Final Reckonings (59 page)

"That's when we went into business, stupid. We was broke."

"Well, if we can go anywheres we want in time, hows about way back, to the Egypians, like? I seen one of them there pitchers, they had all these hot broads runnin' around in their unnerwear — "

"You talk Egypian, stupid? Besides, we don't wanna stay back someplace forever. Way I figger, we go to some time where we can lay our mitts on some loot, real fast-like. And then come back."

"Now you got it. That's the angle. Hey, how about that there Gold Rush?"

The Professor interrupted them. "I'm afraid the Gold Rush wouldn't be of much use to you gentlemen. After all, it occurred in the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine."

"But you can send us to eighteen forty-nine, can't you?"

"Conceivably, if my theory is correct. But you would not be in California. You would still be right here in Philadelphia, in the field which stood here before this house was built."

"Then we gotta find our loot in Philly, huh? Somewheres in the past?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Jeez. And we can't show up in no vacant field with that machine, either."

Then the Thinker took over. "I am beginning to pinpoint our problem," he announced. "Professor, I am going to utilize your library for a day or so. Perhaps I can discover when gold was available in Philadelphia."

"There's always the Mint."

"Too well-guarded. We'd never be able to loot it, any more than it could have been looted by past efforts."

"Banks?" Sammy brightened. "With our heaters, we could knock over one of them big jugs easy — say, a hunnert years ago."

"And come out with what? Old-fashioned greenbacks? We wouldn't be able to use currency of that era today. Arouse suspicion. No, I'm looking for gold."

Finally, in a copy of Berkeley's H
ISTORY OF THE
R
EVOLUTION
, the Thinker found it. He broke in upon the others as they sat guarding Professor Cobbett.

"Here's the answer!" he exulted. "Remember what happened in Philadelphia on July fourth, seventeen seventy-six?"

"That's a holiday, ain't it?" Nunzio brightened. "Must be the Phillies took on the Giants in a doubleheader."

"Seventeen seventy-six, stupid!" Sammy scowled. "Yeah, I remember. They made Washington the President."

"Nah. It was the Decoration of Independence," Mush corrected.

"Right. The Declaration of Independence was presented to the Continental Congress assembled at what is now Independence Hall. And so forth.

But here's another little-known fact. At the same place, on the same day, the Revolutionary treasury was turned over to a small group for temporary storage. It consisted of upwards of thirty thousand pounds sterling in smelted ingots. That's about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold."

"Brother!" Sammy whistled. "What a way to celebrate the Fourth!" Then he frowned. "I'll bet they had plenny guards around."

"No, that's just the point. It was all a secret — few people know of it to this day. Troops brought it in a wagon, around noon. They thought they were hauling documents. It was carted upstairs, and no guards were posted lest suspicion be aroused. Its presence was known only to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and one or two others — probably John Hancock and maybe Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Congress. It was to be used to pay troops and buy supplies."

"It sure could help to pay off old Mickey Tarantino and the Feds. And leave us plenny to spare."

"That is exactly what I had in mind, gentlemen." The Thinker smiled. "Now all that remains is to work out the details. I shall concentrate on the historical aspect and the Professor here can work out the mathematical computations."

Professor Cobbett blanched. "Mathematical computations? But you're asking the impossible. Why, that was over a hundred and eighty light-years ago; we'll be faced with the problem of billionfold magnitudes, and the slightest error or variation can have serious consequences."

"Ain't gonna be no errors," Sammy told him. "Or consequences will be really serious. For you." He showed the Professor his heater. "Now get to work. We're going places."

"Going places." Mush looked at him. "All this here stuff was at Independence Hall. The machine's here in the cellar. We gonna come out on July fourth inna cow-pasture or somethin?"

"That's your job," Sammy decided. "Case this joint. See how it's set up for guards at night. Alarm system, the works. Look it over like you would a bank job. I think we can take over. Nobody's gonna think a mob would break into a Hysterical Shrine or whatever. We get things set, we hire us a truck and cart the machine right down to the Hall and take off from there some night soon. Right?"

"Hey, that's a tough deal."

