"No. I think I'll hang around. I'm starting to like this place."
Harry's eyes narrowed. "Don't get any ideas. We're watching you."
I started to reprise my last year's remark about him being an emperor, remembered he hadn't heard it yet, and decided to hold it so it'd have full impact when I slung it at him earlier. "You do that, Harry. See you around."
I left him standing there, looking triumphant, and headed back into Norfolk, looking for a place to spend the night. The next few days might or might not be a foregone conclusion, so I needed to confirm firsthand that I'd done what my clients wanted. The sun set in a gunpowder-and-burning-ship-smoke-filtered blaze of glory as I walked, wondering how well-lighted the streets here were at night.
The answer was not very well, not that it mattered for long. While walking through a particularly dark patch on the street I heard a stealthy sound behind me, followed an instant later by the impact of a stun charge punching into my back. After that, it really got dark.
I awoke with an aching head and a queasy stomach. The reason for the painful head was obvious, and once I pried open my eyes so was the reason for the upset stomach. I lay in the bottom of some kind of small wooden watercraft, bobbing erratically in the choppy waters. Except for the moving water, everything else was silent and still in that curious way things always get between midnight and dawn. My first attempt to move revealed that my hands were bound together at the wrists behind me.
"Good morning, Citizen," a now very familiar voice snarled.
"Hi, Harry."
He knelt in the bottom of the boat, angry face centimeters from mine. "Real good trick you’re going to pull, Citizen. But not good enough. Maybe you stopped us tomorrow, but it won't happen that way."
I took a moment to sort the jump-tangled tenses through my aching brain. Apparently, this Harry had come from an even later jump, after tomorrow's events were decided. "Criminey, Harry. How many jumps can your client afford?"
"Enough," he spat back.
"Well, you should lay off them. They're making you real anti-social."
Instead of getting madder, Harry just smiled. "Talk all you want. Your ace is about to get trumped." With a dramatic flourish he whipped a piece of canvas off an object lying near me, revealing a cylindrical shape that glinted metallically in the moonlight.
A mini-torpedo. Not the things they called torpedoes here-and-now, which were just tethered mines, but a real self-propelled fish as long as my leg and equipped with a high-explosive warhead. Four holes in the top and sides of the back marked the outlets for the pressure-jet impellers. No primitive screw propellers for Harry's guys. Technology that flashy and anachronistic was risky as all get out, not even counting the cost of bringing it on a jump, which meant my opponents were desperate. That was good. Unfortunately, I was tied up in their boat and the ugly little weapon they'd brought Downtime had a very good chance of doing its job, all of which was bad.
"You can't be serious," I suggested. "What kind of Temporal Intervention footprints are you planning on leaving behind here?"
Harry's smile didn't waver. "None that matter. Your ship is sitting at anchor nearby. This jewel will cruise under its keel and blow a hole in the bottom. It won't sail out to fight tomorrow. End of Michael Holmes' little toy, and none of the locals will ever guess what really happened. For that matter, maybe the end of Michael Holmes, period. Like I told you earlier, Mikey, there's a war on, and people get hurt all the time."
"That's not very nice, Harry." A glimmer of an idea came to me, but if I was going to execute it I needed a good bit of distraction. Well, there was Harry leaning over me and my feet were free...
The sole of my foot caught him in the solar plexus. Harry went back and over with a tremendous splash. While his two pals dropped their oars and lunged to get him, I brought my knees up and hands forward until they cleared my feet, then dug frantically in my coat pocket, fumbling with my bound hands to seize and pull out the ancient writing implement I’d lifted off the Pinkerton ferret. I rolled toward the torpedo as my hands surfaced with the pencil, and jammed it as hard as I could into the right-hand impeller hole. It stuck solid halfway in, so I swung my clenched hands viciously, breaking off the protruding portion. By the time Harry, dripping wet and mad as a French Revolutionary circa 1800, saw me again I was lying back in place, smiling apologetically. "How's the water, Citizen?"
His fist came part way back, then lowered slowly. "You'll find out," he whispered. "Only nobody will pull you back in the boat. Understand? But first, I want you awake and aware while your Intervention gets ruined." I lay there as the boat bobbled its way across the water for an interminable period, occupying myself by slowly working at the ropes binding my hands. Based on the period, and the way they felt against my skin, those ropes should be natural fiber, which meant they were a lot stiffer than a synthetic and were also slightly slick. Also rough. It hurt like hell, but one of my hands slowly began to work through its binding. I hadn't quite finished when Harry finally gestured to his friends to stop rowing and pointed gleefully off to the side. "There. You can't miss it. And neither will the torpedo." With the help of both buddies, he hoisted the weapon over the side.
I needed to distract them in order to make sure they didn’t look too closely at the weapon and perhaps see my sabotage. “How’s that torpedo work, Harry? Some sort of homing device?”
Harry shook his head scornfully. “Too unreliable after a jump, Citizen, as you should know. No, it’s a simple straight-runner with an internal gyro to keep it fixed on course.” He leaned over the side of the boat, fumbling with something, then straightened. “There it goes. Say goodbye to your plan, Mikey."
