A Century of Progress (21 page)

Holly’s fingers, nervously clasping, had rediscovered her small burn. Already it felt more like a healed scar than a recent injury.

Jeff, in spite of everything, could still be distracted, almost enraptured, by thoughts of the future. “Would the people of five hundred years ago have believed someone who claimed to come from the future? They’d have cried witchcraft. But today we ought to know better. Today we ought to believe in the future that science can create.” And with that he shut up suddenly, like a man who knew that now he’d said too much.

Suddenly Holly had to get away. “Dad, I’m going out. No, it’s all right, I’m not going to repeat to anyone what you’ve been telling me. But I have to get out, walk, get some air, think. I’ll be all right.”

She hurried out of the library, to grab boots and a fur coat from a closet and put them on. There was a last hurried exchange of waves between her and her father, assuring each other that they were all right. Then she was gone.

At this early hour on a holiday morning she had expected to have the elevator to herself, but it stopped at the floor immediately below hers and a man got on. He was youthful in appearance, and well-dressed in homburg hat and topcoat, as if he might be going to work today, holiday or not. Not your ordinary overstayed party-goer heading home at dawn, but quite sober and wide awake and freshly shaven. He was a little taller than average, blond and lean, but not exactly German-looking. Not exactly handsome, either, to Holly’s taste. She couldn’t recall seeing him around the building before.

He gave his homburg a little tip. “Mrs. Rudel, good morning.” His voice had authority in it, and a trace of indefinable accent—again, she thought, not German.

“Good morning,” Holly answered automatically, mildly startled. She studied the man again. “I’m sorry, but ought I to know you?”

“I am very glad to meet you at last, Mrs. Rudel. My name is Hajo Brandi, and I represent the law.”

IN YEARS UNKNOWN

Jerry Rosen was seated inside what looked to him, by God, like an almost recognizable phone booth—one big difference was that this was too comfortable. He was physically alone, though he knew that Ginny Butler or one of her people would be listening in when his call went through.

He was at last, after being here in this still-unnamed school or whatever it was for several weeks, getting his chance to phone home.

Just above Jerry’s eye level, as he sat comfortably in the booth, were certain numbers and indicators on its wall. What their current readings meant, as he had been taught to interpret them, was that the call he was trying to place, if it could be completed on schedule, would be received at the Monahan residence in Chicago at some early hour in the evening of Christmas Eve, nineteen thirty-three.

There was no need in this booth for him to hold a receiver to his ear. Just sitting there, hands nervously clasping and unclasping on his knees, Jerry waited, listening. The quiet in the booth was almost absolute, except that now he could hear the ringing of that distant phone. Jerry kept hoping that the call was going through early, as the indicators said, before Judy and her Ma set out for midnight mass. They would probably leave the baby at home, for the half-grown girls to watch, but they might take old Mike along if they judged him sober enough—Christmas Eve was a special occasion—and if he felt like going. They might—

Someone picked up the distant phone. And in another moment Jerry could hear his wife’s voice, as if she were right there in the booth with him, saying: “Hello?”

“Judy? It’s me.”

He had been warned to expect a certain delay in response time, probably enough to be noticeable. One component of the delay was deliberately built in, so he could be cut off if he tried to say something he wasn’t supposed to say. Another component was apparently inherent in the way this cross-time communication worked. Still, the pause that followed after Jerry had identified himself was a little more than he had been expecting.

Then his wife was able to talk. “Jerry. Oh my God. Where are you? What’s happened?”

“Listen, I’m all right. I may not be able to get home for a while yet, but I’ll get there. Did you report me missing?”

“Jerry, it’s been five months. Yes, we reported you. Where are you? Are you coming home?”

“I can’t come home right now. I’m gonna, later, I swear it. Are you and the kid all right?”

There was a burst of something like radio static, which immediately cleared up again.

“—yeah,” Judy was saying. “The other kids had measles, we just got the quarantine sign down off the door.” Her voice shifted off-phone. “Ma, Ma, it’s Jerry.” Back again. “Yes, we’re all right. Jerry, my God, my God, I made novenas . . .” A new change in Judy’s voice. “There was a telegram came, about your father. Did you get that news?”

“My old man? What about him?”

This time the delay stretched on and on, to conclude not with Judy’s voice but in a vast explosion. Not at the Monahans’, either; a hell of a lot closer than that. Jerry could feel the floor, the whole booth, quiver with it. All the lights in the booth, including the digital readouts, momentarily went dead, leaving him in pitch blackness. A moment later the emergency lights from outside the booth came stabbing through the dark, penetrating transparent panels.

