Time spike

by Eric Flint

  Harshbarger stared at him. "Why?" asked Nick. "Two reasons. First of all, there's no mathematical reason they should have been destroyed.

  As cold-blooded as it sounds, I can give you an exact mathematical explanation of why someone gets killed when he gets hit by a bullet in the right place or has a big rock dropped on him. It's just a matter of mass and energy, really." He turned and pointed to the diagrams that were displayed on a big board toward the far end of the huge chamber. "The same is true here-and it doesn't matter which way you calculate it. The point is, whatever these bolides are, almost their entire impact is along a time axis. They're no more capable of shredding three-dimensional objects like a human body than a bullet from a gun or a falling rock is able to send someone back in time."

  "Jesus," whispered Harshbarger. "What's the second reason?" asked Brisebois. The mathematician shrugged. "Hell, Nick, you saw it yourself." He nodded at the two policemen. "We've finally been able to identify the creature they shot. One of our… call him a fellow traveler, is a paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. He's a dinosaur expert. We sent him the carcass you gave us and he says it's definitely a dromaeosaurid of some kind." "Awhat?" asked Boyle. "Dromaeosaurid. The common name for them among dinosaur people is 'raptor.' They're one of the families in the theropod group of dinosaurs." Boyle's eyes were wide. He gave his partner a glare.

  "You crazy bastard! Tim, you had us both out there in the night shooting at a goddam velociraptor. I saw that movie too, y'know? It's a good thingwe're still alive!" Harshbarger made a face. "Oh, cut it out. The thing was nowhere near as big as Spielberg's monsters-not to mention that it was trying to run away from us." Margo cleared her throat. "She, actually." The two cops looked at her. "Well, sure, of course we dissected it," she said apologetically. "Or, rather, sent it to the museum and had them do it." "As a result of which," Richard added, chuckling, "I don't believe our colleagues at Bozeman can be described as 'fellow travelers' any longer. Rabid converts to the cause, would be a more accurate way of putting it. And I believe you can put your mind at ease, Officer Boyle. There are-were-a lot of dromaeosaurids. The name itself is just Latin for 'running lizard.'

  The velociraptors and their huge cousins the Utahraptors were just two genuses among many in the family. Our expert told us the one you shot is related to them, but was probably a scavenger. No more dangerous to a human being than a very large coyote would be, in other words." Nick ran fingers through his hair. "Okay. I see your point. Yeah, that's evidence, all right." Harshbarger was looking back and forth between Brisebois and O'Connell. His face was starting to get flushed again.

  "Well, Idon't get it. What does the critter me and Bruce shot have anything to do with whether or not my buddy Joe is still alive?"

  "Hell, Tim, you can figure it out for yourself. Think about what it means to say that a bolide's impact happens along the time axis instead of the three space axes. What happens when you shoot a bullet into a body?" Boyle grinned crookedly. "If I shoot it, the body dies."

  He jerked a thumb at his partner. "If Ol' Tick-eye Tim here shoots it, who the hell knows? The brick wall eight feet from the target might get dented up a little." Harshbarger scowled at him. "Iam the one who brought down Slavering Sue," Bruce said cheerfully. "Not to mention thatmy scores on the target range-" "Ah, shaddup." Nick waited for the banter to end. Then said: "But whatelse happens? Does a neat hole just appear in the body? Does the flesh and blood vanish? Does the residue from the cartridge vanish? If the gun you used was a. 357 Magnum instead of a target. 22, was the recoil the same?" His friends still looked puzzled. "There's always are- action, is my point. And the reaction, just like the action, only happens in the three spacial dimensions. Well… yeah, sure, there's also a time element, but it's not distorted from the time around it. You follow me so far?" The two policemen nodded. "Then figure out what happens if the impact is fourth-dimensional. You get a reaction also-which is the residue of whatever time period the bolide is passing through getting kicked back." He looked at Malcolm. "Is that the right way to put it?"

  "Uh… not exactly. Mathematically, it's more like a loop. But keep going. You're doing fine." The air transport specialist turned back to the cops. "Don't you get it? If there -action showed up alive and kicking-that's your Slavering Sue, fellas-then why wouldn't the same be true of the ones acted upon? The bolidecan't shred them, in three dimensions. All it can do is shift them around in time." Harshbarger's expression cleared. And, again, his face paled. "Jesus H. Christ.

  Joe-all of them-they're still alive somewhere." O'Connell winced.

