Black Tuesday (Area 51: Time Patrol)

by Mayer, Bob

“Nothing at all in there about the Time Patrol?” the President asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s not good,” the President said.

  The Keep had no opinion on that. That wasn’t her job. She was a tiny woman, slender, with short black hair. There were a few more strands of gray sprinkled about in that black than there had been just a week ago.

  Such was the effect of the revelation of the Time Patrol and Foreman’s ruse that the world would end in twelve hours if the Patrol wasn’t “rescued.” That hadn’t quite been the truth. While there had been a real problem with the Ratnik, the reality was that Foreman had used the incident to test the Nightstalkers in order to recruit them into the Patrol.

  “But there should be something in there now about the Time Patrol.” The President wasn’t asking, but the Keep answered anyway.

  “Yes, ma’am.” She held the pen, waiting for the words, but they didn’t come. Not yet.

  There was a knock on the door and a Secret Service agent popped his head in. “He’s here, Madam President.”

  “Send him in.”

  The small office got tighter as Foreman entered the room. The old man used a cane, a concession to his age and bad knees. He wore a suit that was out of style at least a decade ago and held a porkpie hat in his other hand. Covered by a fedora, his once-thick white hair was now thinner and he was rail thin, the kind of weight loss that wasn’t healthy.

  “Nice of you to make it,” the President said in a tone that indicated she didn’t think it was nice of him at all.

  “I work for you, Madam President,” Foreman said with a slight bow of his head.

  “Do you?” the President asked.

  Foreman eyed the third chair in the room, but the President didn’t give him permission to sit. Power hath its privileges and anger hath its petty revenges.

  “Of course,” Foreman said. Before the President could say anything, he quickly followed that up, lest she misinterpret and think she had “hand.” “I work for the office, ma’am. Majestic-12 was formed by presidential decree after World War Two. My office was a spin-off from that. I understand you feel blindsided by recent revelations, but believe me, there was no intent to deceive you. No president has been aware of the existence of the Time Patrol. It’s not personal.”

  “I’m not taking it personally,” the President said in a clipped tone that her husband could have told Foreman meant she was indeed taking it personally. “Truman formed Majestic-12. It’s in the book.” She nodded toward the Keep. “But the Time Patrol isn’t mentioned. The Nightstalkers are, among other groups such as the Cellar. Was Truman aware of the Time Patrol?”

  “He didn’t have a need to know,” Foreman said.

  “The president didn’t have a need to know?” The President was not pleased.

  “You have to remember,” Foreman said, “that Truman didn’t know of the Manhattan Project until after FDR died. Compartmentalization is the key to secrecy.”

  “And abuse of secrecy,” the President said. “Doesn’t the revelation that time travel exists change our framework of reality?”

  “Not really,” Foreman said, once more eyeing the seat.

  “Oh, sit down,” the President said in exasperation.

  Foreman settled into the seat with a grateful sigh. He put the cane across his knees and rested the Breaking Bad hat on top of it.

  “It changes my perception of reality,” the President said. “How about you?” she asked the Keep.

  The woman was startled to be asked something so bluntly. “I always thought that if time travel existed, then it must exist in the present, if that makes sense.”

  The President blinked, processing that, but Foreman graced her with a smile.

  “An excellent observation,” Foreman said. “And it makes perfect sense. Even if we didn’t have time travel today, if someone in the future invents it, then it exists now. Takes a moment to wrap one’s brain around it. Except time travel has existed for a very, very long time.”

  He shifted back to the President. “Madam President, the thing to remember is that we, our time, goes on as usual. The purpose of the Patrol is to ensure that. We are the front of, shall we call it, a time wave. The future is unknown.” He paused, looking between the Keep and the President. “You are aware, of course, that we cannot time travel into the future?”

  “Yes,” the President snapped. “So I’ve been told.”

  Foreman smiled. “Then the Time Patrol really is of no consequence as long as it does its job and maintains the integrity of our timeline.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” the President asked.

