TW06 The Khyber Connection NEW (17 page)

"Stop that! I can't understand a word. Can't you speak English?"

Din stopped praying. English? The great god Shiva wanted him to speak in English? Come to think of it, the great god Shiva had spoken to him in English.

Perhaps it was because he was wearing the English khaki uniform and served as a regimental
bhisti
. Perhaps that was now the language of his soul. Who was he to question Shiva?

"Oh, Mahadeva!" Din said, keeping his face pressed close to the rock. "Oh, great god! You who are Great Destroyer; you whose presence is felt in falling of a leaf; you who are bringer of swift and terrible death; you who—"

"I'll bring you a clout on the head if you don't stop spouting that nonsense," said Darkness. "Who are you? What are you doing up here?"

"Your humble and worthless servant, Gunga Din, oh, Mahadeva!"

"Well, fine. That settles who you are. Now what are you doing here? How the devil did you get up here anyway? Look at me."

Din slowly raised his face up to stare in terror at the avatar. Something was wrong. Perhaps he wasn't dead yet after all.

"Din try to escape, help soldiers, 0 Great One."

"Soldiers? What soldiers?"

"The Sahibs Finn, Learoyd. O'tris, and Mulvaney. And the Memsahib Cross, 0 Great One."

"Where are they?"

"In temple, Mahadeva. In greatest danger. Din try to escape, try to help—"

"And you got stuck up here, I see," said Darkness. "Well, you've got a lot of nerve, I'll give you that. I suppose we'd better get you out of this mess. Here, give me your hand."

This, then, was the moment, Din thought. Shiva would now lead him into the next life. He shut his eyes and held out a shaking hand to Darkness. He felt himself pulled forward, and kept his eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see the terrifying drop, not wanting to see the end, afraid to catch glimpses of things in the next world that mortal eyes were never meant to see.

"Open your eyes."

Din opened his eyes. He was on the parapet from where the Ghazis had shot at him, not fifty feet from where he had perched upon the ledge. He looked down at himself and saw that he was still unchanged. His soul had not been reincarnated into some other form of life, into an insect or an animal or a bird, nor had it been reincarnated into the body of a high-caste infant; it had been reincarnated back into himself, Gunga Din, unchanged, still in his khakis.

"What are you staring at? Go on. You're safe. You're on your own now. I've got things to do."

Darkness disappeared.

Gunga Din was mystified. How could this be? Had he not died? He must have died! He had seen the great god Shiva. the Destroyer! He had felt himself falling forward, pulled by the hand of Shiva into the yawning void. He felt himself. He felt solid. He felt the same way he always had. There could only be one explanation. It was not the destiny of his soul to be reincarnated into another form of life. He had not acquired enough good karma. His karma was to be a regimental
bhisti
until he earned the right to be reborn into a higher plane. Shiva had given him another opportunity to prove himself worthy. Din swelled with pride at the thought. He would not fail this time.

Andre had her laser pointed at Martin. Bryant had his pointing at Finn. He smiled. "Well, it seems we have a standoff. You kill Martin, I kill Delaney. And then where will that leave us? You might be quick enough to try a shot at me, but with four other weapons pointed at you. I doubt you'd make it."

"Either way, Martin dies," said Andre.

"Well, that would be regrettable," said Bryant, "but it wouldn't change the outcome. I'm prepared to lose Martin if I must. If you're determined to die and you want to take at least one man with you, go ahead and shoot. Personally. I think it would be pointless."

Andre hesitated.

"He's right, Andre." said Finn. "They've got us."

"Damn," said Andre. She lowered her laser and Martin took it from her grasp.

He chuckled, but the sound froze in his throat when he saw Bryant and the others suddenly enveloped in the blue mist of Cherenkov radiation. A second later all five men were gone, their atoms disintegrated. Darkness lowered the molecular disruptor.

Martin yelled and fired at him point-blank, but he was no longer there.

"Try over here," said Darkness from the other side of the room.

Martin fired again, but the target had disappeared.

"Behind you."

