“As you say, it’s quite the plot,” said Drakov. “I wish I had the time to explain it to you fully. However, I fear that it would prove to be quite beyond your comprehension.”
Rassendyll looked puzzled. Was the man insulting him? “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you,” he said, uncertainly. The tingling sensation had now spread to his chest, and his legs felt numb. “By the way, what are those things?”
Drakov was bent over, connecting the strange-looking strips together in a circular pattern on the floor of the compartment. Though Rassendyll watched closely, he could not make out just how they were connected.
“They’re called border circuits,” Drakov said, finishing his task and straightening. “I’m afraid the term will not mean anything to you, but you should find their operation fascinating, just the same.”
He reached for the case once more, this time opening it so that Rassendyll could see inside it. What he saw baffled him completely. It looked like a device out of one of those fantastic novels by that imaginative Frenchman, Verne. Rassendyll had no idea what it was. It seemed quite complicated, what with controls of some sort, reflective surfaces upon which numerals appeared as if by magic and tiny, winking, glowing lights.
“See here, Drakov, what manner of contraption is that?”
“It’s called a chronoplate.”
“A chronoplate? What does it do?”
“It is a device for traveling through time.”
“For — ” Rassendyll looked astonished, then realized that the man was having him on. He laughed. “Traveling through time, eh? Jolly good! What say we voyage to tomorrow and see what the weather will be like, what? Come now, really, what does it actually-”
Rassendyll’s voice suddenly trailed off and he turned pale.
“Is something wrong?” said Drakov.
“I do believe I’m feeling a bit ill, old chap. Perhaps a little air — ” He attempted to stand, only to discover that he was unable to move from the waist down. “What the devil? I seem to have lost all feeling in my legs!”
“That’s because the poison is taking effect,” said Drakov.
“What did you say?”
“That brandy I poured into your coffee,” Drakov said, making some adjustments inside the case. “It was laced with an interesting concoction that would totally baffle your present-day chemists. By now, the numbness you’ve been feeling should be spreading very rapidly. In another few seconds, you will be completely paralyzed and dead moments after that.”
Rassendyll’s eyes grew very wide. “Dead! You cannot be serious!” He abruptly realized that he could not move his arms. Realization of his situation plunged him into abject terror. “My God! Poisoned! No! No, please, in Heaven’s name, man, help me!”
“I’m afraid that you’re quite beyond help,” said Drakov. “I’m sorry.”
Rassendyll now found it difficult to speak. He wanted to scream, but he could not. The most he could manage was a croaking whisper.
“Why?” he said, forcing the words out. “What have I ever done to you?”
“Nothing,” Drakov said. “There is nothing personal in this, Rudolf. That is the main reason I have made it as physically painless as I knew how. It’s slower this way, but at least it doesn’t hurt. In a way, I’m even doing you a favor. You would have died within another year of tuberculosis — what you call consumption. Not an easy death, by any means, what with fever, chills, internal lesions causing you to cough up blood; this will be far less unpleasant. Soon, you will simply lose consciousness, almost like falling asleep. When your body is discovered, it will appear as though you had suffered a stroke.”
Rassendyll could no longer move at all. He could not speak; he could not feel a thing. Large tears made wet tracks down his cheeks. Drakov wiped them away gently with a silk handkerchief. While he spoke, he reached into Rudolf’s coat and removed his billfold, replacing it with one of his own. Then he systematically searched his other pockets.
“I knew all about your trip,” he said. “In fact, I know all there is to know about you, such as your relationship to Rudolf Elphberg. However, there are always slight historical discrepancies that one cannot account for and I had to engage you in conversation to make certain of a few things. You were very helpful, telling me all I needed to know with almost no prompting on my part. If it’s any consolation to you, you’re dying in a good cause. Your death is something that I find regrettable, but necessary.”
He did something inside the case and the border circuits on the floor began to glow. He shut the case; then, holding the walking stick in one hand and the case in the other, he stepped into the glowing circle.
“I’m afraid that Lord and Lady Burlesdon will believe that you must have had some sort of accident upon your hunting trip,” he said. “The papers you are now carrying identify you as Peter Andersen, the name under which I booked passage. Rudolf Rassendyll will simply disappear, as shall I. I’m sorry that it had to be this way. I truly am. You will be missing the adventure of a lifetime. However, we have someone else in mind to play your part. Goodbye, Rudolf. Better luck in the next life.”
The glowing circle flared and vanished, taking Drakov with it.
2
“Ruritania?” Lucas Priest frowned. “I’ve never even heard of a country called Ruritania. Which time period are we talking about, sir?”
“The late 19th century, Major,” said Forrester. He stood behind the podium in the small briefing room on the sixty-third floor of the TAC-HQ building. Major Lucas Priest, Master Sergeant Finn Delaney and Corporal Andre Cross sat before him in the first row of seats. They were dressed in green transit fatigues, form-fitting and lightweight, with their division pins attached to their collars and their insignia of rank on narrow black armbands.
Though Lucas Priest was the ranking officer on the commando team, Finn Delaney had the most seniority in terms of service. The antiaging drugs gave him a deceptively youthful appearance, despite the fact that he was already a veteran of the Temporal Corps when Lucas Priest was still a boy. He owed his lowly rank, out of all proportion to his length of service, to the fact that he had the worst disciplinary record in the entire corps. His most frequent offenses were insubordination and striking superior officers. Each offense, without exception, had been committed in Plus Time. On the other hand, he also held the record for the most promotions for outstanding performance in the field in Minus Time, with the result that he went up and down in rank like a yo-yo. He had only made officer once, for a very brief period of time. The irrepressible, burly, redheaded lifer was a sharp contrast to the slender, brown-haired Priest, a model officer who had quit his job as a well-paid lab technician and joined the Temporal Army on a whim, only to find his true vocation. He had been assigned to Forrester’s division after several tours of duty in the regular corps, and he had risen in rank steadily and rapidly until he was now Forrester’s second-in-command. Though quite different by nature, the two men complemented each other perfectly and, as frequently occurs with close friends, some of their traits had rubbed off on each other. Finn had learned to control his wild temper at least occasionally and Lucas had developed the ability if not to break regulations, then at least to bend them every now and then.
Biologically, Finn Delaney was the oldest of the three at the age of one hundred and twelve, senior to Lucas by almost fifty years. However, if their ages were to be reckoned chronologically, that distinction would have gone to Andre Cross. Though biologically only in her late twenties, a child by the standards of the 27th century, Andre had been born over a thousand years earlier in the mountainous Basque country of the 12th century. Hers was a case of temporal displacement. She had been taken from her own time and transplanted to the 27th century, an act facilitated by computer implant education and her own unique abilities. Tall, broad-shouldered and unusually muscular for a woman of her time, she felt much more comfortable in the 27th century than she had in 12th-century England, where she had found it necessary to wear her straw-blonde hair like a man’s and conceal her gender so that she could become a mercenary knight and live life on her own terms.