Lilliput Legion

Chapter 4

Capt. Reese Hunter had become separated from his unit. In fact, he was about as far separated from his unit as it was possible to get. They were an entire universe apart and Reese Hunter was in the wrong one. The planet he was on was known as

Earth, but it was not the Earth he came from. He was a.~ thoroughly alien here as if he'd been a creature from another' galaxy. Which, in fact, he was. His was a mirror-image galaxy, a parallel universe in a congruent timeline. The same, and yet, profoundly different. Hunter was behind enemy lines.. and there was no way back.

He had been taken prisoner by a team of temporal agents who had crossed over into his universe. He had been unconscious when Andre Cross, Creed Steiger and

Finn Delaney had brought him through the confluence point.. When he had escaped from them, using a stolen warp disc, he hadn't realised that they had brought him back into their own time line. It was only after he had clocked in at Pendleton

Base, at the present transition co-ordinates the warp disc had been programmed with, that he suddenly realised, as Dorothy would have said, that he was not in

Kansas anymore. Fortunately for him, no one at Pendleton Base had expected an escaped prisoner with a stolen warp disc to be clocking in, least of all an officer of the S. O. G. 's Counter Insurgency Section. As a result, he'd been able to bluff his way through, buying himself just enough time to program a new set of transition co-ordinates into the stolen disc. It had been one hell of a big risk.

The discs used by his people were not quite the same and he hadn't really been sure of what he was doing.

He didn't know if they'd be able to trace him through the disc or not, but he had known that he could not afford to wait around and find out. It would have been only a matter of time, perhaps only moments, before the alarm was given and they'd be looking for him. He had no intention of being anywhere near Pendleton

Base when that happened. So he had clocked out once again. Unfortunately, now he had no idea where he was. Which was rather ironic, since he knew exactly where he was.

He knew he was in New York City, but that really wasn't much help at all because this New York City did not correspond exactly to the one in the universe from which he came. He had learned, from picking up a copy of the Daily News, that it was the 20th century, but he could take no comfort in that knowledge, either.

Events in this timeline did not correspond exactly with the events in his. The president of the United States in 1989 was not a woman, as in his timeline. The mayor of New York City wasn't black. And the citizens were apparently not allowed to carry weapons.

Hunter had, at best, only a sketchy knowledge of the history of this timeline, supplied by S.O.G. agents who had crossed over and infiltrated the Temporal Army Archives Section. Their mission had been sabotage and intelligence gathering and they had managed to get a great deal of information through before they had been caught, among which was a detailed explanation of the failsafe systems the

Temporal Corps used on their warp discs. Hunter had benefited from all that, but still, it was nowhere near enough, not when even one slight misstep could get him into trouble. Paranoia had welled up within him. He felt like a bleeding swimmer treading water in the middle of a school of sharks.

There was only one way for Hunter to get home. Some-where, he had to find a confluence point. The trouble was, he didn't even know how to begin to look for one. A confluence point wasn't something you could see. When they were found, they were usually discovered by accident. You simply turned a corner and you were in another universe. If you could keep your head about you and retrace your steps exactly, you could get back home. But Hunter didn't even know where the corner was in this case. Because he had been unconscious when he was brought through, he had no idea where they had crossed over, not even in what country or what time period. Instinctively, the first thing he had done when he had regained his senses was to attempt escape. The attempt had been successful. The only trouble was, now he was trapped in the wrong universe and he had no idea how to get back home.

Part of the problem was that confluence points were completely unpredictable.

There were no scientific principles governing their behaviour that anybody knew of, much less understood. With sophisticated instruments, it was possible to detect the energy field of a confluence, but you had to be practically on top of it. And there was no way of knowing where a confluence point would lead to. They did not correspond in space and time. Hunter knew that a confluence point located in his own universe in the 27th century could intersect with this timeline in such a manner that crossing over would result in entering a completely different century in a completely different geographical location. Conceivably, a confluence point located in Paris, France in one universe could open onto' the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the other. Theoretically, it was entirely possible for a confluence point occurring on Earth in one timeline to open onto deep space in the other, although the vacuum on one side would probably act as a miniature black hole, sucking through everything from the other side where there was an atmosphere, resulting in a devastating temporal whirlpool that would last until the confluence point shifted.

