by Anthology
“That’s right.”
“What’s she like?”
“Probably like a thousand other people you wouldn’t recognize by sight. She’s been beaten down by circumstances—circumstances of your making. She’s lost the two people she cares for, she’s destitute, she’s taking medication for pain and for depression, she lives in a dump, and she has only one goal left in her life—to kill you.”
“That’s her misfortune. No one will miss her, any more than they miss Eddie or her daughter. They’re the roadkill of history. It’ll be like she never existed.” He picked up his highball glass, realized it was empty, and put it back down on his desk. “You know, I always figured if anyone had the brains and guts to take me out, it’d be Jason Bechtold. I keep the bastard under surveillance every minute he’s near me.”
“It just goes to show that you can’t choose your killer any more than you can choose your family. Hell, they’re lined up around the block to kill you. In fact, even if you stop her, that just means someone else with every bit as much reason to hate you will take you out next week or next month. And then I’ll have this same case dumped in my lap again. Maybe it’s just not worth the effort to stop your killer.”
“Quit calling her my killer,” said Draconis irritably. “She’s my would-be killer, and she’s about to become a piece of dead meat. Now, how does this work? You called it prevenge, so I assume I get to take my own pre-revenge and kill the bitch myself. Self-defense. You’re just an interested bystander?”
“That’s correct.”
“So give me a gun. Or do I have to take care of that myself?”
“I have a gun for you—when the time comes. I’ve tried to prevent this three times, and it keeps happening. So no matter what I do, it looks like someone’s going to get killed here tonight.”
“You afraid I’ll shoot you too?” Draconis seemed amused.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” admitted Kyle.
“Why would I do something like that?”
Because it’s your nature. Aloud, he said, “I’m a witness, and who’s going to believe a story about a guardian angel from the future?”
“Then we sit and wait,” said Draconis. “Just stay close enough that you can pass me the gun when the time comes.”
Kyle pulled a leather chair next to the desk, sat down, and stared at the door. Right on schedule, Bertha Gilligan entered the room behind her pushcart. She seemed surprised to see two men confronting her.
“Hello, Bertha,” said Kyle.
“You know my name?”
“I know a lot more than that. I know what you plan to do, and it’s my job to stop you from killing him. Scum like Draconis isn’t worth one second of prison time.”
“I don’t care about what happens afterward.” Her face reflected her hatred. “You don’t know what he did to my husband and my little girl.”
“I know.”
Startled, Bertha reached into the bucket and pulled out her gun. “You think my Naomi is the only person he ever murdered or had killed? You think my Eddie is the only man he ever hounded to the grave?”
“I know they’re not.”
“Stop talking and give me the goddamned gun!” yelled Draconis.
“Then why do you want to save him?” she asked.
“I’m not saving him, Bertha,” said Kyle gently. “I’m saving you. You’ve suffered enough.”
You were wrong, Harvey. The world’s not black and white. It’s twenty-three shades of gray. In fact, you were wrong about a lot of things. Sometimes it’s an insult to the murderer to feel sympathy for his victim.
“My suffering doesn’t matter,” said Bertha. “He’s got to die.” She swung her gun, aiming at Draconis.
“He will,” promised Kyle.
“How?”
“Like this.” Kyle pulled his pistol and fired point-blank at Draconis’s head.
“Jesus!” Bertha stared in rapt fascination as the man fell to the floor in the identical position that Kyle had initially seen him. “Jesus!”
“Get out of here, Bertha. He’s dead. You have a life to live.”
“Not much of one,” she answered bitterly.
“If you don’t make the most of it, then even in death he’s won. Are you going to let a scumbag like that beat you even after he’s been shot and killed?”
“Who are you?” she asked suddenly.
“I’m the man who just gave you back the rest of your life. Don’t make an Indian giver out of me. Go home and think about it. Security will be here any moment, and the cops won’t be far behind.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine. Now leave!”
She stared at him, then pushed her cart into the hallway and over to the elevator.
Kyle left the gun behind, covered with his own clear fingerprints (which, thanks to Harvey Bloom and a few simple jaunts back in time, were not in any database). That way, nobody would accuse Bertha, and of course Bechtold’s alibi would hold up. When he heard the footsteps of a security guard running down the hall, he pulled out his temporal transformer, went forward to his own time, and walked out of the empty office.
Now he was a murderer. Even if the case baffled the cops, the Knights Temporal would solve it easily enough. Would Harvey Bloom order his termination? He couldn’t imagine any circumstance under which Bloom wouldn’t order his death.
But Bloom had a problem. Every Knight Temporal was a moralist, just as he was. Kyle wouldn’t make any effort to hide from them. He’d simply explain the situation, the events that led to his action, and bet his life that they would understand. Situational ethics? Some of the Knights, he was sure, would volunteer to stay in the past and protect him from more of Bloom’s operatives.
