About now Sergeant Brannick should be reaching the front of the building, encountering whatever sort of defenders the Underground had stationed there. Hartstein heard nothing but the twitter and chirp of birds high above him. Then, suddenly, there was something more. There was a low hum and a rumble, so far away that he felt the sound more than he heard it. The vibrations increased in strength and the pitch of the noise rose until it became almost painful. The ground shook and the trees flailed the air as if caught in an invisible storm. A small pane of glass shattered in one of the villa's windows.

  And then a familiar craft screamed down to a shuddering landing on the grass, not fifty yards from Hartstein. The outline of the thing was unmistakable. If it wasn't the Commander's craft from the quasi-future, then it was a sister ship. Hartstein thought for a moment, undecided whether he should continue with the reconnaissance and risk being spotted by the crew of the Underground destroyer, or return to the Agency invasion headquarters to report the ship. The weapons that craft carried could devastate the Agency positions.

  An amplified voice boomed from the destroyer. “SERGEANT HARTSTEIN! WE SEE YOU IN THE BUSHES. THERE IS NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. PLEASE, COME ABOARD. WE ARE MOST ANXIOUS TO SPEAK WITH YOU."

  “I'll just bet you are, anarchist swine,” Hartstein growled.

  “THERE ARE FACTS CONCERNING THE AGENCY THAT ARE KEPT HIDDEN FROM YOU. WE FEEL THAT IF YOU KNOW THESE THINGS, YOU MAY BE PERSUADED TO WORK WITH US WHOLEHEARTEDLY. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION OTHER THAN TO LISTEN TO OUR ARGUMENTS WITH AN OPEN MIND. OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE BLASTED INTO YOUR CONSTITUENT ATOMS IN TEN SECONDS. NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN. SIX—"

  Hartstein jumped to his feet and sprinted across the carefully trimmed lawn to the Underground ship. He pounded on the place where he thought the sliding hatch should be. “Let me in!” he cried. “I'll listen, I'll listen!"

  The hatch slid. “VERY GOOD, SERGEANT. PLEASE, COME IN."

  Hartstein stepped into the craft; the hatch closed behind him, and in the blackness he felt as if he had been swallowed by a giant fish. That was him, all right, Old Jonah. Or Pinocchio, at least.

  Pinpoints of colored light flickered around him. There was a low-pitched hum and a rattling racket that sounded like an ice machine. Once again Hartstein wondered where all the crew members were. He wondered how he was going to find his way about the ship. This one seemed identical to the Commander's, which was still locked into the Easter Island quasi-past. Even if it were identical, Hartstein wouldn't know his way around. The only part of that craft he remembered clearly was the pantry where he had had such an interesting conversation with Melissa Spence, but he knew he couldn't hope to find even that familiar place in the maze of gangways.

  “So, Hartstein, we meet again."

  “Yipe,” said the young Agent, startled. He turned around, but he saw no one in the darkness. “Who's there?"

  “Me,” said the voice, “Tipchak."

  “Tipchak! But you're—"

  “Dead? Not me, pal. Not old Tipchak. I'm too tough to kill. It'll be a long time before the Agency finds a way to get rid of Terrible Tipchak, Time Rogue."

  “Then this is the Commander's ship. But it's supposed to be stuck back on Easter Island. The Agency played the Underground trick of distorting the temporal coordinates. You're all supposed to be trapped forever in some kind of stasis."

  Hartstein heard Tipchak's disgusting snicker. “But we're not. The Commander gave orders to follow you and that Spence person after the two of you disappeared. Our monitoring equipment registered your escape, but it gave us ambiguous data about your destination. The Commander was not at all pleased about losing Sister Spence and her partial-number theory, although it was all recorded in our ship's computer. But he was afraid that she'd given it to you, and that you'd take it to the Agency. Which is, after all, precisely what happened. But he's willing to let bygones be bygones. He's a very forgiving man, Hartstein."

