by Ben Jeapes
'Daiho?' Rico exclaimed. 'And when was this?'
'U-Union Day.' The still-shaken biotech journeyman whom Rico had found in the bedroom was obviously convinced he had just compounded his crimes. Union Day, Rico thought – two days after Daiho was meant to have taken the final plunge from his apartment.
So who had gone over the side of the mountain instead? Rico shook his head to clear it and said, 'Go on.'
'And then, just this morning, Mr Asaldra arrived, and an hour later, all those thugs came pounding in and rounded us up, sir,' said Jontan. 'They knocked Mr Asaldra out and took him off in one of those flying things.'
'Any idea where to?'
'Um, no, sir.'
'Oh, great.' Rico leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. An unauthorized Home Timer on the loose somewhere in the twenty-first century, probably not even equipped with a fieldsuit. He'd worry about that later; maybe even head back to the Home Time and hand over the job to the Specifics.
Half his mind was working on the problem, the other taking in Jontan's story. 'Holmberg-Chabani-Scott . . .' he said. 'Could they whip up a force-grown clone, if the need arose?'
'Why, yes, sir. Dead easy.'
'Light dawns . . .' Rico murmured and retreated into his thoughts again. He felt a sudden shock as he remembered the autopsy report back in Daiho's apartment. 'Oh my God. They picked up brain patterns, which means Daiho gave it intelligence, which means it was fully alive and he committed murder. The bastard.'
'Sir?'
'Yes?' Rico registered he was about to be asked something, not told it, and switched more of his attention to his fellow Home Timer.
'It's illegal, what they did, isn't it? I mean, they broke your rules, and when they brought us here they didn't say anything about sacrifices, but now Mr Asaldra says – said – we'd have to make them, and . . . I mean, it's not right, is it, sir?'
'Yeah, you noticed that too.'
'So I . . .' Jontan swallowed. 'I just want you to know that . . . that Sarai had nothing to do with it, she was just doing what she was told by Mr Scott . . .'
'And you weren't?'
Jontan blinked. 'Well, yes, sir, I mean, I didn't have a choice either, but if you're going to arrest anyone . . .'
Rico grinned. This boy was defending his girl, ready to take the flak for her. He was a better man than either of the Home Timers incarcerated a floor below.
'There'll be arrests,' he said, 'but first there'll be a hearing to decide exactly who should be arrested. And for that, I have to get back to the Home Time.'
'Sir?'
Rico sighed. 'I was only expecting Asaldra to be here, Jon-boy. The recall zone is a long way out from the cliffs and a long way up. My agrav could take me and one other, but it couldn't take all four of you.'
He saw the sudden gleam in Jontan's eyes.
'Or just you and your girlfriend,' he said. 'No. I'll report back to the Home Time and we'll send a general recall field to these co-ordinates. That'll get you all back, and I'll testify for you when you're there.'
Jontan almost glowed and a huge grin split his face.
'Thank you, sir!' And then he subsided as he realized the implication: just a little longer here in the Dark Ages. 'When will that be, sir?'
'They can't send the recall while I'm still here – that would be a paradox . . .'
'Sir?'
'They would be recalling me before I get back to request a recall,' Rico translated. 'But I expect they'll time the recall to a second after I go back myself. So, five, ten minutes. Can you wait that long?'
Jontan was aglow again. 'You bet, sir!'
Rico smiled and patted the journeyman's shoulder for a moment. 'I'll see you, then,' he said, and slipped out past the still frozen sentry.
And then, the biggest surprise yet.
'Rico? Come in please.'
The words pulsed into his mind via symb and he paused at the top of the stairs down to the landing.
'Su?' he symbed back in disbelief. 'What are you doing here?'
'Change of orders. Abandon mission.'
'WHAT?'
'Marje has called you off, Rico. I'm sorry.'
'No. No way.' Rico started moving again.
'Rico . . .' Su's familiar exasperation was warming up in her tone.