And there was no way of telling when that could occur.

Hunter didn't even want to think about what would happen if he were to cross over at the moment a confluence point shifted. He still remembered the disaster that occurred when S.O.G. troops had launched an invasion of this timeline through a confluence point located in the Khyber Pass. At the crucial moment, the confluence point had shifted without warning in a rippling effect that had continued down the timelines as temporal stability had been restored to that location. An entire battalion of soldiers had been caught in the middle of the shift. None of them were ever seen again. They had been trapped forever in the limbo of non-specific time known as the dead zone.

Or at least that was the theory. No one really knew for sure what happened to them.

The average person, in either universe, had no conception of the danger, no real understanding of the instability brought about by the congruence of two universes, instability that was magnified by the confluence of two separate timelines that intersected at various points in rime and space because of the increasing chronophysical imbalance. It occurred to Hunter that most people had never really understood the fragility of their. existence anyway, largely because they didn't want to.

The generation that had grown up with atomic weapons had clung to the idea that atomic warfare was "unthinkable," not so much because no one could win such a war (which was debatable), but because a "nuclear exchange" (how much more sanitised a term than nuclear war!) was, in reality, simply too horrifying to comprehend. So most people tried not to think: about it. That was what the word

"unthinkable" really meant. In the same manner, they had chosen not to think about the irreparable damage they were doing to their ecosystem through the pollution of their air and water and the abuse of their resources. They clung to a lunatic philosophy that held that there was no limit to growth. All criminal foolishness.

Some-one had to pay the piper in the long run, but most people never considered the long run. They took the short view, looking to their wallets at the expense of their legacy,

It had been the same with time travel, an idea that had seemed quite harmless, even quaint, alongside the specters of nuclear missiles and orbital beam particle weapons platforms. And yet, it was a thousand times more dangerous. If people ever really took the time to think: about the sort of world they lived in now, thought Hunter, it would reduce them to hysteria and raving paranoia. Nothing was certain anymore. Perhaps it never had been..

With the advent of the Time Wars, it all became a tightrope walk without a net. By far the largest percentage of troops in both timelines were now essentially non-combative Temporal Observers, assigned to lonely posts scattered throughout time-their duty to monitor historical continuity and be on the alert for temporal anomalies. And there was a temporal Underground in Hunter's universe as well as in this one, each a loosely organised society of deserters from the future who had become frightened or disaffected and had dropped out, fled to the past on the theory that disaster was imminent, and that when it came, the worst effects would be felt further up the timeline.

The Underground, with its black market chronoplates and warp discs and its complex system of transtemporal contacts, offered a tempting mode of life. In a sense, these people had achieved the ultimate in freedom. All of time was at their beck and call. Hunter had once found himself temporarily separated from his unit, stranded in time, and the temptation to seek out the Underground had been very strong. He had held out and waited until rescue came, but his twin in this universe had succumbed to the temptation and gone over to the Under-ground. Delaney,

Cross and Steiger had said that he was dead now, murdered in 17th century France.

It had been a blow for

Hunter to-learn that, in this timeline, "he" had died

Or at least a version of himself had just as it had been a shock to encounter Finn Delaney and Andre Cross, mirror-image twins of those he had known back in his own timeline.

In Hunter's timeline, Finn and Andre had been killed. In them, he had been the one to die. It was madness.

In both timelines, the boundaries between reality and meta-physics were being blurred. Nothing was certain anymore. How many people in the past were really people from the future? How dependable was history when, at any moment, a person from the future could clock back in time and change it, altering-perhaps irrevocably-the flow of the timestream? And with the confluence phenomenon, how could anyone hope to lead anything even resembling a normal life if they knew that at any given moment, they could slip through a wrinkle in time and wind up in another universe, in another timestream, in an alternate reality?