  “So you left that quasi-past before the Agency sealed your particular Easter Island off. I can't say that I'm thrilled to see you again, Tipchak. I thought you were something I never had to worry about again.” His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and he saw the little weasel standing nearby.

  “Let's go. The Commander is waiting.” Tipchak turned and headed down the corridor. Hartstein followed, lost in urgent thought.

  After a while they stood before the metal bulkhead that was the entrance to the Commander's wardroom. The bulkhead vanished, just as it had on Hartstein's previous visit, and the Commander was just as he had been then, seated at the table, drinking quasi-sherry from a cut-glass decanter. The Commander smiled broadly at Hartstein. “Come in, Sergeant,” he said. “Join me. You've made quite a name for yourself since last we spoke. Tipchak, go find something to do. Leave us alone."

  There was a resentful grunt from Tipchak, and the small man went off to do something despicable in another part of the ship. Hartstein took a seat across from the Commander. The kindly old Commander, he reminded himself. This leader of the Underground was not as trustworthy as he wanted Hartstein to believe.

  “Some sherry?” said the Commander.

  “Sherry? Real sherry this time?"

  “Yes, real sherry. I stocked up when we returned to our base. Atlantis is—or was, I should say—a major producer of sherry in ancient times. Or it is now, after I made a few adjustments in their reality. Just a matter of altering a few numbers here and there. But it's actually quite acceptable as sherry, don't you think?"

  “Very nice. You want to talk me into betraying the Agency, isn't that it?"

  The Commander laughed, a pleasant, innocent sound. “You seem very defensive today, son,” he said. “The last time you were here, you enjoyed yourself more. A shame Sister Spence is no longer with us, but if you look around, perhaps you'll discover that such friends are easy to find in the Underground."

  “You can stop throwing your women at me,Commander. I'm not going to sell out the Agency and allow you to destroy the universe for the sake of a few moments of pleasure."

  “I didn't mean anything of the kind,” said the Commander. He looked a little hurt. “Sometimes young people forget who their real friends are. But enough of that. Let me make a few points about the Agency. Then I want you to think over what I tell you, ask me any questions you may have, and be certain that I'm not trying to con you into anything you don't want to do. That's all I ask, that you listen to the truth, and that you evaluate it fairly."

  “Fine,” said Hartstein. “Where's Sergeant Brannick?"

  “Brannick? Did he come with you?"

  Hartstein bit his lip and said nothing.

  The Commander decided that the best thing was to change the subject. “Have you ever wondered whose Agency it is?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘whose'? It's everyone's Agency. It's a service to everyone."

  The Commander allowed himself a brief smile. “How naïve you are. I don't believe I've ever met so naïve a sergeant before. Do you know what they call you behind your back? They call you ‘The Candide of Time.’ Hartstein, the Agency controls a vast, almost unimaginable amount of power, not to say material wealth. Are you so certain that this gathering of power is for the benefit of all mankind?"

  “You can't deny that the Agency has provided material comforts to every single person on earth. There is no poverty anywhere. Great steps have been taken to eradicate many diseases. The—"

  “I know. I do grant the Agency its due in these areas. But these things were unavoidable, don't you see? Even the most evil governments in history provided some benefits to their populations. And next you'll tell me that the Agency is not a government, but I disagree. It has all the privileges of a government without the blessing of legitimacy. The Agency has been consolidating power for many years, and those who control the Agency therefore control the world—the world as we know it, the world as we'd like to know it, the world as we will wake up tomorrow and find it. However that may be."

  “No one controls the Agency,” said Hartstein.

  “You're wrong,” said the Commander softly. "One person controls the Agency. The supreme power and wealth that the Agency has accumulated is all in the hands of a single demented man. Would you care to take a shot at guessing who it is?"

  “I don't have the slightest idea. Sergeant Brannick, maybe."

  “You fell into an elementary trap, son, although in this case it happens that I was telling the truth. When I asked you to guess, you said that you couldn't, which implies that you have accepted the premise that someone is, in fact, in control of the Agency. Which is true, as I said, but you still shouldn't let people bully you with polemical gimmicks. No, it isn't Sergeant Brannick. It's Dr. Bertram Waters."

