“Yes. I hoped she wouldn’t be able to resist going first for the easy targets and sure kills. It seemed to match what I knew of her.”
“The more I learn about her the more I can’t wait to meet this woman.”
“I can wait. She’s really dangerous, Pam.”
“So am I when I want to be.” Pam held her weapon ready as she eased inside. No shots went off, so I followed. We crept through the dimly lit rooms, heading for stairs leading up.
It was night, this was an observatory, but there seemed to be a disturbing lack of astronomers. Then we spotted the first body.
Pam covered me while I crouched down to check. “He’s not dead.”
“He’s not?” Pam seemed to be as surprised as I was.
“No. It seems like some sort of heavy sedation. I don’t see any signs of a struggle, though.”
Pam nodded. “An area incapacitating weapon. Gas, or maybe a short-ranged neural suppressor. Something to get these people out of the way for a few hours without raising any alarm outside or creating too many risks for that blond to be able to operate here right afterwards.”
That made sense, though I could imagine psycho-blond had been disappointed at not being able to engage in mass murder. “I guess once she spotted us she stopped worrying about keeping things quiet.”
We reached the stairs and stopped. Pam waved me forward again while she kept her weapon at ready. I knelt near the stairs, wondering if Pam’s reflexes were faster than psycho-blond’s. “Jeannie, can you detect anything here?”
“There is a sensor of some sort placed nearby. It appears to be focused on the first few stairs.”
I informed Pam, who nodded. “My assistant says she can jam the sensor for about four seconds. Do you think you can cover those stairs that fast without making a lot of noise?”
“I can try.”
We both made it without setting off the alarm, then we crept upward as silently as possible. We made our way past some more sleeping astronomers, assistants and others who’d been unfortunate enough to be in the observatory tonight.
The door into the big domed area holding the telescope was closed and locked. I pantomimed slapping my head in exasperation and Pam grinned tensely. Then she brought out a small gadget and rested it against the lock. After a moment I heard a very faint click. Pam winced at the tiny noise, then pocketed the device. She held her weapon up, gesturing me to the right. I nodded.
Pam’s hand on the door knob moved smoothly and quickly, then she was pushing the door open and dodging inside and to the left. I was right behind her, catching only a quick impression of the big telescope and the Victorian-vintage architecture around it as I searched for danger.
And there she was, her blond hair standing out like a beacon in the dim light. The barrel of her gun was already swinging my way. A big piece of girder nearby rang with the impact of a shot aimed at me as I dove for cover. Pam hit the deck, too, as psycho-blond snapped a second shot her way. I couldn’t see Pam where she’d dropped, and hoped she hadn’t been hit.
This was bad. Very bad. Even if Pam was still in good shape the best we could do was to try rushing psycho-blond and hope she only dropped one of us before the other one reached her. Given what I’d seen of psycho-blond’s aim and reflexes, I wasn’t at all sure even one of us would make it. “Jeannie, can you contact Pam’s Assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Is Pam okay?”
“Pam is uninjured except for a bruise developing on her -.”
“Does she have any ideas?”
There was a brief pause before Jeannie answered this time. “She wants you to distract your opponent for a few seconds.”
"Does she have any helpful suggestions for how I should do that?"
Another pause as Jeannie relayed the question and response. “She suggests you give your opponent something to shoot at.”
“Great suggestion.” I didn't have any personal appendages to spare, nor did I see any lifelike mannequins lying nearby. I had one tranquilizer crystal shooter imbedded in my right forefinger, but that was a point-blank weapon with little accuracy beyond a meter or so. Even if I fired my single crystal, it’d only distract psycho-blond for a second. I shifted position slightly, wincing as psycho-blond snapped off a shot toward the sound I made and then wincing again as a new blister rubbed against the heavy, uncomfortable shoe on my left foot.
Maybe I did have some more weapons handy. I reached back cautiously, working both shoes loose, then braced myself, one shoe in each hand. “Jeannie, tell Pam I’m preparing the diversion.”
“She is awaiting your action.”
“Pass her this countdown. Three, two, one, now!”
I rose up at a slight angle to hopefully complicate psycho-blond’s aim and hurled one shoe without bothering to aim. The big object flying her way must have worried her (for all she knew it contained a grenade) because she caught it with a direct hit that blew leather in all directions. The second shoe, better aimed, met a similar fate well short of psycho-blond, then I started to bring my forefinger to bear, realizing as I did so that she was going to be able to hit me with a third shot before I could duck back down.
Fortunately, Pam was better armed than I and also a good shot. Psycho-blond’s wrist snapped back at an odd angle and her weapon flew away as Pam’s shot hit. I jumped up to run forward as Pam pumped out a couple of more shots, but psycho-blond evaded both by a stunning display of speed as she leaped at Pam. Pam’s gun also flew away as the two women grappled. Despite psycho-blond’s bleeding and apparently broken wrist, Pam barely held her own while I watched for an opening.
Pam finally got in a good slam at psycho-blond’s wrist, generating pain even the Aryan berserker couldn’t shake off. In the momentary lull I shoved my finger against psycho-blond’s back and fired the tranq crystal into her.
