Only he hasn't returned and Andre and Gulliver have been' captured. The question is by whom?"
"The obvious answer would be the S.O.G.," said Darkness. "Yeah," Lucas nodded,
"the Special Operations Group might have located another confluence and crossed over undetected, but there's another possibility, as well. It could be the Network,"
"The Network?" Darkness frowned. "What the devil is the Network?"
"Something I've only learned about since my return," said Lucas, grimly. "Andre was telling me about it. You know about the Underground'? Well, the Network is like an Under-ground on the inside of the T.I.A., a secret agency within a secret agency, They're like moles within Temporal Intelligence, only instead of working for some foreign power, they've struck out on their own and set up a sort of black market, transtemporal corporation."
"Enterprising of them," Darkness said. "And entirely predictable. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. "
"If you're finished with the puns, we've got to figure out what the hell to do about it," Lucas said.
"You have any suggestions?" Darkness said,
"Yeah, but it's going to be risky."
"You're talking-to a man who's liable to discorporate at any moment," Darkness said, wryly. "Don't tell me about risk. What's on your mind?"
"I want you to go back to the time Andre and Gulliver got snatched again," said Lucas. "You've got to try and read those warp discs Andre and Gulliver were given, find out where they went. But you've got to make sure nobody notices. We mustn't do anything that could disrupt the scenario. Otherwise there's no telling where they might wind up. Meanwhile, I'm going to check out those co ordinates that Gulliver gave Finn."
"You think that's wise?" said Darkness. "You still haven't fully adapted to your telempathic chronocircuitry. You've been very fortunate so far. You took a hell of a chance translocating all the way back to Earth by yourself. Suppose something had gone wrong? You might have materialised in space and died in seconds."
"What do you want me to do, Doe'! You went and turned me into a human time machine without even bothering to tell me about it. Now you want me to say
'mother, may I?' every time I draw a breath just because you're worried about your precious prototype? Well, screw that. I died back in 1897 with a. 50 calibre ball through my chest, remember? The way I see it, Doe, this isn't life, it's only special effects. We'll rendezvous back here exactly five minutes from now. And if I'm not back by then, you're on your own."
Chapter 8
Finn groaned and opened his eyes. Shafts of painfully bright sunlight streamed down on him through a canopy of tree branches. He squinted against the glare and tried to turn his head. It felt as if someone had given his hair a sharp yank. He tried to raise his head and found he couldn't do that, either. In fact, he couldn't move at all. He had been bed down, immobilised by a large number of thin, crudely braided ropes that were firmly staked to the ground. He could have broken anyone of them with ease, but there were far too many of them. His floater pak had been removed and he had been dragged out of the thicket and turned over on his back, then spread-eagled on the ground in the middle of a small clearing, like a butterfly pinned to a board. He felt something moving across his chest.
Footsteps.
A tiny figure moved across his chest and stood silhouetted against the sunlight, looking down at him. Then two more little figures came up to stand beside the first one. He could not make out their features. All he could see were three shadowy figures, no more than six inches tall, standing on his chest.
Two of them were aiming miniature laser rifles at him.
"Who are you?" one of them said, raising his small voice so that Finn could hear him clearly.
"Who the hell are you?" countered Finn.
The tiny man crouched down on Finn's chest and a second later, Finn yelped with pain. The Lilliputian had taken a fistful of his chest hair and yanked it out.
"You little son of a-"
One of the other Lilliputians whacked him in the chin with the butt of his tiny rifle, then brought it up to his shoulder and aimed right between Finn's eyes.
"Now you just lie very, very still, answer my questions and speak softly," said the first Lilliputian, crouching on one knee on Finn's chest, "or my men will start shaving off pieces of your anatomy with their lasers. You understand?"
Finn grunted.
"I'll take that as a yes," the Lilliputian said.
Finn strained to raise his head a little against the restraining ropes, so that he could see his tiny interrogators better. The little man doing all the talking had long, black, wavy hair that fell down to his shoulders like a lion's mane and was held in place by a cloth headband. He was bearded and shirtless, wearing a black shoulder harness resembling crossed bandoleers. It held a miniature laser pistol on one side and several power magazines in loops on the other. He was dressed in loose camouflage trousers bloused over tiny jungle boots. His small physique was lean and heavily muscled, ripped to the bone. His two companions looked about the same, like jungle commandos who had been out in the bush too long.
"One more time," the Lilliputian said, "who are you? "Capt. Finn Delaney, Temporal Intelligence. You want my serial number, too?'
"That won't be necessary," said the Lilliputian, with a smile. "I believe you.
However, if I stop believing you, my men will start causing you considerable pain.
Now then, Captain Delaney, what are you doing here?”
"I came looking for you, you.-little pipsqueak-Aahhh!"
One of the other Lilliputians had fired his laser, barely grazing Finn's left ear. Finn strained hard against the ropes and the little commandos on his chest danced a jig to keep their balance. Almost immediately, Finn heard a multitude of rapid little tapping sounds on either side of him. With his peripheral vision, he could see other Lilliputians on the ground, using tiny sledgehammers to pound in the stakes he had loosened with his movements. The one who seemed to be the leader let go of Finn's chest hair, which he had seized with both hands to keep his balance when Finn had started to strain against the ropes.
"Please don't do that again, Captain," the Lilliputian said. "I don't really want to kill you, but I will if you leave me no choice."
Delaney couldn't believe it. He was being threatened by a man who was smaller than his shoe size.
"How did you find us?" the Lilliputians said. "How did you locate the confluence?". "Gulliver gave me the position of the island," Finn said.
"Gulliver? Impossible. He didn't know anything about the confluence. "
"Of course, he had no way of knowing about the confluence," said Finn. "He must have simply sailed right through it without realising he was crossing over from one universe into another. He took a sextant reading when he escaped from here. He must have done it the moment he came through the confluence. The thing I can't figure out is which timeline he came from in the first place. I don't suppose you'd happen to know?"
"No, Captain, I wouldn't. And at the moment, I don't really care. My main concern right now is deciding what to do with you. What, precisely, were your orders?"
"'What orders?"
"Come on, don't play stupid. You're an advance scout for an invasion force. How many others were sent out with you? How long before you're overdue?"
"I came here alone."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I don't really give a damn what you believe," Delaney said. "If the Temporal Army was going to invade this island, they'd have been on you like a fox on a duck by now. And if you really believed there was going to be an invasion, you wouldn't still be here. You'd have killed me and gotten the hell out."