The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (135 page)

Which may sound like madness but was really the safest thing to do. In a few moments, siren wailing and lights going, I was safe in the middle of a pack of screaming, flashing blue and white vehicles. It was lovely. They were
turning and backing and getting in one another’s way, and I did what I could to increase the confusion. It was quite interesting with much cursing and the shaking of fists from windows, and I would have stayed longer if reason had not prevailed. When the excitement reached its merriest, I worked my way out and slid my vehicle around the corner. I was not followed. At a more reasonable pace, siren
silenced and lights lowered, I trundled along the street looking for a haven. I could never escape in the police car, and I had no intention of doing so; what I needed was a rat hole to crawl into.

A luxurious one; I do not believe in doing things halfway. Not very much farther on I saw my goal, ablaze with lights and signs, glittering with ornament, a hotel of the plus and luxury class almost
a stone’s throw from the site of the crime. The last place where I would be looked for. I hoped. Certain chances have to be taken always. At the next turning I parked the car, stripped off the uniform, put a bundle of bills in my pocket, then trundled back toward the hotel with my two bags. When the car was found, they would probably think I had changed vehicles, an obvious ploy, and the area of
search would widen.

‘Hey, you,’ I called out to the uniformed functionary who stood proudly before the entrance. ‘Carry these bags.’

My tone was insulting, my manners rude, and he should have ignored me had I not spoken in another language and pressed a large denomination banknote into his hand. A quick glimpse of this produced smiles and a false obsequiousness as he grabbed for my bags, shuffling
after me as I entered the lobby.

Glowing wood paneling, soft rugs, discreet lighting, lovely women in low-cut dresses accompanied by elderly men with low-hung bellies; this was the right place. There were a number of raised eyebrows at my rough clothing as I strode across to the reception desk. The individual behind looked coldly down a long patrician nose, and I could see the ice already starting
to form. I thawed it with a wad of money on the counter before him.

‘You have the pleasure of meetin’ a rich but eccentric millionaire,’ I told him. ‘This is for you.’ The bills vanished even as I offered them. ‘I have just come back from the boonies, and I want the best room you got.’

‘Something
might
be arranged, but only the Emperor Suite is available and that costs …’

‘Don’t bodder me with
money. Take this loot and let me know when you want more.’

‘Yes, well, perhaps something can be arranged. If you would be so kind as to sign your name here ….’

‘What’s
your
name?’

‘Me? Why, it’s Roscoe Amberdexter.’

‘Ain’t that a coincidence – that’s my name, too, but you can call me sir. Must be a very common name around here. So you sign for me since we both got the same name.’ I beckoned,
and he leaned forward, and I spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t want no one to know I am here. Everyone’s after my loot. Send up the manager if he wants more information.’ What he would get would be money, which I was sure would do just as well.

Buoyed on a wave of greenbacks, the rest was clear sailing.
I was ushered to my quarters, and I bestowed largess on my two bag carriers for being so
smart they didn’t drop them. They opened and shut things and showed me all the controls, and I had one of them call room service for much food and drink, and they left in the best of humors, pockets bulging. I put the bag of money in the closet and opened the smaller case.

And froze.

The indicator needle on the time energy detector had moved and was pointing steadily toward the window and the
world outside.

My hands wanted to shake, but I would not let them as I took out the detector and placed it gently on the floor. The field strength was 117.56, and I made a rapid note of this. Then I dropped and sighted along the needle at the exact spot under the window where it pointed. Running over quickly, I marked a big X on this spot, then rushed back to check it. As I took the second sight, the needle
began to drift, and the meter dropped to zero.

But I had them! Whoever they were, they were operating out of this era. They had used their time apparatus once, and they were sure to use it again. When they did, I would be waiting for them. For the first time since I had been whipped back to this crude barbarian world I was warmed by a small spark of hope. Up until now I had been operating by
reflex, just staying alive and learning to make my way in this strange place, and all of the time keeping my thoughts away from the future that would not exist unless I could bring it into being. And that was just what I was going to do.

