Time, p.6
Time, page 6
If Space could carry sound, there’d be a lot of screaming and yelling going on.
Some of that screaming and yelling would be, of course, the screaming and yelling of the inevitable casualties of war; the rest of it was the Space Avenger’s, when she belatedly discovered that the Conglomerate, under the able direction of Captain Dirk R. Winslow, was slowly regaining that which it had lost during the early stages of the swirling conflict. Plus a few things it never had in the beginning but which looked pretty good now that it had them.
She demanded instant and immediate surrender.
Captain Winslow blustered and refused.
She annihilated a planet of sentient alien things to prove how serious she was.
Captain Winslow blustered, ranted a little, and went red in the face as he refused.
She popped off a couple of Conglomerate ships.
Captain Winslow popped his girdle and two of Avenger’s secret bases on an aquatic planet waterlogged enough to snow up in winter.
She demanded a temporary truce while they discussed humiliating terms.
Captain Winslow, acting on behalf of the Council In Charge of just about everything, agreed.
She wanted to meet on Earth.
He, being no fool, suggested a neutral, uninhabited planet known as Gannet not all that far from the geographical and political center of the conflict, which had, of late, become embroiled in a stalemate.
After much discussion with her underlings and affiliated tyrants, she agreed.
Acting on the authority of the Council, he agreed.
They were now, if the clock on the wall behind the picture of Club Neptune was correct, less than two hours from that historical confrontation.
If Captain Winslow failed, the Angus would be space toast; if he succeeded, Avenger would be forced to return to wherever she came from, renounce all acts of violence and claims to political power, and get a job.
The problem was—
“There’s a problem?” Belle asked. “What more can there be?”
—nobody trusted anybody. Spies were everywhere. Sabotage was the order of the day on both sides. Even if an agreement was made, there was no guarantee either side would keep it, except the crew of the Angus, who would be space toast.
It was therefore very possible that no matter who won the diplomatic wars about to commence, Civilization as everyone knew it would come to an abrupt end.
“Good problem,” Belle admitted.
“If I could just be more like my father,” Virgil said, wringing his sweaty hands. “I’ll bet I could come up with something to help out.”
“Your father,” Molly pointed out, “is a gangster.”
“Yes, but—”
“And you were his henchman.”
“But only sometimes.”
“Oh, sure. Only when he needed someone to loom a lot and scare people half to death.” She smiled kindly. “You’re pretty good at that, you know. Looming.”
Virgil blushed. “I never hurt anyone.”
“Of course not. You’re not the type.”
“Did I ever scare you?”
“You gotta be kidding.”
He smiled shyly. “He’s not my real father, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
At which point Diego couldn’t stand it any longer. He cleared his throat, Molly nearly fell out of her chair, and Belle said, “This Lecotta isn’t your real father?”
“Ah … not really,” Virgil said.
Diego took off his hat, dropped it on the table, and scratched through his hair. “Then your real last name isn’t Lecotta?”
“Well … no.”
“He was adopted,” Molly explained.
“Do you know who your real ma and pa were?” Diego asked.
“Well … yes.”
Suddenly Diego jumped to his feet, grabbed his hat, marched around the table, and before Virgil could react by shrieking or getting out of the way, jammed it on Virgil’s head. Then he marched back to his seat, looked, squinted, and with a loud noise that sounded like, “Well, goddamn and little river fishes,” he realized why Virgil had, since their first meeting, seemed familiar.
He also knew why Virgil had been so fascinated with his, Diego’s, life.
“He knows something,” Molly said in awe.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Virgil answered mysteriously.
Belle looked at Virgil, looked at Diego, and said, “If y’all are going to tell me he’s really your great-grandson or something, I’m taking the first door out of here.”
“No,” Diego said quietly. “Not my grandson.” He almost smiled.
Virgil took off the hat and slid it back across the table. “You know, not even Molly knows my real last name.”
“Of course, Molly doesn’t know your real last name,” Molly said petulantly. “Molly doesn’t know because Virgil never told her. Why she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. It isn’t as if they haven’t shared a lot, all that work and training and making these stupid uniforms. It isn’t as if—”
“Earp,” Diego said.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Something you ate?”
“No,” Diego said. “His real last name is Earp.”
It was Molly’s turn to go through the opening and the closing of the mouth, the blinking in confusion, the eye-widening in comprehension, and the general dawning of understanding.
Then she threw up her hands and said, “Oh, gimmie a break.”
To which no one had the time to respond, because suddenly the door gurgled open, Private Gordon marched in, made sure they all saw the red light pulsing on the barrel of his rifle, and said, “On your feet, intruders! Them is almost here, and the Captain wants you on the Bridge immediately!”
PART III
Stagecoach Leaves in an Hour, Boys, Wheels or No Wheels
CHAPTER 1
Diego, as much as he disliked anything, disliked feeling helpless. He never accepted a gainful employment opportunity until he had first examined all the angles, studied the terrain, and assured himself that, at the end, the money he had been promised would be the money he would receive, even if he had to steal it from the guy who had promised it to him in the first place. All of this, of course, was aimed toward successfully completing the mission he had accepted, and making sure he stayed alive, not necessarily or even theoretically in that order.
