RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
Astounding Science Fiction August, 1943, with "When Is When"
It's pretty hard for a man to get into real trouble with a time machine on hand to yank him out of it. But Anachron Inc. was missing several groups of agents—agents that vanished into nowhen!
IT was a fine balmy morning in May, when spring is in the air and the promise of early summer. It was the kind of day when a fellow felt like banging his desk shut and going fishing. It was the kind of day—well, it was a swell day. And Barry felt swell, too. He could hardly keep from bursting into joyous whistling despite the company's ironclad rule, as he strode happy and carefree down one of the Anachron Building's endless corridors. For only a moment ago the ponderous doors of the room where the solemn Discipline Court sat had opened to let him out—not only acquitted, but completely exonerated of having broken Rule G-45607. It was great!
Not that it had been easy. The members of the board had been tough at first and bawled him out more than once for what they termed quibbling and hairsplitting. It did him no good to insist that the job of being Emperor of Rome was wished on him and that strictly speaking he had never "accepted" the post at all. What got him off—technically, that is—was a bit of slippery sophistry concerning the meaning of the word "public" as used in the original rule. One standard definition of the word meant pertaining to the communal good, or its improvement. Barry contended that since intertemporal commerce benefited all concerned, any employee was, therefore, a holder of public office in the era where he operated, from which it followed that all of them were constantly violating the rule. On the other hand if "public office" was to be taken in the narrower sense of being a post in national government, Barry had provided himself with an out on that. His first official act on realizing he had been made emperor was also to assume the role of Pontifex Maximus, whereupon he promptly deified himself. Then, being a living god with appropriate powers, he abolished the empire and set up a theocracy with himself as head, and made it all retroactive.
"So, gentlemen," declared Barry stoutly, "I was never emperor at all. I took the title of Jupiter Atlanticus, and everybody knows there is nothing political about that."
The judges frowned, and went into a huddle. But Barry didn't worry. He was sitting pretty and he knew it. It was just like the old army days. Company rules, like the army regulations, covered every conceivable thing in the minutest detail. If a fellow learned them all and took care never to break a one—well, he never got in trouble, but likewise he never got far. Smash a rule and one of two things invariably happens. You either get kicked out, or somebody pins a medal on you. It all depends on the outcome. So Barry smiled and waited. He had done all the undoable things they had told him to do—broken up Cassidy's rackets, sent Cassidy home in disgrace, and, best of all, had made scads of money for the company. Now he had given them the formula for the whitewash. Let them mix it up and spread it on.
Thus it was that a few minutes later he was on his way to his boss' office, dazzling with synthetic purity. He wanted to be the first to tell Kilmer the good news, for if Kilmer was having his usual run of headaches he would be needing good news by this time of day. Probably Kilmer had had something to do with his prompt acquittal, but Barry did not intend to be overgrateful on that score, for Kilmer was prone enough to hand out impossible jobs already. So with that in mind he came to the sales manager's door.
When he barged into the latter's office he found things quite in accord with the Kilmer tradition. A red-faced and sputtering fieldman was on the carpet, trying vainly to explain away a failure. Kilmer was taking it characteristically, pacing the floor like a caged thing, tearing at his hair and swearing steadily in a lugubrious monotone. But the fieldman was standing his ground.
"All right, Mr. Kilmer," he said doggedly, "believe it or not, but I'm telling it to you straight. If you don't think so, hop into one of your gilded executive shuttles and take a run down for a look-see yourself. Maybe those dopes in Shuttle Service sent me to the wrong date, though they swear they didn't.
And then again, maybe the histories are wrong—"
"Don't be a jackass, Dilworth," snapped Kilmer. "How can the histories be wrong? Certainly not about something that happened in my own lifetime. Why, I was in Siberia at the time, with the American Expeditionary Force, and I know. Why—"
"O.K., O.K.," said Dilworth, sullenly. "So you were there. So was I. In Moscow. Not two hours ago. Maybe there was such a person as Lenin and the Bolsheviks you talk about back in 1918. But when I got there they hadn't got the news. The church bells were all ringing and Cossacks were clearing the streets of the rabble. There were processions of priests. It was about the Czarevitch's birthday, or something—"
"You are driving me crazy," yelled Kilmer, biting his cigar in two. "The Czar and the Czarevitch and all the other Czarewhatnots were dead when you got there. The priesthood was abolished, and there weren't any more Cossacks. Oh, get out, before I lose my temper."
