The Coming of the Quantum Cats

27 August 1983

10:50 P.M. Major DeSOTA, Dominic P,

Being a major is not really being a major when you have no troops to command, and they had taken mine away from me. There was fighting going on. At a quarter of eleven every gun we had put through the portals began firing at once. The fighting was bloody. I knew this because I was watching the reentry portal under the bridge, and I could see the casualties coming back. But I wasn't taking any part in it. I was standing around with my thumb in my butt, waiting for someone to tell me where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do.

The whole operation was beginning to look very bad. Maybe even terminally bad. The new troops going through the portal south of the bridge weren't heads-up, eyes-bright, combat-ready killers. They slouched into the big black square and didn't talk. And the ones coming back— The medics had their hands full with the ones coming back.

Through the return portal I could hear the sounds of gunfire and the whomp of mortars and grenades. Even the air that came through was bad air. It was a hotter, damper August there than in our own time, and it smelled. It smelled of burning and of dust and shattered plaster. It smelled of sewers ripped open with shellfire, and of the diesel stink of the tanks.

It smelled like death.

Under other circumstances, it might have been a nice night. I could imagine strolling along here by the river, with my arm around a pretty girl, being very happy. It was hot, but what else would you expect of Washington in August? It was sultry, but not unbearable, and though there weren't any stars in the sky, there was the constant zap-zap of our strobes, dozens of them now. I did not really think they were fooling the Russian satellites any more, but they were pretty to look at as they flashed against the patchy clouds.

However, the circumstances were bad. I was a long way from being a hero. At least they'd got me some other clothes to wear— slacks and a sport shirt, probably from the nearest K-Mart—so I didn't have to look like a fool in that rented tux any more. But that didn't stop me from feeling like one. What I was more than anything else was in the way. I stepped back to avoid a half-track lumbering back through the portal with a cargo of stretchers, and I bumped into another rubbernecker, as idle as I. "Sorry," I said, and then saw the general's stars on his collar. "My God," I said.

"No," said General Magruder sadly, "it's just me, Major DeSota."

It isn't easy to feel sorry for a general, especially a general like Ratface Magruder. But this was a whole other man than the one who had chewed his way all up and down my ass back in New Mexico. He had a doomed look about him, and it didn't take long to find out why. All it took was asking him, as politely as I could, which aspect of the operation he was commanding, and him telling me shortly, "None of them, DeSota. I've been reassigned. Fort Leonard Wood. I'm flying out in the morning."

"Oh," I said. There wasn't anything more to say. When a general gets pulled out of an ongoing operation to take over a training post you don't have to say another word. I guess my face showed what I was thinking. He grinned at me. It was not a friendly grin.

"If you're still worried about a court-martial," he said, "forget it. There's about a hundred people ahead of you in line."

"That's good to hear, sir," I offered.

He looked at me with surprise and contempt. "Good?" He rolled the word around in his mouth. "I would not have said 'good' about any of this." He glared at the portal, where a limping sergeant was leading a woman with second-lieutenant's bars sewed onto her fatigues and her head wrapped in bloody bandages. He burst out, "That stupid bitch President! Why did she make us do it?"

"She's crazy, sir," I said, currying favor.

"Damn right she's crazy! But," he said darkly, "at least I understand the way she's crazy. She's not a traitor. And that goddam egghead—"

"Sir?"

"That scientist!" he snarled. "I don't mean Douglas, I mean our own guy. You know what he tells us now? We could have saved the whole fucking operation! There's worlds we could have used where there aren't any people at all!"

"No people, sir?"

"Where the whole damned human race blew itself up years ago," he said testily. "He's peeped them. Like where they had an all-out nuclear war back in the seventies or so. Sure, some are too radioactive, we can't use them. But there are some that aren't. We could have gone into one of them. No opposition. Nobody there to give us any. We could have sent a fleet of transports through, flown them over to Russia, set up portals wherever we wanted them. Shit! We wouldn't even have needed bombs! Just push a nuclear warhead through, a thousand of them if we wanted to, all over the goddam country—or what used to be their country. You want a cup of joe?" he finished abruptly.