No, it was better not to think about such things. It was easier to go through life taking the short view and passing the buck, ignoring that Sword of Damocles suspended over your head and hoping it would fall on someone else. Preferably someone you didn't know too well. Like your great, great grandchildren, for instance.

However, Hunter did not have the dubious luxury of self-deception. He was in the same position as his counterparts in this universe; he knew all too well how fragile the continuity of both timelines had become. And the war between them was only making matters worse.

It had come very close to being an all out war, especially after the scientists in Hunter's universe finally figured out where all those devastating nuclear explosions were coming from, but it didn't take long for leaders in both timelines to realise that all-out warfare between them would be equally devastating to both. Quite possibly, no one would survive. So a form of limited temporal warfare was being waged. The military scientists in Hunter's timeline believed the only way to end the confluence effect was to cross over into the congruent universe and create a temporal disruption of sufficient magnitude to bring about a timestream split. The resulting creation of another parallel timeline would then act as a sort of chronophysical "wedge" driven between the two parallel universes, forcing them apart and ending the confluence phenomenon. In theory, it would constitute a temporal buffer zone between them. In theory.

There was, however, another theory that held that a temporal disruption resulting in a timestream split in either timeline would only compound the problem by creating yet a third timeline, another parallel universe in confluence with the previous two.

And such a magnification of the confluence effect could only serve to introduce further temporal disruption into all three timelines, which could then result in even more time stream splits, creating yet a fourth parallel universe in confluence with the other three, and perhaps fifth and sixth and so on, exponentially, in a chronophysical chain reaction that would be impossible to stop. But the proponents of that theory were very much in the minority because such an event, their fellow scientists insisted, would simply be "unthinkable." There was that word again. And in any case, they said, the confluence effect was already introducing temporal disruption into both timelines. Sooner or later, the scientists insisted, something had to give. Far better that it give in their universe than ours.

Hunter no longer knew whom to believe. If he stopped to think about it for very long, he started to get the shakes. Perhaps it was only combat fatigue. Or maybe it was the desperate fear of a rational man confronting his own ephemeral in a totally irrational world. Either way, there didn't seem to be anything that he could do about it. For now, his one imperative was to survive.

It had occurred to him that, purely by accident, he had been placed in a unique situation. Ironically, he was now in a position to become the C.I.S. 's most effective deep cover operative. Even in the event of a penetration of his counter insurgency unit by the T.I.A., nobody could blow his cover because no one knew where he was or how to get in touch with him. They didn't even know that he was still alive.

Not even he knew exactly where he was, relative to historical continuity in this timeline. However, he could learn. It would not be very difficult. All he'd have to do was clock forward a few centuries in time, purchase a microcomputer or even an cybernetic implant, and then buy himself an education-download some history and world affairs. There would be some risk of getting caught if they were expecting him to try something like that, but the risk would be extremely small.

The T.I.A. had no idea where he was, or where he might pop up or when, so the risk was slight and well within acceptable parameters. With his captured warp disc and a detailed knowledge of this timeline's history, he could become a virtually untraceable saboteur. He, might easily bring about a timestream split in this timeline all by himself and, if the scientists back home were right, he'd single-handedly end the confluence effect and be a hero.

Of course, no one back home would ever know he'd done it, because in that event, he would undoubtedly become forever trapped within the timestream split he had created. That was something he had been resigned to from the very start, when he'd become an agent of the C.I.S., yet on the other hand, what if the scientists were wrong? What if the minority view held by the so-called "lunatic fringe" academicians was the correct one? What if the creation of a timestream split served only to compound the crisis, setting off a chain reaction of temporal disruptions on a cataclysmic scale? In the absence of direct orders, Hunter had to rely upon his own initiative. And what if he made the wrong decision?