  Foreman shrugged. “There’s not much we can do about it in the here and now. Your job, and everyone else’s who has power, is to maintain our timeline and look to the future. To keep ourselves from blowing our world up with nuclear weapons. To prevent climate change from devastating the planet. You take care of the present and the future. The Patrol takes care of the past.”

  “You’re telling me my job?” The President glared at Foreman.

  “Madam President, I’m simply telling you the way things are.”

  “I don’t like being played, Mister Foreman. I had the Keep deploy Furtherance to New York City,” she said, referring to the Keep’s placement of a nuclear weapon deep underneath the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the center of Manhattan. “And it was armed and ticking down. Not a great example of taking care of the present, but I did it because I was kept in the dark about your little test.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Foreman said. “I was there. But, remember, it didn’t go off. Everything worked out fine.”

  “I don’t like you, Mister Foreman,” the President said.

  A muscle twitched on Foreman’s face, but that was the extent of his reaction.

  She continued. “What a president gives, a president can take away.”

  “I’m just a part of the machinery,” Foreman said. “The Patrol goes on with or without me.”

  “Its funding doesn’t.”

  “I’m afraid, Madam President, that it does. That appropriation is grandfathered into the budget so tightly, you’d have to reveal everything in the Black Budget to the world. And we certainly can’t do that, can we?”

  Foreman didn’t smile, but there was a relish to his words. A satisfaction of old age and experience versus youth and pettiness. Foreman had lived through many presidents. He’d outlasted every other bureaucrat in Washington. He’d faced down chiefs of staff, generals, senators, admirals, and more. “And besides,” Foreman added, almost as a taunt, “we have our own internal funding as needed.”

  The President didn’t rise to the bait; she had her own set of skills. “I need more information, Mister Foreman. Since the Time Patrol has been such a big secret, why reveal it now? Just to test the Nightstalkers? Take down the Ratnik? And, by the way, did the Soviet government know about their own time patrol? And that it went rogue?”

  Foreman tackled the questions backward. “There was a man in the Soviet government who held a position similar to mine. He was the liaison to the Ratnik. He is long dead. The program is long dead. Once Chernobyl went critical, that was the end of that. The Ratnik escaped into the Space Between, their base in our time was destroyed, and now they no longer exist. The Nightstalkers saw to that.”

  “So the Chernobyl meltdown happened because of the Ratnik and time travel?” the President asked.

  “The Russians had a base near Chernobyl,” Foreman said, “named Duga 3. We knew they were doing something strange there. The unofficial secret rumor was that it was part of an over-the-horizon radar system, part of an anti-ballistic-missile warning setup. It wasn’t. We learned, too late, that the Russians had stolen information about time travel from us. And were trying their own experiments. It didn’t work out quite right for them.”

  “Who is this ‘we’?” the President asked. She glanced at the Keep. “Anything in the Book of Truths about that? I don’t remember you telling me anyt
hing.”

  “Negative,” the Keep said.

  “So who is ‘we’?” the President asked Foreman.

  “I was using the pejorative,” Foreman said.

  “I think you’re full of shit,” the President said.

  The Keep’s only reaction was to raise an eyebrow.

  “The Nightstalkers were needed,” Foreman continued. “There is a new threat with a short fuse, one it was felt needs to be dealt with. And you need to be warned about.”

  “You just told me that the Time Patrol is of no consequence to our time,” the President said.

  “If it fails in the face of this new threat, it is.”

  That brought a few moments of silence before Foreman continued.

  “Our enemy, the Shadow, is trying a new tactic. Or perhaps resurrecting an old tactic. We’re really not sure.” He went on to explain the Rule of Seven to the President and the Keep.

  “The good news,” Foreman said, “is that the odds are in our favor. The Shadow has to change all six events in order to cause a shift.”

  “How do you know this?” the President asked.

  “It’s how Atlantis was destroyed,” Foreman said.

  “‘Atlantis’?” the President repeated. “Are you serious?”