After a hearty dinner and a snowfall of fluttering banknotes I went to sleep. Not for long though, a two-hour zonk pill put me under in the deepest possible
sleep, with almost constant dreaming, and I awoke feeling much more human. There were a number of interesting bottles in the bar in the next room, some of them rather palatable, and I sat down with a filled glass in front of a glass-eyed instrument called a TV. As I had guessed, my accent in the local language left a lot to be desired, and I wanted to listen to someone who spoke a better form of it.

This was not easy to find. To begin with, it was hard to tell which were the educational channels and which were there for entertainment. I found what appeared to be a morality play in historical form where all the men wore wide-brimmed
hats and rode on horses. But the total vocabulary used could not have been more than 100 words, and most of the characters were killed by shooting before I could
discover what it was all about. Guns seemed to play an important role in most of the dramas I watched, though this was varied with sadism and assorted kinds of mayhem. All this violence and hurtling from one place to another in various conveyances did not leave the people much time for inter-sexual activity; a brief kiss was the only manifestation of affection or libido that I saw. Most of the
dramas were also difficult to follow since they kept being interrupted by brief playlets and illustrated lectures about the purchase of various consumer goods. By dawn I had had enough of this and my speech had improved only microscopically, so I kicked in the glass picture tube as fitting comment and went to wash myself in a pink room filled with museum pieces out of the history of plumbing.

As soon as the shops opened in the morning, I had a number of hotel employees at work with a great deal of money and my purchases soon poured in. New clothes to fit my high station, with expensive luggage to carry it in. Plus a number of maps, a carefully made gadget called a magnetic compass, and a book on the principles of navigation. It was simplicity itself to determine the exact direction that
the detector had pointed and to transfer this to a local map and to get a fairly accurate measurement of the distance in the measurement units called miles to the source of the time energy field. A long black line on the map gave me my direction, a slash across it to show distance – and I had my target. The two lines crossed at what appeared to be a major center of population, in fact, the largest
one on this map.

It was called, quaintly, New York City. There was no indication where Old York City was, and it did not matter. I knew where I had to go.

Leaving the hotel was more like a royal abdication than a simple parting, and there were many glad cries for me to hurry back. As well there might be. A hired car whirled me
out to the airport, and ready hands rushed my luggage to the proper
exit. Where a rude shock was awaiting me since I had completely forgotten about the bank robbery. Others had not.

‘Open up da bags,’ a grim-looking defender of law and order said.

‘Of course,’ I said, very cheerily. I noticed that all of the passengers were being subjected to this same search. ‘Might I ask what you are looking for?’

‘Money. Bank robbery,’ he muttered, poking through my possessions.

‘I’m afraid I never carry large sums,’ I said, holding the bag with my massed banknotes tight to my chest.

‘These are OK. Let’s see that one.’

‘Not in public if you please, officer. I am a high-placed government official, and these papers are top secret.’ I quoted this word for word from the TV.

‘In the room,’ he said, pointing. I was almost sorry I had kicked the thing in since it had been
so educational.

In the room he looked shocked when I opened a sleepgas grenade rather than the bag, and he slumped nicely. There was a large metal locker against the wall filled with the numerous forms and papers so dear to the bureaucratic mind, and by rearranging them, I managed to make room for my snoring companion. The longer he remained undiscovered, the better. Unless there were unforeseen
delays I would be in New York City before he regained consciousness – a process that would have to be a natural one since there would be no known antidote for my gas.

When I left the room, another of the uniformed officials was glowering at me, so I turned and called back through the still open door. ‘Thank you for your kind aid, no trouble at all, I assure you, no trouble at all.’ I closed the
door and smiled at him as I passed. He raised a reluctant fingertip to the visor of his cap and turned away to grab at the luggage of an elderly passenger. I went on with my bag, not too surprised to notice the finest of pricklings of sweat upon my brow.