  “Dr. Waters! That's crazy. Dr. Waters died more than fifty years ago."

  The Commander drummed his fingers on the table impatiently. “The fact that Dr. Waters died in any given year does not rule out the possibility that he may have lived the majority of his life in a time decades later than that year. We have time travel now, son."

  “I know that. But when you go into the past or the future, it isn't real. I've spent months having that drilled into my head. So if Dr. Waters lived many years ago and invented time travel, and used it to go into the future to live, he arrived in a quasi-future, not what we call the real present. He couldn't be here to control the Agency."

  “There! That was fine reasoning.” The Commander beamed at his ace student. “But you neglected one thing. What if Dr. Waters had help from the real future, from a time when legitimate time travel has been perfected, when people can travel back to the true past or ahead to the true future?"

  “That couldn't be,” said Hartstein. “There's never been the slightest sign of any such visitation from the true future."

  “None that you know of,” said the Commander. “Maybe the Agency or a part of the Agency is guarding that knowledge jealously, for its own nefarious reasons. Maybe Dr. Waters is alive at this moment, manipulating you and the rest of the Agents who are out there giving their lives, and manipulating the Underground too and the poor citizens of the world. Can you grant that possibility?"

  It took a little thought. When no one was speaking, the Underground destroyer made gentle background noises like a kitchen full of appliances at midnight. “Commander,” said Hartstein at last, “if I grant that possibility, you must grant the next logical step."

  “Which is?"

  “That from this war the Agency must emerge the victor, in order that the world survives into that future from which Dr. Waters has received the help in the first place."

  “My, somewhere in the last few weeks you've really learned to think. But no, what you're saying isn't necessarily true."

  Hartstein felt it happening to him again; a thundering wave of words and fallacious arguments and convoluted reasoning towered above him, ready to crash down and drown him. “How can it mean anything else?” he cried.

  The Commander took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Although there is a ‘true’ future, son, it is only true in the sense that it exists as a result of our actions in the present. What we mean by ‘true future’ is in reality a finite though immense set of alternate futures each of which could develop with equal probability from the world as we know it at this instant. With every passing second the set of possible futures changes; some futures are eliminated as impossible under the new circumstances, while others are created by the same situation. Dr. Waters received help from people in one or another of these potentially true futures. But there are futures equally likely in which the Underground wins this conflict, and you know what that entails."

  “Hopelessness,” said Hartstein.

  “We prefer to think of it as an absence of the degradation of the nature of the universe."

  “Whatever."

  “Did you know that the Agency has begun a program of educating people through their ESB sessions that not only is the Agency all-powerful, but that it has always been all-powerful?"

  That point bewildered Hartstein. “What good does that do?” he asked.

  “It reinforces the Agency's grip on the present. Soon people all over the world will believe that the Agency has been in existence since the dawn of time; then, when anyone visits a quasi-past in any period or place at all, the Agency will be there. As the ruling force. At that point, the Agency will have won the last shreds of power remaining in the hands of the free individual. There will be a tyranny such as the world has never known, and it will last forever because no one on earth will think it possible to exist without the Agency."

  The notion chilled Hartstein. He knew it was very plausible; the Agency certainly had the means, and they had been giving tourists and students and adult citizens ESB training for many reasons for years. It would not take long for the Agency to accomplish what the Commander suggested. “That's the most horrible thing I've ever heard,” said Hartstein.

  “Good! Then you'll—"

  “But eliminating the universe altogether isn't a rational solution, either."

  The Commander wasn't upset by Hartstein's ambivalence. “We never expected you to become our fanatic supporter, lad. We don't count on your working tirelessly toward our ultimate goal, although we'd love to have you. We ask but one thing from you, and that's this: help us to keep the Agency from winning its ultimate goal of absolute and eternal domination. Your conscience will be clear; you can do that without necessarily aiding us. Do you see?"

