by Simon Hawke
For the people in the parallel timeline, the disaster had been magnified because each time a warp grenade had been exploded in our universe; its surplus energy had been clocked into theirs. Most of those explosions had occurred in outer space, yet some of them had caused untold destruction. Several space colonies in the parallel universe had been utterly destroyed, with cataclysmic loss of life. It had brought about a war
The war was, of necessity, a limited one. Strategic weapons were not used, because the moment the Confluence Phenomenon had been discovered, it quickly became apparent to the people in both timelines that attempts to clock strategic weapons into the other universe could backfire. With the instability in both timelines, there was no telling exactly where or when a detonation could occur. As a result, the conflict had become the ultimate Time War, one timeline against the other, with each seeking to cause temporal disruptions in the opposing timestream.
In the parallel universe, commandos and agents of the strike force known as the Special Operations Group were dispatched through confluence points with missions to interfere with history. Their scientists believed a timestream split would serve to overcome the Confluence Phenomenon and separate the two timelines once and for all. The scientists of the Temporal Corps believed the opposite. They were convinced that a timestream split in either universe could set off a temporal chain reaction that would have disastrous consequences. It could bring about ultimate entropy, an end to all of time. It was therefore necessary to locate as many confluence points as possible and to patrol them for their duration. At the same time, it was imperative to preserve temporal continuity and prevent disruptions caused by infiltrations of the S.O.G. while attempting to bring about minor disruptions in their timeline, thereby tying up their manpower and their resources while they attempted to adjust them.
It was a situation with unlimited potential for disaster, with a Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone. What Dr. Darkness thought of all this had not been known. Shortly after the warp grenade had been developed, he had disappeared. He had gone off planet, to some secret research base he had established somewhere in the far reaches of the galaxy. It was there that he began his experiments with tachyon translocation, temporarily converting the human body into tachyons in order to achieve the ultimate in transportation. Only, in his calculations, he had overlooked a little known principle of physics known as the Law of Baryon conservation. by which his tachyon translocation process was ultimately restrained.
The result was a permanent alteration in his subatomic structure, rendering it unstable. He became the man who was faster than light. He could move through time and space in less time than it took to blink. Yet, upon arrival at his destination, he could not walk so much as one step. The only way he could achieve anything resembling normal mobility was to “tach,” to translocate from one spot to another. It could be highly disconcerting. What was even more disconcerting was what Moses Forrester, Lucas Priest. Finn Delaney and Andre Cross had recently learned about him. And they were the only ones who had that knowledge.
Dr. Darkness was from the future. A future in which, it seemed, some cataclysmic temporal disaster had occurred. He would not reveal what it was, nor would he reveal if he’d been sent out on a mission by people from the future or was simply working on his own, he revealed very little, but it was obvious that he was trying to effect a complex temporal adjustment in an effort to avert whatever disaster had occurred in the time from which he came. And the three of them were somehow a part of the mission he was on.
Delaney groaned and shut his eyes. “Oh, God. Don’t tell me. He isn’t really here. I’m just having a bad dream.”
I’m equally pleased to see you, too. Delaney.” Darkness replied, wryly. “I’d sooner have a case of indigestion. Regrettably, one has to make do with the tools one has at hand. And you, Delaney, are unquestionably a tool.”
“Doc. I’m almost afraid to ask,” said Lucas, “but the last time we saw you, you said something about one more key mission we’d have to perform.”
Darkness nodded “That’s right, Priest. This is it.”
“Shit,” Delaney said. “I knew it. We’re all going to die.”
3
“I sincerely hope that none of you is going to die,” said Dr. Darkness, toying with his walking stick. “Otherwise all the work I’ve done will have been wasted.”
Suddenly, there was a drink in his hand. He had tached over to the bar and helped himself, then tached back, faster than the speed of light, so that it seemed as if a glass of Scotch had simply appeared in his hand out of thin air. He took a sip. “Ahh. That hits the spot.”
“I’m touched by your concern for our lives,” said Lucas, wryly.
“Spare me your sarcasm, Priest.” Darkness replied. “You owe your life to my concern, as you may recall.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Lucas said. “And I’m grateful. However, I’m also apprehensive. It has to do with your irritating habit of not telling us your plans.”
“That’s unavoidable,” said Darkness. “I’m afraid it’s necessary for you to function on what you’d call a ‘need to know’ basis. You have to realize that from my perspective, this is the past and I need to be very careful not to interfere with certain actions you must take. At least, not until the proper time.”
“So why bother telling us at all?” asked Andre.
“Because Forrester deduced the truth about me. And, as a result, it’s necessary for me to impress upon you the importance of what I have to do.” said Darkness. “The fate of the future rests almost entirely in your hands. When the time comes, I cannot afford to have you hesitate. You will have to do exactly what I tell you, exactly when I tell you. Without question.”
“That’s asking us to take an awful lot on faith,” Delaney said.
“Yes, it is. However, I had hoped that by now, you would trust my motives.”