Still, there were other choices, He could do as his twin in this timeline had done and join the Temporal Underground, assuming he could find a way to get in touch with them. Or perhaps, better still, he could opt out and do it on his own. Did he really need the Underground? Even if he decided to function as a deep cover

C.I.S. saboteur within this timeline, what better way to do it than from within the Underground? But did he really owe that much to the C.I.S., who certainly would not be supporting him in any way and who would undoubtedly have already listed him as killed or missing in action? What about patriotism? Well, what about it?

Would anyone care about his patriotic motivations if the choice he made only served to make the situation worse? And what did the concept of patriotism mean, anyway, when ripples in two congruent timestreams resulted in a confluence effect that rendered even boundaries in time and space irrelevant?

He needed time to think and plan. And in order to do that, he needed money and a place to stay. Once again. it came down to bare essentials. Survival.

Fortunately, he did not look too out of place in the simple green transit fatigues he had picked up at Pendleton Base before he had clocked out again, but he needed other clothing and, most of all, he needed money. And when a soldier was trapped behind enemy lines. he had to improvise as best he could.

He picked out a likely looking prospect and mugged him in the subway, knocking him out with a sharp chop to the neck. It was a quick and efficient hit-and-run. The robbery netted him a brown eel skin wallet containing a driver's license, some credit cards, and forty-five dollars in cash. Not very much, but it would do for a start. He went up the stairs to Pennsylvania Station, sat down at a bar, drank some coffee and perused a copy of the Daily News. After a while, he went to the men's room, locked himself up inside a stall and clocked ahead several hours. Then he left the stall, walked out of the bar with the paper folded up under his arm and headed toward the Off Track Betting counter he had spotted earlier inside the station. He spent a short while there, noted the racing results, went back to the bar, entered the men's room once again and clocked back once more. Then he returned to the Off Track Betting counter and placed several bets. Needless to say, he did very well indeed.

His winnings enabled him to purchase a new suit of clothes and have a satisfying dinner in a Chinese restaurant. He then found a different Off Track Betting parlour and repeated the performance, placing larger bets and spreading them out more.

He slept that night in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, using the name but not the credit cards of the man whose wallet he had stolen. The next morning, he had room service send up breakfast and a copy of The Wall Street Journal.

He spent several hours looking over the stock market and commodities reports, then without leaving the room, clocked ahead one day and went out to pick up that day's copy of The Wall Street Journal, taking care to note the time so that he could avoid encountering himself the following morning. Having picked up the paper, he clocked back to the previous day and spent another several hours in the hotel comparing the performance of the various stocks and commodities. Then he took a cab to a brokerage firm on Wall Street and opened an account with twenty thousand dollars in cash, using the identity of his mugging victim, Charles Forman.

He then took a cab to the public library and spent the rest of the day reading historical survey texts. It was not as efficient as computer learning, but it would do for a beginning.

He returned to the hotel that evening, had dinner, went to bed, and left a wake-up call for seven A.M., early enough to ensure that he could leave the room before he was due to clock in from the previous day. He had breakfast in a coffee shop, then went back and checked out of the hotel. By now, Charles Forman would probably have reported the theft of his credit cards and cash, and if he had the time, he might possibly have gotten around to getting a new driver's license, but it would never have occurred to him that someone might use his name and social security number to open an account. He'd be more concerned with fraudulent charges on his credit cards, which Hunter had avoided doing, merely using the cards to reinforce his position, by allowing the broker to catch a glimpse of the gold American Express card while he was filling out his account application.

By the end of the week, Hunter was living in a suite at the Plaza" Hotel. He had purchased a conservative wardrobe at Brooks Brothers (for visits to the brokerage firm and lunch at '21') and somewhat sleeker, more fashionable suit'! at Bamey's (for the track and dinners in little Italy). He made daily trips to Belmont Park by rented limousine, increasing his cash flow dramatically each time and attracting attention with his unerring instinct and ostentatious style. Some people started to approach him and he made his choices carefully after some initial probing conversation on both sides. He traded tips for information. And for certain services and introductions.