  Before Harshbarger could get emotionally see-sawed again, Margo spoke up hastily. "We simply can't say that, Tim. I'm sorry. All we can say is that the time shift itself wouldn't have killed them. But what happened afterward…" The state policeman shook his head. "Yeah, yeah, sure. They might have landed in the middle of battlefield. But Joe and them were-are, dammit-pretty damn tough. I'm betting they can cut it." Margo wondered if she should leave it at that. But…

  These men weren't children. If nothing else, they had a right to know.

  "No amount of toughness could have saved them, Tim," she said gently,

  "if they ended up in the wrong time. This-event-was a really deep one.

  For all we know, they might have gotten driven back two billion years ago." Now, Brisebois winced. "Oh, hell." Harshbarger looked at him.

  "What? Dammit, I don't care how big the dinosaurs ever got, I'm still betting on Joe Schuler and those men and women at Alexander." Nick shook his head. "There weren't any dinosaurs two billion years ago, Tim. There weren't any land animals of any kind. Nothing. Not even lichen." "Jeez," said Boyle, rubbing his face. "They'd starve. It's not like a maximum security prison has more food than maybe a month's supply." Margo sighed. "They'd have died almost instantly, I'm afraid.

  That far back in time, the Earth's atmosphere was completely different. There wouldn't have been enough oxygen to keep them alive."

  "Oh." Harshbarger's jaws tightened. He looked around the huge chamber, full of scientific equipment whose design and function meant nothing to him. "Isn't thereany way you can figure out where-when-they ended up?" Margo shook her head. "I'm afraid not. We just-" Karen Berg cleared her throat. "Uh, Margo, you've been out of the loop for a bit.

  As it happens, we now think we can. Malcolm and I have been working on that almost round the clock, and we've got alot more data than we did when you left." O'Connell looked smug. Everyone else in the chamber stared at Berg. "Well. Roughly," she said apologetically. "It's sort of like a circular error of probability thing-and the farther back in time you get, the bigger the error factor." "Still!" exclaimed Richard. "That's fantastic, Karen." "Howbig?" demanded Harshbarger. He made a gesture with his hands, as if juggling a basketball. "That circular error thing, I mean." Karen Berg was normally given to being cautious in her projections. But, seeing the so evident distress on Tim's face, she clearly decided it was a time for being as precise as she possibly could. "They ended up somewhere-somewhen-in the Age of the Dinosaurs. We're pretty sure it was the early Cretaceous, approximately in the Hauterivian stage. Say, one hundred and thirty-five million years ago. But, that far back, the error spread is something like plus or minus eighteen million years. They could conceivably have landed as far back as the very late Jurassic, although that's not likely." Harshbarger looked at Nick. "Hell, I'm not sure, Tim. But I think-" "The air was almost certainly quite breathable any time during the Mesozoic, which that period was in the middle of," said Richard firmly. "Probably thick with moisture, quite warm, and I wouldn't begin to guess what it smelled like. But your friends wouldn't have suffocated. Dinosaurs may have gotten them, but they'd have been breathing till the end." Harshbarger slumped into a chair nearby. "I'm not worried about giant lizards. Joe and his people handle human lizards every day. Maybe not as big as dinosaurs, but every bit as mean and a lot smarter. They'll make do." His eyes started to water. "Damn, I'll miss him. But at least I
don't have to grieve."

  Chapter 24 Terry Collins whistled softly as he walked toward the armory. Things were working out perfectly. The Indian with his sob story had been the icing on the cake. Captain Blacklock, along with over two-thirds of the guards, was gone. They were off to savethe world, the silly bastards. Collins gave a small chuckle and slowed his pace. He wanted to enjoy the night. It was beautiful. The sky was clear of clouds, giving him a spectacular view of the heavens. He had never realized how many stars there actually were. The moon was just as impressive. It was full and golden. If he'd still been a kid he would have skipped across the parking lot, or tossed a rock at the man in the moon, just for the joy of it. He hesitated. Grinned. Bent and retrieved a rock. But when he looked up at the sky once more, the mood was gone. There was work to do. The rock fell from his hand. He knew from the shift roster, which Joe Schuler had so kindly given him a copy of, that the armory was unmanned. Almost everything was unmanned.

