He thought he saw something like relief in Sniper’s expression. Then the big man grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “You’re right. Fuck ’em! This is my show, my triumph. Everything else is just noise, just gnats buzzing in my ears.” He smiled and slapped Klaatu on the shoulder.
“Come on, let’s go out and have a drink. You spend too much time cooped up in here. Let’s get some girls and have a party!”
Klaatu shrugged. “The work is going well. A few hours off won’t hurt too much.” Besides, Klaatu knew it was best not to say no to such invitations. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get changed. But I must talk to you about some equipment we still need. Some switches.”
“Switches?” Sniper laughed. He was in a good mood now. “Send someone down to the hardware store.”
“I don’t think they’d stock the kind of thing I have in mind.”
* * * *
Superintendent Jacques Bauchet faced a prestigious and attentive audience. The auditorium in the Berlaymont Building had a capacity of two hundred and was about half-filled. As he looked around, he saw Euro MPs, cabinet ministers from various European governments, heads of intelligence agencies and police forces, as well as senior civil servants from many different countries. It was his first high-level briefing as head of the Temporal Crimes Unit and the size and quality of his audience gave him the grim satisfaction of knowing how rattled everyone was. The Chair of the European Parliament’s Standing Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, no less, made the opening remarks and introduced Bauchet. Now the Frenchman had the job of focusing all these powerful people on the job that needed to be done.
“Travelling in time has been one of the most unusual technological developments ever.” He gazed out at them from the podium. “For most of its history it has not been part of mainstream science or technology.” He remotely controlled the room’s huge 3-D display as he spoke. “The original scientific work was done in the early part of this century but was ridiculed by the scientific establishment at the time. The so-called Kentucky formula, which clearly showed how it could be done, was rejected as pseudoscience and ignored by almost every respectable research lab. Of course, when the oil ran out, a few years later, mainstream physics and the more obscure scientific backwaters alike were swept aside by the global depression that we now call the Great Adjustment. Basic science came to be seen as an unnecessary luxury. Any country that could still afford science at all, set its best people onto finding alternative energy sources.
“It was during this period of economic collapse and resource wars that two former PhD students in the north of England used the Kentucky formula to build the first time machine. They were unemployed and disaffected. So were most young people at the time. They used this remarkable invention recreationally, as a kind of sport.
“Pretty soon, they had developed a following. Others started building time machines. A party culture developed around the weird effects, with its own music, its own heroes, and its own jargon based on the metaphor of lobbing bricks back into the timestream to create timesplashes.”
Bauchet’s eyes swept the room. His audience was growing a little restless. No doubt most of them knew this much already.
“For many years, it was a minor phenomenon and well below the radar of law enforcement agencies. Travelling back in time requires a lot of energy and, fortunately, when you try to go farther, the energy requirement goes up exponentially. These early timesplashers went just a few years—ten if they were lucky. The fun involved for the participants and the partygoers is in creating an anomaly. The biggest anomaly of all is a temporal paradox. If you kill your past self, or stop yourself being born, for example, you create a logical impossibility which the universe must reject. This creates what they call the timesplash—an area of disruption in spacetime where causality is damaged. The damage is self-healing and localised so there is never any possibility of changing the past, but there is always a certain amount of disruption that flows down to the present. There, where the edge of the timesplash meets the present—” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “—for reasons any physicists in the audience might like to explain to me afterwards—the disruptions to causality are not repaired and may cause permanent damage.
“As I said, the early bricks could not travel far and the anomalies they could create were not large. What is more, the strength of the effect diminishes rapidly as it flows upstream to the present. It was enough for the bricks to have some excitement and for the kids at the splashparties to enjoy a little weirdness. Nothing dangerous.
“Until the focus fusion generator was perfected in 2035. Timesplashers quickly realised the potential of these small, powerful generators and, while we were building F-Twos as fast as we could and dragging ourselves out of the depression, the splashparty craze was sweeping the whole world. Kids everywhere were organising bigger and bigger parties and the bricks and their technicians were pushing their lobs farther and farther into the past.
“Incredibly, it was only then, when splashparties had become a huge global phenomenon and the most daring bricks had their faces on our children’s bedroom walls, that the world’s scientists woke up to the fact that time travel had been invented and had actually been practised regularly for more than a decade!”
He shook his head in amazement and looked around once more. “Of course, splashparties themselves became big enough to attract the interest of law enforcers. The use of recreational drugs—particularly tempus—at these events had prompted some authorities to ban such parties. However, the sheer scale of the phenomenon meant that most law enforcement agencies focused on containing the noise and disruption from the events—happy to force them out into remote country areas—and to use their resources to crack down on the drug suppliers. Most people still considered the theatre of the timesplash—the brick, the cage, the backwash—just a harmless show. Very few in authority actually believed that kids were going back in time to shoot their own mothers!
