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There was enough of Moosic and the Sergeant still in there that she did understand, although the scope of the project was fantastic.

“You see now,” Herb said, “that we’re in a hell of a fix. We’re not cold and immoral beings, sitting back here taking blind orders from a computer which gets its orders from nonhuman things up front. We’re trying to save the human race from extinction, here on Earth as well as what it’s become out there in space. Time’s running out, as crazy as that sounds. There is a level of battle which will cause Earthside to collapse even without the final push, and that’s approaching. Because we work in absolute time when we’re in phase—relative time is a misnomer, meaning that we are related to the edge—a year here for us advances the edge a year as well. Worse, the assassination of Karl Marx accelerated that critical point.”

“So Eric did them far more harm than good,” she commented.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. We think their plan is simple. We think they hope to buy absolute time by tracing us back and knocking this complex out of commission,” Lind told her.

“But—they already tried that, and it failed!”

“They’re not so sure it did,” Lind told her. “The attack was part of the loop that is still being worked out. They have yet to steal one of our belts, which is why, once the attack was known, we preset the homing key to bring anyone back to the old location. It would match with what they know of the geography around the complex, including what they got from you. We escaped for the same reason that we can’t lose up front—we have far more power available to us than they do. It’s more efficient, better managed, and doesn’t need to be diverted to defense.”

“The trouble is,” Herb added, “we still have years to work on the project. The number of weapons is just plain enormous, and we must make certain we neutralize as many as possible, in all the countries that had and made them. And, even with all the power we have, we are about at the maximum number of people for unrestricted and pinpoint time travel, particularly with the gear we must occasionally move. We need the time, but we have less than we need under optimum requirements. At least we need that much, to do what we can.”

She was more practical than that. “What’s this have to do with me?”

“First, we must undo the loop that made you. Karl Marx must not die in Trier. Ideally, however, Neumann must still escape to erase any chance of things going wrong. That will be tricky. To create Neumann, Alfie must be rescued. Loops are best undone in the reverse order that they were done, and very carefully. We want to create no more loops and ripples.”

“Why not just prevent the killing of Marx in London, then?” she wanted to know. “I mean, that’s a ripple.”

“But it’s a ripple in our favor,” Lind told her. “It has no major effects, but as a martyrdom it makes Earthside’s job of changing the past as Moosic knew it even harder. You’ll have to trust us on that one, but that’s why Eric and the rest had to go back to Trier. Their ripple had worked against them, so they had to undo it and tilt the scale the other way.”

She sighed. “I never really understood it all before, and I’m having more trouble now.”

“Time is a complex science. We still don’t completely understand all of the things that pop up from dealing with and changing it,” Doc said sympathetically. “Just when even we think we have it cold, some wild card comes up and smacks us in the face, telling us that we aren’t so smart after all.”

She shook her head in confusion. She really didn’t want to hear anything more, except what it all had to do with her and the kids—now. “So? You’re telling me I’m no longer welcome? That we’re in the way?”

“In a sense,” Herb replied, “but don’t take that unkindly. You are one of the innocents who always gets caught up in somebody else’s war. We need you, of course, to help undo the loops and reconcile the facts. We expect Trier to be holy hell, because they’ll expect it and have some unknown defenses set up for us. Worse, only four of us are able to make the trip at all, for reasons you probably understand.”

That much she did. The rest probably would wind up in far corners of the world, or be instantly assimilated. “Go on.”

“If Trier is successfully reversed, then you must go and free Alfie. That is as much for your sake as anything, but it helps the symmetry, or so the computer says.”

She sighed. “And once all that is done? What then?”

“Then,” said Lind, “we will attempt to prevent the very attack that got you into this. In the process, if we are lucky and it all works just right, we have a chance of trapping Eric Benoni.”

That was the one prospect she found attractive in it all, but she had a nervous thought. “But—if it’s prevented, then what happens to me? None of this will have happened. You once told me I’d be a little nothing if it all didn’t work out, Doc. Were you lying to me?”

“No,” she responded, “not really. If the loop had been broken instead of reconciled, yes. But we are putting things back, more or less, the way they were. If the loop is completed, then it happened. There’s just no sign of memory, except ours, to say it did. You will exist because it did happen. And so will the kids.”

She didn’t know quite what to believe, or whom. She’d been used and lied to so damned often it was hard to believe anything. She was, however, always practical. There was really nothing she could do about it anyway, and they were calling the shots. “And after that? What happens to me and the kids?”

The three squad members exchanged glances. Finally, Doc spoke. “It’s for the sake of the children I’m pressing this now, Dawn. You see, Ginny is pregnant—by Joseph.”

Even though she’d feared such a thing, the news shocked and stunned her.

“It’s no good, Dawn, don’t you see?” Doc continued, feeling awful as she said what she had to say. “This is no place and no life for them. Any of them.”

Dawn’s gut reaction was frustration that her fake eyes, so realistic in all other respects, could not cry. “But where will they go?”

“Uptime,” Doc told her. “It’s the only way for them to gain the knowledge, the culture, everything that they’ll need. They’re virgins to time travel, really, so it will be fairly easy to establish them as important people, maybe educated people, not the kind of random jumpers like you became.”

“It’s a matter of figuring out in advance the spot time will most conveniently put you, and putting you there at exactly the right spot in space and time,” Herb explained.

“And leave them there, with no chance to make a mark?” She was almost hysterical at the idea.

“No!” Doc responded firmly. “Not unless they choose it. Once they have enough lives, enough experience, to make intelligent choices for themselves, they can choose any one of the ones they’ve been to live as or they can go all the way forward to the leading edge as only edge and nightside people can. Considering the circumstances, there is no other choice.”

“Just drop us back at the island! Just go away and leave us alone! You said they were adapted!”

“But you aren’t,” Doc reminded her. “And what kind of a life would that be? You said yourself that in assimilation they’d have no chance to make a mark, and that’s true. But what kind of a life would you condemn them to? You’re in no condition to go back, to give them any guidance. They’d become incestuous primitives, children with no future. If we did what you say, it would be better, in my opinion, if they had never lived at all!”

There. It was said, and it was hard, but there it was.