“Don’t get us wrong, Doc, “ Lucas said. “It’s not that we don’t trust you. You’ve saved our bacon in the past, no pun intended. You even brought me back from death. I think. I’m still not entirely sure what happened. But the point is that we’ve got a job to do and it’s hard enough doing it without your doing a job on us.”
“What Lucas means is that what we do requires peak concentration,” Andre said. “That’s hard enough to achieve without knowing that at some point, you’re going to show up and yank the rug out from under us. You’re asking us to trust you. And we’d like to do that. It doesn’t seem unreasonable, under the circumstances, for you to trust us, as well.”
“I see your point.” Darkness replied. “And I appreciate your position. But I need you to understand mine, as well. When you clock out on one of your temporal adjustment missions, one that involves your interacting with significant historical figures, you can’t very well approach them and tell them who you are and what you’re doing, can you?”
“Of course not,” said Delaney, “but that’s different. They wouldn’t believe us. They’d think we were insane. This is hardly the same situation. We know about time travel. We know you’re from the future. And we know that, somehow. we’re involved in something-or we’re going to be involved in something-that’s going to have a significant impact on what happens in the time you came from. We can understand and accept that. And we’d like to help you. But we could do a better job of it if we knew just what it was we were supposed to do.”
“I’m not convinced of that.” said Darkness. “In fact, I’ve already told you a great deal more than I should have. much more than I had planned to. My hand was forced when Forrester realized that I was from the future. The fact that you know that alone could jeopardize what I must do. It could affect your actions in a way that would sabotage my mission.”
“So then you are on a temporal adjustment mission,” Andre said
“That much is obvious.” Darkness replied. “However, that isn’t what you’re asking, is it? You want to know if I’m your counterpart from the future, if I’ve been spe
cifically sent back here on a mission or if I’m working on my own. And that’s something I’m not in a position to tell you. I can’t stop you speculating, of course, but I can assure you that it would be pointless. It really makes no difference, either way”
“Damn it, Doc, you’ve got to tell us more than that!” exclaimed Delaney. with exasperation. “What happens in the future, where you came from? Does it happen because of something we did, or something we didn’t do?”
For a moment. Darkness did not reply. He seemed to be considering. Finally, he sighed. “It really was unfortunate that Forrester discovered the truth about me. I should have anticipated that, only I didn’t. I underestimated his resourcefulness. As a result, without meaning to, he’s endangered my mission. That’s why I had to tell him that I would have no further contact with him. It would have been too dangerous. If you hadn’t known… only you do know. And that knowledge could affect your actions. A moment’s doubt or hesitation at the crucial time…
He drained his glass and set it down on the table.
“I can tell you this much,” he said. “Nothing that you have done-and I’m speaking from a future perspective, of course-served to bring about what I’m trying to prevent. However, you are going to be in a position where you will be able to do something to significantly alter the scheme of events in the future. I have seen to that you were chosen very carefully. Telling you much more at this stage would be risky. You are approaching a key focal point in time. And when that time comes, you must do exactly as I say. Without even a second’s hesitation I had tried to improve your odds for success with those particle level implants that I gave you, but unfortunately. I was unable to perfect them and they ultimately failed. Perhaps that was my fault, perhaps it was the influence of the Fate Factor. It’s like trying to swim against the current. I’m struggling to overcome temporal inertia at almost every turn.”
“Like when I was supposed to die back in Afghanistan?” asked Lucas, softly. “What really happened, Doc? Did you change history? Was that Ghazi sniper supposed to kill me?”
Dr Darkness gazed at him steadily. “No.” he said.
“But then, how-”
“That sniper was not a Ghazi.” Darkness said. “And he was not supposed to be there.”
“What?” said Lucas. “Are you saying that…”
But suddenly, the chair was empty. Darkness had simply disappeared. Except for the empty whiskey glass standing on the table, it was as if he’d never been there.
Neilson clocked back into Tombstone shortly before dawn. P.R.T. (Present Relative Time). He had been gone slightly longer than twelve hours, but only three minutes had elapsed in 19th-century Tombstone since he had left. He had “gained” a day, a phenomenon of time travel that was one of the most difficult things fin rookie temporal agents to grow accustomed to. They would depart upon a mission to the past, or Minus Time, and could be gone for days or weeks or months or even years, yet when they returned, often no more than several hours had passed. And duty spent in Plus Time, or in the 27th century, was all that counted toward the completion of an enlistment period. This was always made very clear to new recruits, but the consequences of it were often overlooked, Since there were two different pay scales in the service-one for duty served in the present and one for time spent in the past, with the latter being far more lucrative. The pay scale for Temporal Observers, for example, was higher than that found in almost any other career, and if one was able to avoid the hazards of the duty and survive to complete his tour of enlistment, he could retire a very wealthy man.