  The sixty-four guards still inside the walls had been divided up into two twelve-hour shifts-forty guards on days, twenty-four on nights. He suppressed the urge to laugh out loud. This was going to be like taking candy from a baby. He didn't bother to look around, to check if anyone could see him. If they did, so what? He was the night supervisor, making his rounds. He was just being thorough. He pulled a key ring from his pocket and flipped through the keys till he found the one he was looking for. Unlocking the door, he felt a twinge of doubt, but suppressed it. If Andy Blacklock stayed in charge they were going to spend their lives working like dogs, and for what? To keep a bunch of guys who weren't worth the air they breathed alive and locked up? No. It was crazy. The prisoners needed to be released, or shot.

  That simple. Oh, he had heard the arguments. If they were released they couldn't be given guns and ammo, so that meant they would starve.

  And those that didn't would freeze if this time and place had a winter. They wouldn't be able to build a shelter and gather enough firewood to make it through even a mild cold snap. Winter could be too close. As for prisoners being released and allowed to stay inside the prison, that was an impossibility. There weren't enough guards to keep things controlled. Well, keeping them fed and watered till spring wasnot an option. Everyone would starve. This was a primitive time.

  Survival of the fittest, and he intended to be one of the survivors.

  If Andy Blacklock and Joe Schuler and Rod Hulbert were too stupid or weak to do what had to be done, that was too bad for them. He wasn't.

  He could do what needed doing and it wouldn't keep him up at night. He stepped through the armory's door and closed it behind him before turning his flashlight on. He had a right to be here, but there was no sense in advertising his location. He glanced at his watch. He was well ahead of schedule. Luff had already been given his key to the cell house and a hand-drawn map. In one hour he would unlock the door and then he and his boyswould remove the guard and make their way to the armory. The guard would be easy to take out. He didn't have a gun, a nightstick, nothing. Not even a can of pepper spay. His protection was a battery-operated radio whose battery had been removed twenty minutes ago. That was another example of Andy Blacklock's stupidity.

  Sure, in the world they'd come from, guards didn't carry guns inside the prison. That was standard procedure. No gun meant no prisoner could take it from a guard and then be armed. Well, that might have made sense when the world was still outside the walls. But now, the rules needed to be changed. When Joe suggested that change, Andy had shot him down. "No. That rule is there for a good reason. We can't afford to panic." Blacklock just didn't get it. He didn't understand how much things had changed. But he would. When he got back and found his prison was now Collins' fortress, he would finally catch on. If he got back at all. Collins wouldn't be at all surprised if he didn't. A man who couldn't figure out what to do with a prison filled with cons, sure as hell wouldn't know how to handle a bunch of marauders and wild Indians. Collins checked the shift roster once more, just to make sure he hadn't overlooked anything. He grinned again when he saw Marie Keehn's name scratched off. Obviously, that had been done at the last minute. Hulbert must have gotten his way, and taken the little honey with him. Collins couldn't blame him. Marie Keehn was fine-looking.

  Not as fine as Casey Fisher, though, whom Collins had already picked out as his own. Andy Blacklock had left them forty women. Collins had made it plain to Luff that all forty of them were to be taken alive.

  Even the old, ugly ones. That had been the one and only point the bastard hadn't argued about. He checked his watch once more. A half-hour to go. He unlocked the doors to the cabinet, and left them standing open. He pulled out the vests and the helmets, and then took down the radios. These were C.E.R.T. radios, set to their own channel.

  The guards wouldn't be listening to that channel. Collins and his people could keep in touch, and no one would know. Adrian Luff turned the key, heard the click and gave a little sigh of relief. He hadn't dared try it any earlier. Getting too anxious had caused more than one solid plan to disintegrate. Using his mirror he checked the hall to be sure the guard was nowhere to be seen. It was clear. He moved down the row of cells, unlocking each door as he passed it. The men inside were expecting him. None of them made a sound. Instead, they stepped out and fell into line behind him. They carried their shoes. Many of them also carried jury-rigged weapons made from whatever material they had managed to locate. He came to the end of the row less than five minutes after leaving his cell. He passed a key to the man behind him and motioned for him to go up the metal stairs to the third floor. The rest of the men followed him to the ground level. The guard had just finished rounds, so he would be at the desk.

  The idiots still did their paperwork. There was no administrative aide who was ever going to read it, but they did it just the same. Howard Earl Jameson looked up just as Luff cleared the last step. He snatched up his radio and keyed the send button, shouting a warning to the other guards. But the radio was dead, of course. Luff waved at the guard. Three prisoners moved toward him, blocking his way to the door.

