TW11 The Cleopatra Crisis NEW (6 page)

They had all been trying to spend as much time with Priest as possible. Priest needed the support of his friends just now, he was under a great deal of strain. Forrester visited as often as he could, but the duties of command left him with little spare time.

They all got to their feet as he entered.

"As you were," he said.

Darkness glanced up at him from behind the bar. "You wanted to see me, Moses?"

He was tall and slender, a gaunt-looking man, with dark, unruly hair, deep-set eyes, a sharp, prominent nose, and a neatly trimmed moustache. He was wearing a Norfolk tweed shooting jacket in dark brown herringbone, with rust-colored suede leather elbow patches and a matching, quilted shooter's pad on the right shoulder. He had on a dark brown vest with a gold watch chain, a white Oxford shirt and maroon silk paisley ascot, dark brown tropical wool slacks and light brown calfskin jodphurs. He looked like the ghost of an English country gentleman. Forrester could see the back of the bar right through him.

"I have a few questions and I'd like some straight answers, Robert, if you don't mind," Forester said.

Everybody else called him "Doc" or "Doctor," but Forester and Darkness were on a first name basis, based upon a curious blend of mutual respect and cordial dislike.

"Ask," said Darkness, suddenly appearing about two feet in front of Forrester, holding a glass of whiskey. Instinctively, Forrester backed off a step and grimaced, annoyed with himself for doing so. Darkness smiled.

"I'll never get used to the way you pop around all over the damn place," Forester grumbled.

"You said you had some questions," Darkness said. His voice sounded cultured, vaguely Continental. There was nothing about the way he spoke that was overtly arrogant or condescending, but that effect came across just the same. He was, thought Forester, an irritating bastard.

"What's the long-term prognosis on Priest's condition?"

"We were just discussing that," said Lucas.

"Yes," said Darkness. "Unfortunately, it would appear that the long-term prognosis is not very favorable. There's been a dramatically measurable decay. It's apparently irreversible."

Forester glanced at Priest with alarm. "You mean—"

"He means his particle gizmo," Lucas said, "not me."

"Particle gizmo, indeed!" said Darkness, rolling his eyes.

"Well, whatever you want to call the damn thing," Lucas said. "It seems the good doctor hasn't quite got it figured out yet. It's failing. Looks like it's eventually going to stop working altogether." He grinned. "Ain't that a damn shame?"

"What does that mean in terms of his health?" asked Forrester.

"His health?" said Darkness. "His health is excellent and will undoubtedly continue to remain so, unless he manages to get himself in the way of another bullet. I cannot be held responsible for his propensity for foolish heroics."

"He means I'm going to be all right," said Lucas, smiling. He looked better than he had in weeks, as if an enormous burden had been lifted from him. "But the doc's going to have to go back to the drawing board. Looks like his thought-controlled transponder is a long way from being perfected.”

“You needn't sound so damned smug about it," Darkness said irritably.

Forrester felt enormously relieved. "You mean there's no chance of his experiencing discorporation?”

"None whatsoever," Darkness replied. "There was very little chance of that to begin with. I was reasonably certain that I had the problem solved, but it seems that the transponder itself is still unstable. It simply won't hold up. I can't imagine why." He grimaced. "It's really quite annoying."

"So you mean to say he's going to be the same way that he was before?" asked Forester, his hopes rising. "Completely normal?"

"Yes, yes, yes," said Darkness with a sigh of exasperation. "Given the rate of decay, I would say within a week or two, at most. Perhaps only in a matter of days. Then he can once more revel in being the same, depressingly ordinary clod he always was."

"Thanks," said Lucas wryly.

“Don't mention it."

"That brings up my next question," said Forrester. "With the exception of the people in this room, nobody knows that Priest is still alive. Or perhaps I should say, alive
again
. That presents us with a problem. I should have informed Director General Vargas of what you've done, only I've done as you asked and I haven't. At least, not yet. I'm not at all sure I've done the right thing in not telling him at once, but I was more concerned about Priest's health and emotional well-being. Now that that issue seems to have been settled, there are a few things I need to know. Is there any reason why I shouldn't tell Director Vargas about what's happened?"