'Su, it's suddenly got a whole lot bigger. There's five Home Timers in this century, four of them here and Asaldra vanished into the great blue yonder. And two of the ones here are kids who've been virtually kidnapped, plus the bygoners want to milk them for their distinctly non-bygoner biotech skills. Does Marje know that?'
'Um . . .'
'Su, where are you?'
'At the recall point.'
So, Rico thought, she had the fieldsuit, the agrav . . . But it still wasn't enough to take the entire load of Home Timers back with them. The original plan would have to stand: get back to the Home Time, send a general recall field.
'Wait there for me,' he symbed. 'We'll go back together and raise hell.'
'Rico, some of us don't like dangling about in mid-air for open-ended periods.'
Rico grinned. Personally, he found flying in an agrav exhilarating. 'Get to the foot of the cliffs and wait for orders,' he said.
'ORDERS?'
'Instructions,' Rico amended hastily. 'I mean, suggestions. Requests! Polite, if-you-please requests from a junior to a Senior Field Op.'
'Just get here, Garron.'
Rico grinned again as Su broke contact. He took the first flight of stairs at a quite un-stewardlike trot, and then adjusted pace and expression before he came out onto the landing and into the view of the sentries guarding the other three Home Timers.
When he got to the top of the stairs down to the hall, Rico saw that the scene below was suddenly less peaceful. It was like a disturbed ant's nest. People hurried about and a small, slim man standing at the door into the lounge was talking urgently into his phone.
'Mr Carradine says yes,' the man said. 'You three, come with me.'
He headed for the stairs and began to bound up them two at a time. Still in steward role, Rico stood aside to let them pass. He risked a quick glance at the leading man but it was no one famous, no one who had made it into the history books. The man met his eyes briefly and looked away.
The crowd passed and Rico started down the stairs.
'Wait!'
Rico half paused; no, they couldn't mean him . . .
'You on the stairs!'
That narrowed it down too much for Rico's liking. He stopped, turned, looked up. The slim man was at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips, arms askance. He had a 'haven't-we-met' expression similar to Asaldra's on his face.
'You work here?' he said.
'Yes, sir,' said Rico.
'Your name?'
Rico gave the name he had found on his borrowed ID.
The man nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off Rico's face. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers at the sentries down in the hall.
'You two! Stun this man. Stun him now.' The guards brought their guns up before Rico could react.
His last thought, as the stun charges lanced through his body and he felt his body arch and then start its slow, dreamlike tumble down the stairs, was: 'what did I do wrong?'
Nineteen
Berlin, 1700
You look very sprightly today, Herr Wittgenstein.' Frau Hug noticed the spring in her lodger's step the moment he came into the room. 'Is it a special day?'
'Today is a perfectly normal day, Frau Hug,' the man said with a broad smile. 'As normal as any other day in the considerable history of our planet. Please, carve me a slice of that delicious bread of yours for breakfast.'
Frau Hug, with only a very slight frown, turned back to the sideboard and started preparing her lodger's morning meal. Herr Ludwig Wittgenstein had been in Berlin for a week and so far had resisted all attempts to be lured into conversation. Quiet, kept himself to himself, almost non-descript. But now . . .
She set the plate before
him and sat down in her chair at the head of the table – the place that had been hers for most of her adult life, ever since the smallpox took Herr Hug away and left her with four small children – to watch Herr Wittgenstein eat. None of the other lodgers had come down yet; he was up bright and early. And he was still smiling, even as he ate and . . . she strained her ears to hear . . . was that humming? Why, she hadn't seen or heard anything like this since her oldest boy, Elmar, had . . .
She gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. 'Herr Wittgenstein,' she said with a jocular scold, 'you're going to meet someone today, aren't you?'
The bread stopped halfway to Herr Wittgenstein's mouth and he looked at her over it with wide eyes.
'I beg your pardon?'
'A young lady! Don't deny it, Herr Wittgenstein, a woman can see the signs.' Delighted, she rose and carved him another slice. 'Here, take some more. You'll need all your strength, believe me. Women like a man with a bit of meat on his bones.'