His disbelieving stockbroker had about a million questions, but wouldn't dare to ask-a single one so long as he could make the same investments as his apparently clairvoyant client. The broker didn't want to scare him off. And in order to be helpful, the broker fell all over himself when Hunter requested a few favours, such as certain introductions to certain types of people.

By the end of the month, Hunter had become a multimillionaire with bank accounts in Switzerland and the Bahamas. He had also established a number of different identities for himself, each fully documented and backed up by impeccably forged credentials, enabling him to drop the identity of his mugging victim, leaving the unfortunate Mr. Forman with an interesting tax problem. Hunter was soon on a first name basis with some of the most influential citizens of New York City. Miami and Geneva. as well as some of the most powerful figures in organised crime. He was moving fast. establishing connections, putting out feelers, making inroads.

Surviving. Doing business. And, as the old saying went, sooner or later, everyone does business with everyone. Though Hunter didn't know it, through one of his connections, he had started doing business with the Network.

"What do you mean, you lost him? How the devil could you lose him? Explain yourself!"

The officer in the black beret and combat fatigues stood stiffly at attention atop the mahogany writing table, all six and a half inches of him. His fatigues were crisply pressed and his combat boots were spit shined to a glass-smooth gloss. He looked like a toy soldier, except that this toy soldier was alive.

"It wasn't anything we could have foreseen, sir," he said, his voice as formally correct as his stiff, military bearing. "The mission plan was followed to the letter.

Gulliver was released in a manner that allowed him to think he had escaped. We tracked him until he returned to England and then the assault team was clocked out to make the strike. It turned out that Gulliver was not alone at the time of the engagement, a contingency we had prepared for, but there was no way we could have prepared for the target employing a warp disc to escape, sir."

"He did what?"

The officer winced from the volume of the full-sized voice.

"Used a warp disc to escape, sir."

"Gulliver? Impossible! Where the hell would he obtain a warp disc? And how would he know how to use one?"

"As I've already stated, sir," the Lilliputian officer continued, Gulliver was not alone. The advance scouts clocked in first, according to the mission plan, and they established that there was another man with Gulliver. The mission plan called for them to wail until the target was alone before calling in the strike. However, the scouts were able to establish that the man Gulliver was with was a Temporal

Observer and they decided to go ahead and call in the strike. "

"An Observer? Are you sure? How did they know?"

"Gulliver was apparently suffering from a hangover. The man gave him some aspirin. The scouts also observed that he was writing a report.

In shorthand, with a ballpoint pen. "

"Go on,"

"Based on what they saw, the scouts called in the strike and the field commander made the decision to go in. Because the Observer was deemed the greater threat, he was designated the priority target. The intention was to take him out quickly and then take care of Gulliver, but the man was a good soldier. He kept his cool under fire and used his own body to shield Gulliver while he put the warp disc on him and clocked him out. The transition co-ordinates must have been pre-set; he didn't have time to reprogram the disc. The Observer could have escaped himself, but Gulliver had all the information. It was an unexpected move, although a tactically sound one, assuming you don't mind committing suicide."

"What did they do with the body?"

"The field' commander determined that with the target clocked out, presumably back to the Observer's base, a Search and Retrieve team could be coming through at any time, so they left the body, clocked out the dead and wounded and got the hell out of there. With Gulliver clocked ahead to tell them what happened, destroying the body would have been pointless in any case.

And too time consuming. The risk was deemed unjustifiable. "

"Unjustifiable, indeed! All they did was leave behind incontrovertible evidence to confirm what happened. "

"Even using lasers to dismember the corpse, disposing of a fun-sized human body would have taken hours," said the colonel. "And with Gulliver in their hands, they'd already know what happened."