"Goodbye, Harry." Something about my voice must have alerted him, because Harry looked at me with a very worried expression for about five seconds. That's how long it took for the torpedo, unable to hold a straight course with the impeller on one side completely blocked, to circle back around and pass under our boat. There was a muffled whump as the center of the rowboat flew upward and into pieces, followed by a geyser of water. Harry and his pals got tossed in one direction with their end of the boat while I went in another.
The water was cold as Europa and murky with stuff I didn't care to think about. No wonder Harry had been so mad when I dunked him. I lunged up gasping for air, before my period clothing absorbed water like a sponge and dragged me back under. I had time to wonder if my improvised plan hadn’t had a serious flaw, then flexed with all my strength against my bonds. Thanks to a little extra lubrication from the water, the hand I’d been working on jerked free, leaving a significant quantity of skin behind. Stroking to the surface again, I got another breath before my clothes pulled me down once more, then pulled off my coat before fighting my way up a third time. Grabbing a largish piece of rowboat as it drifted by, I rested on the impromptu float, watching as my hand dribbled blood into the frigid water. “Jeannie, did sharks inhabit these waters in this here-and-now?”
Affirmative. I do not have records giving precise hunting areas, however.
“That’s okay. Thanks.” I ripped my shirt off despite the cold, wrapping it around my hand, then started paddling away from the yells and curses of Harry and his pals. I wondered what story they'd tell if a Union picket boat picked them up.
I mostly drifted until daylight, which fortunately wasn't long in coming, wishing this little event had been timed for a much warmer part of the year. Uptime mental training included a lot of ways to activate ancient methods of coping with severe temperatures, but the ability to survive didn’t make the cold any more pleasant. Eventually, a sailboat full of locals out to see the Merrimack aka Virginia in action again came by and picked me up. Wrapped in a blanket and fortified with their bourbon, I watched Ericsson's ship, (which he’d christened the Monitor) screw-propeller, rotating gun turret, forced ventilation and all, steam out to meet the Confederate vessel. The rest of the day was spent contemplating the two ironclads bouncing solid shot off each other, until the M
errimack slunk home, stymied.
#
"So," I finished explaining, "the disappointed locals took me back to Norfolk with them, and I headed for Richmond to get my jump gear and come back Uptime. With the Merrimack nullified, the Union took Norfolk a couple of months later."
“And no one thought it amazing that both North and South decided to produce these ironclads at the exact same time?” my client marveled.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Downtime historians labeled it a remarkable coincidence.” Coincidence explains everything and nothing, which made it convenient for Temporal Interventions like the Wright Brothers’ engine and Ericsson’s ironclad.
"That's wonderful. Is there any chance this torpedo the other T.I.’s used will be found and create temporal problems?"
"No, the bottom there is soft mud, so any pieces left after it exploded sank right out of sight.”
The client shook her head, plainly bewildered. “But now history records this battle of ironclad ships. It couldn’t have before. Why didn’t your changing history change our present as well?”
“Because I didn’t change the present. It’s based on the North winning the American Civil War. Fine. The North won. Some details changed, that’s all.”
“But . . . but . . . someone once said God is in the details!”
“They did? They were wrong. God doesn’t care about details. Neither does the Universe. Ask a quantum physicist. Historians used to care about details, which is why all the inconsistencies in the historical record drove them crazy.”
“I still don’t understand,” the client lamented. “If our present is based on large events which are inevitable, such as the North winning the American Civil War, why do some people try to change those large events?”
I grinned reassuringly. “Because they’re people, because they can try, and because people do things regardless of whether they’re right or smart. As to inevitability, we don’t know that. You hired me, I stopped the other guys.”
“But what if I hadn’t hired you and no one had stopped them? Wouldn’t our present still remain the same if you’re right? Wouldn’t someone else have ensured the North still won?”
“I don’t know. Is that a risk you’d care to take?” The client stared, then nodded and left. I leaned back for a while, remembering people and places long gone to dust, then started reviewing a file on Victorian England. Something told me I might need that information someday.
Author's Note on Working on Borrowed Time
Another story featuring my hero from Small Moments and Circle. Now he has to deal with a big change that could alter history in major ways. That change involves something which did occur in history and left a very big mark at the time. The Tunguska Event in 1908 was a mysterious airburst in an unpopulated region of Siberia. The exact strength of the burst is now estimated at being equivalent to ten to fifteen megatons of TNT, or equal to a nuclear weapon one thousand times as powerful as that which was dropped on Hiroshima. I have often wondered that it struck on practically the only spot on Earth where such an explosion would directly or indirectly cause no loss of human life. What a lucky coincidence, because if it had landed on a city . . . It’s a big job, but fortunately, our hero finds an ally.
Working on Borrowed Time
The Here and Now which I call home has a number of advantages compared to most earlier There and Thens, one of which is air conditioning. I was still wiping sweat from my forehead and contemplating the fairly recent dust of now-ancient Egypt on my sandals when Jeannie interrupted my work. “You have a call from Mr. Farrow.”
I automatically looked up, even though my implanted Assistant couldn’t be seen, and fastened an annoyed glare on the nearest wall. “Tell him I just got home and ask him to call me back in a few hours.”
