The Underground, with its black market chronoplates and warp discs and its complex system of transtemporal contacts, offered a tempting mode of life. In a sense, these people had achieved the ultimate in freedom. All of time was at their beck and call. Hunter had once found himself temporarily separated from his unit, stranded in time, and the temptation to seek out the Underground had been very strong. He had held out and waited until rescue came, but his twin in this universe had succumbed to the temptation and gone over to the Under-ground. Delaney,
Cross and Steiger had said that he was dead now, murdered in 17th century France.
It had been a blow for
Hunter to-learn that, in this timeline, "he" had died
Or at least a version of himself had just as it had been a shock to encounter Finn Delaney and Andre Cross, mirror-image twins of those he had known back in his own timeline.
In Hunter's timeline, Finn and Andre had been killed. In them, he had been the one to die. It was madness.
In both timelines, the boundaries between reality and meta-physics were being blurred. Nothing was certain anymore. How many people in the past were really people from the future? How dependable was history when, at any moment, a person from the future could clock back in time and change it, altering-perhaps irrevocably-the flow of the timestream? And with the confluence phenomenon, how could anyone hope to lead anything even resembling a normal life if they knew that at any given moment, they could slip through a wrinkle in time and wind up in another universe, in another timestream, in an alternate reality?
No, it was better not to think about such things. It was easier to go through life taking the short view and passing the buck, ignoring that Sword of Damocles suspended over your head and hoping it would fall on someone else. Preferably someone you didn't know too well. Like your great, great grandchildren, for instance.
However, Hunter did not have the dubious luxury of self-deception. He was in the same position as his counterparts in this universe; he knew all too well how fragile the continuity of both timelines had become. And the war between them was only making matters worse.
It had come very close to being an all out war, especially after the scientists in Hunter's universe finally figured out where all those devastating nuclear explosions were coming from, but it didn't take long for leaders in both timelines to realise that all-out warfare between them would be equally devastating to both. Quite possibly, no one would survive. So a form of limited temporal warfare was being waged. The military scientists in Hunter's timeline believed the only way to end the confluence effect was to cross over into the congruent universe and create a temporal disruption of sufficient magnitude to bring about a timestream split. The resulting creation of another parallel timeline would then act as a sort of chronophysical "wedge" driven between the two parallel universes, forcing them apart and ending the confluence phenomenon. In theory, it would constitute a temporal buffer zone between them. In theory.
There was, however, another theory that held that a temporal disruption resulting in a timestream split in either timeline would only compound the problem by creating yet a third timeline, another parallel universe in confluence with the previous two.
And such a magnification of the confluence effect could only serve to introduce further temporal disruption into all three timelines, which could then result in even more time stream splits, creating yet a fourth parallel universe in confluence with the other three, and perhaps fifth and sixth and so on, exponentially, in a chronophysical chain reaction that would be impossible to stop. But the proponents of that theory were very much in the minority because such an event, their fellow scientists insisted, would simply be "unthinkable." There was that word again. And in any case, they said, the confluence effect was already introducing temporal disruption into both timelines. Sooner or later, the scientists insisted, something had to give. Far better that it give in their universe than ours.
Hunter no longer knew whom to believe. If he stopped to think about it for very long, he started to get the shakes. Perhaps it was only combat fatigue. Or maybe it was the desperate fear of a rational man confronting his own ephemeral in a totally irrational world. Either way, there didn't seem to be anything that he could do about it. For now, his one imperative was to survive.
It had occurred to him that, purely by accident, he had been placed in a unique situation. Ironically, he was now in a position to become the C.I.S. 's most effective deep cover operative. Even in the event of a penetration of his counter insurgency unit by the T.I.A., nobody could blow his cover because no one knew where he was or how to get in touch with him. They didn't even know that he was still alive.
Not even he knew exactly where he was, relative to historical continuity in this timeline. However, he could learn. It would not be very difficult. All he'd have to do was clock forward a few centuries in time, purchase a microcomputer or even an cybernetic implant, and then buy himself an education-download some history and world affairs. There would be some risk of getting caught if they were expecting him to try something like that, but the risk would be extremely small.
The T.I.A. had no idea where he was, or where he might pop up or when, so the risk was slight and well within acceptable parameters. With his captured warp disc and a detailed knowledge of this timeline's history, he could become a virtually untraceable saboteur. He, might easily bring about a timestream split in this timeline all by himself and, if the scientists back home were right, he'd single-handedly end the confluence effect and be a hero.
Of course, no one back home would ever know he'd done it, because in that event, he would undoubtedly become forever trapped within the timestream split he had created. That was something he had been resigned to from the very start, when he'd become an agent of the C.I.S., yet on the other hand, what if the scientists were wrong? What if the minority view held by the so-called "lunatic fringe" academicians was the correct one? What if the creation of a timestream split served only to compound the crisis, setting off a chain reaction of temporal disruptions on a cataclysmic scale? In the absence of direct orders, Hunter had to rely upon his own initiative. And what if he made the wrong decision?
Still, there were other choices, He could do as his twin in this timeline had done and join the Temporal Underground, assuming he could find a way to get in touch with them. Or perhaps, better still, he could opt out and do it on his own. Did he really need the Underground? Even if he decided to function as a deep cover
C.I.S. saboteur within this timeline, what better way to do it than from within the Underground? But did he really owe that much to the C.I.S., who certainly would not be supporting him in any way and who would undoubtedly have already listed him as killed or missing in action? What about patriotism? Well, what about it?
Would anyone care about his patriotic motivations if the choice he made only served to make the situation worse? And what did the concept of patriotism mean, anyway, when ripples in two congruent timestreams resulted in a confluence effect that rendered even boundaries in time and space irrelevant?
He needed time to think and plan. And in order to do that, he needed money and a place to stay. Once again. it came down to bare essentials. Survival.