"Why—"

"Come on," he said, and tramped across the street to the headquarters building. "We didn't know," he said gloomily over his shoulder. "Now it's all fucked up."

Even a general relieved of command gets what he wants. The colonel with the papers in his hand glared at me, but I was shielded by the stars. He didn't say anything as Ratface drew two cups out of the urn and handed me one.

"This new operation, General—" I began.

"Yeah, yeah. We've got her pinned, I think. Only how much time have we got left?"

"Time, sir?"

"The Russians," he explained. "They're getting antsy." He took a long pull of the coffee. It was about two degrees under boiling, and just sipping it seared my throat. He had a throat of cast iron. "The word's getting out, DeSota," he said wearily. "Prisoners talk to their guards, guards talk to their girl friends. Casualties talk to their nurses. They even talk to reporters. We can't keep the lid on much longer—What's the problem, Colonel?" he demanded, looking at the commandant.

The colonel was pawing through his papers. "Excuse me, sir," he snapped, not in an excusing tone, "but is this man Dominic

DeSota? Yes? Jesus, DeSota, what the fuck are you doing here? You're in the wrong place! You're supposed to be going through at the sally point—get your ass up to the zoo right away!"

Magruder hitched a ride with me. He didn't ask. He just jumped into the jeep from one side as I was climbing in from the other, and I didn't argue. He didn't say a word as the driver gave it the hammer. There weren't many cars. Civilians had got the word; they weren't venturing out much any more. The traffic lights turned their colors at their own pace, and we went through the intersections with the horn blaring, red or green regardless; and there was nothing to stop us until we turned into the avenue.

Then there was plenty.

The whole of the avenue was blocked. It was like the lineup for an Inauguration Day parade, with all the military might of the republic filling the little side streets, the squad leaders in their gold and crimson helmets pacing restlessly back and forth in front of their vehicles, talking into their shoulder radios, ready to go on signal. Only they weren't getting ready for a parade. They were getting ready to go through the portal after Madame President. And there was another incongruous note. One lane along the avenue had been kept clear to evacuate some of the larger zoo animals, upset by the noise, scared by the commotion. Vehicles like horse vans, but with heavily barred windows, were taking away lions and leopards and gorillas. Behind them the frantic keepers were leading the giraffes and the elephants and the zebras through the hot Washington night. Our drivers lammed his horn button. An elephant trumpeted furiously back. "Shit," yelled Magruder in my ear, "we'll never drive through this! We'll walk!"

Even walking was no joy. The combat vehicles were not moving; dodging around them meant dodging out of the way of elephants—and, now and then, away from steamy great heaps of elephant turds. Ratface Magruder moved like a quarterback carrying the ball through scrimmage, yelling over his shoulder at me. I couldn't hear what; I was too busy trying to follow him to the portal inside the zoo gate.

Nothing was going through the portal.

"Shit," yelled Magruder again. "Come on!" And he headed for the zoo cafeteria, where the commanders were huddled around a television screen.

"What's the problem here?" he snarled. A two-star general looked up.

"See for yourself," he said, jerking a thumb at the screen. "That's a satellite transmission from the League of Nations in Geneva."

A fat man with pince-nez glasses was reading a speech into the cameras; the voice that came with it was a woman's, not his, translating the Russian into English.

"The Russkies?" guessed Magruder.

"Good thinking," said the major general. "That's the Soviet delegate speaking. Notice how sleepy he looks? It's maybe six A.M. there; he must've been up all night."

"What's he saying, sir?" I asked.

"Why," said the general politely, "he's saying they have-what did he say?—incontrovertible evidence that we're planning to attack his country by means of a parallel time. He's saying that unless we discontinue our 'invasion' at once his people will treat it as though it were an attack on their own country. That's a laugh, isn't it? The Russians protecting the Americans from the Americans?"

I swallowed. "Does that mean—?"

"That they'll attack? Yes, that's what it seems to mean. So take a load off your feet. We're holding off on any further troop movements until somebody figures out what we're going to do-and, thank God, that somebody is higher up than me."