"I suppose not," Darkness said, "although I really can't see what purpose that would serve. They'd only bury you in official inquiries. It would cause them to start running about like chickens with their heads cut off, flying to figure out if there's been a temporal disruption."

"
Has
there been a temporal disruption?"

"I wouldn't concern myself with that."

"Perhaps you wouldn't, but I'm afraid
I
have to," Forrester replied.

"The world isn't going to end merely because Priest is sitting there, grinning like a Cheshire cat over the fact that my transponder is decaying," Darkness said.

"How can you know that for certain?" Forrester asked.

"Take my word for it," said Darkness.

“I'd like to, Robert, but how can you know that for sure?" Forester persisted. "Unless, of course, you're from the future?"

The others stared at him.

"You are, aren't you?" Forester said quietly.

Darkness regarded him with a steady gaze. "Very good, Moses. Very good, indeed. I see I've underestimated you."

"Jesus Christ," said Finn Delaney. "Now it all suddenly makes sense!"

"When did you first suspect'?" asked Darkness.

"I'm not sure when the idea first occurred to me," said Forrester. "I'm just amazed that it didn't occur ,to me sooner. I've been doing a lot of digging, trying to cheek you out. I didn't get very far. Everything about your background is classified. Even
I
can't get to it. It's restricted to an access code that no one seems to know."

"I know you couldn't have cracked the code," said Darkness.

"No, I wasn't able to," Forrester admitted. "But I have a feeling that if I had, I would have discovered that the records had somehow been erased. Or something like that, right? There would have been some sort of malfunction that would have rendered them inaccessible, because past a certain point, your background would either be a forgery or it would simply stop. So, frustrated in that endeavor, I decided to do the next best thing. Find out who had the clearance to access your file."

"Only you could not discover that, either," said Darkness, smiling.

"No, I couldn't. However, I'm not the sort of man to give up on a problem. So I began to trace the authorization for the file's being classified."

"And you couldn't find it," Darkness said.

"That's right," said Forrester. "I couldn't find it. Only I should have been able to find it. You see, that's the trouble with covering your tracks, Robert. Sooner or later, it becomes obvious that they were covered. And that's when I knew. You were worried that someone might get curious, find the authorization order, and clock back to the date that it was issued to investigate. So you buried the order. If there even was an order to begin with. The whole thing was a sham. But I wanted to be absolutely certain, so I put a research team from Archives Section on the project and had them do it the hard way. They clocked back as far as we could trace you and started digging. And the trail just ran out. Past a certain point, you simply ceased to exist. That's why none of your peers in the scientific community can understand your work. It's why you've always been so far ahead of them. Because you were, quite literally, ahead of them. Years ahead." He paused.

"How many years, Robert?"

"As you people in Temporal Intelligence are so fond of saying," Darkness replied laconically, "you have no need to know."

"I think I do," said Forrester. “I think we all do."

"What you think is really of no consequence," Darkness replied. “It is what you do that matters. And as you should know, better than anyone else, what you do must not be affected by your knowledge of what will be done."

"Just tell me one thing, Robert. Are you a temporal agent from the future or are you doing whatever it is you're doing on your own?"

"I think I've answered enough questions," Darkness said. "You already know a great deal more than you should."

'The one thing I don't understand is, why the warp grenade?" asked Forrester. "You had to know what it would do. Didn't you? So why?"

"There is a reason for everything I've done, Moses," Darkness said. "And everything that I will do. At the proper time. That is really all that I can tell you."

"God damn it, Robert, don't you—"

Suddenly he simply wasn't there anymore.

"Jesus Christ," said Steiger.

"It's a strange feeling, isn't it?' Delaney said. "We think of ourselves as being the ones who go back into the past to adjust things and here we are, being adjusted ourselves. Sort of like the big fish eating the small fish eating the smaller fish."

