And I had to assume I was just experiencing the front of that wave. As a T.I., I’d developed some extra resistance to changes working their way through time. No one knows for sure why that is, but even with that resistance if I was still here when the crest hit . . . maybe I’d change enough not to remember what had been, either. I didn’t know what that new reality would be like, but I had a feeling anyone willing to destroy a city to bring it about wasn’t interested in building a better tomorrow in any way I’d approve of.
“Jeannie, I need to do a jump.”
“Your credit reflects payment for your Intervention in Egypt.”
For what that was worth. Museums hated losing objects from their collections but couldn’t budget much to get them back, especially since they often couldn’t prove they’d ever had them. Also unfortunately, T.I.’s are prohibited from soliciting work, even in what I assumed was a good cause. “Will my current credit line cover a jump downtime to 1908 CE?”
“Yes. It will be close to maximized, however. I am required to counsel against making a jump on borrowed funds with no specific client.”
“Thank you. Counsel noted.” I glanced around the room, noticing a blank space where I was sure a picture ought to be. A picture of what? The memory was already blurring. “When exactly was London destroyed? And what does history say did it?”
“Old London was destroyed just before dawn on 30 June, 1908 CE by an atmospheric explosion attributed to a meteor impact with the Earth.”
A meteor? There must be another explanation, even though I now had memories of a New London crowding into my head. I waited a very long second while Jeannie set up the jump.
“The period immediately prior to the destruction is inaccessible,” she reported.
“Inaccessible? How can it be inaccessible?”
“I cannot determine the reason. I can jump you in four months prior.”
Too long. “That’s the closest you can get?”
Another long second passed. “I can access 28 June, 1908. There’s a very narrow window available.”
I needed to change out of my outfit and get into clothes at least halfway appropriate for the period. “How long can you hold that window?”
“I do not know. It appeared on my third access scan and may disappear just as quickly.”
“Then let’s go. Right now.” A moment later, I dodged into an alley while the locals were still trying to figure out if they’d really seen a man dressed like an ancient Egyptian court functionary standing in the middle of a street in very early twentieth century London.
“Jeannie, I’d appreciate suggestions on how to get Here and Now clothing.”
“You should acquire such clothing prior to a jump.”
“You’re supposed to tell me things I don’t already know.” I spent a moment becoming aware of my surroundings. Something scuttled through a pile of trash not far from me. The tang of horse manure and assorted less pleasant scents filled the air. Downtime cities stink. Downtime people usually do, too. I coughed, glancing up at the soot-laden sky. “They burn coal for heat Here and Now, don’t they?”
“Yes. I can describe the effects of the coal burning residues on health if you desire.”
“No, thanks.”
The sky seemed darker than it should be, though, even through the smog. I got a glance of a sunbeam spearing through the sky and realized the sun was setting. Jeannie’s narrow window must have been late in the day, leaving me that much less time to discover what had destroyed London and whether I could stop it.
I studied the nearest pile of trash, kicked it a few times, waited for various unseen somethings to scurry out of it, then reached down and pulled out a broken wooden chair leg about the length of my forearm. Then I waited for the sky to get darker.
As I’d expected, the street lighting of the period wasn’t up to the task. It never is. I reached out through the gloom, grabbed a passing stranger who seemed about my size, yanked him into the alley, then menaced him with my club. A few minutes later, my victim was trussed up in strips torn from my Egyptian get-up, and I was wearing somewhat ill-fitting but appropriate clothing and striding rapidly down the street. As rapidly, that is, as my Here and Now footwear permitted. My feet, accustomed most recently to sandals, sent out pain messages with almost every step in the heavy, stiff shoes I’d appropriated. Just my luck that in this Here and Now feet were supposed to accommodate themselves to shoes rather than the other way around.
When I’d put a good deal of distance between me and my mugging victim, I found a bench and sat down to think. I was here. The day after tomorrow, something really bad was going to happen to London. I needed a lead. Fortunately, whoever was carrying out this Intervention had to have left footprints of some kind. All I had to do was spot those footprints within less than two days in a very large and primitive city. I watched the foot and vehicle traffic going by, coughed some more, and wished I had more time to work with and more ideas.
A boy’s voice was yelling out something. I looked that way, and saw he was selling newspapers. I slapped my forehead, drawing an alarmed look from a passerby. Maybe it was some lingering effect of the Intervention wave, but I’d failed to immediately focus on the obvious and best search method.
My new clothes proved to have some coins in one pocket, with which I purchased copies of every newspaper I could find being sold. Then I returned to the bench, opened the first newspaper to its personal advertisements, and started reading. Hours later, the street lights were turned down and passing police officers began giving me long looks, so I found a hotel cheap enough to pay for with my ill-gotten gains but not cheap enough to run too high a risk of picking up parasites. Soon after that I fell asleep despite my best intentions, waking only after the sun was well up the next morning.
As a result, it was mid-morning before I finally found what I was looking for. A personal ad. Mister Meyer Kampf wishes to inquire as to the whereabouts of Miss Leni Riefenstahl with whom he attended the Triumph of the Will lectures in Nuremberg. Anyone with information on Miss Riefenstahl please contact Mister Kampf at . . . The combination of names teased at my memory. “Jeannie, I need a fact check. Leni Riefenstahl. Triumph of the Will. Nuremberg. Identify any connections.”