Here on the Angus, however, there was nothing to study because he had no idea most of the time what he was looking at or listening to, all the angles were curves of one sort or another, and no one had promised him a dime.
All he could do, then, was follow the others as they were herded down the corridor toward yet another one of those elevator chambers. He felt as if he were drifting on a river, no paddle, no provisions, and no earthly idea where he would end up if he didn’t go over a falls before he got there.
Nevertheless, he was not unaware of the sudden increase in tension that had filled the ship. Unlike earlier, the corridors were empty; unlike earlier, the two guards engaged in no sarcastic banter; unlike earlier, Virgil kept his big mouth shut.
They rode up.
They rode sideways a little.
They rode up.
Somewhere during the trip, Molly asked Sergeant Larue what the ship looked like that they had to keep riding up and sideways all the time.
The sergeant refused to answer on security grounds.
Diego tapped her shoulder and pointed to the right-hand wall, on which was a complicated diagram of the ship’s transportation and corridor systems, noting egress and exit points, points of transfer, dead ends, capacities, authorization requirements, and other esoterica, including a blinking green light that, he assumed, was the elevator they were in because it followed what appeared to be wherever it was they were heading.
“Son of a bitch,” Molly said. “It looks like a cow.”
And in truth as Diego used to know it before he had embarked on his Time Traveling, it did.
“What’s a cow?” the private asked.
“Hush, Hauta!” the sergeant warned. “You know your orders.”
The sapient pine tree shrugged.
Diego, meanwhile, examined the diagram more closely.
The front was a long rectangle rounded at the front corners, which angled upward and back into a large squarish bulk; beneath the body were four large extensions, the front pair of which angled slightly forward, then downward, then backward, and the back pair of which did the same only not quite—he reckoned it was one of these extensions that held the cargo bay the TT had landed in. Behind the ship was another thickish extension, and on top, where the front part merged with the main part, there were two more extensions which curved upward and inward and were clearly marked as being off-limits to anyone who didn’t have the proper clearance or a tolerance for heights.
He understood, of course, that a diagram or sketch does not give the full flavor and subtleties of such a massive and technologically advanced machine.
Nevertheless, Molly was right.
Kind of squint a little and blur out the antennae and portholes and protruding bits, and it looked just like a metal cow.
His lips twitched.
Belle gasped. “Careful,” she whispered. “I think you may have smiled there, sugar.”
“Quiet!” the sergeant ordered.
Diego nodded, but something inside, something that had been cowering uncomfortably close to abject fear and resignation, gained a little strength and courage by the schematic vision he saw on the wall. It might not be a true reminder of home, but sometimes the hand you were dealt turned out to be a gold mine of information and support from which you could sail across uncharted waters without believing you’d never make it to the goal line.
He blinked.
He frowned.
He realized that someplace within that tortured metaphor was supposed to be a nugget of comfort, but it didn’t help as much as it should have since he had no idea what the hell a goal line was.
The chamber shimmied to a halt.
The doors opened.
They were brought into a small reception area completely blank save for a pair of sliding doors directly in front of them.
The sergeant pressed a button on a wall panel filled with buttons and spoke softly into a grille at the top of the panel. Seconds later the doors hissed open, and Diego swore he heard an almost subliminal trumpet fanfare.
Not that it would have been inappropriate.
Major Steele stood on the other side, beckoned brusquely, and the guards ushered the quartet through.
Molly and Virgil clasped hands and exchanged rapturous glances; Belle grabbed Diego’s arm and damn near cut off the circulation; but Diego himself was too busy trying to remember how to breathe to notice.
This, he thought, is about as unnatural as you can get without being in Denver.
The Bridge, or the Control Room, or the Conglomeration equivalent of the TT’s not very opulent but functional when it was working Center of Operations Room, was a long rectangle around the top of which ran a gallery with a three-tier brass rail separating it from the main floor, whose sides and back walls were taken up entirely by screens and flashing lights and running lights and stationary lights; in front of these marvels of self-powered electronics were canted shelves on which were more lights of all persuasions, a few buttons, a ton of levers and dials and sliding things, and at which sat a dozen or more people in very subdued and damn close to pink, red uniforms with subtle mauve accents. Aside from that there was a lot of wasted space taken up mostly by a large, padded swivel chair in which Captain Winslow sat. Behind and to either side of the captain were two more chairs, smaller and less comfy: the one on the left was occupied by the Oriental woman with the amazing red hair who stared intently at a flat desktoplike thing on a pedestal in front of her, most of it taken up by a screen surrounded by more lights and buttons and dials and levers; on the right was a similar arrangement except that she didn’t sit in this chair, Major Steele did as soon as he left the gallery level.
But it was the front wall that made Diego want to duck back into the elevator.
There wasn’t one.
