Simon Hawke: Hellfire Rebellion

“What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?” Hunter said.

“No, not really.” said Delaney. holding up a laser pistol he’d just taken from a drawer in Hunter’s desk.

“There’s a. 45 semiauto under the pillow on my bed and a commando knife taped to the back of the headboard.” Hunter said. “You’ll find spare ammo and clips hidden in the breadbox in the kitchen and a brace of flintlock dueling pistols tucked under the cushion of the reading chair in the study.”

They quickly appropriated the weapons.

“Sure you don’t have a spare warp disc tucked away somewhere?” asked Andre.

“Even if I had, it still wouldn’t get me home, would it?” Hunter said. “You people are the only game in town. You know about all the confluence points we’ve used before and your people are patrolling them. If any new ones have been discovered, it’s happened since I got separated from my unit. Besides, if I knew of any others, do you really think I’d still be here?”

“You don’t mind if we look just the same?” said Lucas.

Hunter shrugged. “Help yourselves. Just try not to make a mess. The maid doesn’t come in until Tuesday.”

Delaney glanced at him.

“Just kidding, pilgrim,” Hunter said. “Nobody comes to these digs but me. While you’re tearing apart the house, I’ll go and make some tea. We still drink tea in Boston. For a while, anyway.”

He left the room and went into the kitchen.

“What do you think?” said Andre.

“I don’t know,” Delaney said. “He played straight with us before, when we went up against the Network in New York. Besides, like the man said, he’s been here for a while and he’s got connections. If he wanted to, he could’ve hidden ordnance all over Boston.”

“He probably has.” said Lucas. “Wouldn’t you? Remember our Reese Hunter?” he said, referring to Hunter’s twin from their own universe, who had deserted from the Temporal Corps to join the Underground and who’d been murdered by the Timekeepers in 17th-century France. “First time I met him in 12th-century England, he had an entire arsenal at his disposal, plus all the comforts of home, Sound system, classical recordings, books, microwave oven, generator… had himself a modem bachelor pad all set up in a cabin in the middle of Sherwood Forest. Genetically, this Reese Hunter is identical. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“The question is, how far can we trust him?” said Delaney.

“About as far as his own self-interest is concerned,” said Lucas as they continued their search. “But he did turn himself in voluntarily. He didn’t have to. He could have chosen any time period he wished, set himself up comfortably, and retired. Or he could have gone underground and worked on his own to disrupt our history. Maybe he’s playing straight with us.”

“If he’s not bluffing about those subliminal triggers,” said Andre, “then he took an awful chance by coming in.”

“It could be a bluff.” admitted Lucas. “But on the other hand, put yourself in his place. If you were trapped in his universe, what would you do? Especially if you saw a chance to get back home and, at the same time, get even with an old enemy?”

“I might do the same.” said Andre. “But it’s an interesting coincidence that he happened to wind up in colonial Boston at the same time as Drakov did, assuming that Drakov’s really here.”

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence.” Delaney said. “You start getting into some serious temporal metaphysics when you try to figure out the Fate Factor. When Mensinger first formulated that theory, he was convinced that it was a sort of nebulous temporal principle, a Zen physics version of for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But toward the end of his life, he started getting almost spiritual about it.”

“You mean he thought it was God?” said Andre.

“He never actually came out and said that,” Delaney replied. “He always skirted the issue, as if he was afraid of it. He probably was. But when I was studying his work in R.C. S.. I became convinced that toward the end. Mensinger developed a strong belief in predestination, although he never came out and actually called it that. He kept speaking of ‘an order to the universe,’ that sort of thing. The closest he ever came to admitting the possibility of a guiding intelligence was when he once quoted Einstein as saying that God didn’t play dice with the universe, that there was order to all things. Everyone always assumed that he was speaking metaphorically, but what if he was being literal?”

“It would make the Fundamentalists ecstatic,” Andre said.

“Maybe that’s why he never came out and said it.” Delaney replied. “He didn’t want what he was saying to be reduced to some simplistic dogma for the reassurance of the ignorant. When Einstein made that statement, newspaper headlines all over the world blared ‘Einstein believes in God!’ Nobody ever really understood Einstein, either. It’s a funny thing. Every now and then, someone comes along who gets a brilliant insight into what might be the Ultimate Truth and people either misinterpret them or try to shut them up. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. Galileo was made to recant. By the time Einstein came around, they’d grown more clever. They simply made him into some sort of amiable genius, too complicated for anyone to understand, an stuck him in a university where he could do no harm. Mensinger made it simple for them. He committed suicide.”

“Tea’s on.” said Hunter, coming in from the kitchen. “You guys find the warp grenade I hid inside the chamberpot?”

“Very funny,” said Lucas.

“You know, the Lucas Priest I remember had a sense of humor,” Hunter said. “Maybe that was in my first life.” Lucas said.

“Better,” Hunter said. “But still not up to your old standard. Look, you guys have all my weapons, you’ve got my warp disc. I’m stuck here if I don’t play ball with you. And don’t forget, trust is a two-way street. I’ve also got to trust you to live up to your end of the deal when this is over.”

“And do you?” Andre said.

Hunter shrugged. “What have I got to lose?”

“Quite a lot, if we decide to call your bluff and put you through interrogation.” Lucas said. “You could wind up a vegetable.”

“Maybe,” Hunter said, nodding. And if it was up to your friend Steiger, perhaps that’s exactly what would happen. But it’s not his call, it’s Forester’s. And I think I can trust that man.”

“Why?” said Delaney, curious. “Because he looks a man right in the eyes and doesn’t make him want to look away. Because he tolerates a slob like you under his command. Because he’s out to break up the Network when he could just as easily go along with it and take his cut or simply sit back and do nothing, because the Network isn’t really endangering the timeline. They’re only out to make some dirty bucks. But mostly because I saw his face when you mentioned Drakov.”

Hunter paused a moment and they were all silent.

“There was a lot of pain there,” Hunter continued. ‘And a man who knows that kind of pain doesn’t go around inflicting it

Delaney gave him a long look. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Just part of being a survivor, pilgrim.” Hunter said. ‘How do you take your tea?”

Just as The Bunch of Grapes was the favorite gathering place of the Sons of Liberty, so the Peacock Tavern was a Tory bar. Boston was becoming polarized. Its citizens preferred the company of like-minded thinkers and although no one was very happy with the actions of the ministry and Parliament, there were still many who considered themselves loyal Englishmen and sought a rapprochement with Britain. Among them were men who held offices as tax commissioners and customs officials, merchants who were alarmed over the increasing talk of a boycott of British goods, and citizens who were outraged by the actions of the mobs of rioters who roamed the streets and gathered in the Common and in the taverns on the waterfront.