"Assuming the shock of the experience didn't make him take leave of his senses.

According to your report, he was already disoriented and drinking heavily. Either way, the T.I.A. will be investigating for certain now. Allowing Gulliver to escape was a serious mistake. Your team bungled the entire mission and jeopardised our security."

The Lilliput colonel drew himself up to his full height, but since his full height was only six and a half inches, the effect was negligible.

"'I lost fifteen men on that mission," he said, through gritted teeth. "And six seriously wounded, four of them critically. Twenty-five men went out on what was supposed to be a routine training exercise and only four returned in one piece!"

"And what does that tell you, Colonel? Your assault team was almost completely wiped out by one man, and a mere Observer, at that! What do you think would have happened if he had been a time Commando?"

"Sir, those men were green," the colonel said. "'Only their commander and their sergeant had any field experience at all It was supposed to be a routine training exercise. How were they supposed to expect-"

"They're supposed to expect anything! Anything at all! And be ready for it!

Nothing is routine! Those fifteen men were lost because they were not good enough! And that was your responsibility, Colonel! It's your command! Don't come to me with excuses! I am not concerned with excuses, only with results! Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!”

"The entire operation has been jeopardised as a result of this fiasco. I want you to Execute Plan Delta immediately."

Sandy Steiger's apartment on Threadneedle Street had been thoroughly cleaned up by the S amp; R team. There was no sign of the battle that had taken place there, nothing to indicate that it had been used as an Observer outpost.

Temporal Observers were trained to become completely assimilated into the time periods to which they were assigned. With the sole exception of the warp discs that they carried on their persons at all times, they were under strict orders to have nothing else that could not be obtained within their assigned time zone. In practice, however, this regulation proved difficult to enforce. Observer postings were long term and often entailed hardship. It was difficult to resist smuggling back some seemingly inconsequential items.

Such things as deodorant, or toothpaste or even toilet paper were easily concealed and served to make the posting a bit more pleasant. A carefully doled out ration of cigarettes served to remind one of home just as much as they satisfied the cravings of a habit. A favourite paperback novel reread over and over by candlelight was a harmless way of maintaining contact with the world one came from, so long as precautions were taken to ensure that no one else would ever see the book, especially if the posting was in a time period when the only writing to be found was in the form of serious or illuminated manuscripts or cuneiform.

In the early days, a number of Observers became a bit too casual about following such regulations and, having gotten away with a few seemingly inconsequential items, they took to accumulating more. Miniature portable stereos with head phones began appearing in the 14th century. Minicomputers and microwave ovens were brought back to Victorian London. In one celebrated case, a tiny, portable holographic projection system smuggled back to 17th century America led to the burning of an Observer as a witch when she was seen (by a peeping tom)

"consorting" with demons in her bedroom, demons who were, in actuality, merely holograms of actors in an entertainment feature. The Army finally clamped down and instituted the practice of surprise inspections with stiff penalties for the slightest infractions. Still, in many cases, Observers continued to smuggle back some small conveniences.

The S amp; R team had gone over Sandy Steiger's apartment with a fine tooth comb and, according to their report, they had found nothing more esoteric than some aspirin tablets, a ballpoint pen, some timed-release decongestant pills, a modern tooth brush and nine cartons of cigarettes concealed beneath a loose floor board.

Their report stated that Sandy had clearly broken regulations, but the few items he had smuggled back had not seemed very significant. They had no way of knowing that the contraband had been enough to cost Sandy his life. The S and R team had been quite thorough. Nevertheless, the commandos conducted their own search.

Gulliver stood by the door and watched them anxiously, He was clearly uncomfortable at being back in the same room where Sandy had been killed and where he had almost met the same fate.

"One thing puzzles me," he said, as Creed Steiger, Finn Delaney, and Andre Cross carefully searched through the apartment once again. "Since you have this astonishing ability to travel back and forth through time, is it not possible that you could go back and prevent Sandy from being killed by those horrible Lilliputians?"

