“It’s cold,” he said, tucking his hands under his arms and stamping his feet.
“You think this is cold?” Tatiana Petrovna snorted. “Wait until we get outside. The wind whips down the streets like February in Siberia. But at least there the snow isn’t half-melted into that disgusting slush. Wait! I seem to remember concealing a blanket in this room somewhere for use in such emergencies. I will find it for you.” She prodded and poked a couple of stuffed chairs that sat moldering in the corners, lifted the cushion from one of them, and discovered a neatly-folded blanket of some thick material and dark color, which she threw to Ves. It smelled of horse.
Ves eyed it speculatively, then decided that he disliked the cold more than the smell and wrapped it around his shoulders.
“You should wear it with more élan,” the Countess said. “You look like a peasant.”
Ves shrugged. “How can you wear a horse blanket with élan?” he asked.
“Wear it as a cape,” the Countess told him. “Throw it about your shoulders with a casual air. In the dark, who can tell?”
“It’s warmer this way,” Ves said. “Where do we go from here?”
Tatiana Petrovna raised her right hand, palm up, in a gesture that could have been acquiescence. “Have the goodness to follow me,” she said, and pushed her way through the curtain. The wooden door behind it sagged badly on its hinges, but it must have been well greased recently, for it opened soundlessly to the street.
It was, Ves noted without real enthusiasm, no colder on the outside than it had been inside; but it was a good deal wetter. Mounds of snow had formed by the buildings and the curb; but in the street and sidewalk there was a layer of slush. The cold of the preceding night had managed to freeze a crust of ice over the slush, which gave Ves something to break through with every step. His shoes, thin-soled, square-toed, hand-stitched, buckle-closed shoes, rapidly became one with the slush.
“Stay close to the buildings as much as you can,” Tatiana Petrovna told Ves, as she led him down the street with the rising sun at their back.
“Why?” Ves asked, seeing nothing unusual about the middle of the street. There wasn’t even any traffic around, perhaps because of the earliness of the hour. An occasional car parked along the curb dated the era to late-thirties, early forties, as well as Ves could tell.
“Snipers,” she said.
Ves stayed as close to the buildings as he could. “How far have we got to go?” he asked.
“A few miles,” Tatiana Petrovna said. “Maybe three. Not too bad. Can you drive one of these things?”
Ves stared at the closest car, which looked very much the way an old car was supposed to look. It was a HENRY. Ford or Kaiser, Ves wondered. “I can drive it,” he told the Countess. He tried the door, and found it unlocked. “Get in.”
“Can you start it without a key?”
“Any private detective could,” Ves said. “It used to be one of the requirements for your license, along with keeping a bottle of booze in your desk drawer and refusing to handle divorce work.” He popped up the hood.
Ford, he decided, examining the engine compartment with a professional eye. In a few seconds the engine had coughed into life and was settling down to a noisy purr, and he had slammed the hood shut and climbed behind the wheel. “Pretty good for an old man,” he said, running the floor shift lever through the gears a couple of times to get their feel. “Where to, Lady?”
“Please,” Tatiana Petrovna told him, “I am a woman, I am a countess, but I am no lady. The English are ladies. And you are not knowledgeable despite your age, but rather because of it. I cannot understand the American reverence for youth. The only thing the young have in their favor is a certain nimbleness of body, which is seldom matched by an accompanying adroitness of brain. The Empire State Building.”
“Don’t lecture me, Lady,” Ves said, “I’m old enough to be your father.” He smiled and stretched, rubbing his back against the rough fabric of the back of the seat “Here we go,” he said, shifting into first.
“Slowly please,” Tatiana Petrovna said, “and keep the lights out.” She was huddled up against the far door, staring earnestly out of the side window.
“Snipers?” Ves asked.
The Countess shrugged. “Anything. There is a war on here.”
“What war?” Ves asked.
“The Second World War,” she said.
“But there was no fighting in New York during World War Two,” Ves said.
“In your world there wasn’t,” she said. “In this world, the Germans invaded New Jersey by giant troop-carrying submarines. I think that’s right. My knowledge of the time is sketchy.”
Ves drove the sedan slowly down the street. “I find that hard to believe,” he said. “I mean, I do believe you, but I find it hard to accept that it’s true. One thinks of the past as immutable, even if you can travel through it. The shooting of your grandfather paradox, and like that.”
Somewhere, off in the distance, a machine gun sounded its staccato cough as Ves finished speaking. The sharp cracking sounds of several rifles came in immediate reply.
“You must understand that this is not time travel in any sense of the word,” Tatiana Petrovna said, calmly ignoring the distant sounds. “Your past—the past of your particular world—is dead and gone, irretrievable as far as I know. This world is not behind your world in time, but somewhere off to the left, or right of it. Watch out for that tank!”
Ves swerved just in time to miss a tank that came lumbering around the corner on their right. The tank’s turret swiveled around, the cannon seeking them as they passed. Ves flipped the steering wheel over hard left, bounced the car up on the far sidewalk, and then turned sharply right again until he reached the corner, where he spun the car around to the left and was out of sight around the corner building before he drove the car back down off the curb.