"Things are tough all over," Sammy said. "Now get going."

So Mush got going and the Professor got going and the Thinker got going too. And before the first week was up they were organized.

Mush made his report. The invasion of Independence Hall could be made without too much trouble. Of course, it would cost money for the truck, and there might be repercussions, but they could try to pull it off.

And in view of their present hopeless situation — and in view of the possible gain — it was worth the gamble, Sammy decided.

The Professor presented them with the working manual, based on his computations.

"Are you sure this gets us there?" Sammy demanded. "And back, too?"

"Look it over," the Professor said. "See for yourself."

"It's all right," the Thinker told him. "I've checked it. See, we have no set time for return. Our plans call for us to get the gold and come back as soon after the noon hour as possible. So the Professor has worked out return-variations based on five-minute intervals throughout the early afternoon. It's as foolproof as we can hope to make it."

"All right, if you say so." Sammy shrugged. "But what I want to know is, what do we do when we get there?"

"I've been working on that angle," the Thinker said. "Checking all the source books and references I could muster. History texts. Biographical data on Franklin and Jefferson in particular. And I've got a plan. Apparently the first ones to arrive that morning were Jefferson and Thomson. Franklin and John Hancock came in early, too.

"It's not quite clear whether any of them spent part of the night there. The important thing is that the four men conceivably held an early morning meeting, discussing the Declaration before Congress convened on the fourth. So if we arrive early enough we'll be dealing with just four men. The four men who knew about the gold, by the way."

"Got it," Sammy said. "We come in, flash our heaters, and take over."

"Not quite so simple," the Thinker answered. "Remember, Congress will be gathering that morning. We can't hope to hold our guns on these four key figures from that time until noon, any more than we can hope to pass unnoticed in the crowd for such a period."

He paused as Sammy started to open his mouth, then hastily continued. "I know what you're thinking, and that won't work either. We can't show up at noon and just hijack the shipment. Not in front of fifty or more men, with troops just outside the door."

"Then what do you figger on us doing?"

The Thinker took a deep breath, and then he told them.

"Oh no!" cried Sammy.

"Me, making like John Hancock?" Mush gasped.

"I should run around in one of them wigs like a big-shot politician?" Nunzio scoffed.

The Thinker was calm. "Don't you see, it's the only way? The wigs are perfect disguises. Look I've got pictures of all these men, and we can buy a makeup kit. I'm fortunately bald and approximately Franklin's build. Physically, we'll get by. And don't worry about playing the role of a politician."

"Yeah." Mush was thoughtful. "After all, what's a politician, anyhow? Just a crook that's learned how to kiss babies."

"But we won't be kissing no babies that morning," Sammy reminded him. "Me, I been reading up a little on that stuff, too. Them four guys did a lot of things on the fourth. Made speeches, tried to get the rest of the Congress to sign, all kinds of stuff. And they knew everybody, everybody knew them. We'd fluff it for sure, trying to do what they did."

"That's just the point." Thinker Tomaszewski was triumphant. "We don't have to do what they did! Because we're going back in time, we're changing what happened. I think I'm familiar enough with Franklin's personality. I can talk, if necessary. Sammy, I'll coach you. The other two boys can be absent, if need be — and it may well be necessary to guard our machine and our captives in the rear room. We're not going to merely reenact history. We're going to change it, to suit ourselves. Now do you get it?"

They got it, eventually, because the Thinker rammed it down their throats.

And so they got their coaching, got their truck, got their plan, and actually transported the machine bodily into the rear of the vehicle on the evening arranged for departure.

It wasn't until they stood for the last time in the now open expanse of the cellar that Professor Cobbett voiced a final, timid protest.

"I hesitate to bring this up," he said, "because you'll very likely suspect my motives. You'll think it's because you're preempting my property, and because you are unwittingly involving me as an accomplice to your crime. You'll think its because I have patriotic objections to your plans for desecrating our history."

"Well, haven't you?" Sammy asked.

"Yes, I admit it."

Sammy glanced significantly at Nunzio, then back to the Professor as he continued.