"You think I wouldn't save my own brother if I could?" said

Steiger, grimly.

"Why can't you?"

"It's difficult to explain, Doctor, but the fact is it would be too dangerous. What's done is done. There's nothing we can do about it.

"Can you not tell me why?" said Gulliver.

"Go ahead," Delaney said. "We'll check out the sitting room."

Steiger sighed and sat down on the bed. "Very well, Doctor. I'll see if I can explain it in a way that you can understand. Think of time as a river. A very swiftly flowing river. The current of that river is the timestream, specifically, the inertial flow of the timeline."

Furrows appeared in Gulliver's forehead as he frowned, trying to follow it. Steiger grunted and shook his head.

"Look, just imagine that the current of our river of time is the force that impels events, all right? And the length of the river itself is all of history, the timeline. Got that?"

Gulliver nodded. "Yes, I think I understand."

"Good," said Steiger. "Now, when someone from the future, someone like myself, goes back into the past, he risks doing something that would somehow interfere with the flow of events. Actually, everything I do back here constitutes a form of interference. Even my presence in this room is a form of interference, because after all, there was a point in time at which, in this particular moment, I was never in this room at this particular moment, do you understand?"

Gulliver was frowning once again.

Steiger grimaced. "Hell, I told you it was complicated.

Look, as we sit here right now, this very moment, I won't even be born for about another thousand years. And yet, here I am, sitting here and talking to you, a man who lived almost a thousand years before my time. That's an example of what we call temporal interference." He picked up a pillow. "Even an action as insignificant as my picking up this pillow is an example of temporal interference, because there was a point in time, before we came back here, when this moment passed and I was not here to pick up this pillow and the action of this pillow being picked up didn't happen, see?"

"I… I believe I do see, yes," said guava. "You were right, it is rather complicated, isn't it? Much like these circular arguments philosophers are always having. "

"Yes, very much like that, in a way," said Steiger. "Now, take the fact that I've picked up this pillow." He dropped it back down onto the bed. "It's an insignificant action. It doesn't really change anything, does it? In fact, it's so insignificant that it doesn't have any effect upon our river of time at all. The fact that I have picked up a pillow in this room has had no discernible effect upon events in this time period, even though it was an event that did not originally take place. You follow?"

Gulliver nodded once again, though he looked a bit uncertain.

"Good. Now imagine that you and I go out tonight and have a few drinks. On the way back, as we're passing a dark alley, a thief confronts us at knifepoint and demands all of our money. He lunges at me with the knife and in the struggle, I manage to get the knife away from him and kill him. Now, that act is obviously much more significant than merely picking up a pillow, and I don't mean merely for its moral implications. Suppose the man I've killed had a wife or children. Perhaps he never would have had a wife and children. It's possible that he would have lived out the remainder of his life alone, in insignificance, doing nothing of any importance whatsoever. And it's also possible that if I hadn't been there, you would have been the one to struggle with him, get the knife away and kill him. In that case, his death, in and of itself, has not significantly altered events in this time period. My temporal interference in causing his death is negligible in terms of the grand scheme of things. You with me so far?"

"Yes, I think so," said Gulliver, listening intently.

"All right," said Steiger, "now let's examine another possibility in that same hypothetical situation. Suppose that if it wasn't for my interference, that thief would have attacked somebody else. After all, it was my idea that we go out for a drink; if I hadn't come back here and interfered, you would have stayed home and the thief would have attacked another victim. And in that event, he would not have died. He would have' killed his — victim, prospered from his ill-gotten gains, married and had children. Except, now that I have gone back into the past and killed him, obviously those children will never be born. And that victim will not die, at least not at that particular time. So by my interference, I have altered history.

I have changed the past. I have disrupted the flow of events. Now let's take it a bit further. What if that thief had been my ancestor, my great, great grandfather about a dozen times removed?"