“Leni Riefenstahl was the producer of a primitive video depiction of Nazi political rallies in the German city of Nuremberg. It was entitled Triumph of the Will.”
“Primitive? When was it made?”
“1934 CE.”
“Great.” The most common method of making contact, or just advertising your presence in a downtime Here and Now, was to literally place a personal advertisement containing anachronistic references. No one from downtime would realize the anachronism, but to someone from uptime it would stand out like a sore thumb. As a result, Temporal Interventionists were masters of historical trivia. Occasionally the anachronistic contact data got into permanent, widely distributed form, like when Swift got his hands on an accurate description of the moons of Mars and put it in Gulliver’s Travels quite a while before the moons were actually discovered. That particular blunder wasn’t my fault, though.
In this case, the ad confirmed that someone from uptime was operating in London. Moreover, I knew Germany and England had been at each other’s throats twice in the next few decades, so anyone citing Nazi trivia probably didn’t have London’s best interests in heart and might well be involved in the upcoming disaster. If they weren’t involved, they should be a potential ally for me. “Jeannie, how far away is this address from here?”
“About three kilometers.”
“Then let’s take a walk.”
Jeannie’s database is a wonderful thing. I don’t know what I’d do without her maps. She provided directions to “Kampf’s” address, and I set off, trying to walk in the same fashion as those men around me dressed like I now was. Not too arrogant but not very servile. I’d apparently mugged a solid member of the Here and Now middle class.
The weather wasn’t bad, though
the sun shone a bit weakly through the haze of coal dust, smoke and other unhealthy substances suspended in the air. And the people didn’t smell too bad for downtimers, all in all considered. I enjoyed the walk for a while. Then my feet started to hurt again in the heavy, ill-fitting downtime footwear and I started coughing again and my stomach wondered what had happened to last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast.
“How much further, Jeannie?”
“About one-half kilometer straight ahead.”
I looked in that direction, and saw something that didn’t belong. A woman, not mincing along in confining clothing but striding along rapidly wearing something slightly loose and functional. Her bright blond hair glowed like a beacon because she wasn’t wearing a hat. That fashion error alone would’ve made her stand out on that downtime street, even if she wasn’t shoving through the crowds like a lioness ignoring a herd of hyenas. People on the street were stopping to stare, either at her clothes, her behavior or at her strikingly beautiful face. Beautiful, but also disturbing. Even from a distance there was something about her which somehow made me think of my one look at Caligula. Then those eyes rested on me, her face instantly lit with fury, and one hand swung upward holding something which looked disturbingly like a weapon.
I’m no hero, which has probably kept me alive in Here and Nows where heroes wouldn’t last long. My mind was still registering what my eyes had seen when my legs propelled me sideways into the doorway of the shop I was passing. The impact of my shoulder against the door was muffled by the crash of a weapon discharging, then a chunk of the door frame blew apart. I scrambled the rest of the way inside and ran for the back of the shop as more shots ripped up parts of the structure and the merchandize. The gape-mouthed storekeeper hadn’t had time to yell as I rushed past and hit the rear exit, finding myself in another noxious alley.
“We are being pursued,” Jeannie announced as I dashed past mounds of refuse.
“I’d noticed. Did you recognize her?”
“No.”
Not likely someone I’d ever met, then. A cross-alley entrance loomed and I swung around into it as another shot ripped through the space where I’d been and exploded downrange. Whoever psycho-blond was and wherever she came from, she wasn’t worried at all about blowing her temporal cover, and she really wanted me dead.
The cross-alley was short, coming out on another street. As I slid out into the thoroughfare, barely missing a horse-drawn cab making its way through the crowds, I remembered my old Temporal Survival instructor’s advice. Do the unexpected. In this case, the expected would be for me to run down a street filled with other people who were walking.
I cupped my hands and yelled as loud as I could. “They’re on to you! Run for your life!”
At least half a dozen men and one woman began running as people stared at them. I yelled again. “For God’s sake, run!”
Most of the crowd did what crowds usually do. They panicked. In a moment, the street was full of people pushing and stampeding in all directions. I ignored them, heading instead for the nearby cab.
The cabby fought his wild-eyed horse to a standstill and began shoving his cab forward through the mess. I yanked open the door, hopped inside and smiled at the two women staring back at me. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
The older woman eyed me warily. “Yes. You are . . . ?”
I dredged up a period name from memory. “Alfie. You remember me.”
Barely visible through the edge of one of the cab’s windows, my pursuer came out of the alley like death incarnate, her hand weapon jerking back and forth as she scanned the crowd. I tried to keep smiling at the two women despite the sweat I could feel forming on my skin, desperately hoping they wouldn’t scream and draw psycho-blond’s attention.
“Alfie?” The younger one suddenly smiled. “Oh, yes. Ascot!”
“Yes! Ascot!”
“How did that work out, Alfie?”
“Uh . . . fine.”