"Yes, sir," said the fieldman grumpily, and turned to go. Barry saw that he was dressed the part—in dirty gray blouse over baggy trousers tucked into Russian boots—and appropriately seedy looking as befitted a Comrade of the Proletariat.
"I," Kilmer announced mournfully, "am going nuts. Your Roman affair was headache enough, but it can't touch this business of disappearances and mix-ups."
"What disappearances and mix-ups?" asked Barry, innocently. "I haven't been here, you know. I've been busy needling the spirit of progress into the decadent Roman Empire."
"So you have," said Kilmer absently. He glared for a moment at his piled-up desk, and then dug around until he found a basket tagged with a huge question mark. He pulled out some memoranda.
"You are a fellow with dizzy ideas," Kilmer began, "but they do seem to work. Maybe you can help me. A couple of months ago the Policy Board made an important reversal of policy. You may remember that heretofore, Ethics kept us from doing intertemporal commerce with warring nations whenever they thought the cause of one or the other was unjust and their winning might work out badly. They loosened that rule a bit. They said we might sell to them provided we sold to both sides at the same time. That is, it was O. K. to let Napoleon have machine guns so long as we also gave Wellington a crack at them. See?"
Barry nodded.
"Our first two approved projects were the French and Indian Wars in this country, back in colonial days, and the row between the English and the Spaniards around the time of the Armada. So we fitted out four expeditions. One was to have gone to Philadelphia and contacted Ben Franklin in order to outfit the Braddock army. One went to Quebec to deal with General Montcalm. Then we sent one to Elizabethan England to dicker with Queen Bess and Francis Drake. The fourth we sent to Spain to sell 'em ships and guns for the Armada. Well, two of them got there. The other two vanished somewhere along the line. They just aren't any more."
"Overshot the mark, perhaps," suggested Barry. He had often wondered where a wild time shuttle might end up if something went wrong with the brakes. "Maybe they have been eaten by dinosaurs."
Kilmer shook his head.
"Impossible with the new shuttle system. It used to be that now and then somebody would abscond and skip out to the past with the dough and one of our shuttles, and there was a case or so of highjacking. We changed the shuttle operating mechanism to forestall that. Nowadays the operator in the car has nothing to do with its control. The starter punches the exact date and hour required, together with the geographical co-ordinates. Then he computes the amount of power needed to push the car to that definite point. When the car reaches its destination and is ready to return, the operator signals for the back pull. Then the starter gives him more energy, but in reverse. A shuttle can't get lost."
"That is funny," agreed Barry. "It couldn't be because they ran smack into the middle of a battle or a massacre. It would only take a second to snap back out of it. And even if one had been caught it would hardly account for two being lost simultaneously in altogether different spots and eras."
"Two!" exclaimed Kilmer. "We have lost more than two. There was one sent to Greece in '23 of this century, and another to Bavaria around 1700. They haven't been heard of again, either, nor the one we sent to dicker with Sun Yat Sen in China when he pulled off his revolution. There hasn't been but one come back—that fellow who just left here. We sent him to swap machinery to start the Soviet Five-year Plan for the Imperial crown jewels and other loot of the Russian upset. He got back all right, but he says there never was a Russian revolution. The thing has me down. I'm commencing to think the Anachron idea is not so hot after all."
"Hm-m-m," murmured Barry, drawing a pad and pencil to him. "Let us have those dates again. There may be a connection. Satistical analysis does wonders sometime."
"Not in this case," growled Kilmer, but he gave the information. Barry tabulated the data. When he finished, it looked like this:
"Not much correlation there," observed Barry, frowning at the figures. "How far apart were the first two?"
"On the same day," said Kilmer, "both here and there. They were to have reached down under on October 12th. Here are the exact dates of all the rest. The ones to colonial America were to arrive at the same time also— September 5th. You can't hang it on the destination, either. We sent relief expeditions later. Some came back all right, but with a negative report."
"It's damn queer, I'll admit," agreed Barry. "Suppose I hang onto these for a day or so? I might be able to dope something out."
"Sure," said the gloomy Kilmer. "By the way, it was your old sidekick Maverick who was in charge of the Spanish show. He is nobody's fool."
"No," said Barry, thoughtfully, "and that makes it all the more interesting. I may take a run down to Spain of the Sixteenth Century and look around for him."
"I wouldn't advise it," said Kilmer glumly. "You might fall into the same time hole. All of our relief expeditions didn't come back. Several vanished in the same manner as the originals."