Jerry found that the door was slightly stuck now, but he forced it open and got out. The people who had been in the larger room that contained the booth were gone, and in the distance an alarm was hooting. Just like the practice alerts they had been holding during the past few days, thought Jerry, with an effort recalling himself from thoughts of his father and his wife to face his present situation. But this time, with the lights gone out, and starting with a bang like that, he doubted that it was practice.

Something outside the high gray walls was battering at them like a gigantic tank, and they were going down.

Norlund observed this from a distance, over a remote monitor, while he was pausing to regain some breath after a considerable run. He took one look at the image of those crumbling walls and then ran again, on legs newly taut with youth, their firm muscles fueled by fear. Corridors flowed past him, holding a scattering of other people, some of them running too. By now Norlund had been up and about long enough to know his way around here pretty well. Just as in a normal alert drill, he was heading for the weapons rack where his sidearm was ordinarily kept.

He reached the rack, and amid other scrambling hands and arms snatched his assigned weapon out. He automatically checked the charge, even while jostling his way past other people, away from the arms rack and on toward his next destination.

Which was not far. Norlund hurried among other scrambling bodies through the wide entrance to the huge Operations Room, then across the hangar-like spaces of Operations to the particular launch rack where his assigned vehicle waited. This was an armored personnel carrier with time-travel capability, much different from anything that Norlund had ever ridden in or ever seen. The elephant-sized body of the APC was all slanted planes of dull gray, with the protrusion here and there of a weapon nozzle or some kind of sensor. The two large front wheels were gray, also, and almost spherical. The rear of the body rode on extended, shapeless globs of something that took the place of the endless armored treads of an old-style military halftrack.

The uppermost hatch of the APC was open, and Norlund quickly clambered atop the vehicle and slid down inside. Ginny Butler was already occupying her assigned place, the observer’s position toward the front of the cabin, while Andy Burns was in one of the seats toward the rear. The two other assigned members of the combat team, Jerry and Agnes, had not yet arrived. Norlund had just time to get himself secured in his own seat when Jerry came bursting in through the hatch above, swearing energetically at things in general.

A moment later, Ginny turned round in her chair to hand Norlund a moderately large white envelope. He thought that the expression on her face as she looked at him was odd.

He accepted the envelope, with some surprise. “What’s this?”

“This is obviously more than an alert, right?”

“Right.”

“So I’ve opened our sealed combat orders.” Ginny nodded toward the envelope now in Norlund’s hands. “The first one appoints you to take over this group as RM.”

“What?” Norlund felt dazed. “You’re the ranking member.”

“As long as we’re in training. But no longer. At this point I just wish you good luck, and stand by for orders myself.” She nodded at the envelope again. “There are the rest of the orders, still sealed. They’re for you to open now.”

Norlund looked down at the envelope he was holding. Then he pulled out the first sheet of paper that it held; the paper unfolded and uncreased itself to comfortable flatness as its corners cleared the enclosure. The message printed on it was short. In terse language it made official what Ginny had just been telling him: as soon as combat started, at the base or elsewhere, Norlund was to take over as commander of their small group, and was charged with immediately moving to carry out their assigned mission.

Under that first sheet of paper, an inner envelope, still sealed, was thick with detailed orders—or something. Norlund pulled out the inner envelope only far enough to read the warning that it bore: FOR COMBAT RM ONLY. OPEN ONLY AFTER FIRST COMBAT LAUNCHING AND RE-EMERGENCE.

Ginny, Andy Burns, and Jerry Rosen were all looking at Norlund when he raised his eyes. He thought he saw in their faces less surprise than he felt himself. Well, maybe it was logical. He did have real combat on his record, even if it had been in a different army and . . . a different war? No, perhaps not even that. And he was older than the others, and they knew it, even though he no longer looked as much older as he was. The mirror these days showed him the face of a man of thirty, a hard-bitten face that he supposed could easily look authoritative enough.

And, he supposed also, he knew the job.

More explosions sounded. Somewhere outside of Operations, but still uncomfortably close. Voices were yelling, some of them in panic.

The panels at the driver’s and observer’s positions indicated that the vehicle was ready, fueled and targeted for an emergency launching into time. To get it away safely, ready to fight somewhere, sometime, had to be the first objective of its crew and their commander.

But all the crew was not here yet; Agnes was still missing. Swearing, Norlund got himself out of his seat and stuck his head up through the hatch. Operations was chaos, in which no trace of Agnes could be seen. He dropped down again, pulling the hatch closed above him. Jerry Rosen, in the driver’s seat, was looking up at him expectantly.

