The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues

Chapter 26

Apparently nothing happened. I pulled my finger back and looked at the lights. Then at The Commander and his drawn gun, wondering why he hadn't used it.

Then looked at him again. And saw that he wasn't moving. I mean just not moving in the slightest. I mean like paralyzed. Petrified. Glassy-eyed and frozen.

As was everyone else in the room. Floyd stood in the doorway, gun raised and mouth open in an endless shout. Behind him, for the first time, I noticed an unmoving Fido.

The world was a freeze-frame and I was the only one not trapped in it. I was surrounded by people stopped in the act of speaking, walking, moving. Off-balance, hands raised, mouths gaping. Now stilled, silent - dead?

I started towards The Commander, to relieve him of his gun - saw that his finger was tight on the trigger! But with each step I felt the air resisting my movement, growing firm, then more solid until it was like walking into an unyielding wall. Nor could I breathe - the air was a thick liquid that I could not force into my lungs.

Panic grew and grabbed me - then died away just as quickly when I stepped back. I felt normal again. Air was air and I breathed in and out quite nicely.

"Put the mind in gear, Jim!" I shouted at myself, my words loud in the surrounding silence. "Something is happening - but what? Something happened after you touched the green light. Something to do with the artifact."

I stared at it. Tapped it with my knuckles. Groped about for inspiration. Found it.

"Tachyons! This thing emits them - we know that because that is how Aida tracked it in the first place. Tachyons - the units of time…"

The device was now functioning - I had turned it on when I had pressed the light. Green for go. Go where?

Stasis or speed. Either I had been speeded up or the world had slowed down. Or how could I tell the difference? From my point of view everything seemed to have slowed and stopped. The artifact had done something, projected a temporal field or stopped the motion of molecules. Or had created an occurrence that froze the surrounding world in a single moment of time. Time had come to a stop everywhere that I could see - except in the close vicinity of the device. I moved even closer and patted it.

"Good little time machine. Time mover, slower, halter, stopper - whatever you are. Neat trick. But what do I do next?"

It chose not to answer me. Nor did I expect it to. This was my problem now and I had to force myself to take the time to think it out. For the moment I had all the time I needed. Though eventually I would have to do something. And that something would probably mean touching another one of the colored buttons. Either that or I could stand looking dumbly at the device while I quietly died of thirst or starvation or whatever.

But which light?

Green had been obvious enough - even more obvious by hindsight. And the decision had been made at a moment of life and death. Now I was not so sure. I reached out, then dropped my hand. With plenty of time to decide I had become the master of indecision. Green had meant go, turn on, get started. Did red mean off, stop? Maybe. But what about white and orange?

"Not an easy one, Jimmy boy?" I said in what I hoped was a jocular voice-which came out very mournful and doomladen. I wrung my hands together with indecision. Then stopped and looked at them as though I might see some answer printed on my fingers. All I saw was dirt under the nails.

"You have got to do it sooner or later - so do it sooner before your nerve fails completely," I told myself. Reached out a finger - drew it away. It looked like my nerve had indeed failed me completely.

"Take yourself in hand, Jim!" I ordered. Reached back and took a handful of collar and shook myself as violently as I could.

It was no help at all. Random choice then? Why not, just as good as guessing. I put the finger out again and promised myself that I would push down on whatever color was under the finger when the jingle ended.

"Eeeny, meeny, miney, shmoe, catch a…"

I never found out what I was going to catch because at that moment I heard the dragging footsteps coming from the hall.

Sound?

Out there where nothing moved!

I jumped about, hands raised in defense. Lowered them and waited as the footsteps grew louder, came closer and closer to the doorway…

Slipped past Floyd's immobile body.

"Aliens! Monsters!" I gasped, pulling back. Trying to run although I knew there was no place to go.

Two hideous metal creatures. Bifurcated limbs, many-angled skulls, glowing eyes, claw-fingered hands. Coming towards me. Stopping. Reaching out…

No! Reaching up to twist their own heads off. I could hear a gurgling scream, was only dimly aware that it was my own voice.

Twisted and turned and lifted -

Lifted off the helmets. Two very human faces looked at me with a good deal of interest. I stared back with the same emotion. Realized that, despite the close-cropped hair, the one on the left was female. She smiled at me and spoke.

"Wes hal, eltheodige, ac hwca bith thes thin freond?"

I blinked, didn't understand a word. Shrugged and smiled in what I hoped was a winning way. The second visitor shook his head.

"Unrihte tide, unrihte elde, to earlz'ch eart thu rcome!"

"Look," I said, having enough of this and very much needing a few questions answered. "Could you please try Esperanto? That good, old, simple intergalactic second language Esperanto."