“It was not until Ommen that the real dangers became apparent.” The display behind him showed vidlog footage of damaged buildings and people being rescued from under fallen masonry.
“A young man died that day, one woman lost a leg, and twelve more were injured. The insurance bill for the damage to buildings and infrastructure ran to millions of Euros.”
He began a series of still shots from other disaster scenes. “Ommen was a lob of sixty-five years—the absolute maximum that the technology was capable of at the time. We also believe the anomaly created was of the order of shooting one’s own grandmother. Other bricks have tried to emulate it but have been unable to go so far back—it takes a lot of technical expertise.” Wanted posters for Sniper and Klaatu appeared behind him. “After Ommen, new laws came into force throughout Europe vastly increasing the penalties for unauthorised time travel. The bricks and their tekniks have now all gone underground. The great majority have given it up but there is still a hard core who continue to timesplash. Finding out where they are getting the money to do this and stopping it, is one of our top priorities.
“For the past ten years, mainstream physics has been running to catch up with what these youngsters can do. Unfortunately, this resulted in a far deeper understanding of the theory behind time travel. I say ‘unfortunately’ because this new understanding led to a new, generalised time travel formula. About a year ago, scientists at CERN developed this ‘gigarange formula’ as it has become known and immediately let it leak onto the net.
“With the gigarange formula, timesplashers can hugely increase the length of their journeys back in time. All that limits them now is the energy required for the lob. Like most things connected with this technology, the energy requirements for a lob increase exponentially with its length. However, it is now believed that a lob of one hundred and fifty years or thereabouts is quite feasible.
“What happened in Beijing was, without doubt, the first application of this new formula. Preliminary reports from a group at Cambridge Unive
rsity tasked with analysing the event, suggest that the temporal distance travelled in Beijing was approximately one hundred and forty years.
Given this and the obvious size of the anomaly they created, our best guess is that they took the opportunity to assassinate the then twenty-five-year-old Mao Tse-dung when he travelled to Beijing to attend a student rally on the fourth of May, 1919.”
A murmur went around the room.
“Going after targets such as the future Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, a man believed to be among the most influential people of the twentieth century, is the kind of attack we now face. This new range would easily include major figures in World Wars I and II—think Hitler, Churchill, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Emperor Shōwa, Woodrow Wilson—and many others whose influence on history have been profound—Gandhi, Albert Einstein, John Logie Baird, Henry Ford…”
He threw up his hands to signify the enormity of what he was saying. “We have suddenly become extremely vulnerable. The assassination of any of these people—or their parents, or of others they relied on—before they became the globally influential people we know, would have the same kind of effect as the assassination of the young Mao in Beijing. Bricks are making plans right now to devastate major cities using precisely these tactics. I don’t have to remind you of how far stock markets have plummeted since Beijing. A few more attacks like this and we will be plunged into another depression—one that will make the Adjustment look like a minor hiccough.”
He leaned on his podium, scouring the audience with his deep, dark eyes. Behind him, injured people crawled through the rubble of Beijing, crying for help.
“I do not exaggerate. For a price that many terrorist groups, organised crime gangs, rogue governments, and even wealthy individuals can afford, you can now devastate a major city as effectively as if you’d set off a nuclear bomb there. How many cities would need to be nuked before a country could no longer recover? How many would it take to bring down our whole civilisation?
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the threat we face.”
* * * *
The truck came to a halt with a massive screech as it dumped energy to its flywheels, followed by an explosive hiss from its air-brakes. For a moment it juddered and settled on its shock absorbers, and then it was silent except for the hum of its big electric motors. It was standing in a long, broad lay-by—a big pull-off beside the Autobahn. To the left, separating the lay-by from the main road, was a row of tall shrubs. To the right were open fields. Ahead of the truck, blocking its exit, was a green and white police car. Beyond that, a silver Mercedes. Beside the truck, the motorcycle policeman who had flagged it down pulled in and dismounted.
Sniper, looking smart in a fake Berliner Polizei uniform, stepped up to the cab and called for the driver to get out.
Instead of complying, the man leaned out of his window and shouted to Sniper in German,
“What’s the problem, officer? I wasn’t speeding.”
Frowning at the man from under his peaked crash helmet, Sniper summoned him with a peremptory wave of the hand and said, in a tone that would brook no discussion of the matter, “I’d like you to step down from your vehicle please, sir.”
Reluctantly, the driver threw open his door and climbed down to the ground. Without another word, Sniper drew his QSZ-99 handgun and shot the man through the temple, making sure the blood spattered away from the truck. Klaatu and another teknik ran out from the police car and went to the back of the truck.