"That makes it tougher," reutarked Barry, and rose to take his leave.
He spent the remainder of the afternoon in research. The mathematicians tried all sorts of tricks with his dates, but could find no common denominator. Up in Philosophy the sages couldn't be bothered. It was out of their sphere. The shuttle people almost wept at hearing Barry's questions. It wasn't their fault, they insisted, if adventurous time salesmen got themselves killed by medieval bandits or wild Indians. What were a few isolated disappearances against thousands of successfully accomplished round trips?
It was in History that Barry got his first clue, but it by no means clarified the mystery. At the same time it did give him a hunch, and he followed through. Then he spent a few hours reviewing the bulky set of regulations under which he had to work. After that, he made another call on Kilmer.
"Say, boss," he began, "I have an idea who did this to us. He has been dead a good many hundred years now, but in his day there weren't any bigger shots. If I can get around Rule A-800 and—"
Kilmer groaned.
"Those damned rules." he muttered miserably. "Don't you go busting any more rules. We've got away with murder twice. The next time it'll cost us both our jobs. Besides, A-800 is the worst of all—that's the one about not bucking kings and emperors and other potentates, isn't it?"
"Yeh. Only I won't try to do it openly. I can't get at the guy direct because he maintains a private army. I can't bribe him, either. But if I can get him to retract his edict—"
"Now you've gone nutty," pronounced Kilmer. "If there's one thing that Anachron is sure of, it is that nothing that is changed in the past can affect us in our own time line. It can only affect the offshoot lines generated by the change. The philosophers swear by that; it is the foundation of our business. Our charter hangs on it."
"I know," said Barry. "But have the philosophers told us everything? We deal with the branch time lines—I just came in off of one of them. Now let's suppose our missing friends are hung up in a blind alley along our time line and I get a dead big shot to undo something that he did long ago to ball them up. What it would amount to would be that I create a subsidiary time line along which we can affect the rescue. Do I make myself clear?"
"As clear as Mississippi floodwater," said the weary Kilmer. "Don't bother me with details or philosophy. If you've got a hunch, play it. Now what do you want?"
Barry told him.
"A ten million trade-dollar line of credit—on which I hope to show a profit —and no questions asked."
Kilmer drew a pad to him and began to scribble. He did it with the same show of joy that he might have if he had been making out his own death warrant.
"I might as well be washed up as the way I am," he sighed, and handed the ticket across to Barry.
"Thanks, boss. I'll be seeing you."
Ted Barry returns to 16th Century Spain
Columbus cleared Cadiz in the summer of 1492 with three dinky
little tubs. Less than ninety years later—Spanish
time—El Almirante Teodoro Barrios del San Francisco and
Duque del California del Norte—so Ted Barry styled
himself—let go the hook of his magnificent flagship the
San Ysidro. He strutted his tiny quarterdeck atop the
lofty poop and surveyed the crowds on the mole through a Mark
VIII Anachron long glass. He could see the fisherfolk gaping, and
the astounded stares of scarred seadogs who had doubtless also
sailed the Spanish Main. The arrival of the three ships
had created quite a stir.
The afternoon wore drowsily on while fisher craft circled the little fleet curiously. Never had been seen such stately vessels, or ones of such fine lines and rig. But the admiral and his shipping master, Parker, held their peace, waiting for what they knew must inevitably come. And then, late in the afternoon, but still with remarkable alacrity for Spaniards, they saw the gaudy boat put out from shore. It flaunted the red and gold banner of Castile Aragon.
"I am Don Pablo de Xerife," said the boarding officer, as he mounted to the poop, "harbormaster for my lord the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. He wishes to know whence came these vessels and what the meaning of the strange standard they fly."
"That's a break," replied Admiral Barrios. "I was hoping to meet that bird."
"Una cosa rota?" echoed the bewildered harbormaster. "Que es?—What broke? What bird?"
"Oh, skip it," said Barry, "I forgot I was not still in India del Poniente. The idiom there is passing strange to unaccustomed ears. Tell your master that the flag is that of the great Indian nation Anachronia that lieth to the northwestward of the king's domain of California. I have come to tell him of the marvels of that rich land and of the cunning skill of the wild men who inhabit it. It was they who contrived the miracle guns you see here, and the wondrous sailing gear. I would that he would take me to His Highness so that I may lay these treasures at his feet."
