“So you followed me to B-I Four…”
“As quickly as I could. Managed to get myself assigned as escort to a recruitment group—all native chaps, of course—”
“Native chaps?”
“Ahhh… Anglics, like yourself, captured as cubs… er… babies, that is. Cute little fellows, Anglic cubs. Can’t help warming to them. Easy to train, too, and damnably human—”
“Okay, you can skip the propaganda. Somehow it doesn’t help my morale to picture human slaves as lovable whities.”
Dzok cleared his throat. “Of course, old chap. Sorry. I merely meant—well, hang it, man, what can I say? We treated you badly! I admit it! But—” he flashed me a sly smile. “I neglected to mention your rather sturdy hypnotic defenses against conditioning. I daresay you’d have had a bit more trouble throwing off your false memories if they’d known, and modified their indoctrination accordingly. And to make amends I came after you, only to find you’d flown the coop—”
“Why so mysterious? Why not come right up and knock on the door and say all was forgiven?”
Dzok chuckled. “Now, now, dear boy, can you imagine the reaction of a typical Anglic villager to my face appearing at the door, inquiring after a misplaced chum?”
I scratched at my jaw, itchy with two day’s stubble. “All right, you had to be circumspect. But you could have phoned—”
“I could have remained hidden in the garret until after dark, then ventured out to reconnoiter, which is precisely what I did,” Dzok said firmly. “I was ready to approach you at Mrs. Rogers’ house, when you slipped away from me. I located you again at the cottage at the edge of the woods, but again you moved too quickly—”
“We spotted you creeping around,” I told him. “I thought it was the Xonijeelian Gestapo getting ready to revise the sentence to something more permanent than exile.”
“Again, I was about to speak to you on the road, when that fellow in the cocked hat interfered. Then you fooled me by taking a train. Had a devil of a time learning where you’d gone. I had to return to Xonijeel, travel to Rome, reshuttle to your so-called B-I Four line, then set about locating you. Fortunately, we maintain a permanent station in Italy, with a number of trusties—”
“More natives, I presume?”
“Quite. I say, old man, you’re developing something of a persecution complex, I’m afraid—”
“That’s easy, when you’re persecuted.”
“Nonsense. Why, you know I’ve always dealt with you as an equal…”
“Sure, some of your best friends are people. But to hell with that. Go on.”
“Umm. Yes. Of course, I had to operate under cover of darkness. Even then, it was far from easy. The Roman police are a suspicious lot. I turned you up at last, waited about outside your flat, then realized what you were about, and hurried to your shop. You know what happened there…” He rubbed his round skull gingerly. “Still tender, you know. Fortunately for me I was well wrapped up—”
“If you’d just said something…” I countered.
“Just as I opened my mouth, you hit me.”
“All right, I’m sorry—sorrier than you know, considering what I went through after that. How the hell did you trail me here?”
He grinned, showing too many even white teeth. “Your apparatus, old boy. Fantastically inefficient. Left a trail across the Web I could have followed on a bicycle.”
“You came to B-I Four ostensibly on a recruitment mission, you said?”
“Yes. I could hardly reveal what I had in mind—and it seemed a likely spot to find some eager volunteers for Anglic Sector duty—”
“I thought you had plenty of trusties you’d raised from cubs.”
“We need a large quota of native recruited personnel for our Special Forces, chaps who know the languages and mores of the Anglic lines. We’re able to offer these lads an exciting career, good pay, retirement. It’s not a bad life, as members of an elite corps—”
“Won’t it look a little strange when you come back without your recruits?”
“Ah, but I have my recruits, dear boy! Twenty picked men, waiting at the depot at Rome B-I Four.”
I took a breath and asked The Question: “So you came to make amends? What kind of amends? Are you offering me a ride home?”
“Look here, Bayard,” Dzok said earnestly. “I’ve looked into the business of Sphogeel’s photogram—the one which clearly indicated that there is no normal A-line at the Web coordinates you mentioned—”
“So you think I’m nuts too?”
He shook his head. “It’s not so simple as that…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My pulse was picking up, getting ready for bad news.
“I checked the records, Bayard. Three weeks ago—at the time you departed your home line in the Hagroon shuttle—your Zero-zero line was there, just as you said. Less than twelve hours later—nothing.”
I gaped at him.
“It can mean only one thing… I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it appears there’s been an unauthorized use of a device known as a discontinuity engine.”
“Go on,” I growled.
“Our own technicians devised the apparatus over a hundred years ago. It was used in a war with a rebellious province…”
I just looked at him, waiting.
“I can hardly play the role of apologist for the actions of the previous generation, Bayard,” Dzok said stiffly. “Suffice it to say that the machine was outlawed by unanimous vote of the High Board of the Authority, and never used again. By us, that is. But now it seems that the Hagroon have stolen the secret—”
“What does a discontinuity engine do?” I demanded. “How could it conceal the existence of an A-line from your instruments?”
“The device,” Dzok said unhappily, “once set up in any A-line, releases the entropic energy of that line in random fashion. A ring of energy travels outward, creating what we’ve termed a probability storm in each A-line as the wave front passes. As for your Zero-zero line—it’s gone, old man, snuffed out of existence. It no longer exists…”
I got to my feet, feeling light-headed, dizzy. Dzok’s voice went on, but I wasn’t listening. I was picturing the Hagroon stringing wire in the deserted garages of the Net Terminal; quietly, methodically preparing to destroy a world…
“Why?” I yelled. “Why? We had no quarrel with them…”
“They discovered your Net capabilities. You were a threat to be eliminated—”
“Wait a minute! You said your bunch invented this discontinuity whatzit. How did the Hagroon get hold of it?”
“That, I don’t know—but I intend to find out.”
“Are you telling me they just put on false whiskers and walked in and lifted it when nobody was looking? That’s a little hard to swallow whole, Dzok. I think it’s a lot easier to believe you boys worked along with the Hagroon, hired them to do your dirty work—”
“If that were the case, why would I be here now?” Dzok demanded.
“I don’t know. Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to help you, Bayard. To do what I can—”
“What would that be—another one-way ticket to some nice dead end where I can set up housekeeping and plant a garden and forget all about what might have been, once, in a world that doesn’t exist anymore because some people with too much hair decided we might be a nuisance and didn’t want to take the chance—” I was advancing on Dzok, with ideas of seeing if his throat was as easy to squeeze as it looked…
Dzok sat where he was, staring at me. “You don’t have to behave like a complete idiot, Bayard, in spite of your race’s unhappy reputation for blind ferocity—besides which, I happened to be stronger than you… “ He took something from the pocket of his trim white jacket, tossed it at my feet. It was my slug gun. I scooped it up.