Borrowed Time (9 page)

“Then the asteroid
is
an Intervention?”

“Absolutely.” I finally saw tension leaving her posture, though her hand stayed inside that purse. “I know because I was here when it hit. Not in this spot, needless to say. I was a ways out of town working a job, saw the object streaking in, and knew immediately it had to be an Intervention because my background studies hadn’t mentioned even seeing such an aerial display. Then it blew. I had my assistant jump me back before the shock wave hit so I’d have a chance of doing a counter-intervention.” She eyed me closely, and then relaxed for real, though her eyes kept roaming around in precaution against us being surprised as she’d caught me. I hoped she was better at spotting danger than I was. . “I had to make sure you weren’t one of the people trying to carry off the Intervention. Did you catch any of the change wave before you jumped in?”

“The first parts. Not the crest, I’m sure.”

“My assistant’s history files haven’t been exposed to the change wave. If we compare them with yours we should be able to figure out who will profit from what happened to London tomorrow.”

I didn’t reply directly, instead having Jeannie call up her information so I could summarize it. “Starting with tomorrow, the short story is that the British Empire responded to the tragedy by vowing to rebuild London in even more glory than before. Huge sums and resources were sunk into the effort. The rebuilding effort was well along when World War One took off.”

She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Who won that war?”

“The allies.” I saw her relax, puzzlement plain to see. “At tremendous cost. Russia’s monarchy was overthrown –,“ she nodded, “and replaced eventually by a communist dictatorship –,“ another nod, “the French were bled white -,” nod again, “the United States came out relatively unscathed, and the British Empire sank what was left of its wealth into finishing the job of rebuilding London.” Another frown. “The combination of the loss of London, the war and the rebuilding effort bankrupted the empire, so it started falling apart in the 1920s CE -.”

“What? The British Empire started coming apart in the 1920s?”

“Yes. By the 1930s there were just a few rump possessions left. Then when resurgent Germany invaded and conquered France in short order, the British had no choice but to sue for peace on the Germans’ terms -.”

“Damn!”

I checked some more of Jeannie’s data and flinched inwardly. “The Nazi Third Reich lasted for one hundred fifty-two years.” I didn’t elaborate on what the Reich had done with that length of time, but I had a feeling I didn’t need to.

I was right. Her eyes and voice reflected horror. “They’re supposed to lose. The Third Reich dies in 1945 CE.”

“Not after tomorrow.” I shook my head. “I have to give them credit, the one’s who pulled this off. The years, even the decades, right before and during World War Two are packed with T.I.’s trying to stage interventions for or against the Nazis. They’re always running into each other and countering attempted interventions. But these guys went way downtime, far enough down to avoid the crowds yet close enough that their intervention played out in the outcome of World War Two.”

She grimaced. “Very clever, in more ways than one. If Germany hadn’t lost the First World War then the Nazis wouldn’t have come to power. Our opponents had to take out London early enough before World War One to ensure the Empire would commit to the rebuilding, but not too early to allow the Empire to possibly recover from the double blow before 1939. I never thought I’d describe destroying a major city as a surgical intervention, but they did it.” My fellow T.I. (for that was what I was sure she was by now) reached for my beer, pulled it toward her and took a drink. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Am I still covered?”

“Of course.”

“Then be my guest.” She flashed a grin which quickly faded as I asked a question. “What exactly happens tomorrow?”
She took another drink and made a face I knew had nothing to do with the taste of the beer. “You tell me. I saw the object flaring across the sky, then the flash of detonation.”

I checked with Jeannie again. “Best estimates are that an object entered earth’s atmosphere and detonated over London. The city was totally destroyed by an explosion of at least ten megatons equivalent.” I glanced at my companion. “So what really destroyed the city?”

“A meteor.”

“That’s what my history says -.”

“That’s what happened. My assistant picked up enough information from the object’s entry to confirm it as an asteroid.”

I sat digesting that for a moment. “Do you have any idea how they managed to use a meteor as an intervention?”

“There’s only one way they could’ve. They jumped a spacecraft through and shoved the rock this way.”

