by David Weber
He shivered at the thought as the big man grabbed a chair from the next table and brought it over.
“Hello again, Doctor Schröder.” He waved a hand across the desserts. “Please accept this and the rest of your meal as a small token of my regret. I’m very sorry for how our last conversation went and would like to make amends.”
“Excuse me!” Elzbietá stormed. “I don’t know who you think you are, but we’re having a private meal here!”
“My apologies, Mrs. Schröder,” Raibert said, sitting down. “I’m sorry for intruding, but I have a very important matter to discuss with your husband.”
“My husband?”
Raibert blinked and his eyes focused on something past them.
“Oh. My mistake.” He tapped his forehead. “I’m not used to going into situations like this without a mental connection to my abstract companion. It seems I missed a small detail. The two of you get married next year.”
“That’s rather presumptuous of you! He just proposed!”
“And the date will be…” Raibert paused and looked past them again. “Sunday, June 16, 2019. Ah! The same as your birthday. I can see why you’ll choose it. Or at least you would have if I weren’t here upsetting the timeline.”
“I don’t know what kind of con you’re trying to pull,” Elzbietá leaned in, “but I’ve had quite enough of it!”
“No cons here. Just a simple time traveler trying to set things right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I take it he didn’t mention I’m a historian from the thirtieth century?”
“I told her you were crazy,” Benjamin quickly interjected. “Which you clearly are.”
“It might actually be better if that were true. Then at least it’d only be me with the problem and not the whole universe.”
Elzbietá grabbed her purse off the floor and unzipped it.
“Ma’am, I appreciate what you think you’re doing, but I know about the”—Raibert paused as if someone were speaking to him—“V10 Ultra Compact or whatever you call that peashooter in your purse.”
Elzbietá visibly tensed.
“Anyway, it’s not going to be enough to take me down.”
“You wearing body armor under that suit?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“In that case, you step out of line, and I’ll shoot you in the head.”
“Ah, but my head isn’t where my mind is stored.”
Benjamin and Elzbietá exchanged a quick look, and she mouthed the word “crazy.”
“Raibert, what the hell do you want?” Benjamin asked.
“To talk.” He clasped his gloved hands together on the table.
“That’s all?” Benjamin asked, noticing a matte gray material between Raibert’s black leather gloves and his cuffs. Was this loon wearing a jumpsuit under his clothes that he thought was some sort of futuristic armor?
“That’s all,” Raibert echoed. “Just an honest and open talk with you. Really, that’s all I’m after.”
“And then you’ll leave?” Benjamin asked.
“Sure,” Raibert said, looking away. “Then I’ll leave.”
“You’re lying,” Elzbietá stated. “I’m blind in one eye, mister, not both, and I know a liar when I see one.” She reached into her purse and released the safety on the locked and loaded automatic.
“Honestly, there’s no need for violence,” Raibert stressed. “We’re all civilized people here. This can all be resolved peacefully, so I recommend we just talk this through and see where it leads us. How’s that sound?”
“Just talk?” Benjamin asked.
“Just talk.”
“All right, then.” Elzbietá clicked the safety back in place but kept her hand in the purse. “Talk. But I warn you, you do anything to threaten me or my fiancé, and I swear to God I will paint the walls with your brains.”
“Ah, if only that were still possible,” Raibert spoke with a sad smile. “Anyway, I’m not here to bore you with my problems, of which there are many. Instead, let’s discuss the one very important task I need your help with.”
“The one involving the end of the universe?” Benjamin asked.
“That would be it. This timestream’s been altered and it needs to be set back to the way it was. If we do nothing, then this universe is doomed. And guess what, Benjamin? You’re the only person who can help me put it back on track.”
“You’re a total nutcase!” Elzbietá declared.
“No, ma’am. I’m not. The doctor’s condition isn’t some strange mental illness. The ‘fictitious’ reality in his head is one that actually existed, and one that needs to exist again. I require the information he has to repair the timeline and prevent this universe from going boom. Though, to be frank, ‘boom’ is an understatement for what’s in store for us. More like a big bang that obliterates every part of this universe simultaneously.”
Benjamin tried to ignore Raibert’s words, but the muscles in his chest still tightened.
“An event somewhere in the twentieth century has gone wrong. I don’t have access to records from before the change, and while I’m a historian, I’m an expert on the wrong period to solve this problem. I can’t fix this without his help. He needs to identify the Event and what was changed with enough precision for me to go back in time and correct it.”
Anxiety built within Benjamin, sweat glistened on his brow, and he concentrated on taking smooth, deep breaths.
“I know what you must be thinking, but I can offer proof of everything I’ve said, if you would only give me the chance. I do, after all, have a time machine, and I’d be more than happy to let both of you inspect it.”
Benjamin put a hand over his heart as the tightness became painful. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real! IT WAS NOT REAL!
“Look, I’ve heard enough of this bullshit!” Elzbietá snapped. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to him? This sick game of yours has gone too far. You said your piece, and our answer is no. Now get the hell out of here!”
He wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded in agreement.
“Please don’t be hasty,” Raibert urged. “Perhaps if I were to call in my time machine so you could see it for yourself? I’m sure you’d find it quite impressive.”