  “And,” Foreman said, “we’ve received several reports of this tactic being used on other timelines.”

  “I’m still on Atlantis,” the President said.

  “You know as much as I know about that,” Foreman said. “It existed. It was destroyed by the Shadow.”

  “I doubt that I know as much as you,” the President replied. “Where was Atlantis? It’s a myth. Mentioned only by Plato.”

  “Your schooling in the classics is correct,” Foreman said, “but I assure you, Atlantis did exist. And it was destroyed.”

  The President scrunched her eyes shut and then rubbed them. Her husband could have told both Foreman and the Keep that this meant she was on the verge of either exploding in anger or accepting defeat, rarely the latter. She opened her eyes. “If there’s nothing I can do about the Time Patrol, I ask you again: Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you need to prepare contingencies in case the Patrol fails and we get hit with a time tsunami.”

  “And what will happen if such a tsunami hits?”

  “At the very least,” Foreman said, “civilization will collapse. We’re more vulnerable than ever before in our history to a tsunami. Most people don’t realize it, but we’re only about a week away from the collapse of civilization if the delicate infrastructure that supports it is broken. The world has become so much smaller and interdependent than ever before. With greater advancement comes greater danger.”

  “What about at the very worst?” the President asked.

  “Our timeline will blink out of existence,” Foreman said.

  “Not much I can do about that, is there?” the President said.

  “No. There isn’t.”

  The President stared at him for a few moments. “You’re lying to me. I’ve been in politics long enough to recognize that. I’ve been around some of the greatest bullshitters there are. And you, Mister Foreman, rank up there.”

  Foreman got to his feet with difficulty. “Is that all, Madam President?”

  “You tell me,” the President said. “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Get out of here.”

  With a slight bow, Foreman left the Keep’s office.

  The President turned to the Keep. “What do you think?”

  The Keep shook her head. “I’m still processing time travel and Atlantis.”

  Surprisingly, the President laughed. “I’ve given up trying to understand any of this. When you briefed me shortly after I took office from that book on the Nightstalkers and Rifts and the Cellar and all that other incredible stuff, I think my mind either broke or expanded to accept pretty much anything. We don’t have to process this stuff. We need to deal with it.

  “I want to talk to Hannah.”

  When: Can’t Tell You. Where: Can’t Tell You.

  Roland laughed, pointing at Mac. “Nice legs, dude.”

  “Shut up,” Mac snapped.

  “Oh come on,” Roland said. “You’re kind of cute and—”

  Mac whipped a rapier out of his belt. Roland was almost as fast with the longsword already in his hand. Each blade came to rest on the opposing man’s throat, pressing against the skin.

  The fact each went on the offensive and for the throat, rather than trying to block the other, said everything there was to know about the mentality of the Nightstalkers. The fact neither would ever follow through said everything about teamwork.

  “Easy,” Moms said. “Easy, men.”

  Roland pulled the sword away, always obedient to Moms’s slightest command. Mac gave it a second, and then pulled away the rapier. Mac was dressed in Elizabethan garb, the tight leggings below the short pants the prompt for Roland’s comment. He also had on a “puffy” shirt underneath a doublet and a cloak. His natural good looks were actually enhanced by the clothes; he could step on any stage and be considered a Tom Cruise look-alike.

  Roland wasn’t looking better in worn leather pants and tunic. His large arms were bare, along with most of his chest, making him a perfect candidate for a romance novel cover.

  Moms stepped between them, outfitted for cold weather, pre-Gore-Tex and all the other high-speed gear that had been developed in the last couple of decades, her outfit consisting of mostly wool with white camouflage outer garments. An M14 with a bulky suppressor on the end of the barrel was slung over her shoulder.

  “Play nice,” Moms said. “Roland. Say you’re sorry to Mac.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roland murmured, his face red from Moms’s rebuke.

  “Mac?” Moms said, feeling like she was shepherding kindergartners.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “You look very nice,” Moms said to Mac, who twitched a smile in response.