And then he was going to present Bloom with the same moral conundrum he himself had just faced . . . because even if one did manage to kill him, wouldn’t Bloom’s own rules allow him to take his own prevenge?
The thought brought an amused smile to his face.
PROJECT MASTODON
Clifford D. Simak
Chapter I
The chief of protocol said, “Mr. Hudson of—ah—Mastodonia.”
The secretary of state held out his hand. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Hudson. I understand you’ve been here several times.”
“That’s right,” said Hudson. “I had a hard time making your people believe I was in earnest.”
“And are you, Mr. Hudson?”
“Believe me, sir, I would not try to fool you.”
“And this Mastodonia,” said the secretary, reaching down to tap the document upon the desk. “You will pardon me, but I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a new nation,” Hudson explained, “but quite legitimate. We have a constitution, a democratic form of government, duly elected officials, and a code of laws. We are a free, peace-loving people, and we are possessed of a vast amount of natural resources and—”
“Please tell me, sir,” interrupted the secretary, “just where are you located?”
“Technically, you are our nearest neighbors.”
“But that is ridiculous!” exploded Protocol.
“Not at all,” insisted Hudson. “If you will give me a moment, Mr. Secretary, I have considerable evidence.”
He brushed the fingers of Protocol off his sleeve and stepped forward to the desk, laying down the portfolio he carried.
“Go ahead, Mr. Hudson,” said the secretary. “Why don’t we all sit down and be comfortable while we talk this over?”
“You have my credentials, I see. Now here is a propos—”
“I have a document signed by a certain Wesley Adams.”
“He’s our first president,” said Hudson. “Our George Washington, you might say.”
“What is the purpose of this visit, Mr. Hudson?”
“We’d like to establish diplomatic relations. We think it would be to our mutual benefit. After all, we are a sister republic in perfect sympathy with your policie
s and aims. We’d like to negotiate trade agreements and we’d be grateful for some Point Four aid.”
The secretary smiled. “Naturally. Who doesn’t?”
“We’re prepared to offer something in return,” Hudson told him stiffly. “For one thing, we could offer sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary!”
“I understand,” said Hudson, “that in the present state of international tensions, a foolproof sanctuary is not something to be sneezed at.”
The secretary turned stone cold. “I’m an extremely busy man.”
Protocol took Hudson firmly by the arm. “Out you go.”
General Leslie Bowers put in a call to State and got the secretary.
“I don’t like to bother you, Herb,” he said, “but there’s something I want to check. Maybe you can help me.”
“Glad to help you if I can.”
“There’s a fellow hanging around out here at the Pentagon, trying to get in to see me. Said I was the only one he’d talk to, but you know how it is.”
“I certainly do.”
“Name of Huston or Hudson or something like that.”
“He was here just an hour or so ago,” said the secretary. “Crackpot sort of fellow.”
“He’s gone now?”
“Yes. I don’t think he’ll be back.”
“Did he say where you could reach him?”
“No, I don’t believe he did.”
“How did he strike you? I mean, what kind of impression did you get of him?”
“I told you. A crackpot.”
“I suppose he is. He said something to one of the colonels that got me worrying. Can’t pass up anything, you know—not in the Dirty Tricks Department. Even if it’s crackpot, these days you got to have a look at it.”
“He offered sanctuary,” said the secretary indignantly. “Can you imagine that!”
“He’s been making the rounds, I guess,” the general said. “He was over at AEC. Told them some sort of tale about knowing where there were vast uranium deposits. It was the AEC that told me he was heading your way.”
“We get them all the time. Usually we can ease them out. This Hudson was just a little better than the most of them. He got in to see me.”
“He told the colonel something about having a plan that would enable us to establish secret bases anywhere we wished, even in the territory of potential enemies. I know it sounds crazy . . .”
“Forget it, Les.”
“You’re probably right,” said the general, “but this idea sends me. Can you imagine the look on their Iron Curtain faces?”
The scared little government clerk, darting conspiratorial glances all about him, brought the portfolio to the FBI.
“I found it in a bar down the street,” he told the man who took him in tow. “Been going there for years. And I found this portfolio laying in the booth. I saw the man who must have left it there and I tried to find him later, but I couldn’t.”
“How do you know he left it there?”
“I just figured he did. He left the booth just as I came in, and it was sort of dark in there, and it took a minute to see this thing laying there. You see, I always take the same booth every day, and Joe sees me come in, and he brings me the usual, and—”
“You saw this man leave the booth you usually sit in?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you saw the portfolio.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You tried to find the man, thinking it must have been his.”
“That’s exactly what I did.”
“But by the time you went to look for him, he had disappeared.”
“That’s the way it was.”
“Now tell me—why did you bring it here? Why didn’t you turn it in to the management so the man could come back and claim it?”
“Well, sir, it was like this. I had a drink or two and I was wondering all the time what was in that portfolio. So finally I took a peek and—”
“And what you saw decided you to bring it here to us.”
