by Bob Mayer
Doc gave his best impression of a confident smile. “Don’t worry. We’re going to. There’s just some adjustments I have to make.” He nodded toward the observation slit. “Let me show you.”
Lockhart holstered the gun and joined Doc, peering out.
Doc pointed. “See that guard post to the left of the road, where it makes the S-turn?”
“Yes.”
Doc slid the needle into Lockhart’s neck with his other hand, pushing the plunger.
Lockhart reacted so quickly, the syringe was ripped from Doc’s hand, and a gash was torn in Lockhart’s neck. As the sergeant reached for his pistol, Doc clamped both his hands over the holster. They struggled for a moment, then the sedative took effect, and Lockhart slumped.
Doc quickly bandaged the small wound then positioned the unconscious man as comfortably as he could. Doc wrote a note, then pinned it to the front of Lockhart’s jacket where he’d see it when he regained consciousness.
Doc closed his eyes once more and thought hard, envisioning what lay ahead and what would be needed. Because when he’d thought of the others on the team and how they wouldn’t hesitate to implement the plan, for the first time, it struck home to him that he was one of them. He had been a Nightstalker, and now he was Time Patrol, and this was his duty.
Doc repacked his rucksack, appropriating some gear from Lockhart’s. He went to the right front part of the hide site. Leveraging an entrenching tool, he pushed aside the thick piece of plastic that had been in place when Lockhart and whoever Doc was replacing had crawled in here. Doc slithered out. He put the plastic back, making sure the camouflage was intact.
The mountainside was steep. Doc thought of all those hours he’d spent in the silo with Eagle, forced to practice his climbing and rappelling, and wished he’d spent more time training and less time complaining. There was a path; well, not a path, but a way that had been used before.
Doc began to climb down the mountain toward the Kala Chitta Nuclear Weapons Depot to stop a nuclear war.
Delphi, Greece, 6 June 478 B.C.
Scout wasn’t there and then she was there, but she’d always sort of been there. It was the best way to explain how she arrived, becoming part of her current time and place. She was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully she wouldn’t be here afterward.
And she was Scout, not occupying the priestess Cyra, as she had just two years previously, on her Ides mission. Two years in now time, only a few weeks in Scout time.
One small blessing that was immediately negated.
“You’re too late.”
The first thing Scout saw was the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the cave. Then a small fire. And on the other side of the fire, an old woman dressed in a white robe, with a heavy red cape over her shoulders. She was clutching the cape tight around her neck and had a purple veil over the lower part of her face.
“I’m too late?” Scout asked, trying to understand where she was, who was dead, and who the old woman was, although that answer popped up instantly: the Oracle of Delphi.
“Can’t you see?” the Oracle asked bitterly, pointing at the body. She appeared to be very old, but that was relative in this era. She could be in her forties or her nineties. Her hair was white and surprisingly long, curling over her shoulders. Her eyes were pale blue, and something wasn’t quite right about them. Cataracts, Scout realized, remembering her grandmother’s eyes—her dear Nana, so different from her mother.
Scout looked more closely at the body. A man lay facedown, his white robe stained with blood. “Who is this? What happened?”
“That’s Pythagoras,” the Oracle said. Her voice wasn’t seer-like at all, but like that crazy aunt who smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much bourbon. “The man you were supposed to save.”
Scout knelt, but she knew dead, and he was dead. She checked anyway, her finger on his neck. No pulse, but the skin was warm. “Who did this?”
“I only caught a glimpse,” the Oracle said. She nodded toward a narrow passageway deeper in the cave. “I was in there and came out just a few seconds before you arrived. But you’re too late,” she repeated.
It is 478 B.C. The first Parthenon was destroyed two years previously by the Persians, and it would be thirty-one years before construction would begin on the second one, which the modern world would know as THE Parthenon; Hiero I becomes Tyrant of Syracuse following the death of his brother Gelo; a Temple of Confucius is established in what becomes modern day Qufu; Aristides commands an Athenian fleet of thirty ships to free the Greek cities on Cyprus and capture Byzantium from the Persians.