  The door opened and Eagle walked in wearing Vietnam-era OD green jungle fatigues with an old external-frame rucksack over one shoulder and an M16 with a blank adapter on the end of the barrel over the other. He had on a patrol cap, which he took off.

  “We were out of Vietnam by 1980,” Moms said to Eagle.

  He nodded. “Got to be something else. Somewhere else. The blank adapter suggests a training environment.” He looked at Mac. “1618. Looks like England for you.” Then Roland and his large sword. “Perfect fit. Looks like you get to kill someone or something, big man.”

  Roland nodded, eager to be out of there and into the action. He twirled the sword, belying its weight. “It has good balance. Good steel.” He sounded like a man talking about a woman he loved, but that was Roland’s way with weapons.

  And he’d never talk about Neeley in front of the team because he truly loved her and that was locked deep into his heart.

  “You’re going someplace cold,” Eagle said to Moms.

  “No frak, Sherlock.” Moms looked none too pleased by the prospect.

  Ivar walked in, appearing as if he might be auditioning for a gangster movie in the roaring twenties. He had a fedora pulled down low over his eyes and wore a sharp suit.

  “Yours is the easiest,” Eagle said, nodding at Ivar. “October 29, 1929 was Black Tuesday. 10-29-29. The stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression.”

  Ivar took off his hat. “Seems like we ought to be stopping the Great Depression.”

  “Not the way it works,” Moms said. “We maintain history.”

  “Yeah,” Ivar said, “but—” He stopped as the door opened and Scout came in, followed by Edith Frobish and Doc.

  “Well,” Moms said as she took in Scout. She couldn’t find the words to say anything more. The rest of the team was similarly dumbstruck.

  Scout was ready for Woodstock. She wore low-riding jeans sporting a wide leather belt and a peasant top that bared her midriff. Her hair
was parted in the middle and lacked its usual streaks of color. She didn’t look happy.

  “Nice threads,” Roland finally said.

  Scout gave him the stink eye. “Right.” But she followed it with an appreciative smile, because, like Moms, she knew Roland had a good heart. What he said, he meant.

  “1969,” Eagle said. “A time of great turmoil. But also exciting.”

  “Right,” Scout repeated, clearly uncomfortable in the outfit.

  “Your clothes are authentic,” Edith said. “Supplied by agents from the era you will be infiltrating.”

  Roland scratched underneath his armpit.

  “You stink,” Mac noted.

  “The clothes stink,” Roland said, taking a deep sniff.

  “Again,” Edith said, failing to see the humor, “the clothes are accurate and well worn.”

  “What about me?” Doc asked.

  “You’re staying here,” Edith said. “There’s some data that we would like you to look over.”

  Doc didn’t seem overly disappointed.

  “Sir Walter Raleigh,” Eagle said, looking at Mac.

  “What?” the team’s demo man said.

  “October 29, 1618,” Eagle said, drawing on his massive memory. “On that date, Sir Walter Raleigh, favorite of Queen Elizabeth, was beheaded. Seems to be the most likely event on that day in that year for you to be dealing with.”

  “So I make sure this guy Raleigh gets his head chopped off?” Mac asked.

  “It might not be that simple,” Edith hedged. “Wait until Dane gets here and can brief you.” She turned to the rest of the team. “Next we—”

  “Hold on,” Moms said. “There’s something the team has to do first.”

  Edith opened her mouth to say something, but Moms’s tone stopped her.

  “We take care of our own,” Moms said.

  The team gathered round her and linked hands, leaving Edith standing nervously near the blackboard.

  Moms continued. “It is Protocol for us to acknowledge the death of a Nightstalker because no one else will. We must pay our respect and give honors.

  “He was named Nada by the team,” Moms said, “but in death he regains his name and his past. Sergeant Major Edward Moreno, US Army Infantry and then Special Forces, Delta Force and Nightstalker, has made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, for his world, and for mankind. We all speak his rank and his name as it was.”