At the Narrow Passage

by Richard Meredith

  I just smiled again, and Scoti put the pistol back and started to show me another of his favorite weapons, an R-4 power pistol from his own Line.

  It was two or three days later that Mica dropped his bomb.

  We were sitting in his office one morning having coffee, discussing some of the Paratimes we had been in, when he almost casually mentioned his Homeline.

  "It must be very interesting there," I said.

  "Yes, I suppose it is," Mica replied. "You'll have a chance to see for yourself soon."

  "How's that?"

  "Next week Trebum and I will be going home to make a progress report to our governing council. We will be taking you along."

  "Oh?" I said, unable to think of anything any more intelligent at the moment.

  "Yes," Mica replied slowly. "The council would like to speak with you also. It isn't often that we get a Timeliner convert."

  "How long will I be there?"

  "I'm afraid that I cannot say. It will be up to the council. However, I doubt that you will ever be returning here."

  I started to ask why, but decided against it. I knew why. They just didn't trust me that much, not enough to leave me here this close to my "friends," though they trusted me enough not to kill me.

  "I trust that you do not find that an unpleasant prospect," he said, a statement rather than a question.

  "No, of course not," I told him. "It should be very interesting."

  But I had already made up my mind about what I was going to do.

  17

  "Red Mobile to Red Leader"

  Mica told me that we were going to his Homeline on Friday. I acted on the Monday before that.

  The Monday morning after a solitary breakfast I buzzed Sally's quarters on the intercom, hoping that I'd catch her before she left. I was lucky. She was still there.

  "Yes, Eric," she said over the intercom.

  "Are you busy?"

  She paused for a moment before answering. "Well, no. Not really. I have a few things to do, but nothing urgent. Why?"

  "Oh, no reason, really," I said. "I've just got a touch of claustrophobia. I'd like a chance to get outside for a breath of fresh air."

  "We could have gone to the surface yesterday," she said. "There was a picnic, you know."

  "I know, but I didn't feel like it then. How about it? Can you take me up for a few minutes, just to look around?"

  "Okay," she answered at last. "Give me a few minutes. Then I'll come for you."

  "Good. I'll be waiting."

  Of course I'd be waiting. I still couldn't even open the door by myself.

  It was nearly half an hour later when Sally showed up wearing bright yellow shorts, halter, and sandals. I was pleased to note the bulge of the small handgun that was still on her hip under the shorts. I had been fearful that their trust of me was enough for Sally to have come without the gun now. It wasn't. Good. I needed that gun.

  "Ready to go?" she asked.

  "Ready," I answered

  We followed the corridors to the stairs and took the stairs up to the surface, out into the bright springtime morning light. It was almost summer then all across the Lines.

  When the door closed behind us, I took a deep breath of fresh air, looked up at the cloudless blue sky through the dark pine trees above, and then looked around and located the hangar off through the trees. That was my ultimate destination.

  "Is there any place in particular you want to go?" Sally asked.

  "No," I replied, "let's just walk."

  So we walked away from the hangar across the flat countryside through the pine trees toward a small stream that cut through the forest, making its way toward the Gulf of Mexico less than fifty miles to the south.

  "I'm going to be leaving soon," I said, as I fished into my pocket for a cigarette.

  "I know," Sally replied. "Mica told me."

  "In a way I'll hate to leave here. I sort of like it."

  "I envy you," she said.

  "Envy me. Why?"

  "You're getting to visit Mica's Paratime. I've never had a chance. It must be a wonderful place."

  "Oh? You mean you've never been to where they come from?"

  "No, very few of us have."

  I wondered why, then dismissed the thought. It might have some kind of significance, but I doubted it. And it didn't matter. Not at the moment. I had no intention of going there with Mica.

  "I guess it will be interesting," I said, "but I'd rather stay here."

  "What difference does it make to you? This isn't your Homeline. I thought that one Paratime was as good as another to you."

  "Some are better than others. I've come to like it here."

  "As a prisoner?"

  "I've had freedom that's been a lot worse than this prison, and, hell, I've got such nice guards."

  "You mean like G'lendal and Jonna?" Sally asked, a smile flickering across her face.

  "Yes, like them and you."

  "Me? What am I to you, Eric?"

  "I don't know, Sally. I just like you.~

  "Guilt feelings?"

  "Guilt? Oh, for kidnapping you and all? No, not really. Back then you weren't a person to me. Just a job. I don't have any reason for guilt, do I?"

  "I'm not a person to you now either, Eric. I'm just a turnkey."

  "No, more than that."

  "I'm just your guard, Eric," she said, an edge to her voice. She had come to a stop near the base of a huge old pine. "I could never be anything else."

