“They want to consult with Marx?” Moosic responded, puzzled.
“We doubt it. The best idea we can come up with is that they want to give the time machine to Marx. We think that they’ve had no better luck than we on what could be changed to make their goals close. So, they have the machine and the means—why not give it to the man whose ideas they profess?”
The security man thought it over. In a way, it made a perverted kind of sense. Particularly if you were a committed radical getting more and more disgusted and disillusioned with the progress of your goals. In all but rhetoric, nationalism had triumphed over ideology long ago. The Russians always sounded like Communists but acted like Russians had always acted, as did the Chinese and others. The true believers had been systematically purged or assassinated, from Trotsky down to Maurice Bishop in Grenada—by the very states and systems they’d established.
The radicals below were no stooges of Russia; they were true believers. Not only their statements but also their intelligence files and psychological profiles proved it.
Ron Moosic sighed. “All right, I’ll buy it. I assume this has already gone to the President and the NSC. What do they say?”
“Our computer models indicate no particular danger. They’re not going to meet the man they imagine, but rather a nineteenth-century philosopher very much a product of his times. Still, there’s a risk. There’s always a risk. Joe Riggs tells me that they’ve bypassed virtually all of the systems at this point. One of his teams has managed to tap into the system and reduce the available power to the time chamber itself. Still, we’ll have a two-hundred-year range to deal with if they really have some other date in mind. If they know this much, they might know how to bypass and go remote on the suits.”
“Bypass?”
“It was built in as a safety factor after we lost that fellow back in the Middle Ages. If you know you’re going, you can boost yourself out of there into one other time frame without severing the automatic connection. It’ll save your ass until the automatics on this end can bring you back. They’ll have a second chance once they’re where they say they want to be, although travel in space will be severely restricted.”
“Then we can’t afford to let them go. Simple as that.”
“Maybe not. We’ve proposed to let them go, all right, but doing a little funny business ourselves. The time-space coordinates change every moment, and they’re continually updated. That update is partially through a satellite link with the Naval Observatory. We have proposed, and they have tentatively agreed to, a little alteration. Instead of getting the atomic clock, they’ll be plugged into one of our computers. Let’s send them back to September 10, 1875— ten days early. The suits will have a low charge, and won’t be able to boost immediately. That’ll give us a week or more to get back there and track them down, as well as work on this end to trace their accomplices. We think it’s worth the risk.”
Moosic thought it over. “But we’ll have to get in there pretty quickly to go after them,” he noted, “and that’s not going to be bloodless. Then we’ll have to have these time suits or whatever they are available for us. I assume they’re going to destroy what they don’t use.”
“That’s where they have us, of course. There are two spares, but they are both down for repairs right now. That leaves the one on the man now downtime, and he’s due back on automatics at six tomorrow morning. That means we have to convince them to go now, then deal with the remaining ones by whatever means we have to use and regardless of costs. Cline knows when that other one comes back, too.”
The security man frowned. “That gives us less than eighteen hours. Why not just cut the power to them when they go back?”
“Because they’d still have those few days of grace to do whatever mischief they wanted before they got absorbed. We must know what they do, where they go, all of it. And even if we cut ’em off, restore power two weeks from now, and send somebody back, I’m told that the newcomer will re-energize their suits anyway. Don’t ask me how—I’m not a physicist.”
Ron Moosic sighed. “And this was supposed to be my first day on the job.”
A MATTER OF PERFECT TIMING
Dr. Aaron Silverberg was anything but pleased. On the one hand, he felt he had the biggest hangover a human could bear; on the other, his baby was in the hands of kidnappers and one of the nannies was telling them what to do.
Still, he led Sandoval, Austin-Venneman, and Cline back to the time chamber and its control center. The center itself was behind massive multiple sheets of lead-impregnated glass. A single operator’s chair was in the center, surrounded by an inverted crescent-shaped control panel with myriad instruments and controls as well as a number of differently colored telephones.
Christine Austin-Venneman, who’d been fairly quiet during much of the takeover but who’d also looked from the start like the kid turned loose in the candy store, looked around. “Wow!” she said in a soft, deep voice. “This looks like the bridge of a spaceship!”
“Or the supervisor of a telephone exchange,” Sandoval responded, less awed. In point of fact, it looked far less exotic than he’d imagined and he felt somewhat let down. “Everything is controlled from here?” This was addressed to Silverberg. Cline, obviously, was there to make sure he didn’t trip anybody up.
Silverberg sighed and tried to keep himself erect. His head was killing him, the aftereffects of the gas. He also felt somewhat frustrated; he could not understand how Karen could be with these people, but they had made talking to her impossible. Still, she avoided his glances.
“Nothing whatever is controlled from here,” the scientist told them. “It is exactly what its name implies—a command center. The director sits here and gives the orders necessary to accomplish the mission. He cannot initiate, only abort. The instruments confirm that all is as it should be, nothing more.”
Sandoval went over and peered through the dark glass. The time chamber itself was quite small, no more than a dozen feet square, and unimpressive. There was an airlock-like door to one side, and then the chamber itself, a barren and featureless box of a room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all made out of a single material and looked cast as a whole. The material itself was smooth and featureless.
Sandoval turned. “Where are the time suits?”
Silverberg sat down in the chair with a groan and held his head. The weapons came up, but he waved them away with a gesture. “I do not care if you shoot or not. I did not have your handy filters stuck up my nose and my head is splitting. Shooting me would be a mercy.”
“I’ll show you,” Cline said, and Sandoval looked over at Austin-Venneman. “Go with her and get them. Bring them here,” he ordered.
Silverberg lay back in the chair and breathed deeply for a few moments. He seemed to feel a little better. “What do you hope to accomplish by all this?” he asked the terrorist. “I mean, no matter what, you have to accept much of what is done here on trust. Karen is the only one who knows anything at all about the proper things to monitor, and she must sleep. I still expect them to blow us all up the moment we begin, anyway—although, I must admit, with this head I am not sure it would not be a mercy to me.”
“We have confidence in the plan. We know we will go back to the right place and time.”
“So confident! Even I am never that confident!” Silverberg’s brows lowered. “Unless—it has already been confirmed?”