Martin spun around and Andre and Finn both dropped to the floor as he fired wildly all around the room, vainly trying to keep up with a target that moved faster than the speed of light.

"Hi," said Darkness, manifesting directly in front of Martin, about three inches away. Martin screamed and leaped back, but Darkness was gone again. His eyes staring madly all about the room, Martin kept jerking to the left and to the right, spinning around, trying to find something to shoot at. A fist materialized out of thin air and connected with his jaw. Martin collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Darkness reappeared seated in one of the chairs.

"God, I'm exhausted."

Finn and Andre both got up off the floor. "Having fun?" Delaney said.

Darkness stared at him. "You're welcome," he said. "I pull your butts out of the fire again and you begrudge me even some minor amusement. You're an ungrateful man, Delaney."

"I'd have been a damn sight more ungrateful if one of those wild shots had hit me," Finn said. "I'm glad to see you, Doctor. We could sure use some help. How'd you find us?"

"Peculiar little chap named Gunga Din told me you were here," said Darkness. "I was looking for the confluence when I spotted him sitting on a ledge out there, looking unutterably morose."

"God, we've got to get him down from there!" said Andre.

"No, no, he's all right," said Darkness. "He's running about somewhere. The important thing right now is to do something about these characters. I left that one alive to tell me where to find the confluence. I know it's around here somewhere, but I can't seem to pinpoint it."

"So you know all about it then?" said Finn.

"Of course I know all about it, you cretin. What do you think we're talking about? Vargas has already been warned, and I expect he's gotten on to Colonel Forrester. However, there's a certain question of timing involved, and a few other minor problems. But before I do anything else, I need to find the confluence point."

"We can help you there," said Andre. "It's right below us. We spotted several of them coming through with jet-paks. There's a narrow section of the pass down there, directly below this temple, where the walls jut out like two giant pillars. The confluence point is there."

"Well, then it was fortunate for me I saw that little fellow sitting on the ledge," said Darkness. "I was about to go right through there. I haven't yet perfected a means of measuring for inertial surge. That's the key, you understand. The phenomenon is truly fascinating. What we have here is—"

"Doc," said Finn, “I don't mean to sound rude, but we can get into temporal physics some other time, okay? You said there were problems. What problems?"

"Oh, well it's a question of timing, partly. It appears as if their plan is to support Sayyid Akbar in his fight against the Tirah Expeditionary Force."

"I knew it!" Andre said. "That must be where the others have gone, to check on the progress of the force. With their help, Sayyid Akbar will be able to set up an ambush, and then they'll bring their own troops in to do the mopping up."

"It's a bit more complex than that, I'm afraid," said Darkness. "Sayyid Akbar is none other than our old friend, Nikolai Drakov."

"What?" said Andre.

"He must have stumbled through a confluence somehow," said Darkness, "or perhaps created one by actions of his own. He fell into their hands and now they're using him to control the Ghazis."

Delaney strapped on his warp disc. "I'm getting really tired of tripping over Drakov at every turn," he said. "This time he's not getting away."

"This time he's not a great priority," said Darkness.

A tribesman came through the door. Before either Finn or Andre had a chance to move, the tribesman had collapsed to the floor as if felled by an unseen hand.

"Where was I?" Darkness said, apparently not having moved from his chair. "Oh, yes, Drakov. Forget about Drakov for the moment. There's something much more important. When I tached to Plus Time and briefed Vargas about the situation, I discovered they had arrested one of the programmers in the archives section of TAC-HQ. He was caught tampering with the implant education and mission program files. A clear-cut case of sabotage. The historians were called in to run a scan check on the files, and they discovered a number of them had been tampered with. They ran a cross-check on the subknowledge of various adjustment personnel and confirmed that the sabotage goes back a number of years. I think you'll find one of the discoveries made by the historians significant. All data pertaining to Winston Spenser Churchill had been altered. He was entirely erased from all the archive files."