"But what I have to say to you now, I say in my capacity as a scientist. In that capacity I warn you, as I did on the first evening here. Time travel is hazardous. The possibility of alteration of the past due to your invasion cannot be discounted. You may well find yourselves up against unforeseen factors, unexpected problems. That's why I never dared make the attempt myself; not even a journey of one minute, let alone almost two centuries. Should you fail, I must absolve myself of any responsibility. I shall await your return with the utmost trepidation."

"Don't bother," Sammy told him. "We got that all figgered, too. You plan on waiting for our return with a gang of coppers, don't you?"

The Professor turned pale. "Don't tell me you gentlemen expect me to come along?" he murmured. "I couldn't do that. I couldn't. I'd — I'd be afraid.

Frankly, the dangers of dislocation or alteration in the past frighten me worse than the prospect of death itself."

"I'm glad," Sammy said slowly. "On account of it's either-or. And you just made up our minds for us."

The Thinker was already out in the truck, but Mush and Nunzio stood beside Sammy in the cellar.

Nunzio took out his heater and Mush smiled. "Well," he said. "Looks like we're starting off our trip with a bang."

4

And a bang-up journey it was. There was a route to travel, and guards to knock out and bind, and a heavy machine to cart up into the rear chambers of Independence Hall. Then came the nerve-wracking business of setting it up, and the Thinker's frantic rescanning of the Professor's charts and directions as he set the computers. By the time they were ready to take off— 1:45 a.m. on the dot — the transition itself was almost an anticlimax.

Anticlimax it proved to be. They huddled in the machine, the vacuum-lock set and the vacuum-lined walls enclosing them, and a generator hummed and their fluorescent light above the dials dimmed and the Thinker pressed his finger down after endless adjustment of tab-buttons and then—

Nothing happened.

Or seemed to happen, until the moment — or century, or eternity — of darkness elapsed. None of them were conscious of a change at all. It was when they opened the compartment and stepped out that the change occurred, or they were aware of its prior occurrence.

"Thinker!" Nunzio said, blinking in the bright morning sunlight that streamed through the high windows. "We made it!"

Sammy and the Thinker and Mush didn't even look at him. They were staring at the four men on the other side of the room — four men who stared, in turn, at them.

Then things happened fast. Things happened with orders and heaters and ropes and gags. Things happened with wigs and shoes and clothing.

Four writhing figures squirmed on the floor, then calmed to quiescence as Mush used the butt of his heater.

"Fancy this!" he sighed. "Me knocking out old Ben Franklin hisself!"

"Never mind fancying it now," the Thinker told him. "We've got to get ready for more action."

And so they'd gone into their act.

Altering the text of the Declaration itself was an inspiration on the Thinker's part.

"Give 'em something to argue about all morning," he said. "Keep them talking, then we don't have to. And if they accept the business about temporary governing powers and a treasurer, there'll be no questions asked when the gold arrives and we take charge of it."

He glanced at Mush and Nunzio. "You two go in the back room right now. Watch the machine, keep the Founding Fathers company. And don't forget to watch the windows — maybe the gold will arrive early. Professor Cobbett was no fool. I respect his judgment. If he said things might be a bit different in the past because our coming changed it, maybe he's right."

"Nothing different so far," Sammy said.

"Well, one never knows."

Mush and Nunzio vanished and the Thinker turned to his companion. "Remember your laryngitis. They call it quinsy in these times, and that's how I'll refer to it. And when I do, you cough."

"Got it," Sammy said. "But hey, when's the gang showing up?" He pulled his watch out of his pocket and studied. "Must be after eight by now." He frowned. "That's funny, it stopped. Still says seven-thirty."

"Let me take a look outside," the Thinker suggested. He strode to the window. "Crowd down there all right. But — wait a minute —" He tugged Sammy's arm. "Look at those soldiers!"

"I see em. You mean the ones in the tall hats, with the red uniforms?"

"Red uniforms mean British troops."

"British?"

The Thinker didn't answer. He rushed to the door of the hall, flung it open. Two grenadiers in scarlet coats confronted him. He stared at the white piping on the coats, stared at the silvery steel of their bayonets.