Don Pablo bowed low, but his eyes were bugging. He had never seen a modern streamlined sailing ship before with tubular steel masts and running gear that was rove through neat galvanized iron blocks. Nor so much clear deck space despite the many guns along the bulwarks. They were different guns, too, from the clumsy brass carronades of the galleons. These were bright and shiny and of the color of good Toledo steel.
"I understand that our lordship," Barry went on, "is contemplating the destruction of perfidious England. If not, he had better have had, for only this year the pirate Drake stuck his nose into my harbor of San Francisco. Soon he will be back with more ships and men to take Anachronia from the infidel savages before ere we can. Can you persuade his lordship to come aboard tomorrow so that I can show what manner of ships we build in Poniente ?"
"Surely, yes," said Señor Xerife.
He went away after an hour, fortified by several shrewdly chosen drinks, and carrying a small gold nugget which the admiral assured him were common enough in the northern part of California to be used as paving stones. In addition he carried a Colt revolver and a single box of ammunition. Barry wanted to make very certain of his first impression on the bloodthirsty duke. For Medina-Sidonia was the most powerful of all the courtiers in the train of Philip the Second of Spain. And Philip himself was the fair-haired boy with a certain—
But that could wait, Barry declared, and he went into consultation with Parker as to the details of the morrow. That night they further amazed the local inhabitants of the port by putting on a searchlight display, using the acetylene model that had worked well in old France. It had its effect, for the duke and retinue climbed aboard almost with the sun.
The getting underway went smoothly. Sidonia watched the fishing of the anchor with a practiced seaman's eye and marveled at the smoothness of the Anachron capstan. He marveled more as the sails went up without visible effort and the ship stood out to sea.
"Where can I find a good target?" asked Barry. "I want to demonstrate the guns."
"Along the Moorish shore there are many—far too many," said Sidonia, with a black scowl. "The accursed non-believers are as numerous as fleas, and as fleet. The foul pirates show their heels at the first close approach. It would be better to go to the west, where we may come upon an Englishman in a day or so."
"I can't spare the time," was Barry's mystifying reply. "I'll take the first thing handy. What do you make of that low, rakish thing there to the south— the one with the leg o' mutton sail and rigged out with oars like a centipede?"
" 'Tis one of the accursed Saracens," said Sidonia, "but you waste time. He'll wait like a fox until you are right on him, and then he'll run as though the Evil One were on his tail—which he is. He will be too wily to let you get within gun shot."
"Yeah?" said Barry, and winked at Parker. Then he held up four fingers signifying that the sights were to be set for four thousand yards. Whereupon the helmsman put the rudder over and they began to close upon the corsair. Silently the Anachron- trained gun crews took their posts. Medina-Sidonia gaped again at seeing breechblocks open and the shot and powder fed in from the rear. Off the bow the corsair still dawdled in the distance, a good three miles away, confident that he could outrun the heavier ship if things came to that pass.
Barry lowered his glasses.
"Commence firing," he ordered.
"Commence firing," he ordered
A salvo rippled out. The row of guns reared back on their
lashings. And then, before the first shots had even landed, the
crews had yanked the breech-plugs open and were in the act of
loading again.
"Valgame," gasped the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, crossing himself by instinct. At the incredible distance of two miles there had arisen a geyser of white water, and in it flew the fragments of the blasted galley. A second later there was only a thin pall of settling mist, a broken prow sticking up out of the water, and a couple of score of black dots on the water where the surviving Moors still swam.
"There is another galley off there to port," said Parker, pointing.
Barry was not keen to go in for more wholesale murder just to make a sale, but he remembered that Maverick's life and many others depended on the success of his mission. He also remembered that the Moors were unscrupulous pirates in their own right. So he nodded his head and let Parker bring the ship around. By night they had cleaned up five of the galleys—most of them on the first salvo. It was a deeply impressed duke that disembarked that night.
Two days later Barry found himself in the same ducal coach with Sidonia, jolting along the dusty roads of Spain toward Madrid. Armed postilions and outriders guarded them from ambuscade. All the long way the duke chattered about the great day when he would build an armada and conquer England. He had thought it would take eight or ten years to assemble such a fleet, but here was an adventurer from the New World assuring him it would take much less. That is, if only the king would finance the expedition.
Philip was not at Madrid, but beyond, supervising the building of his great new palace, the Escorial. It was there that Barry found him. The king, failing to recognize the alleged duchy of which Teodoro Barrios claimed to be overlord, glanced at him with scant respect. But that attitude altered when Medina-Sidonia spoke of the wonderful performance of the San Ysidro.