"Good lord!" said Gulliver. "Then by killing him, you've prevented the birth of his children, which means that… that you could never have been born!"

"Precisely," Steiger said.

"But… but if you could never have been born," said

Gulliver, frowning, "then.. then how… how is it possible that you could have.. " his voice trailed off and he stared at Steiger with an expression of utter confusion.

"That, my friend, is what's known as a temporal paradox," said Steiger. "If you went back into the past and killed your grandfather before your father had been born, then you wouldn't have been born, so how could you have gone back and killed your grandfather in the first place?"

"It makes no sense," said Gulliver. "How is it possible?"

"Well, for years, scientists believed it wasn't possible,"

Steiger replied. "They believed that the past was an immutable absolute. It had already happened, therefore it could not be changed. According to their thinking, if I went back into the past and tried to kill my grandfather, something would have prevented me from doing it, otherwise I couldn't have gone back to try it in the first place because the very fact that I was

alive to do it meant that my grandfather had survived my attempt on his life. You see.?"

Gulliver knitted his brows as be ran through it once more in his mind and nodded slowly. "Yes, I think I understand. It all seems very logical now that you've explained it."

"Except it doesn't work that way," said Steiger.

“Oh, dear," said Gulliver. "And I thought I was beginning to understand it."

"Don't worry," Steiger said. "All the scientists were wrong as well and they had the advantage of having a lot more knowledge than you do. Or perhaps I should say they will have that advantage… in about another 950 years or so."

"What is the answer, then?" Gulliver said, anxiously.

“Let's go back to our river," Steiger said. "Remember that

I said the current of the river is the timestream and that the river itself represents history, the timeline? If a person travels back in time and does something relatively insignificant my picking up the pillow, for example-then that would be like tossing a very small pebble into a swiftly flowing stream. It wouldn't even make a ripple. A more significant form of interference-the killing of our hypothetically childless thief, for example-might be compared to tossing a rather large rock into the river.

It would make a splash, but unless the interference was significant enough to alter the flow of events, the ripples would be dissipated by the force of the current. Still with me?"

"'Yes, I think so," Gulliver said, paying very close attention.

“Now," said Steiger, "an act of interference that was significant enough to actually alter the flow of events and cause a severe temporal disruption-something like my killing my great grandfather, in other words could be compared to our throwing a gigantic boulder into the river, something huge, big enough to make the river overflow its banks on both sides and flow around it. And that is what we call a timestream split. For a short period of time, you would have two rivers, one flowing around each side of the giant boulder. One fork of the river would represent the past as it had happened before the act of disruption. The other would represent the creation of a second past, a parallel timeline, in which the act of disruption had been taken into account. A live grandfather in one, a dead grandfather in the other. And the person causing the disruption which created the split would wind up in that second timeline, because there would have to be an original timeline in which his past, up to the moment he disrupted it, was preserved intact. And at some point, unless the disruption was of sufficient magnitude to keep both timelines apart indefinitely, those two separate timelines must rejoin and the results could be disastrous."

Gulliver gaped at him, slack jawed.

"And that's only the simplified explanation," Steiger said.

"It can get a great deal more complicated than that. Even if it wasn't against all regulations for me to attempt to save my brother's life-and I've never been all that religious about following regulations to begin with-there would still be no guarantee that I could do it. And even if I could, there would still have to be a past in which my brother died, because it's already happened, do you see? If I tried to change it, I'd risk creating a timestream split. Or at the very least, I would bring about what's known as a 'ripple' in the timestream, sort of a miniature timestream split of short duration, one that would also have completely unforeseeable results. "

"The place is clean," Delaney said, coming back into the bedroom. "Well, did he explain it to you, Doctor?"

Gulliver looked up at him and the bewildered expression on his face said it an.

"Yep, I guess he did," Delaney said.

Then Andre screamed.

Delaney and Steiger both drew their weapons and ran into the sitting room.

"Don't shoot, it's only me," said Lucas Priest.