But it was not, by any means, a route to easy street. As Neilson had already discovered. It was an exciting way to make a living, but it was highly dangerous. as well. Most temporal agents found that they had to leave their former. civilian lives completely behind them. After Neilson had returned from his first assignment to the past, he had taken some leave and gone back to Tucson to visit his family and his girl. It had been a shock to them to discover how much he had changed. For them, from the time he had gone off to join the service to the time he returned from his first tour of Observer duty in the past, only a month or so had elapsed. For Scott, it had been four years. Four years in which he had grown immeasurably older and more experienced He had found it difficult to connect with them. His girl, whom he had loved with all the fierce intensity of youth, had suddenly seemed immature and superficial. And the concerns of his family seemed suddenly irrelevant to him. He was still his mother’s little boy.” but he had returned a man and found that she could not snake the adjustment Since then, he had not gone back home again. It was a different time and place
As he reappeared inside his room in the Grand Hotel, it looked no different than when he had left, about twelve hours earlier. Only minutes had passed here. The outline of Jennifer’s head was still impressed into the pillow. He gazed at the rumpled sheets on the bed and thought about her. He found those thoughts disturbing.
It was hard to believe she was a prostitute. He was not naive about the subject. He was in the service, he’d been with prostitutes before. Only this had been different. He’d only had a couple of experiences with hookers and, at first, there had been a sort of illicit thrill to it, but it was a thrill that was very short-lived. He knew that some men liked going with prostitutes because it was easy, uncomplicated sex, coupled with a sort of sleazy thrill, but he had found it frustrating and unsatisfying. He’d heard it said that prostitution victimized women because it made them into objects, but in another sense, it also victimized those who patronized them-to the hookers, they were objects, too. There was really no personal connection. It was, in many respects, a lot like masturbating. He had found it even less satisfying, because there was another human being involved, yet there was no real emotion, no affection, no genuine desire or intimacy. And when it was over, he was left with an empty feeling.
Only with Jennifer, it had been different. He had expected a relatively quick coupling, with little or no foreplay, and with her making all the obligatory expressions and sounds of sexual passion, only it had not turned out that way. It had started with that damn calico dress. It made her look like something out of Little Women, for God’s take, demure and innocent. The moment they entered the room, he had expected her to start stripping in a matter-of-fact way, only she hadn’t done that. She had approached him rather shyly, put her hands upon his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to kiss him softly on the lips. It was a hesitant, gentle kiss, almost chaste. They had exchanged several kisses like that, very brief and tentative, and then she had sighed as he pressed her against him and started undoing the buttons on the back of her dress.
In bed, he had marveled at the soft, lithe suppleness of her, the flawless, creamy skin, the gentle curves, the silky texture of her hair… They spent almost half an hour languorously exploring one another’s bodies, kissing and caressing and whispering endearments to each other, and when they moved beyond the foreplay and started making love, that too had been nothing like what he’d expected. There were no melodramatics; rather there had been a genuine, loving intimacy that took him completely unprepared. He could not believe she was that good an actress. He had climaxed quickly, carried away by the intensity of his feelings, yet she had not gotten out of bed to use the washbasin, dressed and gone away. Instead, she had lingered, and they had held each other and talked, and then they made love once more, and the second time, as she reached orgasm, she had cried out softly and wept real tears. She left shortly before dawn, after hugging him and holding him close for a long time, and it was only after she had gone that he had realized she had never even mentioned money.
He wondered what the hell he was getting into. Was he falling in love with a hooker? Jesus, that would be really stupid. Stupid and destructive. And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. What they had shared was real. He had no doubt of that. He did not know how he felt about it. Logically, he told himself, he should forget it. Don’t get involved. He had a job to do and he could not afford dis
tractions. Nor could he afford to fall in love with someone who, when he was born, had already been dead for over eight hundred years.
He could not reconcile the image of the tender and loving young woman he had made love to with the image of a girl who worked in a saloon and hustled drinks and would have sex with any cowboy who could afford the price. A hooker with a heart of gold? Come on, he told himself, get real. Don’t be an asshole. Yet, he kept thinking of her lying on top of him, with her hand gently placed against his cheek, her beautiful blue eyes gazing deeply into his, as if in wonderment
…
Don’t do this, he thought to himself. It was just a brief sexual encounter, nothing more. She had been excited by the prospect of making it with a handsome, dangerous, young gunfighter and there was nothing more to it than that. Hell, it was probably only a come-on. Next time, she’d charge him. If there was a next time. He knew it would be stupid. There would be no next time, he told himself. However, his resolution lacked conviction. He sat down on the bed and touched the pillow where her head had lain Jesus, he thought, she had actually cried.
Why had she cried?
Hop Town was west of the Tombstone business district, just past Third Street, yet it might as well have been on the other side of the world. It was Tombstone’s Chinatown, home to some five hundred Chinese immigrants, “coolies.” as they were often called, who came to work on railroad construction gangs and in mining operations and in laundries and whatever other menial labor they could find. For most of the Chinese residents, it was a temporary situation, a way to find some work and make some money and return to the homeland, so they made little attempt to become acculturated to American society. As a result, Hop Town was like a little slice of China dropped into the frontier. Most of the residents of Tombstone never ventured there, preferring their own saloons to the Chinese opium dens and gambling houses. There was one exception.