"Sire," he urged, "with fourscore such ships we can conquer the earth—the Low Countries and England, who give us much trouble, and Portugal and Mauretania as well. Above all, we must have this land of Anachron of which Don Teodor speaks."
"What of Anachron?" asked the king, leveling his fierce gaze on Barry. His eyes were those of a ruthless fanatic, blinded to all consequences of his terrible acts by the religious zeal that drove him. A hawknosed chief inquisitor looked on with glittering eyes.
"Far to the northwest of Hispania Nueva, on the shores of the Mar Pacifico, lies the land of Oregon, peopled by the tribe of Anachron." Barry had to think furiously, for it would be hard to explain to this king why Juan Cabrillo, who had recently discovered southern California had not gone on to complete the conquest. "It is a land of fog and darkness, and hard to come by sea and impossible by land on account of the mighty mountains. 'Twas but by chance that my ship came upon their chief port." These are not a copperish people as those of Mexico and the Antilles, but whitish, even as we."
"But infidels?" barked the inquisitor.
"Aye, a most ungodly people. Or rather, a people of many gods. There are many of them, tens upon tens of thousands, clever at handwork but greedy and grasping. They have a few good ships, but not many, since they are too fond of luxury to fight. We have only to hire them to build us a sufficient fleet to liquidate the English, and then we will be able to go for them. Sire, they will be a pushover."
Barry bit his lip in mortification for having let himself slip into the Anachronistic dialect, but it didn't matter. In translating his thought into Middle Castilian, he had perforce used the expression "roundheels" which seemed to convey a similar meaning at Philip's Court, for the king grinned briefly at the metaphor. Then he frowned.
"How much will such a fleet cost ?"
"A million pistoles, sire," said Barry calmly.
"Phew!" It came like the roar of freight locomotive opening its bottom blow. Nearby courtiers and synchophants paled and trembled. A few hastily made the sign of the cross. But the chief inquisitor was fondling the nugget which Medina-Sidonia had brought with him to the court. If these cluttered the landscape—
"Think of the million souls to save, sire," suggested he. "Perhaps his holiness—"
"Ah," breathed the king, "perhaps so. We have spent so much already in Brabant and Holland that only a little more sent after the bad may retrieve it all. Yet, why do these uncouth savages demand money? Is not their country bursting with gold?"
"They do not have use for gold," assured Barry, "but luxuries. Let your gold remain at home. Instead, buy with it paintings, wines, slabs of cork, casks of olive oil, finely wrought silver vessels and the other art products of Europe. These I will take back with me to give in exchange for the armada. In three years I will return with what I have bought. Then the world will be yours."
There was a long deep silence. At length the king broke it.
"I must have a writing," he said, "duly sealed and sworn."
"You shall have it, sire," said Barry.
Monks were sent scurrying to bring quills and parchment and inkwells. Then followed a period of scratchings as the promissory note was made out. It was a lengthy and impressive document, bristling with "whereases" and ending with "under our hands and seals." The date of its execution was filled in—that day, October 12, A.D., 1579. All that remained was the date of maturity.
"You'd better make it three years." said Barry casually. "It will take a year to make the voyage back by way of the Tierra del Fuego, another year to build and outfit the ships, and a final year here. Yes, three years to the day will do very nicely."
The date was filled in. Barry signed, and the cardinal came to sign as witness. To clinch the matter beyond any possible doubt, there followed a brief ceremony. The direst curses were invoked on either party should he deviate by the slightest iota from the text. It looked bad for Barry, for the palace treasurer was already standing by to deliver the order for the pistoles. Within a few minutes the king would have complied with his half of the contract except for the final collection of the funds advanced. Barry would have received his grubstake and the viceroyship of the new dominion. For his part, he must yet deliver the fleet as promised, return the advance, and then make good his conquest of Anachronia.
When it was all over, Barry pocketed his copy of the treaty and followed the royal party to the dining hall. He noticed that the king, the cardinal, and the chief inquisitor, not to mention the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, all looked highly pleased. He might have guessed that they were about to make a tidy profit on the million, since they themselves owned most of the commodities mentioned in Barry's request. Barry did not mind that. The thing was he had managed the loan and given his note. What mattered now was when and where they would discount that note. Surely, since the Jews had been expelled from Spain, there were few if any bankers able to take up so vast a sum. Yet on the whole Barry was as happy over the transaction as the mercenary bigwigs of the court. His first step had been taken. The next day in the lap of the gods. But history was so far on his side. Would history make a monkey of him, or would he make a monkey of history?
