A Matter of Time Read online

  She did a less competent job of concealing her surprise. Strangefellow stirred uneasily while pretending not to notice.

  “Well, sit down. Let’s see what we have. Can we get you anything? Coffee?” Cash flashed Annie a look. What will the neighbors think was all over her face. This, probably, was part of the testing pattern.

  “Tea. If I may. Plain.”

  Miss Groloch flashed across Cash’s mind.

  “What we have,” Strangefellow said, after making small talk till Annie, composed once more, brought coffee and tea, “is a family of four. A major of police from Saigon, Tran Van Tran, is interested in your offer. Our backgrounding suggests you’d be compatible.”

  “Uh?...”

  “Mr. Cash?”

  “Well, to be honest, I’d be a little worried about his record. You know, the Fonda people were always talking about the police over there. If they were on our side, they were concentration-camp guard types.”

  “I see. Understandable. Some probably were. You needn’t worry, though. This guy’s as straight as Jack Armstrong. Educated here and in France. He was liaison between the Saigon police and our Mps for two years. He had no connection with the secret police. Oriental politics operating the way they do, though, he probably did have some political responsibility on paper.”

  “No, that wouldn’t bother me. Even here we’ve got trouble keeping City Hall from using us. I just didn’t want any SS-types.”

  “None of that. Tran’s a genuine Audie Murphy, Vietnamese-style. Squeaky clean war hero. Remember the Tet Offensive in sixty-eight? He won their equivalent of the Medal of Honor during that one.”

  “Oh?” Cash was beginning to grow distracted. Strangefellow was so thoroughly educated and bureaucratized that he seemed like a white man in blackface. His failure to conform to any racial stereotype was flatly disconcerting.

  “Seems that, even with a bullet through his liver, he single-handedly stopped a Viet Cong suicide squad from reaching a packed ARVN hospital with their satchel charges. And later, when the end came, he stuck it out till the last minute. He was one of the last people they brought out.”

  “Have you met him?” Annie asked.

  “No. I’m sorry. Not yet. Except through the paperwork. The book on him is this: he’s thirty-eight, his wife, Le Quyen, is thirty-four, his sons, That Dinh and Don Quang, are fifteen and twelve. There aren’t any extended family complications. This is Tran’s second time on the run. Just after he got married, he and five brothers had to scoot out of North Vietnam. They were Catholic, and Ho had just given the French the boot. Their parents and most of their relatives still live in the Haiphong region, they think.”

  “It sounds good to me,” said Cash. “Annie?”

  She nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “We can handle our part, then. Might have some trouble finding him a job, though. Things are tight here. But we’re ready to go to the next step.”

  Annie nodded again. She did not trust her mouth much tonight.

  “No hurry on decisions,” said Strangefellow. “This is just a preliminary interview. We won’t get started on the details till the Board reviews my field report.”

  “I see.” The whole thing hung on the impression they had made tonight.

  “There’re some personal questions I’m supposed to ask. If you think the answers aren’t any of my business, just say so.”

  Yeah, Cash thought. And Annie can kiss her pet project good-bye. “Go ahead.”

  “You lost a son in Vietnam?”

  “Missing in Action,” Annie replied. For her, and thousands like her, the distinction between KIA and MIA was critical.

  “I see. Thank you.” Strangefellow smiled thinly. “I’m trying to determine if there’s any resentment of the Vietnamese because of your loss.”

  “No sir,” Annie said.

  Damned right there is, Cash thought. “Maybe a little,” he confessed. “You can’t help thinking some strange things sometimes. Especially what if this or that had happened differently. You don’t have to worry about us taking it out on Tran, though. We’re not that petty.”

  “And your daughter-in-law?”

  “I can’t speak for her. I think she’s mostly mad at the government, though. Kissinger especially.”

  “Friends of the family?”

  “We don’t move in a large circle. There’d be more curiosity than anything.”

  “Mrs. Cash?”

  “I guess they’re mostly the sort who’d try to make them feel wanted.”

