The lights came on. Five glistening inhuman creatures stared at him, rifles aimed at his head. In the big stuffed recliner chair sat a man he’d seen before, a blond man with a strong Nordic face, dressed all in black, leaning forward so that he didn’t have to sit back on his time belt.
“Come, come, Sergeant O’Brien—or should I say Mr. Moosic? Surely that is not the kind of expression used to greet old friends.”
UPTIME DOWNBEAT
“Time,” said the blond man, “is very, very difficult to handle. Change one major thing, you wind up with the same mess—or one much worse. Change anything else, and it just grabs hold of you and gets you. Or you find out you’ve shifted something very subtly and wound up causing the nuclear war they narrowly averted. I, by the way, am Eric Benoni.”
He had no intention of moving with all those guns on him. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.”
Eric made a simple hand motion, and the guns went down and the creatures stepped back. “That better? I must say you’re looking very… sympathetic.”
“And you’re looking much the opposite. In fact, you haven’t changed a bit since the last time we met, although that was very, very long ago.”
“Very long—hmmm… We are in one of those cross-temporal problems. It probably was very long to you in relative time, but it seems only a short while ago to me—which it was. One of the hazards of this business.”
“Mind telling me how you found me so quickly and so easily?”
“Oh, it wasn’t difficult to anticipate. Admittedly, it takes a week or so relative time for the sensors to determine an anomaly with their random sweeps, but if one knows that someone else is likely to appear in a given time and place, it’s child’s play to set a permanent scan on it. It was still a bit of luck, but this was the one time and place that both of us knew precisely and which you’d have some likelihood of returning to. Our psychologial profile of you indicated that, if you ever received major injury or reached a critical age point, you would most likely choose this time and place for a trip point.”
Moosic was not pleased at that. “Am I so easy to read?”
“In many ways we all are, Mr. Moosic. Don’t take it so hard. Had you tripped in any other time or place, I might never have found you. Even if you’d shown up here after that, I’d merely know an enemy agent was here, not you. But—come. Let us be off. I’m afraid I’m overstaying my welcome in this period even now, and our power is far more limited than yours. Shall we get your belt now?”
“I don’t think so. It’d lead you right back to the base, which you’ve already caused to jump around. Even if they could escape again, I doubt if I’d be any good in the ten years it’d take them to get the power back on. No, I think you might as well shoot me now and be done with it.”
Eric Benoni’s manner was such that it was impossible to determine through the cool, aristocratic tone if he was serious or sarcastic, but he at least sounded surprised. “I have no intention of shooting you, Mr. Moosic, unless you make it an imperative. I could, however, use rather unpleasant means to make you reclaim that belt and give it to me.”
Moosic returned a sardonic smile. “So why haven’t you? Partly because you’ve overstayed your welcome in this time frame, I’d say, and are in very close danger of getting assimilated here yourself. Those methods take time. And partly because you know, as I do, that this body couldn’t stand very much before it gave put.”
“Brave talk. You’re going noble on me, and that’s unbecoming. However, I will be honest enough to say that you are correct in both assumptions. I can waste no more time here, nor can you stand harsh methods.” He turned to one of the gargoyles. “Strap a belt on him!”
With those guns trained on him, Moosic couldn’t argue with them. He allowed the belt to be strapped to his waist because there was no alternative. “Where are we going? To make me a healthier torture victim?’’ he asked the blond man.
“Well, yes and no. If you think I’m going to take the risk on assimilation just to get you in better shape, you are wrong. Too chancy. Come. Activate!” he commanded. The belt must have been voice actuated, because everything blacked out and he was falling once more.
Ultimately, the world returned, a world of artificial light. It was not any place he’d been to before, but he could guess what it was. There was a delay of sorts on his belt as well, because they were all there just waiting for him to materialize.
He materialized, of course, as the prematurely aged and terminally ill Moosic of the island.
There was no mistaking Benoni’s shock and surprise at seeing him like this. He sighed. “Well, now it’s clear why you required a trip point.”
“Failed again,” Moosic almost taunted him, feeling pretty good about it despite his desperate situation. “This body’s in at least as bad shape as the other one.” He looked around. “Your base in the Safe Zone, I presume?”
Benoni nodded. “Yes. Exactly so. Founded, I might add, only two decades after those first experiences, as soon as they had the capability. The ultimate retreat and escape for the rich and powerful when and if the bombs are launched. The world’s most luxurious, and secure, bomb shelter. Never used for what it was intended, of course, but still here.” He sighed. “So what are we to do with you, Mr. Moosic? I suspect we could easily gain the location of the belt from you, but we could hardly force you to go up, retrieve it, and hand it to us. Either your body or your mind would give, and you are a trained security agent.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps a different tack is warranted.”
“You’re going to be my buddy now, right?”
“I wouldn’t insult you like that. But—consider. Why am I doing this? Money? What use is money to a nightsider? Power? What sort of power am I wielding beyond what I could have by other means?’’
“I assume you’re a soldier doing your duty as you see it.”
He nodded. “Exactly! But unlike you, I have had an advantage. I have been on both sides in this terrible conflict.”
That piqued Ron Moosic’s interest. “Both sides?”
“Indeed. In fact, I lived with the Outworlders for some time before getting directly involved. Have you ever seen the Outworlders, sir?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I have. Many of them. We went too far in our quest to colonize, Moosic. Much too far. They are monsters. I’ve seen creatures with glistening exoskeletons who breathe poisonous gases and glide along in a sea of methane. I’ve seen tentacled things that can take the oxygen out of rocks and transmute granite. The first generation was already lost, as soon as they accepted what they were. The second had no human origins. We are fighting the third.”
Moosic had to admit he was shocked. “Biology went that far that fast?”
“Not so fast. Consider it was but sixty-six years between the first powered flight and the first man on the moon. Consider the genetic manipulations and the medical wonders in your own lifetime, and use the same developmental scale. In the technological era, a decade is revolutionary; a century is radical.”
He had to admit he’d never thought of it that way before, but there was truth to what the blond man said. There was, however, a rather compelling counterargument standing not so far away. “Those creatures of yours—they’re the humanity you want to save?”