained.
“And leave them there, with no chance to make a mark?” She was almost hysterical at the idea.
“No!” Doc responded firmly. “Not unless they choose it. Once they have enough lives, enough experience, to make intelligent choices for themselves, they can choose any one of the ones they’ve been to live as or they can go all the way forward to the leading edge as only edge and nightside people can. Considering the circumstances, there is no other choice.”
“Just drop us back at the island! Just go away and leave us alone! You said they were adapted!”
“But you aren’t,” Doc reminded her. “And what kind of a life would that b
e? You said yourself that in assimilation they’d have no chance to make a mark, and that’s true. But what kind of a life would you condemn them to? You’re in no condition to go back, to give them any guidance. They’d become incestuous primitives, children with no future. If we did what you say, it would be better, in my opinion, if they had never lived at all!”
There. It was said, and it was hard, but there it was.
Dawn took several minutes to get hold of herself, to try to control her emotions. Finally, she managed, “And me? Where do I fit in all this?”
“Your bond to the kids is strong. Stronger, I think, than their bond to you, as bad as that sounds,” Doc replied. “You have the same choices, although, in the case of the assimilation, they’re more limited. You’ve established a pattern which time finds easiest to continue. So you can come back here and go to the edge with them, or you can pick a person and place and return there.”
She swallowed. “What you’re telling me is that I can be a whore in any time and place I want.”
Doc was grim. “Yes. Except on the edge.”
“I wouldn’t be permitted to stay—human—up there, isn’t that right?”
“Most likely not,” Lind confirmed. “They just no longer have the facilities for it. I can’t tell you whether it’s good or bad becoming one of them, and that’s honest. I have trouble even imagining what they’re like, let alone being one, even though I’ve been hundreds of human beings. But I like to think that a side, any side, in a war that tries to save as many lives as possible has to be better than one that’s going to blow up its own people in a snit at losing.”
There was silence for a while. Finally, Doc asked gently, “What do you say, Dawn? Do we close off the loop?”
“Can I… talk this over with the children before answering?”
Lind looked at Doc and then at Herb. No words were exchanged, but their thoughts were easy for him to read. There was no reason to put it off any longer, for the longer it was put off, the harder it would ever be to get the job done—and people were needlessly suffering. They didn’t like the situation any more than Dawn did, and they didn’t like the choices, either, choices that, eventually, they themselves might have to face, for the war, inevitably, would end.
“We’ll give you forty-eight hours,” Lind told her. “Time is running out.”
RIDING THE LOOP
She had her showdown with Ginny, and it only told her that Doc had been right, as usual.
“You shouldn’t have the baby.”
“Why? What’s wrong with what I did? You and Daddy did it all the time!”
“But that was different!”
“How!”
How, indeed, did you explain such things to one raised as Ginny had been? They went around and around with it, but got nowhere. Finally, Dawn gave up, recognizing defeat. Doc and the others would have to deal with it, by force if necessary, but probably just by giving them the uptime experience they desperately needed.
They, all the children, even young Mark, would have to make their own decisions on their futures. She could not and would not do it for them.
Finally, during a walk outside, she told them she had to leave them.
“Like Daddy?” little Sarah asked worriedly.
“No, not like Daddy. I have to work for them now. I have to pay them back for all they’ve done for us.” And to us, she added silently.
“I don’t like them,” Joseph said flatly. “They took Dad away.”
“No, no! You must never think like that! Your father was a fighter in their fight, just like I was. Fighters sometimes don’t come back. Let them show you what uptime is like and what it’s like to live in it. Then maybe you’ll understand.”
“Are you not gonna come back, too, Mommie?” Cathy asked.
“I hope I am,” she told them sincerely, “but I don’t know. There are some very bad people on the other side and they’ve done some very bad things. I have to try and stop them, try to undo some of the bad they’ve done. I—your father and I—sort of accidentally helped the bad things happen. I have to put it right.”
“Why?” asked Mark.
“Well, if you know something bad’s going to happen, and you can do something about it and don’t, then you’re just as bad as the ones who did it. You let it happen when it didn’t have to.”
That more or less went over. At least she and Ron had taught some moral lessons, although she was beginning to see where they’d fallen down on the job in some respects.
It was tough to leave them, but she really had no choice. Not only did the moral lesson make sense, but, disregarding the morals of the thing, she really had no choice. In every sense of the word, they held her and the children hostage.