The Oracle shook her head. “How can you travel so far, be so close, and yet fail?”
Good question, Scout thought.
Some things change; some don’t.
The Oracle walked stiffly to a stone throne that looked very uncomfortable then sat in it. “Bring me—” She gestured as she pulled the veil away, revealing her face, lined with worry and age.
Scout saw a table on which an amphora and chalice rested. Scout poured wine into the chalice then brought it to the Oracle. The old woman’s skeleton-like fingers curled around it.
“Who did you see?” Scout asked. “Who did this?”
“A woman with a dagger,” the Oracle said. She drank from the chalice. “Tall. Her hair was different. Black. With a single white streak running from here”—The Oracle touched her own head above the left eye——“over the top to the back. She ran when she saw me come in.”
Scout knew who that was. “Pandora.”
United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 6 June 1843 A.D.
Ivar wasn’t there, and then he was there, but he’d always sort of been there. It was the best way to explain how he arrived so abruptly, becoming part of this time and place, without fanfare or excitement among those around him. He was in the bubble of this day and this place, not before, and hopefully he wouldn’t be here afterward.
“To Sam, and perhaps his graduation!” someone shouted in a Southern accent. “Or as his family knew him, to Hiram.”
Someone else chimed in. “Or, as the Army will forever know him, Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant!”
Ivar was extremely uncomfortable for some reason, and relaxed his shoulders as he tried to get oriented to his new surroundings.
“Get your chin in, plebe!” Spittle sprayed Ivar’s face, and he blinked at the large man screaming at him, trying to understand what could cause such rage. Looking past the red face, Ivar saw a half-dozen cadets standing around a wood plank table, hoisting mugs in honor of the toast. The mugs were all pointed at the man sitting at the end of the table, and Ivar realized he was looking at the future four-star General and President of the United States.
Grant’s mug wasn’t in his hand.
The others turned their backs to the table and away from each other and drank, which Ivar found odd, but Edith had found intriguing in the research for the download; it was tradition, based on practicality. The original purpose was that by turning their backs, the cadets could rightfully claim under the honor code that they had not seen each other imbibing alcohol, which was forbidden by regulations. These days, it was more form than substance, but West Point was big on tradition whether it made sense or not.
Ivar studied Grant. He made Ivar appear to be the epitome of physical fitness. Grant was short, slight, and Ivar doubted he weighed more than 120 pounds. He had thick, dark hair, imperfectly combed, and was clean-shaven. One hundred fifteen pounds, the download corrected him, just as the red-faced cadet slammed an open palm into Ivar’s chest, pinning him against the log wall. “Eyes straight ahead, plebe.”
Plebe, a member of the lowest class at the U.S. Military Academy, dating to 1833, most likely a shortened form of the Latin plebeian. Edith’s download translated the term, which wasn’t very useful, but Ivar did as ordered and stared straight ahead, tucking his chin in and wondering what the heck was going on, and what military purpose tucking his chin in accomplished—prevent
it from getting shot off, perhaps?
“Gentlemen, spirits treat me ill,” Grant said, an uncomfortable smile on his face. “I appreciate your fine gesture and best wishes, but I cannot partake further.”
“When I make a toast, I take it ill to be rebuked,” the Southern accent replied.
“You’re in a foul mood today, George,” someone else at the table said.
“We don’t take slights lightly where I come from in Virginia,” George said. “I toasted Mister Grant, and he refused to partake.”
“Your family hasn’t lived in Richmond in years,” the same someone said. “You came here with an Illinois appointment, if I remember rightly.”
Factoring George, Richmond, an Illinois appointment, and a total student body of less than 250 cadets (Ivar had always been good at sorting data), Ivar came up with the most likely suspect: George Pickett, West Point Class of 1846.
