"Colonel Jones, sir?"
Curtis had no trouble recognizing and respecting Jones's authority, something that earned him respect in return; a hard task, as many junior officers of the Eighty-second could testify. "I don't mean any offense, sir, but where you come from, are there are a lot of Negroes in the service?"
Airman La Salle smiled to himself as Jones replied.
"No offense taken, Ensign. But we don't use the word Negro anymore. Most folks consider it offensive. You'll want to bear that in mind when you get aboard the Clinton. Both of you," he added for the benefit of Black. "I believe the correct term nowadays is American of color." Jones snorted to show how little regard he had for such things before continuing. "But the corps is color-blind, Ensign. All of the armed forces are, and have been for a long time. When Admiral Kolhammer here was fresh out of college he served under a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a sort of supreme commander of all the services, whose family came out of Jamaica. He'd have been called a Negro, or worse, in your day."
"That man went on to become the secretary of state," Kolhammer added. "Could have been president, too, if it hadn't been for Ms. Clinton."
"The lady your ship is named after?" asked Curtis.
"The president my ship is named after. Best president the navy had, since Ronald Reagan."
"The cowboy actor!"
"The one and only," smiled Jones.
"Excuse me," Black interjected. "No offense, Colonel. But a colored president? A lady president? A B-grade cowboy in the White House? What are you, using the funny pages for your history books? You gotta be yanking my chain. I'm looking around your whirligig here and I'll admit I can see a lot of change, a lot of advances. But some things, they just don't change."
Instead of replying, Jones pulled a satchel out from under his seat and then a pair of powered combat goggles from within the bag.
"Pilot?" he asked, over the chopper's comm channel. "Can you raise Fleetnet for me? I need to access my personal archive.
"Put these on," he ordered Black.
The former copper miner eyed the goggles suspiciously. He gave Jones a hard, inquiring look, but the marine simply shrugged in reply. After a moment's consideration, Black reached across and took the device. It reminded him a little of antique flying goggles from the Great War. But only a little. These things were lightweight and sleek, with a curious feeling of density to them. Like they were packed tight with impossibly small machinery or wiring.
He needed no help settling them over his eyes. Indeed, they seemed to mold themselves to his face. The sensation wasn't entirely pleasant.
The first thing he noticed was the night vision. It was startling.
"Okay," he said. "That's a good trick. But what have they got to… whoa!"
Without warning his entire range of view turned black for a split second, before it was slammed by countless shimmering filaments of light. Sometimes they seemed as delicate as a single thread of spider's web. In other places energy poured through this strange negative space in torrents and floods. As Jones worked a flexipad, Black rocked in his seat, overwhelmed by the visual effect of flying through this self-contained cosmos of fire and light. He found that he could catch a glimmer of something every now and then, a glimmer of recognition as something vaguely familiar flashed by; the Globe and Anchor of the USMC, the roaring lion from the beginning of an MGM movie. The images flickered in and out of range so quickly that he could never quite identify any one impression.
In a few seconds Jones seemed to find what he wanted. Lieutenant Commander Black let his head fell back slightly, like a man in the front row of a movie theater. He was in Washington, hovering above a huge crowd, perhaps a million strong. He could see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and then he was right up close to a black man. His rounded cheeks and pencil-thin mustache filled the-what, the whole screen? — as he punched out a speech, or perhaps a sermon. It certainly rang with the powerful cadence of the fire-and-brimstone revival meetings Black's daddy had favored.
"I have a dream…," roared the Negro. "That one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…"
The man's voice rang out and filled the world as the footage segued into film of men and women, black and white, under attack by police dogs and fire hoses.
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…"
Newspaper photographs of a black man who looked like he'd been shot on a motel patio faded to color images of a jungle war, of black and white soldiers so befouled with mud and gore that beneath their ruined fatigues all difference had been erased. Lieutenant Commander Black thought he recognized Marine Corps insignia on one Negro whose bandaged, bloody head lay in the lap of a white comrade. The black soldier stared sightlessly into the heavens, his face streaked with tears fallen from the eyes of his friend.
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…"
Snatches of color movies, and strange music, of grinning black basketball and football players cut to images of city workers, black, white, Asian, male, and female running blind and fearfully through streets turned gray by clouds of pulverized cement that rushed at them while a stupendously tall building collapsed straight into the ground behind them. And the same preacher still called out his message in Black's ears.
"Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York…"
Bright, clear color film of U.S. Marines, obviously of many races, standing atop the rubble of some palace in a place identified as DAMASCUS faded to a shaky handheld shot of a beaming Colonel J. Lonesome Jones on the lawn of the White House, escorted by his impossibly beautiful and-for Dan Black-improbably blond and blue-eyed wife.
The woman was teasing Jones, repeatedly stroking the decoration newly pinned to his chest, a Medal of Honor. A black woman, beaming fit to burst and identified on the screen as VICE PRESIDENT RICE, wandered over to shake his hand.
The preacher still roared out.
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
The images froze, and Black felt someone tapping on the goggles. He lifted them off. The sudden darkness of the chopper cabin was unsettling.