Sniper could hear them opening the big door and clambering in. It was a quiet stretch of road and the lay-by was sheltered by the shrubbery, but there were still too many cars and trucks going by to leave a dead man lying there for long. Moving quickly, Sniper opened the pannier on his police bike and took out a folded cloth. He flicked it open and threw it over the body. The cloth, a smart fabric, took light striking it from the sides and carried it laterally, releasing it from the opposite side. The effect was a kind of camouflage. When you looked at the cloth, you didn’t see the cloth but a blurred image of what was beside it. Sniper squinted at the strange, disturbing effect, stepping away from it toward the road. Instead of a dead body, he saw a curious distortion, a bump in the tarmac, perhaps, or an odd reflection from the truck’s paintwork. Good enough, he decided, and went to join the others.
“This is good,” Klaatu told him as he peered into the gloomy interior. Klaatu and the other teknik had torches and tag-readers. “It’s everything we need.” Despite this, Klaatu’s expression was dark and surly. Robbing a truck in broad daylight, he had told Sniper earlier, stealing components that any cop with half a brain would know were for a displacement field rig, was incredibly stupid. Sniper had shouted him down and shut him up.
“Good. Get the police car shifted, then take the Merc and get lost. I’ll join you at the warehouse. I’ll be at least an hour driving this thing.” He grinned into Klaatu’s face. He knew just how much his teknik resented this. “Cheer up, my gloomy friend. By the time the cops work it out, we’ll have done what we came to do.”
Klaatu said nothing. He pulled another device out of his jacket and went to the truck’s cab to reprogram the vehicle’s ID responder. When it passed the toll points and police checks, it would feed them a false ID and identify its load as farm produce. He gave a quick check that the licence plate displays at front and back had changed to reflect the truck’s new designation and went back to join Sniper.
“You sure that’s going to be okay?” Klaatu asked, glancing at the logo on the side of the truck.
“Don’t worry. There are thousands of these things on the road.” He looked across at the main road. “Half a dozen must have gone past while you’ve been dicking about with the registration.”
Klaatu nodded and set off for the Mercedes. Before he closed the back of the truck, Sniper took one last look at the equipment they had just stolen. It would be soon now. Very soon.
* * * *
No one noticed Joe was missing until the next day. Jay was the first to mention it, worried that something might have happened to him.
“What do you mean, he might have gone out to ask a few questions?” Kappelhoff demanded. Jay struggled with his concern for the young Spaniard’s safety and his unwillingness to get a fellow officer into trouble. “It’s just that, the last time I saw him, he sort of mentioned he might just, you know, pop into a club or two to, well, get a feel for the local scene.”
The Chief Inspector eyed him with a dangerous calm. “And just when did he just mention all this?”
“Yesterday afternoon, sir.”
Kappelhoff looked at his compatch. “And it is now ten fifteen in the morning. And you say you checked with the hotel and he didn’t use his room last night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you can’t raise him on his compatch?”
“No, sir.”
“So one of my officers has been missing for about eighteen hours and you only just thought you’d come and mention it?”
Jay bridled. “I don’t think that’s fair, sir.”
Kappelhoff lifted the lid on his anger just a fraction. “Oh, really. You let a member of my team—” He paused, staring past Jay. “What the…”
Jay turned too, to see Joe sauntering across the room to his desk.
“What the hell is that boy’s name?” Kappelhoff growled, transferring his anger to Joe. Jay grimaced. “I haven’t quite got it yet, sir. He says it a lot but it’s a bit long.”
Kappelhoff scowled at him. “You!” he bellowed. Every head in the room turned, so that when Kappelhoff pointed at Joe and yelled, “Yes, you! In my office right now!” there was no mistaking whom he meant. As the Chief Inspector set off after Joe, he added in an aside, “You too, DC Kennedy.”
“Where have you been?” he asked Joe as soon as he walked through the door. Joe cast an accusatory frown at Jay. “I have been talking to some local people, sir, trying to get the lie of the land.”
“You report to Detec
tive Inspector Moretti, do you not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Moretti order you to go out talking to people?”
“I wasn’t doing anything else, sir. I thought it would be useful if I—”
Kappelhoff raised his voice. “Did Moretti order you to go out talking to people?”
Joe stopped trying to justify himself. “No, sir.”
Kappelhoff simmered down in turn. “No, sir. And you.” He turned to Jay. “You knew he had gone off without explicit orders but you said nothing to anyone?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, that’s right, sir.”
Kappelhoff regarded them sternly. “This is the second time in as many days that you two have been in trouble for a breach of discipline. If it wouldn’t be such a waste of taxpayers’ money, I’d ship you both back to Brussels right now. So, since I’m stuck with you, I’ll have to put you to use, somehow. But I tell you, I don’t like officers who don’t understand basic discipline. Consider yourself warned. Do you understand me?”
They both yessirred in unison and were dismissed.
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