"Certainly," the girl said, smiling a winning and white-toothed smile. "My name is Vesta Timetinker. My companion is Othred Timetinker."

"Married?" I asked for some incomprehensible reason.

"No, stepsiblings. And you - you have a name?"

"Yes, of course. James diGriz. But everyone calls me Jim."

"A pleasure to meet you, Jim. Our thanks for activating the temporooter. We'll take it off your hands now."

She started towards the artifact - which I now knew was a temporooter. Though I still knew little else. I stepped in front of it and said:

"No."

"No?" Her rather attractive forehead furrowed while Othred's face suddenly looked grim. I turned a bit so I could keep an active eye on him.

"If no is too abrupt," I said, "then I will ameliorate it and say hold on just a moment if you please. Didn't you just thank me for finding this thing?"

"I did."

"Finding means that it has been lost. And has now been recovered because of my intervention. In return for this favor I believe you owe me at least an explanation."

"We're dreadfully sorry. But it is strictly forbidden to pass on information to temporal aborigines."

Not too flattering, I thought. But I was thick-skinned enough to take it. "Look," I carefully explained. "This is one aborigine who already knows a good deal about what is happening. I now have in my possession your temporooter, a device that has been constructed for burrowing through time. It seems that you or your associates not only lost control of the device but actually lost it in time and space. This is very worrying because you are forbidden to reveal your operations to people living along the time tracks you explore."

"How - how do you know this?" she asked. Well done, Jim. They may be long on linguistics but are certainly short on extrapolation and imagination. Keep going.

"At first, when we aborigines discovered the device, we thought it was an alien construction from the far past, built by long-lost, millennia-dead aliens. Of course the real explanation is much simpler. It was sent from the future and through a malfunction got out of control." Now I was just guessing - but their shocked expressions meant I was still doing well.

"Got so far out of control that it just kept going back in time until it ran out of power. Without power you could not locate it. You thought it might have been destroyed. Which is why there was such consternation when it signaled its presence. And you two were sent to retrieve it."

"You - you read minds?" She spoke in a hushed voice. I nodded firmly.

"The science of mental telepathy is well advanced in this era. Though it is obvious that all knowledge of our abilities has been expunged from your records in the future. But I will cease my mind reading now. I know how embarrassing it is to have one's secret thoughts revealed to strangers." I turned away, pinched my forehead, turned back. "I have stopped the function. We now communicate by words."

They looked at each other, still dazed.

"Speak, please, for now I do not know what you are thinking. Only by speech can we understand each other's thoughts."

"Knowledge of time travel is forbidden," Othred said.

"That's not my fault - you're the ones who lost the thing. You must understand that now I know all about it - as do all of my brothers in telepathekinesis who have been listening to my thoughts. But we are sworn to silence! If you wish your secret to remain a secret it will be secret. But you must aid us in keeping this secret secret. Look about you. See this ugly-looking type in the horned helmet? He is just about to kill me. And when you entered you probably stepped over the wreckage of a very armed and deadly machine - you did?, nod yes - good. That thing was going to kill me and my friend, but he got it first. So just turning off the temporooter and skedaddling is out of the question. You will leave behind a deadly and destructive situation."

"What must we do?" Vesta asked. Palm of my hand.

"First you will help me by permitting myself and my associates to escape before the time stasis has been turned off."

"That should be possible," Othred said.

"Then that's agreed. Secondly I will need another temporooter to take back with me…"

"Forbidden! Impossible!"

"Hear me out, will you please. Another temporooter to take back that does not function. A realistic fake that will disguise the fact that you and your machine have been here. Catch on?"

"No."

They sure bred them dumb in the future. Or without imagination or whatever. I took a deep breath.

"Look. I want you to remember that all the scientists here, in this time, know that there is a device of some kind that looks like your temporooter. Only they think that it is an alien artifact from the far past. Let us convince them that their assumption is true. If we do that, why no one will ever know about you and your lost equipment. Just have your technicians get some million-year-old rock and carve out something that looks like this. We'll pass it off as the original, the secret will be kept, honor satisfied, all's well that ends well."

"Excellent idea," Vesta said, and pulled a microphone from her armored suit. "I'll have one constructed now. It will be here in a second or two - "

"Wait. I have another small favor to ask. I will need certain functions built into the duplicate to convince our scientists that it is not a dummy. Just a simple device that will destruct after a single operation. This will pose absolutely no difficulties for your techs, I am sure."

It took me a bit longer to convince them of this necessity, but in the end they reluctantly agreed. The duplicate was an exact physical duplicate of the original. It blinked into existence floating in the air before us. Othred reached up and tugged; there was a popping sound as he pulled it down and handed it to me.

"Wonderful," I said, tucking it under my arm. "Shall we go?" They nodded agreement and put their helmets back on.