“That’s right. I saw—”
“Don’t tell me what you saw. Give me your name and address and don’t say anything about this. You understand that we’re grateful to you for thinking of us, but we’d rather you said nothing.”
“Mum’s the word,” the little clerk assured him, full of vast importance.
The FBI phoned Dr. Ambrose Amberly, Smithsonian expert on paleontology.
“We’ve got something, Doctor, that we’d like you to have a look at. A lot of movie film.”
“I’ll be most happy to. I’ll come down as soon as I get clear. End of the week, perhaps?”
“This is very urgent, Doctor. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Big, shaggy elephants and tigers with teeth down to their necks. There’s a beaver the size of a bear.”
“Fakes,” said Amberly, disgusted. “Clever gadgets. Camera angles.”
“That’s what we thought first, but there are no gadgets, no camera angles. This is the real McCoy.”
“I’m on my way,” the paleontologist said, hanging up.
Snide item in smug, smart-alecky gossip column: Saucers are passé at the Pentagon. There’s another mystery that’s got the high brass very high.
Chapter II
President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Mastodonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return.
“I tell you, Wes,” said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury, and war, “this is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can’t get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along.”
“We had to stay,” Adams said. “You know what would happen to this camp and our supplies if we weren’t around here to guard them.”
“The only thing that’s given us any trouble is that old mastodon. If he comes around again, I’m going to take a skillet and bang him in the brisket.”
“That isn’t the only reason, either,” said President Adams, “and you know it. We can’t go deserting this nation now that we’ve created it. We have to keep possession. Just planting a flag and saying it’s ours wouldn’t be enough. We might be called upon for proof that we’ve established residence. Something like the old homestead laws, you know.”
“We’ll establish residence, sure enough,” growled Secretary Cooper, “if something happens to that time unit or the helicopter.”
“You think they’ll do it, Johnny?”
“Who do what?”
“The United States. Do you think they’ll recognize us?”
“Not if they know who we are.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Chuck will talk them into it. He can talk the skin right off a cat.”
“Sometimes I think we’re going at this wrong. Sure, Chuck’s got the long-range view, and I suppose it’s best. But maybe what we ought to do is grab a good, fast profit and get out of here. We could take in hunting parties at ten thousand a head or maybe we could lease it to a movie company.”
“We can do all that and do it legally and with full protection,” Cooper told him, “if we can get ourselves recognized as a sovereign nation. If we negotiate a mutual defense pact, no one would dare get hostile because we could squawk to Uncle Sam.”
“All you say is true,” Adams agreed, “but there are going to be questions. It isn’t just a matter of walking into Washington and getting recognition. They’ll want to know about us, such as our population. What if Chuck has to tell them it’s a total of three persons?”
Cooper shook his head. “He wouldn’t answer that way, Wes. He’d duck the question or give them some diplomatic double-talk. After all, how can we be sure there are only three of us? We took over the whole continent, remember.”
“You know well enough, Johnny, there are no other humans back here in North America. The farthest back any scientist will place the mig
rations from Asia is 30,000 years. They haven’t got here yet.”
“Maybe we should have done it differently,” mused Cooper. “Maybe we should have included the whole world in our proclamation, not just the continent. That way, we could claim quite a population.”
“It wouldn’t have held water. Even as it is, we went a little further than precedent allows. The old explorers usually laid claim to certain watersheds. They’d find a river and lay claim to all the territory drained by the river. They didn’t go grabbing off whole continents.”
“That’s because they were never sure of exactly what they had,” said Cooper. “We are. We have what you might call the advantage of hindsight.”
He leaned back against the tree and stared across the land. It was a pretty place, he thought—the rolling ridges covered by vast grazing areas and small groves, the forest-covered, ten-mile river valley. And everywhere one looked, the grazing herds of mastodon, giant bison, and wild horses, with the less gregarious fauna scattered hit and miss.
Old Buster, the troublesome mastodon, a lone bull which had been probably run out of a herd by a younger rival, stood at the edge of a grove a quarter-mile away. He had his head down and was curling and uncurling his trunk in an aimless sort of way while he teetered slowly in a lazy-crazy fashion by lifting first one foot and then another.
The old cuss was lonely, Cooper told himself. That was why he hung around like a homeless dog—except that he was too big and awkward to have much pet-appeal and, more than likely, his temper was unstable.
The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm and the air, it seemed to Cooper, was the freshest he had ever smelled. It was, altogether, a very pleasant place, an Indian-summer sort of land, ideal for a Sunday picnic or a camping trip.
The breeze was just enough to float out from its flagstaff before the tent the national banner of Mastodonia—a red rampant mastodon upon a field of green.
“You know, Johnny,” said Adams, “there’s one thing that worries me a lot. If we’re going to base our claim on precedent, we may be way off base. The old explorers always claimed their discoveries for their nations or their king, never for themselves.”