“Good driving,” the Countess said firmly. The glint of excitement showed in her eyes, but otherwise she was completely unruffled. “But why did you go to the left? The tank’s gun was turning to the right, so you passed right under it to reach the curb.”
“The tank came from the right,” Ves said, “so I knew I wanted to turn left and avoid meeting any of his friends. I thought it would be a good idea to get over to the left side of the road as quickly as possible.”
“Good thinking,” the Countess approved.
“That was a Sherman tank,” Ves said. “I studied old armor and ordnance for a while.”
“So?” Tatiana Petrovna asked.
“So it’s one of ours. I mean it’s American.”
“So? I understand they’re good shots, the Americans.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Ves said. “But it does feel funny to have to run away from your own people.”
Tatiana Petrovna nodded. “It does,” she said. “I also have had to do that.”
Ves turned downtown on Amsterdam Avenue, proceeding slowly, cautiously, and with his lights out. The dawn was beginning to light up the city, and now Ves could get a better idea of what the buildings he was passing looked like. The area was mostly five-and six-story brownstones, with a few storefronts and a couple of older, twelve-to fifteen-story apartment buildings. Every window up to the third floor in each building was boarded up. The storefront windows were taped and sandbagged, except for the ones which weren’t there. Many of the building fronts bore the pockmarks of rifle or machine gun fire; a few showed the larger craterings of aircraft cannon, and an occasional pile of nibble showed the effects of artillery or bombs. Major damage was rare, but most of the buildings showed signs that people were trying to kill other people.
Tatiana Petrovna’s hand clutched Ves’s shoulder. “Pull over and stop,” she said. “Quickly!”
Ves pulled the car over to the curb and set the brake. Two blocks ahead a pair of halftrack troop carriers ground
their way around the corner, blocking the road. Men in field gray uniforms and bucket helmets swarmed off the backs, lugging heavy machine guns, steel boxes of ammunition, and sandbags, to commence construction of a barricade. They worked with the sure, instinctive knowledge of ants building an anthill, and the barricade took form with impressive speed as Ves and the Countess watched.
“The automobile engine is still on,” the Countess said. “If one of the soldiers comes this way, he will probably hear it and investigate.”
“I can stall it out,” Ves told her, “and I will if I have to. But I can only start it again by going under the hood, which would make me sort of conspicuous. Let’s sit here for a few minutes and see what happens.”
As they watched a third halftrack joined the other two, and the soldiers began to fan out and occupy the buildings flanking the corner. Selected windows on the upper floors were knocked out, presumably to give marksmen stationed there greater fields of fire. Then a truck came up and offloaded a steel-and-cement jigsaw puzzle that the men began erecting from sidewalk to sidewalk across the facing street, in front of the machine guns.
“Instant tank trap,” Ves said.
“I think we had better get away from here,” Tatiana Petrovna said. “If the Germans do not shoot us, they will soon cement us in.”
“You have something there, Countess,” Ves admitted. “We need one sudden, definitive act to get out of here before they have an opportunity to get any of those guns trained on us.” He stared reflectively at the street. “A U-turn, I think, and then a quick right at the end of the block—”
His planning was suddenly interrupted by a high-pitched mechanical scream, and the undercarriage of a propeller-driven fighter aircraft appeared in the sky over them. It made a shallow dive toward the Nazi-infested corner. A rhythmic roar of explosions blotted out all other sounds, and hundreds of thirty-caliber steel-jacketed bullets created a moving line of destruction down the middle of the street. The asphalt was chewed into little bits, leaving a residue of black, powdery smoke; a fire hydrant erupted, sending a plume of water five stories into the air; a car exploded with a belch and a sheet of red flame; and a score of German soldiers, frozen into a tableau position for the split-second of remaining life, scattered like leaves in the bullet-storm and lay broken in grotesque postures about the barricade. Then the plane was past, climbing beyond the roofs and into the tranquil sky from which it had come.
The half-track vehicles sat there stolidly, looking whole amidst the wreckage, but a small, fine pillar of black smoke rose from the center one. The one on the left was canted at a strange angle, as though it were a model placed carelessly on a miniature street. An officer in a high peaked hat had run from his protecting doorway and was emptying his handgun at the retreating aircraft. Aside from the sharp yap of his pistol and the roar of escaping water, the street was curiously quiet in the immediate aftermath of the strafing attack.
“There is an ancient Chinese curse about living in interesting times,” Ves said. “I wonder how they would have felt about traveling through interesting times.” He backed the car up and then executed a slow, precise U-turn. Nothing impeded him except dust.
“I hope the It in the Empire State Building is still accessible,” Tatiana Petrovna said. “It will cause us much inconvenience if it is not”
“I just hope the Empire State Building is still there,” Ves said. “If it’s still standing, we’ll find a way inside; you have my word.”
Twenty minutes more of creeping, darting, and waiting in their stolen Henry, and they arrived at their objective.
“Well,” Ves said, pulling over to the curb and stalling the car. “Where is the gadget?”
“Upstairs,” the Countess told him. “Way upstairs, in the observation tower.”