A chair fell to the floor, and even the cadet hazing Ivar turned about to see what was amiss. Pickett had knocked his over, and he was swaying drunkenly. His face was red, and his dark mustache twirled at the ends, ending in little spikes.
Grant laughed uneasily, taking a step back from the table. “I meant no offense.”
“But you gave it,” Pickett said. “You do not act as a gentleman, but what can be expected of those such as you?”
“Easy, George,” someone else said.
Ivar chanced a look at his surroundings, and it took a moment to pin down the most likely location: Benny Havens Tavern. The dark windows and the flickering lanterns in the smoke-filled room indicated it was night outside.
Pickett pointed at the mug in front of Grant. “Pick it up, Hiram.”
“I don’t fancy that name.” Grant had been born Hiram Ulysses Grant, but the Congressman who’d given Grant his appointment to the Academy had made a clerical error on the paperwork, listing his name as Ulysses S. Grant. Once the Army had something down in writing, it was practically impossible to get it changed. Friends called him Sam, and that suited him just fine.
A flicker crossed Grant’s face. “Is it a heavy burden being the Immortal in all your sections, George?”
Immortal? Sections? Ivar realized he was going to be spending a lot of time sifting through the download if this kept up. Immortal = last, academically; Sections = classes.
“Is it a heavy burden, Hiram,” Pickett said, the name dripping derision, “to be stepping in between myself and my lady?”
Grant was stunned. “What are you speaking of?”
“I saw you confiding with her this past weekend,” Pickett said.
“I was merely being courteous,” Grant said. “No confidences were passed.”
Pickett slammed a short horsewhip onto the table, rattling the glasses. On the other side of the room, the proprietor, Benny Havens, had been resting his head on the wide wooden plank which served as bar. He started, lifted his head, then peered at the cadets. “None of that in here, lads.”
Pickett ignored him. “I challenge you, sir, on your honor. Or lack of it.”
“Easy, George,” another cadet said. “There’s no need for that. None at all. You’ve had too much spirits.”
“My honor is not slighted so easily,” Grant said. “And dueling is foolish and against regulations. I have been through too much here in these forlorn four years to be a fool now.”
“Perhaps your honor isn’t slighted so easily because you have none,” Pickett pressed.
“It’s late,” Grant said. “It will be reveille in an hour, and there’s a storm brewing outside as well as in here. I must be back to barracks. I can ill afford more demerits this close to graduation. I prefer not to spend any more time here at my Rockbound Highland Home than absolutely necessary.” He looked at another cadet. “If you’d like, Thomas, I can ride York with you back to the stables. It was most kind of you to join us, as I know you rarely frequent this establishment.”
A cadet who had not uttered a word and was sitting at the corner of the table looked up and nodded. “I’d appreciate that, Sam. It gave me a bit of trouble to ride York down here, but I wanted to test my mettle. It is clear to see why he has been dubbed the Hell-Beast.” Thomas had long mutton chop sideburns, not quite making a beard, but getting close.
Hell-Beast? Ivar thought. Some creature from the Shadow? But then, Ivar shook his head. A horse. York. In fact, the horse on which Grant would make the jump that wrote him into the record books at the Academy.
Grant made for the door. The quiet cadet, Thomas, joined him, but Pickett wasn’t done.
“That is all you will say in your defense, Hiram, whose middle initial, S., stands for nothing? And why are you so friendly with him, Jackson?” he demanded of Thomas. “You should associate with better, even though you are poor South.”
Thomas Jackson? The name clicked in the download: Thomas, who would be better known as Stonewall two decades in the future.
Grant shook his head, but didn’t say a word. He and Jackson went out into the darkness. Pickett followed, which caused the other cadets to scramble after, wanting to see how this would play.
Ivar needed to keep an eye on the most likely object of his mission. He went to the door then peered out. In the bright moonlight, Grant was unwrapping the reins of the largest horse Ivar had ever seen—not that he’d seen that many horses in person—from a hitching post.