The plan that was worked out was both direct and clever, although they knew that there would have to be elements of improvisation. As Lind had warned, they would expect an attempt at reversal and would have some nasty surprise waiting.
She was both surprised and delighted to find that Herb could go, but the other three were team members she knew only slightly, despite the long time at the base. Nikita she knew slightly; the small, weasel-like man was not the friendly type, but he had been civil to both her and the kids. Lucia was a tough but tiny woman who looked like a born gymnast. Her dark brown skin and wooly hair bespoke a central African origin, but, of course, it was difficult to determine anyone’s true origins around here.
The fourth member was Faouma, whose name sounded vaguely Arabic but who was an enormous, Nordic-looking woman, fully six-three or better. She had a hard, permanently mean and nasty expression, and was all business.
“This has been mapped out so that each of you knows your part in the plot. The important thing is to do your assignment. Only when it’s over should you move to cover someone else. Dawn, Lucia, and I have specific things to do; Faouma and Nikita will assist as needed. Dawn? You understand the weapon?”
She nodded. “I’ve test-fired it, but with the kind of spray it gives I couldn’t miss even without the goggles.”
“Good. Remember your time schedules. It’s critical. Jump only to save your own life before we’re all out of there. Understand?”
“We’re ready,” responded Faouma. “Let’s do it.”
Just in case, all belts were set to return to an individually specified date when none of them had been in the Safe Zone in the old time and location. To return to where they were supposed to be, they would have to perform an extra setting, known only to them, on the time and location board before pressing home.
There was a certain order to it, because of relative time. Dawn and Nikita had to go first, for her initial action was crucial to the rest. Although they might miss Dawn in the scan, in the time it would take them to do their job and work down to the square, they might well be spotted by the opposition, which might then adjust its game plan.
Dawn and Nikita stood there, and on Herb’s count pressed their time controllers. Both “fell” uptime.
Dawn had half expected to become Neumann when they started with this, a personality and existence she barely remembered at all, but no longer. Neumann was Ron; she was Dawn, a nightsider. The same person could not exist in the same time period at the same time, but at this stage they were two different people entirely.
As soon as she felt solid ground and the sensations of time travel had ceased, she pulled down her goggles. At night, in this darkened position along the road, she had better vision than Nikita. She had started her watch with the others, but now could read it. It read 01:43. Nikita faded into the neighborhood, giving her backup and cover. She checked the weapon, very much like a rifle, although weighing only ounces and feeling like a child’s toy. All the settings had been perfect, but everything would be for nothing if they had made one mistake and if Marx was not, in fact, taking this route to his assignation in the square. If not, they would have to jump back no later than 01:50 and a new plan would have to be improvised.
She crouched there in the dark
ness, watching the road and trying to avoid the occasional oil lamps and torch lighting that smudged her vision. She checked her watch. 01:46. She began to worry that he wouldn’t come.
The worst part was, the place did not look or feel familiar. She was only vaguely aware of who Karl Marx was, and couldn’t even remember the name of the town they were in, although she’d studied its street maps with Herb. She had, she realized, come even farther than she thought down the road to individuality, and, oddly, it pleased her.
01:48 on the watch did not.
Suddenly, far off, she heard the sound of someone walking, heels hitting the brick walk. She tensed, ready to do the job. She was going to save a man’s life, she knew, even if she no longer recalled or understood who or what he’d been.
The strange footsteps grew closer, and she could clearly see now that it was a young man with a beard, dressed in a funny, old-fashioned suit. She expected, when she saw him, to know him instantly, but found that he looked no more familiar than the photo Herb had shown them. Still, if Herb’s photos were right, this was indeed Karl Marx.
He was walking very slowly, almost hesitatingly, and his manner seemed to indicate a great deal of indecision. Clearly, Marx was uncertain as to whether or not this was a smart thing to do. He stopped near her, and she froze, fearing that he’d seen her. But the stop was to suppress a yawn as best he could, rub his eyes a bit, then continue on.
She let him get about five yards beyond her position, then rose silently and, raising the rifle, pulled the trigger.
There was a feeling in the rifle like a vibrator had been turned on for a brief moment, and her vision was momentarily wiped out by a sparkling ray of light. She heard a man cry out softly, once, and then the sound of a body falling.
Downtiming the Night Side Page 22