  “Good enough. I think that’s all for this time.” He began assembling the few papers he had brought.

  “That’s all there is to it?” Annie demanded.

  “For tonight. There’ll be paperwork if the Board gives us the go-ahead. I don’t foresee any difficulties there, though.”

  “Oh. I see.” Annie always felt more secure when bulwarked by paperwork.

  “Thanks for the tea. And I’m sorry I took up your evening.”

  Norm glanced at the clock. The man had been there less than a half hour. Amazing. He walked Strangefellow to the door, said good night.

  “I should’ve expected it,” Annie grumbled when he returned.

  “What’s that?”

  “That they’d send a black man. Or someone different.”

  “Well, it don’t matter now. I think we got through all right. It kept me from worrying about O’Brien and Miss Groloch for awhile, anyway.”

  He switched on the TV, but mostly thought the thoughts he wanted to avoid till the ten o’clock news came on.

  That was the same old noise. Two more of the people he was supposed to protect had gotten themselves killed. It seemed like the department was always too busy picking up the bodies to indulge in any prevention.

  Next day, long before his evening escape rolled round, he began wondering if he should not just spend the rest of his life locked in his bathroom.

  VIII

  On the X Axis;

  Prague, 26 August 2058;

  Agency for State Security,

  Que Costodi Custodes?

  “Thought you should know, sir.” Sergeant Helfrich’s voice sounded tinny, crackled. His picture kept twisting away into a dark, slanting line.

  “We’ll be right up.” Colonel Neulist severed the connection, glared down at the page for his stamp album that he had been hand-lettering. He had smeared the black ink in a little feather that obscured several letters. “Damned phones. Even the agency can’t get ones that work.”

  “Yes sir,” his aide, Lieutenant Dunajcik, responded, thinking the quality of service at home was far worse. At least here in the agency building one had reliable sound.

  “That was Helfrich. Good man. He’s been with me since the Uprising.” Neulist’s fingers showed none of his rage as he used a white-out solution to conceal the smear.

  “Yes sir.” The lieutenant had been twelve the summer rebellion had swept through Central Europe like the fury of an avenging god. Like the fury of a god betrayed, Dunajcik thought. The People, the Party intoned reverently in every statement. Who were these People being deified? Certainly not those who had thought their last hope was to take up arms against Party and State.

  Neulist held up a stamp with a pair of tongs. He peered at it this way and that, with the wonder of a child examining a butterfly. “Look at it, Anton. A work of art. The engraving.... As fine as any banknote.”

  The lieutenant could not begin to understand his boss’s love affair with the little bits of paper. There were as many stamp albums and medical journals on the disorganized shelves as there were accepted agency materials. Albums and catalogs always lay open on the colonel’s desk. “Yes sir.”

  Dunajcik had been with the agency three years, mostly in Neulist’s cluttered office. The man often made him wish the rebels had succeeded.

  As he often did, the colonel skipped tracks without warning, shifting emotions as he did. “Let’s get moving. The Zumstegs are up to something. They brought the girl w
ith them. Today.”

  This was a crisis point in the agency’s history. Perhaps the State’s. This was the unexplained limit date of the Tachyon Displacement Data Transfer System on which the agency had built its remarkable record. Everyone in the building knew Time Zero was approaching, that the Central Committee was watching closely.

  “Yes sir.” Dunajcik eased the colonel’s wheelchair into the corridor and started toward the elevators. His heart fluttered as they passed the emergency stairs. Dump the bastard down there someday, he thought. ISD could requisition a power chair for its director.

  Internal Security Division’s primary responsibility was ferreting out enemies of the State hidden within the agency itself. It was the agency’s most powerful, shadowed, and feared division, and Neulist made an erratic guiding spirit.

  The colonel was a dreaded man. His whim could terminate lifelines anywhere in Prague Zone. Dunajcik was one of a tiny handful of Central Europeans who did not hold the man in absolute terror. He just hated Neulist.