  The short struggle that followed didn't last long. Once it was over, the guard lay on the floor, tied up with a cord clipped from a now useless television. His keys were in Luff's pocket, his flashlight in Luff's hand. "Let's move," Adrian said. One of the prisoners took off down the cellblock releasing the men on the lower level. These were the men chosen for tonight, and for the months ahead. Most of them were smarter than the average con and all of them had backgrounds that Luff thought would be useful in this new world. And they included, of course, all the men who had become part of Luff's informal organization. That was something Luff hadn't bothered to explain to Collins. He had let the man think they were being chosen because of their fighting prowess. Collins was another idiot. He couldn't think past tonight. He couldn't see they were going to need farmers and soldiers, mechanics and laborers, everything you could think of.

  Collins had insisted the women be spared and Adrian had agreed. What Collins didn't know was thatnone of the guards were going to die if Luff could help it. Including the male guards whom Collins obviously expected were going to be murdered on the spot. Not tonight, anyway.

  Not until he discovered who was useful and who was not. Who could make things run. Who couldbuild things. Tonight was the easy part. The hard part was months down the road. Actually, it was years from now.

  Running water and sewers and baked bread with jam. Those were the things that gave life a quality Luff wasn't anxious to live without.

  He didn't mind doing it for a while, but he wasn't going to do it forever. Before he was busted, he had made a good living as an accountant for a manufacturing company that made specialty parts for machinery. He hadn't worked the floor. He didn't have those skills, but he knew men who could look at a drawing and two weeks later hand you a functioning machine. And that's what he had to know about the guards they captured, before any of them were killed. Who was working this hellhole because the economy
sucked, their old line of work had dried up, and they needed cold hard cash to meet the mortgage? Once he sifted through the guards he would go through the prisoners. Some of them would be men of talent who happened to fall on the wrong side of the law. But, prisoner or guard, it didn't matter to Luff. As long as they had a skill that was usable, they could live. After he knew who was who, who had those talents and skills, then he would thin the numbers, but not one minute before he was sure. He motioned for everyone to put their shoes on. If things went right, they wouldn't have to worry about noise from this point on. When the last man gave him a heads up, he turned the knob on the door and pushed it open. He stopped halfway through the door, startled. This was the first time he'd been outside his cell since the Quiver. The fresh air felt good on his skin, and in his lungs. The sky was prettier than he remembered. Then he noticed the slight chill in the wind. He had heard winter might be coming. This was late November, pre-Quiver time. Now, no one knew. Everyone just guessed and hoped. He moved on. The weather wouldn't change anything that happened tonight. June or January, it didn't matter. Tonight he had to take the prison. When Collins had approached him with his plan to take command, Luff had agreed. Partly because he preferred being in charge to being incarcerated, but more because he was afraid to turn him down. If Collins succeeded, he'd be the one deciding who got culled and who didn't. He might easily decide that there wasn't any use for an accountant in their new world. So, Adrian had agreed. He'd even encouraged the fool. He'd had to do more than encourage, soon enough. Collins really wasn't very bright. Adrian had had to baby him along. Patiently explaining what was needed, over and over. Explaining and arguing. Pushing him to make all the steps, not letting him take any shortcuts. Walking through the grounds, moving quickly, using Jameson's keys as they came to doors that had been left unguarded, they made their way to the armory. The map Collins had given him was good. So was the route. They did not run into one guard from the time they left the cellblock until they stepped into the door of the small block building twenty minutes later. "You're early," Collins said, frowning at his watch. "Ten minutes." Luff nodded. "It went better than we thought it would." "You took care of Jameson?" "Yeah." Luff looked at the room beyond the entry area. "He won't be a problem." "I bet not." Collins chuckled and shook his head. "Okay, the easy part's over. You and your boys are about to earn your keep." "How many are on duty, and how many are in their bunks?" When Collins told him, Luff gave a low whistle. "Are you sure?" "Sure I'm sure. Everyone not on duty is beat. They've been pulling twelve-hour shifts ever since the Quiver. They're sacked out in A-block. You send a few guys in there with repeating rifles, and you'll have them before they've had a chance to roll out of their bedrolls." "And the other twenty-four?" "You only have eighteen left to worry about. You've already got Jameson. Marie Keehn went with Hulbert and I'm right here." He looked at his list. "Kathleen Hanrahan's on maternity; she's just had a kid. And Elaine Brown is still out of it. She's the C.O. Boyd Chrissman nailed. They're both in the infirmary with two of the three nurses." Collins snickered.