"It does explain a lot," said Andre. "What do you think happened where he came from? You think it all finally fell apart and now he's trying to fix it?"

"We have, unfortunately, no way of knowing," Forester said. "And, though I don't like it, we may well be better off not knowing. However, we do know at least one thing. What we're doing, or what we will do, is significant enough from the standpoint of the future for Darkness to have taken as much time as he has to involve himself with us."

`"Swell," said Lucas. "So not only is the past messed up, but something's screwed up in the future, too. It figures. I knew it had to hit the fan one of these days. Well, at least there's a bright side to all of this. With that particle gizmo of his going on the fritz, pretty soon I won't have to guard my thoughts so carefully. No more dreaming of ancient Rome and waking up there."

`"Funny you should say that," said Forester.

"We've received a report of what appears to be a temporal anomaly from one of our L.T.O.'s," said Forrester.

"That sounds serious," said Steiger. "L.T.O.'s don't generally jump to conclusions."

"No, they don't," said Forrester. "The man's name is Travers. Capt. Jonathan Travers. I've had his file pulled. He's one of our best people. He's assigned to Julius Caesar. "

Lucas exhaled heavily and shook his head. "A temporal anomaly involving Caesar could pose all sorts of problems. He didn't exactly lead an uneventful life. When did Travers make his report?"

"This morning. He clocked in with it personally, leaving Caesar's camp on the night before he crossed the Rubicon and started the civil war in Rome," Forrester said. "He clocked back out so he'd arrive just after he left, so he was only gone from Minus Time for a matter of minutes. Therefore, the risk was minimal and he felt justified in taking it. Under the circumstances, I'm inclined to agree. At first, he wasn't sure that what he had on his hands was an anomaly. Caesar, like other people of his time, was in the habit of consulting soothsayers and it seems that word had reached him of an oracle of some sort, a man named Lucan, who could see into the future. He had sent for this oracle to give him a reading on the night before he crossed the Rubicon.

“There's no historical record of any such event, but as we all know, that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen. Still, Travers found it curious, since both Caesar and his classical biographers had mentioned most of the occasions when he had received significant prophecies or omens. To receive a prophecy on the night of one of the most important events in his life would certainly seem significant, yet it was possible that history might have overlooked it.

"In any event," Forrester continued, "Travers didn't think much of it at first He thought it might make for an interesting incident in his book. He plans to write a biography of Caesar when he returns to Plus Time. He managed to be present during the reading, which turned out to be rather unusual, to say the least. The oracle told Caesar that he would be successful in his civil war, that his fame would live for generations, and that he would fall in love with a beautiful young queen, an apparent reference to Cleopatra."

"Well, with all due respect, sir," said Delaney, "that sounds more like a generalized bit of fortune-telling than an anomaly. None of those so-called predictions would seem particularly farfetched for a Roman general with Caesar's reputation. Roman military governors often became involved with royalty. There were more kings and queens back then than you could shake a stick at. And flattering a general by promising him victory and fame would only be good business sense for an enterprising soothsayer."

"This soothsayer also told Caesar the exact date when he would be assassinated and to beware of men named Cassius, Brutus, Cimber, and Casca."

"Oh," said Delaney.

"Yeah, oh. What's more, he told Caesar there was a chance that he could change his fate if he paid attention to the omens, and one in particular, which he cited rather cryptically. ‘That which was concealed shall stand revealed.' After the oracle went out the gates of Caesar's camp, Travers tried to follow him, only he had mysteriously disappeared."

"This was at night, wasn't it?" said Steiger. "Travers might have simply lost him in the darkness."

"The moon was out," said Forrester. "And the terrain around the camp was an unbroken slope that stretched down to a meadow, affording an unobstructed view for several miles.”

"He might have gone around the camp, hugging the wall."

"Or he might have clocked out," said Andre. "I think Travers was right. It definitely sounds like a potential disruption. We can't afford to overlook it.”

“ ‘That which was concealed shall stand revealed,' " said Lucas, frowning. "What does that mean?"