  The colonel’s current obsession was nailing the Zumsteg brothers for the anticipated failure of the TDDTS. But his motivation was spite, not service to the State. Otho Zumsteg’s physician daughter had rejected the colonel. And Otho had had the nerve to threaten personal violence after having learned of the advance.

  Dunajcik had witnessed that confrontation. He had come away with his hatred reconfirmed.

  The colonel would not tolerate rejection, much less threats. He seemed to feel he was a god, above any rules or control.

  Dunajcik’s greatest failing was that he took as ex cathedra every encyclical published by the Central Committee.

  By their officially published guidelines, Neulist was guilty of gross abuse of power.

  Dunajcik had therefore pursued the only course he had seen as open to a minor cog in the State machine. He had approached Committeewoman Bozada, who was known for her dislike of the colonel.

  Was Neulist aware that he had become the woman’s creature? The bastard was slick as a greased snake. He wriggled out of every trap.

  In the Zumstegs the colonel had met a match. They had patrons on the Committee. Their subdivision, a cornerstone of Security, Economic, and Agricultural Directives, was absolutely critical to the welfare of the State. Only Neulist had ever questioned their loyalty. And their genius was such that the TDDT System could not function long without them.

  Neulist had chosen a hard nut.

  Three floors up, Sergeant Helfrich managed his electronic sorceries from a room hardly larger than a closet. Dunajcik and Neulist were compelled to remain in the open doorway.

  “What’re they up to?” the colonel demanded.

  Helfrich glanced at Dunajcik.

  “Go ahead.”

  Was that a signal of trust? Or of imminent termination? At one time, before the Uprising had radically altered his life, Neulist had been an outstanding medical experimentalist at one of the secret research facilities. It would suit the man’s sense of humor to condemn his aide to human guinea pig service in such a place.

  Helfrich was as near a friend as the colonel had, and even he walked on eggs.

  “They’re setting up to transmit the final program. With triple fail-safes, all recorders going, like that. Frankly, I think the girl’s with them because it’s the one place you can’t reach her.”

  Neulist smashed his good fist against the arm of the wheelchair. The lieutenant and sergeant exchanged looks, anticipating one of the colonel’s fits. Dunajcik reached back to make sure he still had the hypo kit attached to his belt.

  “What the hell’s wrong with that picture?”

  “Static from the tachyon generator, Colonel. When my laser beam bounces off the back theater wall...”

  “Doesn’t anything work in this place? Give it more power.”

  “I can’t, sir, without giving them interference readings that would tell them we’re watching.”

  “All right. All right. Damn you, Dunajcik. You brought me up here for nothing.”

  Always his fault. Why hadn’t they given him pilot’s training the way he had asked? He swallowed an observation concerning the colonel’s own stupidity. Any fool could have seen this was pointless, today of all days.

  “Hell. I’m going in there. Those bastards have been getting away with this shit for too long. Dunajcik. The programming theater.”

  “Sir?” He could not stifle a sharp intake of breath.

  “You heard me. Wheel me in there where I can watch while those traitors sabotage the system.”

  He was further gone than Dunajcik had suspected. He had begun to confuse his own interests with those of the State.

  No one — and there was an unexplained Special Advisory specifically banning Neulist — was allowed within the main programming theater without clearance from the Committee itself.

  What to do? Dunajcik wondered. He had his ass in a sling now. If he conformed to security directives, Neulist would devour him. If he did not, he would be explaining why to Committeewoman Bozada.

  He flashed a look of appeal at Helfrich.

  The sergeant nodded slightly. One finger tapped a nervous tattoo near his phone.

  Take a chance. Maybe Helfrich could place the State ahead of his old master.

  Dunajcik fingered a scrap of paper from the hypo kit, let it fall where the sergeant would see it.

  There was a number on it. The one Bozada had given Dunajcik.

  Helfrich acknowledged with a slight nod.

  Relieved, Dunacjik wheeled the colonel into the corridor. Now, if he could just stall....