  I turned to look at her, my hands going to her shoulders, memories of Kristin coming to me, beginning to hate myself for what I was about to do. "You could be a lot more than that, Sally."

  "No, never, Eric."

  "Why? Because you're married to Von Heinen? What's he to you?"

  "Not Albert," she said, a strange mixture of emotions on her face. "You know -- you must realize by now that I'm Mica's mistress. I'm . . ."

  That's when I acted.

  I had never seen Sally draw her hip pistol while wearing those shorts. She must have had some easy access to it, though I didn't know how and didn't have time to investigate. I just grabbed the shorts at the waist, jerked down and forward and hoped that the fabric or the stitches that held it together would tear. Something gave way.

  Sally was as well trained in hand-to-hand combat as any woman I'd ever met, but fighting was my business, and I was bigger and stronger than she was. She fought back as I tore off her shorts, grabbed at the small holster strapped across her now-naked hips, wrapped my fingers around the weapon's butt and pulled it free. Then I shoved her away, jumped back and leveled the pistol at her, snapping the safety off. It was a small automatic of a make I didn't recognize, .22 caliber.

  "Hold it, Sally," I grasped.

  "Goddamn you!" she cried, on her knees and starting to rise, but then looking at the weapon aimed at her. "You lying, sneaking bastard. I trusted you. I . . ."

  "I'm sorry, Sally," I said as calmly as I could. "I hate to do this, but I've still got a job to do."

  "You still believe them," she said, her eyes filling with fire and hatred, and tears. "You still believe those monsters are telling the truth. You traitor, you filthy . . ."

  "That's enough," I said sharply. "I'm doing what I have to do."

  "Don't hand me that shit."

  "That's not very ladylike."

  "Don't mock me, you . . ." What she said next was even less ladylike.

  "Get up," I said. "We're going to the hangar."

  "You're not stupid enough to think you can steal a boat, are you? You don't even know how to operate one of ours."

  "I don't need to. Now get up and do as I say."

  Sally came to her feet, clutching her torn shorts around her waist as well as she could with one hand, turned in the direction I pointed with the pistol, started walking.

  Well, I thought, I'm into it now. If I don't make it . . . Well, it's a bullet in the head for old Thimbron Parnassos if I don't pull it off this time. There'll never be
another chance.

  Sally did not speak again as we made our way back along the trail toward the hangar in which the Paratimers kept their sautierboats there on the surface, hidden from British airships by a thick cover of trees.

  In a few minutes we were within sight of the hangar. Exactly as I had hoped, the big hangar doors were open, and I could see inside. Two of the alien skudders sat there, the big one and the smaller one, and inside the hangar, dark against the bright light outside, I could see two men, gray-clad technicians doing whatever technicians do when they don't have anything else to do.

  "Don't make a sound, Sally," I whispered, knowing that we were still outside their range of hearing. "If you do . . . I let my voice trail off.

  She turned to look at me, hatred still in her eyes, and for an instant I -- well, damn it, I loved her. I guess that's what it was. And damned if I knew why. And when that instant was gone, I knew that I couldn't trust her. She might -- probably would -- yell a warning to the technicians inside the hangar as soon as we got close enough. And I didn't think I would be able to kill her if she did.

  I'm sorry, Sally, I said to myself, dropping the pistol, balling my fist and snapping my knuckles across her jaw in a single motion.

  She looked startled for a moment, then collapsed quietly onto the soft, pine-needled floor of the forest.

  I took off her halter, feeling guilty as I undressed her, and used it to tie her arms crudely to the trunk of a small tree. With my handkerchief and a strip of her torn shorts I formed a gag and hoped that she would be found soon. I didn't want her to strangle.

  Looking regretfully at her for one last time, wondering whether I'd ever see her again, I left the now-nude girl behind me and began slipping through the thinning forest, around the hangar so that I could come up from the other side.

  Standing only inches from the two huge open doors at the hangar's front, I could hear the two technicians talking, though I couldn't understand them. They were speaking that French-like language that was common to the Paratimers.

  After a while I decided that I was gaining nothing by delaying. I might as well go on and do it before I was discovered. So I waited only until I thought I could pinpoint their locations from their voices, both together, standing not far from me near the hangar's doors.

  Leaping out into the open, turning, and aiming the pistol, I said loudly, "Hold it! Don't move!"

  The two technicians turned to face me, startled expressions on their faces, words cut off in mid-sentence.

  One grabbed at the tool belt he wore, grasping at something that vaguely resembled a flashlight, but might well have been some sort of laser device that could be used as a weapon. I pulled the triggr.

  The technician staggered backward, grasping his shoulder, blood spurting between his fingers.

