Dinosaur Beach

3

I went over to the door and listened for sounds that would indicate that someone had heard the shots and felt curious about them. Apparently nobody had. It was that kind of neighborhood.

I laid the Karg out on its back and cut the seal on its reel compartment, lifted out the tape it had been operating on.

It had been suspected back at Central that something outside the usual pattern had been going on back here in the Old Era theater of operations. But not even the Master Timecaster had suspected collusion between Second and Third Era operatives. The tape might be the key the Nexx planners were looking for.

But I still had my professional responsibilities. I suppressed the impulse to cut-and-run and got on with the business at hand.

The tape was almost spent, meaning the Karg’s mission had been almost completed. Well, true enough, but not in quite the way that had been intended. I tucked the reel away in the zip-down pocket inside my shirt and checked the robot’s pockets—all empty—then stripped it and looked fur the ID data, found it printed on the left sole.

It took me twenty minutes to go over the room. I found a brainreader focused on the rocker from one of the dead bulbs in the ceiling light. The Karg had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he cleaned me before disposing of the remains. I recorded my scan to four-point detail, fussed around a few minutes longer rechecking what I’d already checked, but I was just stalling. I’d done what I’d come here to do. The sequence of events had gone off more or less as planned back at Nexx Central; decoying the Karg into a lonely place for disposal wrapped up the operation. It was time to report in and debrief and get on with the business of remaking the cosmos. I pushed his destruct button, switched off the light, and left the room.

Back down in the street a big square car went by, making a lot of noise in the silence, but no bullets squirted from it. I was almost disappointed. But what the hell: the job was over. My stay here had been nice, but so had a lot of other times and places. This job was no different from any other. I thought about Lisa, waiting for me back at the little house we’d rented six weeks ago, after our four-day honeymoon at Niagara. She’d be getting anxious about now, trying to keep the dinner hot, and wondering what was keeping me.

“Forget it,’ I told myself out loud. “Just get your skull under the cepher and wipe the whole thing, like you always do. You may ache a little for a while, but you won’t know why. It’s just another hazard of the profession.”

I checked my locator and started east, downslope. My game of cat and terrier with the Karg had covered several square miles of the city of Buffalo, New York, T.F. date, 1936. A quick review of my movements from the time of my arrival at the locus told me that I was about a mile and a half from the pickup area, thirty minutes’ walk. I put my thoughts out of gear and did it in twenty-five. I was at the edge of a small park when the gauges said I was within the acceptable point/point range for a transfer back to my Timecast station. A curving path led past a bench and a thick clump of juniper. I stepped into deep shadow—just in case unseen eyes were on me—and tapped out the recall code with my tongue against the trick molars set in my lower jaw; there was a momentary pause before I felt the pickup field impinge on me, then the silent impact of temporal implosion made the ground jump under my feet—

And I was squinting against the dazzling sunlight glaring on Dinosaur Beach.