After that it was only a matter of keeping her from killing Pam and I until the tranq knocked her out. That was easier said than done, but eventually we found ourselves looking down at our unconscious foe, breathing heavily and trying to ignore all the places where we’d been battered. “Based on how she killed all those soldiers,” Pam gasped, “I guessed she’d be so focused on killing you that she’d ignore me for long enough.”
“You don’t know how glad I am that you were right,” I wheezed back.
“Why don’t you carry a more effective tranq weapon?”
“It’s effective enough to drop a mammoth within seconds!”
Pam shook her head, looking down at the blond. “But it took a few minutes to take her down. I wonder what her genetic profile looks like.”
“I don’t want to know.” Nazis and genetic engineering wasn’t a scenario I liked contemplating.
“We need rope in case she comes to.”
“Rope, hell. There’s some chain back where I was hiding.”
The chain wouldn’t have sufficed to hold a battleship at anchor, but we wrapped it around psycho-blond as many times as we could, interweaving the wraps so she wouldn’t be able to just shrug it off.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to find the device psycho-blond had been guarding. Outside, it looked like a small Here and Now trunk. But the energy it was giving off led our assistants to it easily. We checked for booby-traps, then cautiously opened the lid and saw a control panel far too sophisticated to be local work. “Jeannie, what is this thing?”
“The device before you is transmitting a continuous encrypted signal.”
“Can you break the encryption?”
“No. Not with available resources.”
I turned to Pam. “My assistant can’t break the signal.”
Pam nodded and smiled. “Mine can.”
So Pam’s Assistant was more capable than mine. I hadn’t really had time to think about When she was from, but it was now apparent she lived uptime from me. Not too far uptime, I hoped. “Should we shut it off?” I asked.
“No. If we just did that, the asteroid would probably continue on its
last heading and still cause a lot of damage even it didn’t hit the city. My Assistant thinks she can alter the homing signal parameters, though, and . . . ah! She’s found the atmospheric entry command sequence.”
“Has it activated?”
“Not yet.”
“If we can cancel the maneuver -.”
“No! The rock will still reenter and we’ll have no idea where it’d impact.” Pam stared at me. “Trust me.”
“But -. Okay.” It sounded like Pam was going to try to make the object enter earlier than planned. It’d come from the east, Pam had told me, so that meant the new trajectory would bring it down somewhere east of England. What was east of London in 1908? Europe. Heavily populated even then. Then Russia. Or the Russian Empire, rather, in 1908 CE.
Pam seemed to be sweating as her assistant worked silently to alter the space object’s destination. Jeannie and I waited. I watched Pam’s face for any sign of how her attempt to alter the asteroid’s path was working, but couldn’t see any clues there. I found myself looking outward, wondering if I’d see the incandescent path of the space object heading for London.
A light blinked off on the device. Then another. Pam drew a long, deep breath. “It’s coming down early.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in a region called Siberia.” She shot me an aggrieved look even though I hadn’t said anything. “I couldn’t stop it and I can’t achieve a precise target area without a homing device like this there, so I aimed it for emptiest place I could. Siberia seems the best chance we have to minimize the death and destruction this intervention will cause.”
I nodded, realized it’d been a while since I’d breathed, and inhaled deeply. “Siberia is one of the least populated regions on Earth right Now.”
“Yes.” Pam sagged with reaction as the tension fell out of her. “When we get back to our own Here and Now’s, there’ll no doubt be mention of a big explosion in Siberia on,” she paused to check the date, “30 June, 1908 CE. Hopefully in the middle of nowhere.”
I grinned. “I wonder to what they’ll attribute the good fortune of it hitting in the middle of nowhere?”
“The usual, I’m sure. Accident or chance or luck. The standard way of explaining something when they don’t really know the answer.”
“If they didn’t explain things away like that, your and my jobs would be a lot harder.”
“True.” We heard a strangled sound, and both looked toward where we’d left psycho-blond. The killer was snarling soundlessly at us, having recovered from the tranq with amazing speed. “What should we do with her?” Pam wondered.
“If they don’t manage another counter-intervention, she should loop out any time now when the future that created her ceases to exist.”
“Yeah, but how long will that take?” Metal clanked on the heels of Pam’s question, and as we watched the loops of chain which had been wrapped about psycho-blond collapsed into the vacant space she’d once occupied. “I think the fat lady just sang. How’s it feel to know you’ve saved London?”
“Right now it still hurts. Too bad the bruises that woman inflicted didn’t vanish along with her.” I stared at the pile of chain. “I wonder what kind of person she’ll be with a different history? Maybe not too bad.”
“Are you planning on looking her up?”
“No way. I think I’m going to be a little wary of blonds for a while.” I suddenly noticed shouting outside. “I think all the gunplay has attracted too much attention.” I went to what must have been the same point where psycho-blond had been firing from and looked downward. People who’d had cause to be about in the very early hours of the morning were gathering around the bodies of the dead soldiers, examining them and speaking in indistinct but clearly excited voices. “We’d better get out of here.”