“A spacecraft? In a jump?” My expression must have revealed what I was thinking. The cost and energy requirements for jumps go up exponentially as mass increases.

“I know it’s hard to believe. Whoever did this must have expended a large world’s gross planetary product’s worth of wealth on the project.” She finally relaxed completely and took her hand out of her purse. “I’m Pam.”

“Tom. You’re also a T.I.?”

“That’s right.”

“And you really haven’t met psycho-blond, yet?”

“No.” Pam’s eyes went distant for a moment in the way they do when someone’s thinking deeply. “She’s blond, you say. Tall.”

“Yes.”

“Blue eyes?”

I hesitated, but Jeannie had automatically saved a file on my brief looks at psycho-blond. “Yes.”

“She’s someone’s idea of the perfect Aryan killer, I guess. Just the sort of thing a hundred and fifty year old Reich would produce.”

“Kampf looked nothing like that,” I objected.

“No? And this, uh, psycho-blond was apparently waiting in Kampf’s apartment when you got there?”

“Yes, I . . . hell. How stupid can I be? I’d waylaid Kampf, someone in the intervention-created future realized it in time to do something, and they sent her to stop me from getting to him.”

Pam nodded and drank again. “Countering your attempt to counter them. Wheels within wheels. But being a blood-thirsty assassin she bungled her rescue of Kampf in her eagerness to kill you.”

We fell silent for a while. I ordered another beer, since Pam didn’t show any signs of returning what was left of my first, and wondered what about this whole picture was bothering me. “Why does it matter?” I finally asked her.

She looked astonished. “Are you serious? Why does the destruction of Here and Now London and a Nazi victory -.”

“No, no, no. Not that.
That
matters. What I mean is, if someone shoved a rock at London from out in space, why does it matter if I got Kampf? Or anyone else? How can we stop a rock? Spacecraft are hideously expensive to jump, but imagine trying to jump downtime a Space Object Destruction or Diversion System. If we can’t get a SODDS, why does Kampf matter, and if we can get a SODDS, why do we need Kampf enough for them to worry about it?”

Pam frowned thoughtfully. “Very good question.” Her expression shifted. “And why is Kampf even Here and Now for that matter?”

“
Was
Here and Now.”

“Was Here and Now. He must have had some role in what happens tomorrow.”

When in doubt, bounce information off of your assistant. Jeannie pondered the question briefly before replying. I stared at Pam as I relayed the answer. “Terminal guidance. A rock hurled at the planet wouldn’t be that accurate a weapon. They need to hit London square on. The only way to ensure that is to have a maneuvering system on the rock so they can bring it down at the right place. Kampf must have been involved with that.”

“But how does the rock know where its target is? They didn’t jump through constellations of navigational satellites. Even aside from the cost, there’d be too big a chance of them being spotted by Here and Now astronomy, or their signals being inadvertently interfered with by primitive electronic experiments -.”

“Then they need a surface locator or homing beacon . . . ” Here and Now astronomy. Of course. I laughed, earning a questioning look from Pam as I reached into my pocket. “Kampf had this,” I told her, holding out the train ticket.

“Greenwich?”

“The Royal Observatory. High ground, near London.”

“Yes! The perfect site! They must’ve installed something there already. Maybe Kampf was just hanging around in case it malfunctioned and needed repairs.”

I grinned. “I think we can arrange for a serious malfunction beyond the possibility of repair. Interested?”

“Absolutely. Want to take a train ride?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

It took us a while to reach Victoria Station, then we had a wait for the next train to Greenwich, and then we had the journey itself. The day was drawing to a close, and another day wouldn’t dawn over London unless we found what we hoped for at Greenwich. At some point, I realized that even if we diverted the rock we’d still have a very dangerous object heading for someplace on Earth with potentially horrible consequences. I couldn’t think of any consequences worse than a century and a half of Nazi rule over Europe and a good chunk of Russia, But I wasn’t happy thinking of the people who might catch that rock instead.