"That explains it!" Andre said. "We encountered Churchill while we were with the Malakand field force, but only Lucas knew who he was. Or rather, what he would become. Neither Finn nor I knew he would become prime minister of Great Britain, because there was nothing about him in our subknowledge or in the mission programming. Lucas couldn't understand it. An omission like that seemed inconceivable, but then he realized that he didn't know about Churchill through his subknowledge either. He remembered reading about him."

"He gave his life to save Churchill's," Finn said.

"Yes, I know," said Darkness. "I'm sorry."

"We thought the incongruity had something to do with Churchill being the focus of a disruption, but that wasn't it. It was sabotage. Christ, it's all starting to fit together now. They must have discovered a confluence in Plus Time. Either that, or used the confluence back here to get someone through and clock ahead to the 27th century. They infiltrated someone into the archives section with instructions to delete all programming having to do with certain key historical individuals—targeted individuals. But they didn't count on history books. Only a small group of dedicated scholars and antiquarians read books anymore. Everyone else uses information retrieval systems. They couldn't have known one of the commandos sent back on the adjustment was a history fanatic. Lucas was a collector of old history books, specializing in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries."

"There's an anomaly right there," said Andre. "It's one example of how their timeline differs from ours. Their Lucas Priest can't be an historian, otherwise he would have suspected that ours might be."

"Their Lucas Priest?" said Darkness.

"An identical twin front the alternate timeline," said Delaney. "It's scary. He's the one in command of their advance force."

"Incredible." said Darkness. "The Fate Factor never ceases to amaze me. But you realize what all this means. The strike against the Tirah Expeditionary Force is only part of their overall plan. They're out to create a massive historical disruption in the hope that it will force the two timelines apart and eliminate the confluence effect that endangers them both. What they don't realize is that there's every possibility a time stream split could only make matters worse by compounding the problem. It could result in three timelines experiencing a confluence effect. In fact, I believe the odds favor that possibility. Once such an effect was under way, it could be impossible to stop it. We'd wind up with four timelines. then five, then six, leading to God only knows what. However, since they apparently don't know that, they're out to create a timestream split, and this scenario offers them an outstanding opportunity. Defeat of the Tirah Expeditionary Force could end British control of the frontier and drastically alter the picture in this part of the world. And assassinating Winston Churchill in the same scenario would not only further disrupt history in this time period, but it would disrupt it in the early 20th century as well. It could lead to not one. but two timestream splits."

"That's why they sabotaged the archives," Finn said in a low voice. "They didn't want an adjustment team to know that Churchill was a key historical figure and concentrate on covering him. We left him on the march to Chakdarra. Christ, he's wide open."

"And Priest and some of his men are gone," said Andre.

"There's not a moment to lose," said Darkness.

“You must find Churchill. I'll help you if I can, but I need to keep track of their movements against the British Expeditionary Force, as well as maintain a watch on the confluence point. I need to recuperate, and besides. I can only be in two places at the same time."

"We'll find Churchill, Doc. You've got enough on your hands."

"Here, take this," said Darkness, handing Finn the disruptor. "Between that and the laser, you should have adequate firepower. Don't hesitate to use it."

"Count on it."

"Good luck."

"And good luck to you, Doctor," said Andre. They programmed their warp discs and clocked out.

"Somethin's gone wrong," Learoyd said. "They haven't come out."

"I knew we shouldn't 'ave left 'em," said Mulvaney.

"Bloody green subaltern's goin' to get 'imself killed for sure."

"We've got to go back,- said Learoyd.

"Go back?" said Ortheris. "Are you out o' your mind?"

Learoyd turned on him angrily. "What the hell do you want to do, Stanley? Leave them there? Fine! You can turn tail and tuck it up between your legs while you're about it! Go back to Peshawar and warn the troops. I suppose someone's got to do it. But I'm not walkin' out on Finn and Andre, no sir, not Chris Learoyd! I'm not one to leave friends in a lurch. You with me, Mulvaney?"

"I never was much for sneakin' about an' keeping me 'ead down," said Mulvaney. "I say we go back an' give those sods what for!"

"Well, if we're goin' to kill ourselves, we might as well dolt together," said Ortheris. "You're right, mate, we can't just leave 'cm. What's the plan then?"