“I should have guessed,” Ves said. “Let’s hope the elevators are running.” They left the car and raced across the deserted sidewalk to the Fifth Avenue entrance of the building. One of the doors was unlocked. They went in, cutting their pace to a fast walk, and went down the long arcade toward the elevator banks. “Is this the last It before we arrive at Prime Time?” Ves asked.
“One more,” Tatiana Petrovna said. “But less of a problem to get to.”
“Why isn’t there one that just goes straight through?” Ves asked.
“The Translator can only go from one time to another when its base exists in both times,” the Countess said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“Noticed what?” Ves asked.
“The similarity of the locations on both sides of the transfer,” she said.
“Ah!” Ves said. “Yes, of course. Now that you point it out.”
“State your business!” a young, earnest voice called. And then, as an afterthought: “Halt!” Ves and the Countess froze in place, and a young corporal with an ancient Springfield rifle stepped out of a doorway, pointing the weapon at them in an embarrassed manner. “Advance and be recognized,” he said.
“Good going, Corporal, keep alert,” Ves said. He took a couple of steps forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “This is top-security work for the Manhattan project. Top Secret, classified with the British Most Secret. You’ll want the password, of course. The civilian project Class-A Password for the day is Eiderdown. What’s your countersign?”
“Eiderdown?” the corporal asked, sounding unhappy. “That’s not the code-word I was given.” He shifted the rifle as though uncertain whether he should point the rifle at Ves, or hand it to him. He compromised on a sort of port arms.
“It’s not the code-word?” Ves asked in amazement. “You are cleared for top-secret, aren’t you?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t think so, Sir.”
“You’re not? Then what are you doing here?” Ves’s amazement was complete.
Tatiana Petrovna touched Ves’s arm. “We are, after all, under attack,” she pointed out. “Things get mixed up—confused. It’s not the corporal’s fault, surely.” She turned to the corporal. “What password were you given?”
“Central Park,” the corporal said. “And the countersign is supposed to be Bronx Zoo.”
“There,” the Countess said, with an explanatory gesture to Ves. “Central Park! Surely you see... ”
“Of course,” Ves agreed. “Listen, son: use your codeword for all of your people. You know—Army and all that. But if anyone else comes in with the password ‘Eiderdown’, remember that your countersign is ‘Pillow’. I’ll see that the next change of guard has all five classes of passwords.”
“Five?” the corporal asked. By now, his rifle was pointed at the mural of a wood-nymph with a jackhammer on the corridor ceiling, and he was holding it loosely by the stock.
“Five,” Ves reaffirmed. “It’s a complicated war. Thank you, corporal. Stay on guard, there are some German troops about. Are the elevators working?”
“Yes, sir,” the corporal said. “Far as I know. Operator’s down in the basement; just ring for her.”
“Very good, thank you.” And they left the guard, and proceeded to the elevator banks. “I forgot all about elevator operators,” Ves said. “Where I come from, you do that yourself.”
“A true democracy,” Tatiana Petrovna said.
The elevator came for them after one ring and a great deal of patience. “Where to, gents?” the girl asked.
“All the way up,” Ves said.
“Okay,” the girl said cheerfully, closing the door behind them and starting the elevator with that stomach-dropping surge so characteristic of the building. “But you’ll have to change at the hundred and second; that’s as high as I go.”
When they got off at the 102nd floor, the tower elevator wasn’t working, so they had to walk up the last three flights to the observation deck.
It was broad daylight when they emerged on the deck, eighty stories above the fog. Most of the l
and below them was shrouded in ground fog and low-lying clouds. To the east and south pillars of black smoke rose in several different places, but no details could be made out.
“Come,” Tatiana said. She led Ves around the tower to a certain spot on the outer wall facing downtown, and pressed a concealed switch. The panel flopped open.
“A second,” she said, groping in the panel for the right button. Then she closed the panel.
“Well?” Ves said.
“It’s done,” she replied.
“Where in the name of Minos did you come from?” a voice behind them demanded. They turned.
A man in a blue toga with gold trim, and a woman in a Grecian-style gown with her left breast bared were standing arm in arm, staring at Ves and the Countess. The man held a blue-steel automatic pistol pointed steadily at Ves’s belt buckle. It wasn’t cold anymore, Ves noticed.
Tatiana Petrovna took Ves’s arm. “This is the wrong place,” she murmured in his ear.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Intercontinental Coach ran out of track on the Jersey side—or what would have been the Jersey side—of the Hudson. A flat-bed barge with a steam-driven paddle wheel took them from the Hoboken docks to the Battery at the foot of Manhattan. There were a clump of neat-looking brick houses around the Battery, an expanse of cleared land behind the houses, and then a dense forest covering all of uptown Manhattan. “So this is your colony,” Swift said, stepping off onto the dock and gazing around at the neat, clean, geometrically precise brick walls. Even the dirt street seemed to have been scrubbed.
“Gentleman farmers,” Hamilton said. “Jefferson would approve. Of course, we don’t use slave labor.”
“What then,” Nate Swift asked doubtfully, “Indian workers toiling for their gods?”
The Whenabouts of Burr Page 14