"You're right, Commander," said Jones, leaning forward, his face dimly illuminated. "Some things don't change. But that doesn't mean progress is impossible. My niece made that film you just saw, by the way. She cut it all together for a school project. Even took the footage at the White House herself. It's nicely done, don't you think? She's only eleven years old, and I suspect she'll be a holy terror to her mother and father."
Lieutenant Commander Black was at a loss for words. "Is she… uh…"
"As white as the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. But she loves her uncle Lonesome, and wants to follow in his footsteps, God help her."
"How did you win the medal?" asked Black, readjusting his headset as he handed the goggles to Ensign Curtis.
"I don't mind you asking, Commander. But I'm not inclined to discuss it with you just yet. That doesn't mean I won't."
"I think I understand," Black said with a hint of chagrin.
"No, I don't think you do," said Jones. "Have you ever been in combat, Commander?"
"No," he admitted.
"Well, the admiral, myself, Airman La Salle over there, and the pilots of this helicopter, we've all been there. Too many times. If I could wish that away, I would, believe you me. I don't want my niece to live my life, but that's the world she was born into. It's not pleasant, but it has its certainties. One of which is that I know every man and woman in this aircraft would cut their arms off to save me if they had to-and they know I would do the same for them. They're my people, Black, no matter what. You, however, you I don
't know."
"That's pretty goddamn rich, don't you think?" Black protested. "You blowing in here the way you did, and then demanding that we earn your trust. That's hardly fair."
"Fair's got nothing to do with it." Jones shrugged. "You'll see that soon enough, if you have any sense."
"Colonel Jones?"
Ensign Curtis interposed himself between the two men in the unfamiliar role of peacemaker.
"Yes, son?"
"These eyeglasses, sir. Do you actually wear them in combat, so you can see in the dark?"
"We do. But they have other uses, too. They'll take a shotgun blast from twenty yards out. Your face'll get shredded, of course. But your baby blues will be A-okay." He grinned ghoulishly. "They can display a bunch of tactical information, too. Real-time imaging from intel drones, spy-cams, and so on. So if you're wondering what's on the other side of a hill, say, you can see without popping your head up to get it shot off."
Jones could see that neither Curtis nor Black really understood what he was talking about.
"Put them on, Ensign," he said.
When Curtis had the goggles snug over his eyes, Jones made another series of fingertip adjustments on his flexipad. Wally's head moved from side to side as he was instantly overwhelmed by the mass of data. Inside the goggles he could "see" five movie screens. Each seemed to contain a different view of the same scene-a squad of soldiers attacking a building. Curtis couldn't tell if it was for real or made up. After a few seconds Jones shut down the goggles and asked him to hand them over to Dan Black.
The second time around Black did better at hiding his surprise, but the look on his face still gave him away. He watched the film through to the end before lifting the goggles.
"I'm no foot soldier," he said, "but how in hell is anyone supposed to fight with that five-ring circus to distract him?"
Jones grinned like a hungry wolverine. "Thousands of hours of training."
Black nodded. It was just a small movement. "Admiral Kolhammer?" he said, with a slight shift in his voice indicating that he was approaching a personal Rubicon. "How'd you really get here? Assuming you are here and we're not there, wherever it is you came from."
Kolhammer sighed. "Truth be known, I can't tell you that, Commander. Not because it's restricted information, but because I don't really know. When I was last in Pearl, I attended a briefing with the captain and executive officer of the Clinton. A bunch of no-name spooks and pinheads gave us a soft sell about this research project we were to ride shotgun on. They said it was for a new weapons system, gave us a lot of bullshit about a gun that wouldn't so much fire a bullet or a missile as take it directly to the target. One of them, a Japanese man actually, talked about 'collapsing the distance' to impact. It sounded like a bunch of crap to us, but ours is not to question why."
"Some things really don't change then," Black smiled, a small gesture of genuine warmth for the first time.
"No, they don't," admitted Jones.
"Anyway," Kolhammer continued, "I don't expect you to understand the science. Even I only have a Popular Mechanics notion of how it all works. But these guys were generating enormous levels of energy, enough I guess to actually warp the structure of space itself. And one of the things we've learned is that, on a certain level, space and time are the same thing. I guess they just got their figures wrong. I promise you, as we know more, we'll fill you in."
"That's pretty fucking wacky, if you ask me," said Black.
"Any wackier than this?" said Kolhammer, holding up the goggles and then swinging them around to take in the entire chopper.
"Or me?" said Colonel Jones.
"Yeah, quite a bit, since you ask."
Lieutenant Commander Black cracked his big broken knuckles. "You know, I might look like a real palooka, but I have a master's in civil engineering. It's only from Dakota State, but I had to sit down for five years of book learning like everyone else. Just because I used to break rocks for a living doesn't make me a fuckin' rockhead. I understand progress. The way I worked a mine was a hell of a lot different from the way my granddaddy did.