"Swallowed it hook, line and sinker," he told Parker, when he got back to Cadiz. "Now home, James."
The three ships bulged with priceless ecclesiastical paintings, a ton or more of the choicest handiwork of Benvenuto Cellini, and other items worth together much more than the million pistoles owed for them. Barry could still buy the armada and deliver it and show a profit at the same time. Whether or not he completed the bargain would depend upon the results of his second trip. He meant to make that shortly. In the meantime, the ships weighed their anchors and put out to sea.
It was on one of the Azores that he had his secret base. The San Ysidro led the way into the quiet harbor. Barry did not wait for her to discharge her cargo, but ran at once to the station shuttle platform. Then he put through a call to Kilmer.
"Send me a special shuttle right away," he asked. "I'm coming up."
"Did you find Maverick?"
"Not yet. I'm in 1579. He's somewhere else. Step on it, won't you ?"
When he got topside he did not tell Kilmer more than the bare facts of what he had done. Why he had done it was still his own secret. If he succeeded, he could boast in due time; if not, the less said now the better. So he told his tale simply. His reward was a wan smile. Kilmer must have someone else in his hair again, Barry concluded, since he looked so sour.
"Glad you salvaged something out of the Spanish thing," said the boss, but with little enthusiasm. "Bugs Chilton played hell in England. He sold Queen Liz, all right. A hundred ships of the line. And now look!"
It was a cancellation order. The English, adhering to a policy that must have been initiated by the first Britons, had decided to wait for the actual coming of the armada before preparing. They would take only one ship of the lot for trial and proof.
"Ninety-nine ships, built and ready for delivery," moaned Kilmer, "and charged to me. And now I get a cancellation."
"Cheer up, boss," grinned Barry. "I'll take 'em. I need eighty for Philip, and it's a cinch that I can sell the other nineteen to Queen Bess when she finds out he has the eighty. I've already figured my price—a half a million doubloons."
Then Barry took a week off and spent it in the country loafing. He had time to burn. After which he returned to New York and reported in.
"I think I'll take that fleet on down and deliver it to Philip," he explained. "Tell the shuttle people to make the date midsummer of 1582. That is ahead of the time I am due to show up, but I may need a little leeway for more negotiations."
Kilmer did not argue with him, but made the arrangements. What Barry was up to he could not guess, especially since he had insisted on having full battle crews for the ships, but all his money was down on him and he couldn't back out now.
"Oh, by the way," said Barry on parting, "if Maverick and the other lads show up while I'm away and wonder what happened to them, just tell them to sit tight and I'll explain when I get back. S'long."
Then Barry was gone. Kilmer's jaw dropped as he gazed at the empty chair. Had Barry been pulling his leg all the while? For at the outset he had proposed to rescue the missing expeditions from wherever it was they were lost, yet he had not gone near any of the dates of their disappearance.
A week rolled by. There had been no further report from Barry, though the starter said that he and his fleet had gotten away from the Azores on time. Then another week went by, and a third. A month followed, and then almost another when things began to break. When they did, they broke with a vengeance.
All four telephones on Kilmer's desk began ringing at once. He took them two at a time and listened incredulously to the excited words of the shuttle starters. The missing expeditions were reporting in from all directions, wanting to know what had happened and what they should do next. There was the fellow in Bavaria, the one in China, the one with Benjamin Franklin, and the two expeditions that had gone looking for them. There was also the salesman sent to modern Greece. And last of all, Maverick.
"Come home and report," was all that Kilmer knew what to say.
Within a few hours they lined up before his desk, rather sheepish and tongue-tied. Each had the same tale to tell.
"We simply floated around in a gray-black sort of pea-soup fog," was the way Maverick put it. "We were like disembodied spirits, without sensation or bodies. The shuttles weren't there—our hands and feet were there—the controls weren't there. It seemed to last for ages. Then, bang, everything cleared up. We reported in at our destinations and were immediately recalled. What happened to us ?"
"Search me," said Kilmer helplessly.
"Barry knows, but Barry is off in the Middle Ages, selling the armada to King Philip of Spain."
"Why, the rat!" exclaimed Maverick. "That was my assignment!"