“Not without this.” Pam indicated the now-silent device. Unlike psycho-blond, it’d been put here by a history that still existed. “I hope it’s not too heavy.” She tried to raise it, then grinned with relief as it came up easily. “Not bad at all. I can handle it alone. Let’s go before anyone realizes the shots came from here.”
“Wait.” I checked to make sure psycho-blond’s weapon had vanished along with her. Sometimes the strangest things get left behind even after the reason for their existing had looped out. But that’s another story. “Where’s your gun?”
Pam smiled. “Already on me. But thanks for thinking of that. Now let’s go.”
Pam and I ran again, this time out of the observatory. Once at the door, we slackened our pace to a walk, moving nonchalantly away from the growing crowd around the remains of His Majesty’s brave military men. I felt sick again, even though I knew that because of historical circumstances their deaths Here and Now wouldn’t even be a drop in the tides of history. Odds were that all of those soldiers would have died anyway within a few years, between 1914 and 1918.
Or during the influenza epidemic that started in 1918. But that’s also another story and not one I like remembering. Then my shoeless foot hit a stone and another pain occupied my attention.
We soon entered a built-up area where the streets meandered past still-closed shops and pubs. I wondered what the local time was, thinking it must be getting close to dawn. Pam finally paused and set down the trunk. “It’s high time we jumped out of here. The local cops are going to be looking for anyone who might know anything about those dead men. And as long as this homing device is still Here and Now there’s a chance someone might try to retrieve it. Do you want it?”
I had Jeannie calculate the cost of jumping that extra mass uptime and winced. “Not unless you don’t want it.”
“Okay. I think I know some people who’ll give me a few bucks for it.” She smiled and offered her hand. “Nice working with you.”
“Likewise.” We shook hands, then I gathered my courage. “Pam, what would you think about getting together on a non-business basis?”
“I’d like that.” She named a date about a century uptime from me, then saw my expression. “Are you up or down from that?”
“Down.” I named my own date and Pam had the grace to look disappointed. There’s expensive get-togethers, and then there’s going on jumps for get-togethers, which only the incredibly rich and idle can afford. I didn’t fit either category.
“Well, maybe something will work out,” Pam offered. “Come up and see me sometime.”
“If I can, I will.”
“Too bad we can’t see the sites of London together. Thanks again for the help. And the company. See you around.” Pam smiled, blew me a kiss, and then jumped uptime, leaving me gazing at the empty place on the sidewalk where she’d been.
I checked in my pockets, confirming that my stash of ill-gotten cash had dwindled to a few small coins I suspected even beggars would turn up their noses at. Both of my feet hurt from running on cobblestones and the occasional tree trunk or rock.
There I stood in Edwardian London, with no money, no girl, and no shoes, doubtless being sought at this moment by numerous Sherlock Holmes-wannabes from Scotland Yard. Hail the conquering hero.
“Jeannie, prepare the jump back home.” Maybe I’d be able to hit up my friends for contributions to pay for my trip here and back. Bill sure as heck owed me some, but professors didn’t tend to have large bank accounts and he might not even remember the entire incident. “And look up any organizations that might give me some sort of reward for saving London and ensuring Hitler’s defeat. That ought to be worth something.”
“You will have to convince them that the history they know is the result of your Intervention,” Jeannie reminded me.
“I know. Hopefully they’ll accept your files on this trip.” When you’re a Temporal Interventionist, history is what you make of it, but you usually don’t make enough from making history. I faced east, where a gradual lightening of the night sky foretold the sun still rising on the British Empire. “Let’s go home, Jeannie.”
Author's Note on These Are the Times
; Our favorite Temporal Interventionists, Tom and Pam, are back. Literally. They’re back in 1775. There was a shot fired that year in Massachusetts that started the American war of Independence. We still don’t know who fired it, but we may be about to find out. And Tom has to decide whether he is willing to move “up” or lose his chance at changing his own history. This story was inspired by helping my youngest son with his homework on the American Revolution. Those old weapons put out a lot of smoke when they fired. Why didn’t anyone see where the shot came from that day on the field at Lexington?
These Are the Times
Like different people, some places and times in the past attract a lot more attention than others. Sometimes a particular there and then only needs a few Temporal Interventionists dropping by before every question is pretty much answered. Lady Godiva, for example, who really did do her bare-back ride, but no one who saw her picture in action once wanted to see it again. They probably forgave the taxes just so she’d put her clothes back on.
Other places get a fairly constant stream of TIs either trying to change things for their clients or trying to collect information from the past. It’s hard to visit Washington, DC anytime during the first three centuries of the United States, for example, without tripping over fellow TIs.
Then there’s very specific there and thens, places and times where something special happened, a turning point, and everyone wants to be there.
Like Boston, Massachusetts, in April, 1775 CE.
I’d landed what should have been a nice, simple job. No Interventions this time by someone wanting to ensure Great-Great-Great-etc.-Uncle Ned made it to Lexington Green so they’d have a hero in the family instead of an ancestor who’d stayed in bed with a hangover that morning, or someone wanting to murder Paul Revere or poison his horse. That stuff could get hazardous, especially with so many TIs from different centuries clustered in this here and now all trying to either carry out their own Interventions or stop someone else from achieving their Intervention.