“No! I’m through listening to this insane dribble you’ve been spouting!” She pointed her artificial hand at the door. “You lift your butt out of that seat, and you take it straight out that door!”
“Then maybe some form of remuneration might smooth this over? I’m sure my ship could—”
“Enough! Not another word out of you!”
“I see.” Raibert’s eyes darkened. “In that case I…wait…what was that, Philo?”
“Who the hell are you talking to?”
“You think you spotted what heading this way?”
“You’re completely bonkers!”
“Oh, no!” Raibert’s eyes bugged out. “Get down!”
He grabbed Benjamin by the shirt and yanked him away from the window.
Elzbietá pulled the gun from her purse.
The window burst into a shower of glinting glass, and the table exploded in a spray of dessert, wine, and splinters. Something hit Raibert in the arm and blew his sleeve clean off, but the gray jumpsuit underneath remained intact. His collar tore open, and thick strands wrapped around his head until it was completely cocooned in the material.
Raibert shoved Benjamin down, and he hit the floor on his back. The impact forced the air from his lungs, and he struggled for breath as Raibert loomed over him and reached into his coat. He retrieved a heavy, long-barreled pistol from a shoulder harness and swung it around.
An unclear shape leaped through the window, pieces of glass tinkling with its passage.
Raibert fired.
The weapon’s discharge stunned Benjamin’s ears and rattled his teeth. Part of the ceiling exploded upward, and the shape that had vaulted over them crashed onto an unoccupied table, c
ollapsing it. He turned his head to the side and saw what looked like a mechanical dog with a gaping hole in its abdomen and a narrow snout that might have been a gun. Oily fluid leaked from the wound.
“See?” Raibert shouted, rising. “Not quite the same when I can fight back!”
Rapid gunfire shattered more windows, shredding booth cushions and their occupants alike. Their waiter’s head burst like a balloon, and screaming filled the restaurant.
“Ella!” Benjamin cried. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled toward her. “Ella!”
“That’s it, Philo! Keep painting them for me!” The hand cannon cracked twice.
Another indistinct shape smashed through a window to the right of the carnage, and gunfire chattered against Raibert’s back. The attack shredded his coat and threw him forward, but he twisted around and fired again before dropping to the floor. The shape flew back, slid across a table, and collapsed to the floor in a heap of twitching, now-visible limbs.
“Sneaky bastards!” Raibert blasted three quick holes in the wall. A flying shape spiraled out of control and thudded into the ground.
“Ella, no!” Benjamin screamed. She lay on the carpet with her head to the side as a wet stain spread from her abdomen.
“Philo, bring the TTV over here now! We’re getting out of here!”
“No-no-no!” Benjamin crawled through his fiancée’s blood and pressed his hands against her stomach. Blood. So much blood, and it continued to spurt through his fingers.
“Time to go, Doc!” Raibert rose to a crouch and grabbed Benjamin by the shirt collar.
“No!” Benjamin screamed as Raibert dragged him away. He reached out and seized Elzbietá’s ankle with both hands. “I’m not leaving her!”
“Fine then!” Raibert dropped him and flipped over a long rectangular table. “Head out to the parking lot! I’ll get her out of here!”
“I’m not about to trust you with her life!”
“Go!” He shoved Benjamin away. “A table is not suitable cover for what they’re packing!”
“But—”
Wood chips flew into the air, and gunfire perforated the half of the table Raibert crouched behind. The shots shredded what remained of his coat, and he fell back onto his butt.
“Damn it!” His hand cannon blew the table in half, and a flying shape outside the restaurant exploded into burning pieces that pattered down on the front lawn. “I said I’ve got her! Now go!”
Raibert lifted Elzbietá onto his shoulder, and her blood quickly stained his back.
“Are you deaf?” he shouted, and fired twice. “Out the back! Help is on the way!”
Raibert shoved Benjamin toward the restaurant’s parking lot entrance, and Benjamin stumbled for a moment before regaining his balance. He gritted his teeth, turned and ran. The two sets of double doors were closed, but their glass had already been shattered. Benjamin hurried straight through, and Raibert followed.
A four-legged shape that blended into the grass skittered around the corner.
“To the left!” Benjamin shouted.
“I see it!” Raibert swung his hand cannon around and fired through the wall. An explosion blew out one side of the creature, and scrap metal tumbled down the hill.
Shapes buzzed over the restaurant roof. Raibert snapped off two shots, and the shapes crashed and tore groves in the shingles. Another three faint outlines popped over the building, but then a loud, continuous roar assaulted Benjamin’s ears, like the voice of some chainsaw forged in hell, and a line of fire and metal tore across them.
“About time, Philo!”
Benjamin looked up to see a huge elliptical craft descending upon their position. At first he wasn’t sure how large it really was because he didn’t have a solid frame of reference to judge its size, but then it kept coming closer and closer, and he finally realized it had to be larger than any aircraft he’d ever seen.
“What the hell is that?” he exclaimed.
“That, Doctor Schröder, is my time machine!”
*
“And there it is,” Okunnu announced. “TTV sighted moving toward the engagement zone.”