"I look at this bird and it seems mighty queer to me, but Ensign Curtis, he tells me these things are already on the drawing board. You got a woman flying this thing? Fine. I'll bet Amelia Earhart could fly rings around her. And as for you, Colonel Jones, my great-great-granddaddy on my mama's side was a lieutenant with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, a black regiment with white officers. He died with his men, charging the Confederate guns at Fort Wagner. The grapeshot cut them up so bad, you couldn't tell who was who, or who was what, if you get my drift. So the home I grew up in, you ever spoke the word nigger, you got your ass whupped good and proper. Maybe you want to bear that in mind, Colonel Jones, before you go judging the content of a man's character by the color of his skin."
Jones gave Dan Black the benefit of his hardest glare, until a sly smile cracked open his granite features.
"Well put, Commander. Touche."
"Admiral Kolhammer?"
"Yes, Ensign?"
"How can you be sure you went back in time, and we didn't come forward?"
Kolhammer shifted his weight as they banked for approach. "I'm not a hundred percent sure," he answered. "But we can't access any of our satellites. Our radar, which is a hell of a lot more powerful than yours, isn't giving us the returns that it should. We were just off the coast of East Timor, down the bottom of the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia in our day. But it's not coming up anymore. We can't find anything, TV, radio, GPS, nothing. Our equipment is fine. It's just like there's nothing out there."
The two Enterprise officers only understood about half of what he said, but the admiral's demeanor left no doubt as to what he was getting at.
"And what about this ship, the Nagoya? Where'd it get to?" asked Black.
"That's one I really can't answer." Kolhammer shrugged. "We've been looking for it, believe me. I'm hoping to God it hasn't come through and landed in Tokyo Bay. But I doubt it. We're missing a couple of other ships, but they were all some distance from the center of the group, and the simplest explanation is that they just didn't get sucked up with the rest of us. We lost a couple of nuclear submarines and some Indonesian destroyers like that. Although the destroyers weren't such a great loss. Another ship got cut in half by the event horizon.
"The Nagoya was tucked away between the Clinton and a couple of cruisers. It would have been at the epicenter of whatever went wrong. It was probably destroyed, but we'll have to invest significant assets confirming that."
"Because that's your only way home, right?" said Curtis.
"Got it in one, son," said Kolhammer. "But for now, if you'd care to look outside, you can see what the Enterprise will grow into, given eighty years or so."
They two visitors leaned over. Black swore softly. Ensign Curtis didn't bother to hide his surprise.
"Good gosh! It's as big as a city."
USS ENTERPRISE, 0005 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942
Captain Halabi couldn't remember ever being at such an uncomfortable gathering. There were only three of them standing in Spruance's cabin as the admiral methodically leafed through her copy of Fuchida and Okumiya's Midway. The other officer present, a Commander Beanland from his planning staff, had attempted to engage her in polite chitchat, but the conversation curled up and died on the deck after he had blundered into a morass of nonsensical questions about the hygiene difficulties of "women's troubles" on board a warship. Halabi had snapped back at him that menstruation proved itself to be much less of a problem than the standard array of sucking chest wounds, compound fractures, and deep tissue burns with which one had to deal after a missile strike.
"Fascinating," Spruance murmured, closing the book with a snap. "If it's true."
"Well, it won't be now of course," Halabi ventured. "The collision between our two forces has seen to that."
"Indeed… Captain. And so, what now? If you are what you claim to be, what do you do now? Throw the lever on the magic box th
at brought you here? Leaving us in the lurch? You might very well find when you get home that everyone speaks German and Japanese."
Halabi rubbed her tired eyes. "Well, to begin with, we seem to have lost our magic box. And even if we could throw it into reverse, all the currently accepted theories of time distortion posit an infinitely variform multiverse rather than a single linear universe…"
She lost them with that, and so decided to try a different tack.
"There's a field of physics called quantum mechanics. It's not specific to my own time. A chap called Max Planck kicked it off in nineteen hundred with something he called the quantum theory of light, and Albert Einstein moved it along in nineteen oh five with his work on the photoelectric effect. Basically, he theorized that light can be observed as either particles or waves, but never both at once. It's all about uncertainty, gentlemen, what we call quantum uncertainty. Long story short? It's most likely that there are an infinite number of universes, all existing alongside each other, all of them different, some subtly, some radically. I guess the fact that we're here is the first real proof of that theory."
"I'm sorry," said Spruance, "but that sounds utterly ridiculous. You're saying there's a place where, for instance, America lost the War of Independence, or the South won the Civil War?"
"And infinite variations on that." She nodded. "A universe where there was no War of Independence because British colonial policy was more enlightened. An American Civil War after which Lincoln wasn't assassinated. A Second World War in which Hitler was. Or where the whole planet was invaded by, I don't know, space lizards or something. A universe in which Coke tastes like Pepsi. And another in which I'm standing over there drinking tea, rather than here drinking this… uhm… coffee. You get the picture?"
"If that's so," mused Spruance, "it might seem as if you've dropped into your past, but in truth you haven't."
"Quite so." Halabi nodded, encouraged by the man's grasp of the theory. "This may be a subtly different nineteen forty-two. Or maybe a radically different one. Perhaps Hitler doesn't make the mistake of invading the Soviet Union…"
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