'I really . . .'
But there was no stopping Frau Hug now. One by one the other guests came down for their own breakfast; one by one they were greeted with the good news. Even when Herr Wittgenstein made his escape half an hour later, his attire had to pass his landlady's scrutiny and she tutted in despair; hat crumpled, boots not polished, cloak downright dowdy. Well, it would have to do, she said with a sigh. Finally she watched her lodger leave for the day, half her mind already taken up with passing the good news about that nice Herr Wittgenstein around her friends.
Having made his escape from the valkyrie Cupid of the Grunewald, the Correspondent made his way into town. It was summer in the Berlin of 1700, early in the morning. The day was already comfortably warm and dry and the light had a clean, liquid quality. Not many of the future Prussian capital's thirty thousand-odd people were around yet, just those with whom the Correspondent had instinctively identified himself ever since arriving in Isfahan. Butchers. Milk sellers. Servants on their way to work. The tradesmen, the people who did the work that ran the electorate of Brandenburg.
Going to meet someone . . . For the first time in seven centuries, he had almost believed in telepathy. But Frau Hug was a kindly soul under the general bossiness and desire to run the lives of everyone she met, so he had gone along with the charade.
He wondered how disappointed she would be when he didn't come back. Well, the month's extra rent he had left on his bed would help ease her hurt.
His first destination of the day was the shambles behind a butcher's shop in Schmargendorf. He paused in the dim alley and glanced about him. The sounds of a small town coming to life were all around him, but the people themselves were well out of the way. It should be safe. He sat down on a box and ate an apple.
Two minutes later, Herbert appeared.
'Oh, my God.' The Home Timer screwed his face up in disgust and put his hand to his nose. 'What is this place?'
'We're behind a butchers,' the Correspondent said. 'Good morning, Herr Herbert.'
'Good morning, Herr . . . ?'
'Wittgenstein. Ludwig Wittgenstein.'
'Your loyal servant.' Herbert gazed around him and it looked as if he were going to be sick. 'You've always been good at locating dirt and grime but this time you've excelled yourself.'
'How kind.' The Correspondent stood abruptly and chucked the apple to one side. 'First, show me you brought it.'
'Of course.' Herbert reached into an inside pocket and produced a thin, hexagonal wafer of dark green crystal that filled his palm. The Correspondent took it reverently between thumb and forefinger, looked at it from both sides, held it up to the sky so that the light shone through it like a lantern at the bottom of a murky pond.
'More crystals,' he said. 'Is everything in the Home Time crystal-based?'
'Most of the technology is. It's an organic, solid state world.'
'How do I make it work?'
'You don't. Just keep it on you, and when the recall field comes on, it'll pick you up as well.'
The Correspondent pocketed the tag. 'I can't believe I'm going home. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.'
Herbert gestured towards the alleyway entrance. 'Shall we go?'
Berlin had well and truly come to life as the two men entered the city proper, walking up through Schöneberg and into town. Herbert was breathing heavily.
'You're not getting any fitter, are you?' the Correspondent said.
Herbert glared at him. 'It's been fifty years for you,' he said. 'I've been making these trips in quick succession. I haven't had time to get fit. It wasn't meant to be like this.'
'Oh, I was forgetting,' said the Correspondent.
'Of course. I was meant to be an innocent dupe, lied to and used by you so that you can do whatever you do to the people I interview. You should never have had to walk more than ten feet in any given direction. If this weren't the last one, I'd be more considerate in future.'
They walked in silence for a couple more minutes.
'So, where are we going?' said Herbert. They both spoke fluent eighteenth-century German, though it occurred to the Correspondent that while he could easily pass for a native Prussian, Herbert sounded like what he was – a foreigner who had learned the language but not the accent.
'To see Leibnitz, of course.' The last one! the Correspondent thought with silent exultation. Seven centuries, seventeen seminal scientific thinkers, and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz is the last one!
