Time Riders

CHAPTER 46

1956, Washington DC

It was dark and wet. Bob’s eyes had adjusted hours ago to the dimness downhere in the sewers. Pallid tendrils of light lanced through the grating in the pavement above.It was a grey, overcast afternoon in Washington DC, the day after America had been defeated byits invaders.

The support unit sat motionless on a damp concrete sill, his legs dangling in thefoul-smelling water that trickled past.

From above, he could hear the occasional movement of vehicles, the tramping of boots andevery now and then the rattle-dash of distant gunfire. Over the last twenty hours, thousandsof people, potential trouble-makers — those who might try their hand at rallying thepeople: senators, congressmen, judges, lawyers, journalists — had been rounded up andput on convoys of trucks heading out of the city. The rest of the city’s populationcowered in their homes and could only wonder at what Kramer and his invasion force would dowith them all now.

It was quiet at the moment, save for the persistent echo of water dripping from thesewer’s curved brick ceiling and the languid trickling of stinking sewage.

Bob sat motionless. Absent-mindedly a finger flicked the safety catch of the pulse carbineheld in his hands. On and off, off and on, the metallic click echoing loudly down thesewer.

Waiting patiently. Counting down on his internal clock.

Bob closed his eyes.

[Information: final window due in 23 minutes]

He was only ten minutes from the White House, a mile as the crow flies, and half thatdistance he could cover underground along the network of sewage tunnels, emerging from amanhole along Pennsylvania Avenue. He would have to run the rest of the way in plain view. Hisblack rubber suit and mask might disguise him for a short few moments. But since all the otherenemy soldiers had discarded those and were now wearing their grey Wehrmacht uniforms,he’d most probably attract attention the instant he was above ground.

However, if he timed things correctly, and was lucky, he stood a fair chance of managing tofight his way quickly to the space beneath that copse of cedar trees just as the air began toshimmer and the window appeared. Yet it was quite probable that his body would suffer too muchcombat damage to recover itself.

But that was of little importance.

The small wafer of silicon in his head was all that mattered; getting that through the windowand sent back to the future in one piece was the onlyconsideration. Even if the best he could do was poke his head into the portal as it activated,leaving his headless corpse behind, then that would satisfy his primary mission objective. Thegathered intelligence would be back with the field office, precisely where it needed tobe.

Bob stirred. It was nearly time for him to make his move.

But something in his small organic mind urged him to reassess his mission priorities, like asmall child’s nagging voice. A whimpering plea that travelled down thin internalwires.

Don’t leave him behind.

Bob’s head twitched uneasily as his AI attempted to deal with conflicting assertions.There was an authoritative, emotionless silicon reply to that child’s voice.

[Mission objective: gather and returninformation]

But… there was so little information to relay, so very little that they’d managedto gather. Bob could return to the field office — alive or dead — and they coulddownload from his head what he’d seen and heard. But the vast majority of this data wasjust smoke and gunfire; there was little they’d learned that could be of use. Not enoughto fix on a precise point of origin for this time contamination. More information was needed,much more. Specifically — knowledge of the events that had come before this invasion. Located here in 1956 he had a far better chance of uncoveringthe recent past than back in the altered world of 2001.

His head convulsed anxiously, his finger thumbed the safety catch with increasinglydistracted vigour.

[Mission parameters require reprioritization]

The unit was out of his comfort zone now. His AI could deal with detailed and speedysituation analysis, but decision-making was something far betterdealt with by a human mind. His on-board memory recalled Foster’s words from a few daysago.

‘… And that’s the reason the agency sends a humanoperative back as well as the support unit. A robot can’t make intuitive judgements,Liam… not nearly as well as a human can…’

The tiny nodule of wrinkled flesh in Bob’s skull — the undeveloped brain — understood this all too well. It understood help was needed while the hard-wired computer codecontinued to argue the case that mission orders were orders to be obeyed at all costs.

Must Find Him.

[Recommendation: update mission parameters]

Bob’s finger froze; his body remained rigid, utterly still. His internal computerfocused now on one thing alone, every micro-volt of computing power devoted to one end.

Re-ordering his mission priorities.

Making a decision.

[Mission updated: locate and rescue Operative LiamO’Connor]