  "Don't move again, either of you," I said, wondering if the report of the tiny pistol was really as loud as it had sounded to me in the stillness of the surface forest.

  "Tie him up," I told the uninjured technician, the one that had explained to me the workings of their sautierboats a few days before. "And hurry. I don't have much time."

  The startled technician seemed disinclined to argue with the tiny but effective weapon I held. Without speaking he bound his companion hand and foot and gagged him with black electrical tape under my supervision.

  "Okay. Now drag him over there out of the way," I said. "And don't make a move toward any of those tools."

  When he was finished, he looked back at me fearfully, or rather at the pistol. He could not seem to take his eyes off it even as he spoke.

  "He'll bleed to death," he managed to say. "You hit an artery."

  "Do both those boats have radios?" I asked. Right then I couldn't afford to care if the other technician did bleed to death. I was more concerned with my own life.

  He was nodding.

  "Which is the most powerful?"

  "N-neither. Both are the same kind."

  "Okay. The big one." I gestured toward the larger of the two craft. The technician didn't ask any questions. He just started across the hangar.

  I wasn't foolish enough to believe that I could steal one of their sautierboats. I had no idea how to operate the controls, and I could not trust the technician to do anything that complex. The best I could hope for was one of the radios -- if I could just get a message on the air and if Kar-hinter still had people monitoring and if I happened to find the right frequency and if . . .

  The technician opened the hatch of the large craft, stood for a moment waiting for me to tell him what to do.

  "Get in," I said.

  For an instant I had the same feeling I had had back in the stables of the villa near Beaugency, back when I was fleeing from the Paratimers in an Imperial motorcar with Sally and Von Heinen as captives, so long ago and half a world away. There was the sensation of another presence in the hangar, and out of the corner of my eye I caught the impression of a figure standing back deep in the shadows at the far end of the hangar.

  I spun toward the image, leveling the small pistol, but when my eyes focused in the shadows, there was nothing there. Had there ever been?

  I went on into the boat, feeling a strange chill on my back. Ghosts?

  Inside the boat I recognized the controls as being basically similar to those of the craft that had brought me to Staunton, what I had seen of its control panel. The radio transceiver was easy enough to locate, though the lettering on the controls was foreign to me.

  "Okay," I said, "tell me what does what."

  The technician looked at me for a moment, perhaps wondering what he could get away with, then, gazing at the pistol, seemed to decide that he'd better play it straight and nodded. "This -- this is the on-off switch. The receiver and the transmitter operate on the same frequency. That's controlled by this knob."

  "What does that dial indicate?"

  "Megahertz. Vernier control here and these -- these buttons will select preselected channels."

  "Go on."

  "Yeah. This -- this is your power amplifier tuning. The meter should register fifty percent when you're ready to transmit. This is . . ."

  In five minutes I thought I could operate it. Maybe the technician had given me the wrong information about the radio set, but I doubted it. He was too scared -- and one VHF transceiver is pretty much like another when you get the basic idea of what it is supposed to do.

  My worry was about the type of modulation this set was using, FM. And the Kriths mostly used AM in the VHF ranges. Why, I don't know, but they did. And if I transmitted an FM signal into an AM receiver, even if I were exactly on frequency -- well, they wouldn't get much out of it on the receiving end. I just hoped that the Kriths had planned for an eventuality like this and would be able to demodulate my FM signal.

  "Sit down over there and stay quiet," I told the technician and began flipping switches.

  Less than a minute later lights and meters said that I was ready to transmit. And if I were correct in remembering the Krithian emergency frequency and if the set were really transmitting and if . . . Hell, worrying isn't going to do any good. Just try.

  "Red mobile to red leader," I said into the microphone in Shangalis. "Red mobile to red leader. Do you hear me, Kar-hinter?" Then I realized how foolish all that was and decided to give it to them straight. "If anybody's listening, this is Eric Mathers, Timeliner, under Kar-hinter's supervision. I have been captured by invaders from another Timeline. I am held prisoner in a place called Staunton somewhere in West Florida. Lock in on my signal and triangulate. Inform Kar-hinter at once and tell him to get here fast. I've come across the biggest thing we've ever seen. . . ."

  That was the gist of my message. I repeated it three times, then switched to another frequency and did it again.

  I was on my fourth frequency when I heard the banging on the hatch.

  "Who's in there?" a muffled voice called from outside. "What's going on?"

  The technician looked at me for an instant, then bac
k at the hatch.

  "Stay still," I told him -- but that didn't do any good. He was a brave man, that technician, to be as scared as he was and still do what he did.

  Still looking directly into the barrel of my pistol, he jumped at me, a yell of pure hatred on his lips. I fired. There wasn't much else I could do. And then his face wasn't much of a face anymore.