“Target locked. Missiles away.”
The chronoport’s four missile pods each launched one missile per second for eight seconds. The long, conical projectiles engaged solid-propellant boosters and rocketed out of the ocean in sprays of water and steam.
The thirty-two missiles skimmed the ocean surface and accelerated at twenty gees, splitting the air as they broke the sound barrier in less than two seconds.
“So much for the professor,” Hinnerkopf said.
*
“They fired what?” Raibert blurted. “Then what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get down here!”
“Behind you!” Benjamin shouted.
Raibert spun around, but the aerial drone fired first. One shot pierced his gray jumpsuit at the elbow and blew his forearm off in a cloud of viscous fluid and snapping, flexible bands. The second pounded into Raibert’s back and left a divot in his jumpsuit, and the third punched through Elzbietá’s spine in a fountain of blood and bone.
“NO!” Benjamin screamed.
Raibert staggered to his knees and fired. His shot caught one of the machine’s propellers, and it twirled through the air before crashing nose first into the pavement. Two more ground-based shapes crested the hill, and the huge aircraft cut loose with twin guns that blasted topsoil into the air and set the ground ablaze.
“Hurry it up, Philo!” Raibert shouted, pushing himself up with a shattered, inhuman arm and steadying Elzbietá with his good one.
The craft dropped sharply. Its exterior appeared seamless, but then an opening formed and a ramp extended. The craft’s descent settled, but its ramp still crushed a red sports car and set off its shrill alarm.
“Come on, Doc! We’re leaving!” Raibert shouted and ran up the ramp.
Rage, anguish, and stunned disbelief swirled in Benjamin’s mind, but all he could focus on was the man taking Elzbietá’s broken, bleeding body away from him. He snarled and charged up the ramp after him.
“This is all your fault!”
“Probably!” Raibert snapped back. “Kleio, get us out of here!”
The ramp closed and sealed them in a tall, well-lit space with a roof three stories high that might have been the vessel’s cargo bay.
“Well, yes!” Raibert growled. “I’d be happy to come to the bridge!”
“She’s dead!” Benjamin cried. “She’s dead because of you!”
“And we will be, too, if we don’t get out of here!” He ran to the back of the cargo bay, and Benjamin followed as fast as he could, then stopped as Raibert floated up a shaft without any visible support.
Benjamin’s brain started to catch up with his body, and he began to process all he’d just seen. Invisible robots. Raibert’s fake arm. His unusual weapon. And now a giant aircraft where gravity was optional on the inside.
Could all of Raibert’s rantings be true?
Or am I slipping further away? Benjamin looked down at the blood on his hands—Elzbietá’s blood—and wondered if it was real. Could she really be dead?
Is this what’s it’s like to go crazy? How can any of this be real?
He shook the dark notions away and steeled himself until all he could see was Elzbietá’s corpse in his mind’s eye. He hurried onto the circular platform Raibert had used.
“What the hell do I have to lose at this—whoa!” He suddenly felt as if he were falling, but instead of falling down, he fell up through the shaft Raibert had disappeared into. The shaft opened at the top into a corridor, and he spotted Raibert racing down it.
“Kleio, engage the impeller!” Raibert shouted. “Get us out of here!”
“Raibert!” Benjamin charged after him.
“Not now, Doc! We need to—”
The ship rocked from a sudden impact, and Benjamin stumbled forward. A great tearing noise echoed through the ship, it turned onto its side, and he slipped
and cracked his head against the wall that now served as a floor.
The room spun around him. Stars filled his vision. Sound deafened his ears. Another great shudder ripped through him. Through the ship. Through the world.
“Ella!” he gasped as everything went dark. “No!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio
non-congruent
“Kleio, are you trying to be obstinate on purpose?”
The voice fought its way through layers of mental fog.
“Just do as I tell you and everything will be fine.”
Benjamin cracked his eyes open, then squinted at the harsh overhead lighting.
“No, I don’t care if you found old injuries. Fix everything, you hear me? Everything.”
He blinked and a sterile white room slowly came into focus.
“Yes, yes, the hand and eye too. That’ll be a pleasant surprise, and it’ll make for a nice show of our good will.”
Where was he? Who was talking? What had happened?
He rubbed his face with clean hands, and when he opened his eyes again, the silhouette of a man blocked the light. His eyes adjusted, and the man came into focus.
“Ah. You’re looking better.”
Who was that again? Wait, yes. Raibert was his name. Raibert. Raibert.
Raibert the crazy.
Raibert the liar.
“How do you feel, Doc?”
Raibert. The man responsible for Elzbietá’s death.
Benjamin’s eyes snapped open as visions of blood and bone and his fiancée’s slack corpse filled his mind. His hands shot outward and his fingers locked around Raibert’s thick neck like a vise.
“She’s dead because of you!” he screamed, and pushed his thumbs into the man’s throat. “Those things were after you! She’d be alive if it weren’t for you!”
“Well,” Raibert remarked, clearly unimpressed. “Not the greeting I’d hoped for, but I guess it’ll do.”
Benjamin gritted his teeth and squeezed with all his might.