York was a horse whose name had been written in history, mainly because of Grant riding it. A chestnut stallion, well-muscled and exceptionally tall, it had arrived at the Academy stables a few months previously and gained a reputation as intractable and unrideable, having thrown many a cadet. In this way, it had earned its moniker: Hell-Beast, a term Grant never used.
Pickett walked around Grant to the side of the horse. He snapped his short whip on the well-muscled flank of the mighty beast, and it tried to rear, but Grant held onto the bridle.
“Easy, York, easy,” Grant said in a surprisingly calm voice, given the suddenness of the action. He placed a hand on the horse, and it immediately quieted down. Grant meticulously wound the reins around the post, then turned to Pickett. For the first time, Ivar saw anger, indeed rage, on Grant’s face.
“A man does not beat an animal,” Grant said. “Never!”
“An honorable man does not intrude between another man and his lady.” Pickett stepped up to Grant, the horse one one side. He slapped Grant across the face. “On your honor, sir!”
Grant nodded. “Accepted!”
“One half-hour,” Pickett said. “The river field with pistols. We will see who has honor. And courage.”
It is 1843. Lord George Paulet occupies Hawaii in the name of Great Britain; the world doesn’t end on the twenty-first of March as had been predicted by preacher William Miller; Tivoli opens in Copenhagen; the world’s first computer program is translated and expanded by Ada Lovelace, using a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, although the computer hasn’t been invented yet; Robert Todd Lincoln is born; Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is published.
One of the upperclassmen was worried about something else. The hazer hit Ivar on the shoulder. “Get some hot flips poured into a bottle, plebe, and bring it to the river field. This is going to be interesting.”
Some things change; some don’t.
Chauvet Cave, Southern France, 6 June 32,415 Years B.P. (Before Present)
Moms wasn’t there, and then she was there, but she’d sort of always been there. It was the best way to explain how she arrived, becoming part of her current time and place without fanfare or excitement among those around her—if there had been anyone around her. She was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully she wouldn’t be here afterward, because if so, it would be a long time before she’d be able to take a hot shower again.
Moms staggered and had to kneel. She was light-headed, confused. Uncertain of where she was, when she was.
Time Patrol.
In time. “Way, way, way in the past,” Moms whispered to herself, still kne
eling, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she tried to gather herself.
In place. “South of France.”
She opened her eyes then looked about. She was in a deep valley, stretching in both directions as far as she could see, which wasn’t that far. A thin snow was falling, swirling about in a nasty, chill wind. The sun was muted behind low-hanging gray clouds. She realized there was dust mixed in with the snow and checked the download. At least she had the thick furs, because the south of France was much different from the tourist brochures of her present. This was near the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the last ice age. Northern Europe was covered in ice, all the way down through Germany and most of Britain.
When she was stationed in Europe, she’d traveled to this area with someone on a walking trip of the Dordogne, a rare change of pace for her and not her idea, of course. It had been beautiful and green, and the land, even in modern days, wild and rough. Now, she could be on a different planet. The terrain was gray and appeared mostly dead. She was on the edge of a polar desert, with stunted trees trying to grow on the steep sides of the valley.
Moms tried to remember her companion on the trip. A man, another soldier, but she couldn’t remember his name. She could picture him in her mind only vaguely, and remembered that he’d been killed in Afghanistan some years later. Another life, another person. Someone long gone in her memory, along with the person she had once been.
Moms squatted down, trying to clear her mind of distractions, not realizing the inability to retrieve memories was a distraction of its own.
It is 32,415 Years B.P. Three thousand years before this, Homo neanderthalensis was extinct in Europe, and was currently becoming extinct everywhere as the world transitioned to the age of Homo sapiens; around this millennia, Homo sapiens populates Europe; ice sheets still cover the Great Lakes, the mouth of the Rhine, and most of the British Isles; no Homo sapiens are in the Americas; the wooly rhinoceros and cave bear wander Europe.
Some things change; some don’t.