"You didn't sell it, did you?" asked Kilmer.
Then the door was opened and Barry walked in, grinning like the wrapping of a catful of canaries.
"Hiya, fellows," he hailed them. "How did you like nonexistence?"
"Huh?" It was a chorus.
"That is what I said. You birds went where there wasn't any time. You went to nonexistent dates. You fell into time holes. There are a lot of 'em."
"Quit kidding," someone said, "there isn't any such thing. Time is continuous. How could there be holes in it ? And if so, how did you pull us out?"
"By going back before the holes were dug and stopping the digger from digging."
Barry sat down and turned to Kilmer.
"Everything's jake, boss. I delivered my end to Philip, and then went on to London and sold Liz. She paid through the nose like a good girl and I got my pistoles back. And then some. It worried her plenty when I told her what Philip had. But it was dickering with him that took all the time."
"I showed up way ahead of time," Barry went on to explain. "Philip was tickled pink and was for taking possession of the fleet then and there. But I reminded him that the contract didn't call for delivery until October, and that there was the matter of the million pistoles to consider. I didn't have 'em. Not yet. He offered to waive the pistoles, which would have been that much velvet, but I still wouldn't let him have the fleet. Then he said he would take it. I said O.K, try. So that fell through. Then he wanted to know what I was trying to pull. And I cracks back with what was he trying to pull. He didn't understand it, so I told him."
"For Heaven's sake, Barry," cried out Kilmer, "quit beating around the bush and teasing us. Who was trying to put something over whom, and why?"
"Well, sir, I have a great respect for a triple-barreled curse, especially when it is laid on by a cardinal and a chief inquisitor. So had Philip. I was supposed to hand over the fleet on October 12, 1582, and he was required to accept it. Now, as it stood, we couldn't do that, so I suggested that he fix things up so that there would be a date like that. You see, that year was short a few days—"
"Barry!"
"Patience, friends. It would have been, rather, if I hadn't played my cards the way I did. The minute I saw that Philip was as much worried about the curse as I was, I tipped my mitt. From the very beginning, the pope was the man I was after, but I saw no easy way of getting at him. But Philip stood well with him and I picked him as my candidate to do the intervening. It was this way. While I was gone—on the twenty-fourth of February, 1582, to be exact—Gregory, with the advice and consent of a flock of cardinals, mathematicians and astronomers, had issued an edict changing the calendar. The day after October 4th was to be the fifteenth, dropping the missing ten dates into the nowhere. Knowing that was where Maverick was hung up, I had to get it changed. Since a consideration of that sort would not have moved the pope, I had to do it the way I did.
"History already had told me that Gregory XIII considered Philip II a pretty swell fellow. He had already financed him heavily in the wars to bring the Protestant Low Countries back into the fold. I figured he would put out some more to get England and Anachronia. I also knew that Philip was virtually bankrupt and did not have a million of his own. Philip could be counted on to rush a courier to the Vatican with my note and hock it there, counting on repaying it when I came across with my end. When he found out he would get no fleet and no million to repay the loan, Philip was in a terrible dither. He jumped at my suggestion that he use his influence with the pope to have the order annulled. That's what was done. Spain got her armada, the pope got his million back, Anachron made a profit, and you got loose."
"I told 'em that fixed-date system was wrong," muttered Kilmer. "They ought to use net time spans."
"Hey," spoke up the emissary to Philadelphia, "what about me? I wasn't stranded in 1582. I got lost in 1752. Yet Eddy, who started with me, got to Quebec all right. How does that fit?"
"Perfectly. The British didn't get around to adopting the change until September of that year, whereas the French made the change along with the other Catholic countries—as soon as it was effective. It wasn't the date only that counted, but where it was in force. That explains the others. China waited for the revolution to make the change. So did Russia—"
"Yes, what about Russia?" demanded Kilmer, sitting up and paying more attention. "That expedition didn't get lost. It just went haywire."
Barry grinned again.
"In Russia they split it. The Bolsheviks decreed the new calendar and skipped thirteen days, but the Orthodox Greek Church would have none of it. Dilworth hit there on one of the nonexistent dates as far as the Soviets went, but it was a perfectly good date from the orthodox point of view. And since the faithful deny the validity of the revolution and the overthrow of the Czar, he bumped into a purely visionary situation. Maybe if you ask the philosophers how—"
"Philosophers!" snorted Kilmer. "Let's all go down to the lounge and have a drink."