“Drive us out, Jerry,” Norlund ordered.

Jerry didn’t move at first, except to look over at Ginny as if requesting confirmation.

“I’m RM now,” said Norlund. “Do it. Get us the hell out of here, somewhere fast.”

Three seconds later the APC launched. There had been nothing surprising about Jerry’s assignment as first driver, given his high scores on the simulator tests in training. And from the start of training Jerry had insisted that these APC’s weren’t as hard to control as their reputation had it. “They just tell us they’re tough to keep us from trying to use ‘em to get home.”

The launching at Jerry’s hands now was barely in time, for a last explosion, very near, almost overtook the vehicle. Norlund, watching the observer’s screens, could see how the reaching tendrils of that blast came after them, spreading like cracks in a fine vase across the last milliseconds of their existence within the Operations chamber. Then those computer-drawn lines were gone, along with all other information from the world of normal timeflow. The vehicle with them in it had survived the blast, but it was obvious to everyone that it was going to be thrown off course.

What wasn’t obvious at first, at least to Norlund, was how far off they were going to be. Their passage through the brightly-colored world between the years continued through hours of subjective inside-the-vehicle time, a much longer period than any normal launching would have entailed.

From time to time during these hours, Jerry would lay hands on the controls, and make some minor adjustment to them, and reluctantly take his hands away again. Given the magnitude of the initial deflection caused by that explosion, there was probably little that any driver could have done in the way of correcting course. It would be necessary to wait until some destination was reached, and try again. Mean-while indications were that the computers were laboring to do their best.

Norlund glanced several times at the envelope containing his sealed orders. But the warning on it was plain—he was to wait until first emergence before opening it.

Some of the hours of passage time were occupied by getting into combat clothing and gear, something of a struggle in the cramped space available. When everyone had done that there was really nothing more to do but wait, and be ready for emergence when it came. The vehicle felt as steady as an airliner in smooth flight, and was almost quiet; muffled chaotic noises came and went outside the hull at intervals, and now and then there was a perceptible movement, a shift as if gravity had altered slightly. The waiting conditions were endurable, so far, if not comfortable. An APC was built for survival, not comfort, and with four people and their gear aboard the interior was dense with equipment and supplies and bodies.

Norlund, trying to relax in his chair—trying above all to look confident—could close his eyes and hear to right and left the engines of the old Fortress. But the engines he heard were far too quiet, and he was too warm and relatively too comfortable, for the illusion to be in the least convincing.

At last the colored lights that made up their surrounding universe began to change, their images in the viewscreens signalling imminent emergence. Presently Ginny in the observer’s position announced that the early sensors were beginning to recover, another sign that they were fast approaching normal timeflow.

Moments after Ginny’s report the vehicle lurched more strongly than before, and those inside briefly knew the sensation of free fall. This lasted for only a fraction of a second before the APC found solid footing, wheels and tracks bouncing and then coming to rest with brushing, crackling noises, in what sounded like tall grass.

Now the screens showing the outside were filled with a different color, what Norlund took to be gray daylight. “Battle stations,” he ordered, and realized even as he spoke that he ought to have given the command sooner.

Stillness reigned, inside and outside the vehicle. The crew looked over their surroundings as well as they could, with instruments that were still recovering from passage through time. It was impossible as yet to tell where and when they had emerged.

“Clear from stations,” Norlund said at last. He looked again at the envelope of sealed orders. It would be legitimate to open them now, but he felt that finding out where they were took precedence even over that.

“I’m going out to take a look around.”

When he opened the top hatch the air that came in was chill. The sun was hidden in a thick overcast, and Norlund was struck immediately by a couple of drops of rain, feeling cold as snow. When he stuck his head out of the hatch he saw that the vehicle was surrounded on three sides by miles of tall, brown grass. Near the horizon the grass made islands out of groves of trees, looking brown and leafless. On the fourth side—there was no telling which compass direction it might be—the grass was cut off at about a hundred yards’ distance, by a rank of tall sand dunes.

Climbing free of the vehicle, Norlund dropped into the tall grass, which crunched under his combat boots. Just behind the APC were the three or four yards of tracks it had left between materializing in the air and rolling to a stop. Norlund’s crew followed him out, some of them with sidearms at the ready. He thought that the dismal peace around them mocked weaponry.

Jerry, after a moment, holstered his gun. “I bet this ain’t nineteen thirty-four,” he said.