  Hartstein nodded slowly. Perhaps there was a way of blocking the Agency without clearing the way for the Underground. And vice versa. It required some thought...

  “Will you work with us?” asked the Commander.

  “Yes,” said Hartstein, “up to a point."

  “Fine. We will not ask you to compromise your principles or endanger yourself or your friends."

  Hartstein had yet to see how that was possible. “What do you want me to do first?” he asked.

  “We want you to prevent the Agency from destroying the Underground command center here in Atlantis. If we can win this battle today, we will move our headquarters elsewhere, and Atlantis can be returned to its proper quasi-past."

  “A stalemate,” said Hartstein. “I suppose you have just the right way for me to go about it, too."

  “Of course.” The Commander smiled and poured him some more Atlantean sherry.

  Captain D'Amato looked worried. This operation wasn't going so smoothly as headquarters had hoped. Agency men were dying by the hundreds on the beachhead. The Underground seemed to anticipate their every move. And the Underground had some grotesque weapons that the Agency knew nothing about. Of course, the Agency had a few tricks left up its silver-and-blue sleeve.

  The captain stroked his blond moustache and waited. He could do nothing more until he received reports from the forward positions. Marshal Farias himself would arrive in a few minutes, and then the headquarters staff would begin to revise the strategic timetable. It was obvious now that some revision was necessary.

  The Agency had taken over a farmhouse just south of the landing areas for use as a makeshift field command post. Captain D'Amato looked out a window toward the ocean. Bright violet beams of energy split the air above the Agency positions. There was the eerie, intermittent noise of a battlefield, the booming of guns and the cries of dying men reduced to mild and gentle sounds by the distance. A young lieutenant knocked briefly on the door and entered the room. “Captain,” he said, “Sergeant Hartstein is back."

  “Just Hartstein? Brannick's not with him?"

  “No, sir.” That was more bad news.

  D'Amato rubbed his temples and waited for the news to get worse.

  “Captain D'Amato, sir,” said Hartstein. “I've just come back from the Underground headquarters in Sector Six. I've had an interview with the Commander."

  “The Commander! But he's supposed to be out of this war. Or did he come here from a point before we trapped him in the Easter Island quasi-past?"

  “No, sir,” said Hartstein. “He and that destroyer from the future managed to escape. But he believes that I'm willing to cooperate with the Underground, and he thinks he has reason to trust me. I have the entire rebel battle plan."

  D'Amato just stared for a moment. This was news better than any he could have hoped for. The difficult situation in Atlantis could yet be turned around. “First,” he said, “before we discuss that, what of Sergeant Brannick?"

  “Captured, sir. He's somewhere in that main building, I'm sure. I was too closely observed to do anything about him. I felt my primary duty was to get back here with their strategy."

  “Exactly right, Sergeant, but don't worry about Brannick, he'll take care of himself. They won't get anything out of him. And we'll get him out of there if we have to take this whole unreal continent apart stone by stone. Now, let's see what you have."

  Hartstein took a seat by the captain's table and began telling him the falsehoods invented by the Commander. Hartstein knew this would cost the lives of thousands more unlucky Agents; he felt like a filthy traitor.

  In response to the deceptive Underground plans, Captain D'Amato ordered a company of men to charge the enemy's left flank. The left flank was supposed to be vulnerable; it was not. The company was decimated, and as twilight fell on Atlantis, the news of the disaster came to the darkened farmhouse. Marshal Farias brought it himself, muttering orders into his wrist-communicator. The noise of the weapons never ceased, nor did it grow quieter as it should have, had the Agency forces been able to leave the beach and storm inland toward the Underground stronghold.

  “Did you send Company B into the Underground's left flank?” asked Marshal Farias. He seemed almost exhausted by the long and terrible battle.

  “Yes, sir,” said Captain D'Amato. He and Hartstein stood at attention.

  “And you did so without consulting Major Li or myself?"

 

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