I had my temporal companions first release the stasis field on Floyd's hand so I could disarm him. Like our mutual enemy his finger was also tightening on the trigger. What a world of nascent danger do live in! I tucked the gun into my belt and nodded to the tempotechs.

Give Floyd that - his reflexes were great. He was twisting and chopping towards Othred's neck the second he moved - stopped when I called a halt.

"Friends, Floyd, Down boy! Ugly-looking monster friends who are getting us out of here. If you look around you, you will see that all our enemies are paralyzed with indecision - and will stay that way until we are gone. Don't trip over the pieces of the Killerbot on the way out. And, Vesta, if you please. Tap that fake ball of fur with your magic wand so it can join us."

"What the hell is going on?" Floyd said, blinking in confusion as he tried to understand what was happening.

"I feel that some explanation is in order," Aida said, and Fido barked with exasperation.

"Second the motion," Floyd said.

"Forthcoming. As soon as we are out of here. Will you be so kind as to lead the way back to the surface."

I turned to thank my temporal saviors, but they were already gone. Not only short on imagination but bereft of manners as well. And when they had vanished they had taken the time stasis with them; I could hear our footsteps for the first time. I looked back with a sudden feeling of horror but, right, the stasis was still working for the enemy as the silent form of the gun-toting snarling Commander indicated.

"Time to leave," I said. "Since I have no idea how long the nasties are going to stand around that way. Go?"

"Explain!" Floyd shouted. Not in the best of moods.

"In a moment," I equivocated - and stopped dead. For I had suddenly been possessed of an even more horrifying idea. All this playing with time - what had it done for my personal poisonous deadline! I groped for my pendant skull-computer but of course it was gone with the rest of my equipment. How much time had passed? Was the poison now taking effect? Was I about to die…?

Sweating and trembling I dropped the replacement artifact temporooter and grabbed up the plastic poodle.

"Aida - is Fido transmitting?"

"Of course."

"What time is it - I mean what day? No cancel that command. Get on to the Admiral now. Ask him how much time I have left. When is the deadline? Now - please. Don't ask me any questions. He'll know what you are talking about. Do it! And fast!"

Time dragged by on very sluggish feet I will tell you. Floyd must have heard the desperation in my voice for he stayed silent. A second, a minute - a subjective century crawled by before I had my answer. Aida must have done it - and made a good connection. Because the next voice Fido spoke with was that of Admiral Steengo.

"Good to hear from you, Jim…"

"Don't talk. Listen. I don't know what day it is. How much time is there to the deadline?"

"Well, Jim, I wouldn't worry about that if I were you - "

"You are not me and I am worried and answer the question or I will kill you slowly first chance I have. Speaking of killing… " I found that I couldn't go on.

"I meant it when I said don't worry. The threat of the thirty-day poison is over."

"You have the antidote?"

"No. But the thirty days are past. Two days ago!"

"Past!! Then I'm dead!"

But I wasn't dead. My brain spluttered and clanked and slipped back into gear. Thirty days past. No antidote. I was alive. I could hear my teeth grating as I spoke.

"Then the thirty-day poison - the whole thing was a fake from the start, wasn't it?"

"I am afraid that it was, and I do apologize. But you must realize that I did not know about it until now. Only one person had that information, the instigator of the operation."

"Admiral Benbow!"

"I'm afraid that information is not mine to reveal."

"You don't have to - it reveals itself. That lawyer who gave me the drink was just doing as directed. Lawyers will do anything if you pay them enough. Benbow was in charge and Benbow invented the poison plot to keep me in line."

"Perhaps, Jim, perhaps." His voice, even when transmitted through the agency of a plastic dog, reeked of insincerity and equivocation. "But there is nothing we can do about it now. A thing of the past. Best forgotten. Correct?"

I nodded and thought - then smiled. "Correct, Admiral. Why don't we just forget about the whole thing. All's well that ends well and tomorrow is another day. Forget it."

For now, I thought to myself, but did not speak that important little codicil aloud.

"I'm glad you understand, Jim. No hard feelings then."

I dropped the dog, turned and clapped Floyd happily on the shoulder, bent and picked up the replacement artifact.

"We did it, Floyd, we did it. I will explain everything as we walk. In great detail. But as you can see we are free, in possession of this artifact. Mission accomplished. Now - lead on, faithful Fido, since you have memorized the entrance-and-exit path. But go slowly, for it really has been one of those days."

I was hungry and thirsty. But even more thirsty for - what? Revenge? No, revenge was a dead end. If not vengeance - what then?

The time had come for a little evening up, a little sorting out of the record. I had been taken in completely by the poisonous con job. So before the last I was dotted, before the last alien artifact laid to rest, I was going to see that a little justice got done.

On my terms.