What there was instead was a long narrow window that looked out on Deep Space, which, in this particular sector, was pretty much all stars.
Doc Preston sidled up to him. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
Diego swallowed.
“It takes some getting used to.”
Diego swallowed again.
“It’s actually three viewscreens in one. The two side sections always look the same except when something’s there. The middle section doubles as a communications viewer, for when we have contact either with another ship or someone below, on a planet.”
Diego stopped swallowing.
Once the vertigo was under control, he had to admit it was a beautiful sight, truly impressive, and astoundingly beyond anything he had yet seen in any of his recent travels, none of which, he reminded himself, were his idea in the first place.
Winslow swiveled his thronelike chair around and smiled. “Ah! Our distinguished visitors!”
Steele instantly leapt to his feet. “Sir, I must protest this unprecedented and unwarranted breach of security!”
The Oriental woman moved more slowly but no less emphatically. “Forgive me, but I must agree, sir. These people do not belong on the Bridge when we’re in the midst of such delicate maneuvers.”
“Bertie,” the captain said patiently, “we go straight ahead for fifteen, sixteen thousand miles and turn right. What’s the big deal?”
Captain Maynard, who wasn’t really the same rank as the Captain captain, huffed a little to prove that not only was she still annoyed, but that her slightly less subdued red uniform with the orange trim was, military and movement considerations aside, obscene. “I still want to go on record as opposing this entire affair.”
The captain looked crestfallen.
The major nodded smugly. “Objection noted, Captain Maynard.”
“Thank you, Major Steele.”
“Sit,” ordered Captain Winslow as he did precisely the opposite.
They did, mumbled under their breaths, and otherwise returned to their mysterious yet no doubt vital functions. Winslow moved to the gallery wall and looked up. “So what do you think of our little space buggy?”
“It looks like a cow,” Belle said.
Winslow inhaled slowly, turned slowly, and slowly raised his right arm to point dramatically at the viewscreen, through which they could see the forward- and downward-slanting fore section of the Angus.
It was, Diego noted, black.
He also noted that Winslow was still pointing, although he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at, and so noted instead that the crew had taken to glancing at him when they weren’t pushing buttons or pulling levers or reading their screens or sticking things that looked like baby cucumbers into their ears.
One crewman in particular was a slender woman whose skin was, in the unobtrusive artificial light, a curious and calming shade of mint. She had more buttons and dials than anyone else, a larger screen divided into six smaller ones, and sparkling black hair braided into two loops that had settled comfortably over her chest. When she wasn’t staring at him, she spoke into a metal thing that poked out of her shelf.
“You know,” Belle said, her accent thickening slightly, “I haven’t had a whole hog lot to do around here, what with not being the famous Diego and all, and not wearing a stupid green uniform that looks like underwear and traveling through Time all over the damn place, but I’ll tell you this—you don’t put them cowpoke eyes back in your head, I’m gonna find a pair of boots and stomp them in.”
Without admitting a single ounce of guilt, Diego politely shifted his gaze, found it settling on Captain Maynard, and shifted it again to the window or port or screen or whatever they called it that showed him all that empty except for the stars Space.
Belle huffed.
He said nothing.
She was a strange woman, Belle Starr, and despite all they had been through together, he still wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about her. Or about her being with him. Or about her threatening him. Or about her bare feet which, he decided, were looking a little chilly.
“Fifteen minutes, Captain,” Maynard announced.
Winslow looked over his shoulder. “Can’t it wait? I’m still pointing.”
The Bridge Officer glanced up at him. “What for?”
He frowned. “Seemed a good idea at the time.”
“Then perhaps you’d better prepare for contact.”
He frowned more deeply, lowered his arm, and dropped into his chair which he swiveled back to face front. “Lieutenant Yomatha, are we in contact yet?”
The mint-skinned Communications Officer checked her board and screen. “No, sir, not yet.”
“Let me know as soon as it happens.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No secrets, now.”
“Absolutely not, sir,” she responded, sounding offended.
“I mean, of course you’ll let me know as soon as we’re in contact, Janet, but I’d like a few seconds warning this time. Last time, with that Hmeerian ambassador, his face popped up so fast I nearly had a heart attack. Ugly sons of bitches. Scared shitless of squirrels and woodpeckers, though.” He looked anxiously at Steele. “There aren’t any Hmeerians on Their side, are there?”
“Absolutely not, sir,” the major replied. “We made peace with the Hmeerians thirty, forty years ago.”
“Thank god. Doc?”
Preston leaned on the railing. “Yes, Dirk?”
The captain jumped, swiveled, and looked up. “Good lord, what the hell are you doing up there?”
“Yes, Mr. Preston,” said Major Steele with a suspicious frown. “What are you doing up there?” He looked at the others. “With them.”
“They were ordered here, Major,” the doctor reminded him. “I’m along to see they don’t get into any trouble.”
“That’s my job,” the major declared huffily. He left his seat slowly. “You know, you’ve been acting awfully funny since they came aboard. Really strange.”