  There was no way to restrain Neulist long enough. Even if Helfrich reached Bozada immediately, it would take time to poll the Committee, and to advise the Ministry. Then word would have to reach General Kulage, who would have to trace and convince Neulist’s number two, Major Votruba..., With the comm systems in their present state, an Emergency Executive Action might take an hour.

  The lieutenant ran out of stalls and time-consuming stupidities much sooner.

  They pushed through a door guarded only by dread and respect for the importance of the work carried out behind.

  Today, of all days, Dunajcik thought, you’d think there’d be a sentry.

  “Stand by,” Otho Zumsteg was saying. “It’s coming. Marda, watch that....” He whirled. “Neulist. You idiot. What’re you doing here?”

  Beyond him, his daughter’s face reflected a lightshow of colors from the winking lights of the programming console.

  “Zumsteg, you traitor....”

  “Oh, damn. Now I see. Lieutenant, get that fool out of here! Don’t you know what you’re doing?”

  For an instant Dunajcik hated Zumsteg. Here was a man who could say what he thought and get away with it.

  He didn’t know what to do. He was in the meat grinder now.

  He did a thing that was treason by everyone’s standards. He said a silent prayer that Helfrich had indeed called Bozada. Then he began backing the colonel from the room.

  Neulist produced a pistol, obviously with the intent of using it. Dunajcik fled. Shots pursued him. One smashed into his right shoulder, spun him, hurled him to his knees in a half-faint.

  He did not feel the pain, only the horror of failure.

  “Oh, god,” Stefan Zumsteg moaned. “Otho, this must be what the Neulist message meant.”

  “You’re right.” Otho stared into the muzzle of the colonel’s weapon. “Override and send the warning. Try to be more explicit this time.” He stepped carefully toward Neulist, his intention to soothe the man. “Marda, help me....”

  Stefan managed exactly the same message they had received six months earlier, jammed into the weekly weather/agricultural program: “Neulist in theater....” It was the only explanation they had ever had for the fact that the future ended on 26 AUG 58.

  The colonel resumed firing.

  A bullet shattered the heads that recorded the information to be impressed on the tachyon stream. The result would be, or had
been, a burst of white noise on January 4, and every point subsequent when an intercept of the particular program had been attempted. Messages received after that date had all been transmitted prior to the final program.

  Dunajcik recovered, staggered toward Neulist. Tape heads could be replaced. The installation and Zumstegs could still be salvaged.

  “We’re all fools,” he muttered. “We protect the State ….”

  But who could prevent the State from destroying itself?

  One bullet had changed him, or compelled the admission of changes that had been coming on since his assignment to the colonel. He could now indulge his heresies, his seditions. He no longer had anything to lose. Even his life might be forfeit.

  He had failed. Both himself and the trust of Madame Bozada.

  The Zumstegs retreated into a frightened huddle. Neulist now wore the mad-gleeful expression that had become so familiar in Uprising news tapes, at those moments when he had personally dispatched rebel ringleaders for the camera. That had been before the reactionary bomb had rendered him permanently disabled.

  Neulist had come to his position in an oblique manner. Strong rebel mobs had hit the agency building early, very nearly destroying the agency’s ability to react. Then director of a nearby medical research facility, Neulist had led his staff in counterattack, had picked up the reins while the Central Committee remained stunned, and had acted so well in the crisis that he was allowed to continue prosecuting the Uprising’s suppression. The ISD Directorate, once the bomb had rendered him an invalid, had been his reward.

  It was one the Central Committee often rued giving.

  Dunajcik hit Neulist. The wheelchair rolled toward the Zumstegs. Dunajcik clung, unable to aim it in the direction he wanted to go.

  The colonel emptied his weapon.

  One bullet penetrated the tachyon generator. Another shattered the governor on the tiny fusion plant that provided the theater’s independent power.

  A hitherto only theoretical tachyon storm raged for nanoseconds. Then the generator blew with the force of a satchel bomb.