The flight was brief, uninteresting, noisy, and rather too
bumpy, in a great fixed-wing craft that appeared to be powered by jets burning a
liquid fuel. Though the smell of this fuel was everywhere, and familiar, I could not bring myself to believe that they were burning irreplaceable hydrocarbons. I had a moment of expectation when we disembarked, but there did not seem to be any alarm. Reaching the center of the city from the outlying airport was a painful ordeal of hurtling vehicles, shouts, noise of all kinds, and it was with a feeling
of great relief that I finally fell through the door of a cool hotel room. But once reason was restored by the quiet, plus a couple of belts of the distilled organ destroyer I was becoming attached to, I was more than ready for the next step.

Which would be what? Reconnoiter or attack? Sweet reason dictated a careful stalk of the time energy source to determine what I was up against; who and
what. I had half settled on this course and was berating myself mildly for even considering attack before the force of logic clanked through to its last link. I turned and pointed at myself in the mirror.

‘You are a dum-dum.’ I shook a disgusted finger at myself. ‘What the cabdriver called the other cabdriver. A joick and woise.’

There was only one advantage that I had – and that was surprise.
Any bit of reconnoitering might tip my hand, and the time warriors would know that they were under investigation, perhaps attack. Since they had launched the time war, they were surely prepared for possible retaliation. But how can guards stay alert for weeks and months, possibly years? Once they knew I was around, at this time and place, all sorts of extra precautions would be taken. To prevent
this, I had to hit and hit hard – even though I had no idea whom I was hitting.

‘Does it make a difference?’ I asked, snapping open a grenade case. ‘It might be nice to satisfy my curiosity and find out who has attacked the Corps – and why? But is it relevant or important? The answer is no.’ I glared across a small atomic fusion bomb at my red-eyed mirrored image
and shook my head. ‘No, and no
again. They must be destroyed, period. Now. Quickly.’

There was no other course open to me, so calmly and surely I fitted about my body the most potent weapons of destruction ever devised by millennia of weapons research, always a favorite of mankind. Normally I am no believer in the kill-or-be-killed school of thought; affairs are usually not that black and white. They were now, and I felt not
the slightest guilt over my decision. This was undeclared war against all mankind of the future – or why else had the Special Corps been the first target of attack? Someone, some group, wanted control
of everything,
probably the most selfish and insane plan ever conceived, and it did not really matter who or what they were. Death for them, before they killed everything of value.

When I left the
hotel, I was a walking bomb, an army of destruction. The black box of the time energy detector was in the attaché case I carried, the indicators visible through holes I had cut in the lid. Somewhere out there was the enemy, and when he moved, I would be waiting.

It was a short wait. There was an unseen burst of time energy unleashed, close by if the action of the needle was any indication, and
I was on the trail. Direction and distance, I worked out the vector as I plunged ahead, almost ignorant of the people and vehicles around me, but slowing and becoming more careful after a close miss by a lumbering truck.

Now a wide thoroughfare with green in the center of it, tall buildings of a uniformly depressing design, great slabs of metal and glass looming up in the polluted air. One very
much like the other. Which one did I want?

The needle swung again, quivering with the intensity of its reaction, turning as I walked, the meter rising to a distance reading right at the top of its scale.

There. In that building, the copper and black one.

In I went, prepared for anything.

Anything that is except what happened next.

They were locking the doors behind me, lining up and
blocking
them even as they did so.
Everyone.
The visitors to the building, the elevator starters – even the man behind the cigar counter. Running, pressing forward, coming toward me with the cold light of hatred in their eyes.

I had been discovered; they must have detected
my
detector; they knew who I was. They were attacking first.

It was a nightmare come alive. At some time in our lives we are all touched by incipient paranoia and feel that everyone is against us. Now I was faced with the reality. For a single instant this basic fear possessed me; then I shrugged it off and tried to win.