Everything considered, I enjoyed the ride. Pam had an easy smile and a good face. It’s usually impossible for me or other T.I.’s to get emotionally involved with locals in downtime because there’s no way to shake the knowledge that those people have all been dead since before you were born. They’re alive, walking and talking and feeling, but it seems like stepping into an old movie where the characters are playing parts you learned about in ancient history lessons. Pam being from uptime, like me, made it possible to connect with her. Pam being Pam made it easy to connect with her.

But all good things come to an end.

The walk from the platform where the train dropped us to the observatory wasn’t too far. It’d gotten very late and plenty dark, however.

A long grassy slope led upward toward the observatory. Aside from a few trees dotting the landscape, it was all distressingly open. We began sauntering up the path, trying to look casual, unconcerned and inconspicuous.

It didn’t work. Either psycho-blond recognized my clothing or she was in a kill-just-in-case mode. I noticed something move against an opening near the top of the observatory and shoved Pam to one side moments before a shot dug a very large divot out of the grass.

We scrambled to one of the trees, which fortunately wasn’t too far away and had a trunk big enough to hide behind as long as Pam and I huddled real close together. Under other circumstances, I would’ve really enjoyed that, but occasional shots blew chunks out of the tree trunk and kept my mind on business.

“Now what?” I asked Pam.

She grimaced. “There’s only one option. One of us has to jump downtime far enough to try to get into the observatory before your blond girlfriend gets to it.”

“Please don’t call her that. And I had trouble getting into this Here and Now, by the way.”

“Nice time to mention it.” Pam fell silent, communing with her assistant, then frowned at me. “My assistant can’t set up a jump within weeks of this date. The period’s blocked.”

“I came in on a narrow window on the 28
^th
.”

“It’s not there anymore. Nothing within four months.”

“How are they blocking jumps?” We both knew it could be done. No one could jump uptime past a certain year because whoever lived Then had set up barriers to jumps for reasons that remained unknown. But no one downtime of that was supposed to have such capability.

Pam shook her head angrily. ”I’d guess one of the results of this intervention was the discovery of a means to block jumps farther downtime of when it should’ve happened. They must’ve opened that window to jump one of their own people in. Maybe Kampf. You just got lucky and saw it during that brief gap.”

I winced as another shot sent wood splinters flying. “How much ammo does that homicidal maniac have?”

“Too much. Do you think we have a chance if we split up and try to rush from two different directions?”

I looked around, judging the terrain and what I knew of psycho-blond’s accuracy, then shook my head. “She’d nail us for sure. We’d be out in the open too long.”

Pam looked unhappy, but nodded. “I have to agree. There’s no sense getting ourselves killed without a reasonable chance of success. Too bad we can’t call on reinforcements.”

“You, there!” Pam and I looked at each other, wondering who’d spoken. “What’s all this?”

I rolled slightly and bent my head to see ten men in uniform standing a ways down slope on the walkway. They looked magnificent in what must have been full dress or mess dress, their insignia and medals flashing even in the dim illumination of the night. British military officers, obviously, probably returning late from the sort of social function which made up a large part of Victorian and Edwardian military life. Just what we needed to balance the odds. “There’s a foreign agent in the observatory! Here to kill the . . . ” Exactly when had Victoria died?

“King,” Pam whispered.

“ . . . King!”

A shocked pause followed, then rasps of metal and more glints of moonlight revealed the Brits were drawing the swords hanging at their sides, swords I’d automatically and incorrectly assumed to be simply ceremonial. “Unthinkable,” the most heavily be-medaled officer stated. “We shall put a stop to this.”

“Good. If we split up and work our way around -.”

The apparent commander raised his sword. “Forward, men.”

Pam and I stared at each other. “Wait,” I yelled. “The agent has a gun!”

The Brits didn’t hesitate. They stepped out, walking upslope at a brisk pace, their swords held at ready, the senior officer slightly in the lead and the others in line abreast behind him. It made for a glorious sight, if you happen to think that watching brave people do stupid things is glorious.

“What are they doing?” Pam demanded, both her face and her voice revealing her disbelief.