“He says it’s very urgent.”
I smothered an exasperated reply. Whenever I got together with other Temporal Interventionists we usually ended discussing one of the still-unsolved mysteries of the universe; why we had access to all of human history but always seemed not to have any time to spare. “Okay. Put him on.”
An image of Bill Farrow appeared before me, his usually cheerful face looking worried. I started talking before he could. “Look, I’m sure this is really important, but I just got back from dodging homicidal priests through the City of the Dead so I could stop someone from looting a tomb a few millennia before it was supposed to be looted. In other words, I had a really long night last night a long time ago. Can’t this wait?”
Bill frowned. “You guys always talk funny.”
“T.I.’s, you mean? It comes from living in circles. Can this wait?”
“No.”
I smothered another exasperated expression and tried to look halfway accommodating. “What’s up?”
“Tom, we’ve been friends since college, right?”
“Right.”
“Have I ever remembered stuff that wasn’t true?”
I started to give a flippant reply, then thought better of it. “No.” Not more so than anyone else, that is. But I didn’t want to get into Quantum Memory Effect at the moment.
“Then why . . . ” He looked bewildered now. “I was preparing a lecture for my classes, and went to check some of the information, and, and . . . ”
“Something didn’t match?”
“Not at all! How could I have forgotten London, England was destroyed by an asteroid in 1908 Common Era?”
“It was?”
“Yes!”
“Jeannie, please check Bill’s last statement for accuracy.”
Her voice sounded as calm and confident as always. “Historical data bases all agree that London, England was destroyed in 1908 CE. I am unable to check the accuracy of Mr. Farrow’s alleged forgetfulness.”
“Thanks.” I shook my head. “That’s not what I remember, either, Bill.”
Bill spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “But that’s what happened! Every history I’ve consulted says so. How could we misremember something like that? How could I misremember it? Imperial England is my specialty.”
I rubbed my forehead to fight off the first twinges of a headache. It looked like this conversation would take a while whether I wanted it to or not. “Have you ever heard of Quantum Memory Effect?”
“Uh, no.”
“Human brains work partly on a quantum level. That’s how we accomplish creative work, and it’s why our minds can accept apparent multiple realities simultaneously. You know, like fiction. But it also has an effect when there’s been a temporal intervention that causes changes to ripple up through history. Thanks to QME you remember something being a certain way, and it’s not, even though you’re positive you couldn’t be mistaken. That’s because part of you is still remembering a reality which has been altered, a reality which no longer actually happened. Usually, it’s just something small and insignificant. But if a really big change happens downtime it can cause really big changes uptime.”
Bill didn’t look reassured. “But your assistant -.”
“Jeannie, and every other artificial intelligence, doesn’t work the same way as our brains do. Not yet. They can only accept one reality at a time, even though they can shuffle through alternatives very quickly.”
“You’re saying London wasn’t destroyed in Victorian times?”
“Well, no. I mean, it obviously was. But it apparently wasn’t before. Maybe. Now it was.”
“I don’t understand. You’re talking in circles again.”
Despite everything, I laughed briefly. “Because that’s how I have to think. You can think in linear terms of before and after. But I have to deal with causality loops brought into existence when someone uptime goes downtime and changes something. The cause of the action takes place after the action, you see. It’s a causality loop through time, not a straight line.”
Bill didn’t look reassured, then he looked puzzled. “What does that all mean? Look, what’re we arguing about, anyway?”
“
You wanted me to explain why you didn’t remember London being destroyed.”
“London? You mean the 1908 CE event? Of course I remember that. I wrote my thesis on it.”
I looked away for a moment, startled by the rapid overwhelming of the QME. When I looked back, Bill’s image was gone. “Jeannie, did Mr. Farrow terminate that call or did something else happen?”
“I require further information to answer your question.”
I pointed, unnecessarily, at the spot where the image had been. “Mr. William Farrow. The call he made to me just now. How did it terminate?”
“You were not engaged in a call. Your last call was made seven minutes ago to notify your employers of your successful completion of your mission.”
“I see.” Or, at least, I was afraid I did. “Please put through a call to Mr. Farrow.”
“I have no data for a Mr. Farrow in your personal contact file. Please provide more identifying information.”
I stared at the spot where Bill’s image had been, rubbing my chin this time. He wasn’t there anymore, and he wasn’t in the contact list I maintained for friends. Someone had made an Intervention downtime, something which might’ve made William Farrow disappear completely from existence, like that man who’d famously walked around the horses, or maybe he’d just shifted to a new reality where he and I weren’t friends. I don’t like Interventions that mess with my friends. “Jeannie, how many names are in my personal contact file?”
“Eighty six.”
There should’ve been an even one hundred, a number I’d stuck to so I could keep the file from bloating into uselessness. I was certain of that, even though doubt nagged at me in a way I recognized. “Confirm. Eighty six?”
“No. Eighty five.”
Damn. I’d lost another in that second of time. It’d been a big Intervention, then. Not just ripples causing localized effects that dampened out as they ran up through the inertia of history, but a big wave crashing through time and rearranging what had been. Big wave. Big Intervention. London, 1908.