“Fancy you being here.” More shots boomed down the street. I couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to be going away from me and the cab. “What do you suppose is happening out there?”
The older woman gave her a stern glance. “Don’t look. It’s not our affair. But if this gentleman would be so kind?”
I kept my smile fixed in place even though my cheeks were beginning to ache. “Of course.” I cautiously looked out. Amid the Victorian hats streaming away from us, a head of blond hair was visible fighting its way along. Then the cab turned a corner and cut off the view. I started breathing again.
“What is it?”
“I couldn’t tell. Odd, eh? Nice seeing you again.” I was out of the cab and back on the street before they could say anything else. One street away, the panic I’d started was already being swallowed into the inertia of the city. The entire incident, crazed blond shooter included, might merit a couple of sentences in the next day’s papers. “Jeannie, how far are we now from Kampf’s place?”
“Two hundred meters.”
I found the street and the address, a four-storied rooming house of some sort. Kampf’s room was on the third floor, so I headed up the narrow stairs.
The man who answered my knock peered suspiciously at me. “Yes?”
“Mr. Kampf?”
“Yes?”
“I know something about Miss Riefenstahl.”
“Then you know when I met her.”
“That was in 1934, right?”
His eyebrows rose, then he squinted at me. “I’m not expecting you.”
“Something came up. Please. We don’t want anything to go wrong.”
Kampf pulled me partway into his room. “Why? What’s happened?”
It’d worked once. “They know. They’re on to you.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are my orders?”
“Abort.”
“Abort!” He shrilled the word, his face disbelieving. “No. Impossible. They’d never order an abort at this point. Who are you?”
I had one hand on Kampf’s coat to keep him from pulling away. “The orders are to abort.”
Kampf barred his teeth at me. “I need verification. I won’t abort without verification, even if you threaten to kill me.”
I tried to look menacing, which was the best I could do. My old survival instructor had drilled into me that you should never carry a gun. It made you too confident, too careless, so you missed warning signs. It also meant I didn’t have anything to shove in Kampf’s face.
But old Professor Matson had been right. There was a tiny sound to my left, just the barest rustle of fabric which I only noticed because my senses were hyped-up with fear. I dropped to the floor while Kampf spun about partway. His coat came off in my hand at the same moment his chest exploded. The door swung wider and I got a glimpse of a newly familiar face. Psycho-blond had her gun out and was staring at what was left of Kampf with an expression that went from horrified to enraged. Then her eyes locked on me without any hint of recognition but a very Caligula-like promise of death.
I didn’t waste time trying to get up, but rolled out of the doorway and right down the stairs, banging myself up painfully. Moments later I was once again running frantically through alleys and streets to lose my pursuer.
An hour and considerable distance later, I chose a small garden and finally sat down to catch my breath. In one hand I still held the late Mr. Kampf’s coat. But at least I appeared to be safe for the moment from psycho-blond.
The late Mr. Kampf’s coat didn’t match my own outfit, so I had to get rid of it as soon as possible. I went carefully through the pockets, then felt along all the seams, examined the buttons, then carefully pressed my hands along every square centimeter of fabric. Finished, I examined the meager results. A few more coins to add to my small supply of local money. A handkerchief which seemed to have no other hidden use. A big key with a number embossed on it which matched that of the room Kampf had been using. And a cancell
ed train ticket to Greenwich.
I pocketed the money, returned the key and handkerchief to the coat, then took a long look at the ticket. It was apparently no more nor less than what it appeared to be. Why had Kampf gone to Greenwich? The Royal Observatory was there, so maybe he’d snuck a peak at the rock which was scheduled to arrive in less than twenty-four hours. No, that was ridiculous. The rock was probably too small to be seen by the optics available Here and Now, even if Kampf knew the exact place to look.
I had a lot of questions for Mr. Kampf, but he wouldn’t be answering any of them for me. My stomach took that moment to once again protest. It was past noon, and the last time I’d eaten was in ancient Egypt.
Jeannie directed me to a pub with an outdoor dining area, as I wanted to be able to keep an eye out for dangerous blonds coming my way. The early twentieth century English food wasn’t very tasty, but then I didn’t expect it to be and it did a decent job of filling me up. The English beer, though, was a positive joy. I ordered a second pint after polishing off my meal, then leaned back to ponder my next move.
Something hard pushed against the base of my neck as a female voice whispered “don’t move.” I sat as still as I could, wondering why psycho-blond wasn’t shooting me right off the bat. Perhaps this run-in with me was coming for her before either of her earlier meetings with me. The pressure eased and I heard someone moving around to my left.
The woman who came into view didn’t look familiar, and she was dressed like a Victorian. But her movements betrayed the casual grace of someone trained in gymnastics or martial arts, and didn’t appear hindered by the horribly confining undergarments required of women Here and Now. Not a local, I was a certain. She sat down opposite me and gave me a long, searching look before speaking. “Who are you?”
I put my best confused and innocent look on my face. “I’m from out of town -.”
“That’s obvious, since you have an implanted jump mechanism.”
Definitely not one of the locals. “Do you mind telling me who you are, first?”
“Yes, I do. Obviously I’m not someone you were expecting to see.”