'I meant, where are we going to see Leibnitz? At his home?'
The Correspondent stopped in his tracks. 'You're joking!'
Herbert rolled his eyes. 'About what?'
'It's July the seventeenth, 1700,' the Correspondent said slowly. 'We are going to see Leibnitz. Can't you put the two facts together?'
'His birthday?' Herbert said with elaborate sarcasm.
The Correspondent started walking again, taking long strides that meant Herbert had to hurry to catch up.
'Leibnitz founded the Academy of Science, and today is the day he's sworn in as life president. There's going to be a ceremony, and that is where we'll meet him.'
'Oh,' said Herbert. The Correspondent looked at him askance and shook his head.
'You didn't know? You really didn't know?'
'I just follow orders,' Herbert said. 'I know the name of the person I've come to see and a few general details. Someone else decides on the itinerary.'
'It doesn't interest you that he worked out the principles of differential calculus at the same time as Isaac Newton?'
'Since I've no idea what differential calculus is, no. But it sounds like something my associate would think is useful. What else did he do?'
The Correspondent shook his head. He was so primed with every useful detail there was to know about his interviewees that it had never occurred to him Herbert might be ignorant of it all. Didn't the man even read his reports? Do some research? Apparently not: Herbert was just doing a job. So the Correspondent simply answered:
'This and that.'
Herbert wasn't even interested in the answer: he was looking curiously at the Correspondent, his expression thoughtful.
'Besides,' he said, 'when did you start caring?'
They arrived at the ceremony just as it was starting. It was a grand but crowded room full of men standing and jostling as people did on these occasions, chatting idly, catching up with each other, making new acquaintances. It was an era of grand clothes and wigs but the finery was only a visible distraction from the fact that the bygoners still hadn't entirely got the hang of hygiene. Herbert was obviously trying not to pull a face.
Now the men were drifting to their seats and Leibnitz was taking the stage. The philosopher had a long, dark, curly wig, arched eyebrows and a face that was usually calm and placid but, on this occasion, could be excused for more than a hint of smugness.
The Correspondent had timed their arrival so that Herbert would not have to make casual conversation with bygoner German scientists and be revealed
as the fraud he was. As they took their seats he mused that it had been a wise precaution; bearing in mind what he had just learned, Herbert wouldn't have been able to bluff his way for a second. What kind of idiot, the Correspondent wondered, would come back however many centuries, knowing he would have to blend into the population, and not even try to learn something about the time?
But that question was only incidental to the main one bothering him as everyone applauded the man at the front. The main one was: when did you start caring?
When indeed? He thought back to his arrival at Isfahan. He hadn't cared then. He had had a desire to get to the city and to meet Avicenna, and lurking at the back of his mind had been enough information about the man's career to be able to make conversation and conduct an interview.
But now?
Now, it mattered to him that Leibnitz – mathematician, statesman and above all philosopher – had founded and presided over the Akademie der Wissenschaft. It was important that Leibnitz saw the universe as composed of what he called monads, centres of spiritual energy that together formed the harmonious and perfect conclusion of a divine plan. And above all – as the Correspondent could see, even if Herbert could not – both men owed everything to people like Leibnitz and all the other interviewees, because they were both the products of a highly advanced technological society, far removed from the on-going Iron Age that was currently all around them in eighteenth-century Berlin. The world would move from this bygoner age to the Home Time through scientific advance, and that scientific advance was made possible because of the theoretical groundwork laid by the men the Correspondent had interviewed.
So, yes, it mattered to the Correspondent. It mattered a great deal.
Leibnitz ended his speech with the hope that great things would come out of the new Academy of Science. The Correspondent applauded quite genuinely while Herbert's applause seemed more out of relief that the speeches were over.
'And now, let's go and meet the man,' the Correspondent said as the assembly rose from their seats.
'I need to be alone with him,' Herbert muttered. 'How am I going to manage that here?' They began to sidle along their row of chairs towards the aisle.
