Jack Chalker - Downtiming the Night Side

As soon as she felt solid ground and the sensations of time travel had ceased, she pulled down her goggles. At night, in this darkened position along the road, she had better vision than Nikita. She had started her watch with the others, but now could read it. It read 01:43. Nikita faded into the neighborhood, giving her backup and cover. She checked the weapon, very much like a rifle, although weighing only ounces and feeling like a child’s toy. All the settings had been perfect, but everything would be for nothing if they had made one mistake and if Marx was not, in fact, taking this route to his assignation in the square. If not, they would have to jump back no later than 01:50 and a new plan would have to be improvised.

She crouched there in the darkness, watching the road and trying to avoid the occasional oil lamps and torch lighting that smudged her vision. She checked her watch. 01:46. She began to worry that he wouldn’t come.

The worst part was, the place did not look or feel familiar. She was only vaguely aware of who Karl Marx was, and couldn’t even remember the name of the town they were in, although she’d studied its street maps with Herb. She had, she realized, come even farther than she thought down the road to individuality, and, oddly, it pleased her.

01:48 on the watch did not.

Suddenly, far off, she heard the sound of someone walking, heels hitting the brick walk. She tensed, ready to do the job. She was going to save a man’s life, she knew, even if she no longer recalled or understood who or what he’d been.

The strange footsteps grew closer, and she could clearly see now that it was a young man with a beard, dressed in a funny, old-fashioned suit. She expected, when she saw him, to know him instantly, but found that he looked no more familiar than the photo Herb had shown them. Still, if Herb’s photos were right, this was indeed Karl Marx.

He was walking very slowly, almost hesitatingly, and his manner seemed to indicate a great deal of indecision. Clearly, Marx was uncertain as to whether or not this was a smart thing to do. He stopped near her, and she froze, fearing that he’d seen her. But the stop was to suppress a yawn as best he could, rub his eyes a bit, then continue on.

She let him get about five yards beyond her position, then rose silently and, raising the rifle, pulled the trigger.

There was a feeling in the rifle like a vibrator had been turned on for a brief moment, and her vision was momentarily wiped out by a sparkling ray of light. She heard a man cry out softly, once, and then the sound of a body falling.

Nikita was by her in an instant. “Just fine,” he whispered. “He’s out for a half-hour, won’t know what hit him, and he’ll think he tripped and fell. You all right?”

She nodded. “Knocked out my glasses for a minute. It’s coming back now.”

“O.K. Help me roll him over into the grass here, so anybody coming by won’t see him right away.” They did it, although the man was quite heavy. Marx, she was relieved to see, was breathing, but in his tumble to the pavement he’d struck his head, and there was an ugly, if superficial, gash on his right forehead.

“You want to keep safety watch here instead of me?” the little man asked her. “It’s O.K. if you do. I don’t mind.”

“No, we’ll go as planned,” she told him. “I’ll be all right.” And, with that, she left him and went on down the walk toward the town.

It was an eerie wait, back in the shadows of an alleyway looking on the square. All was silence, and there was no movement except for those shadows and the noise of the multiple fountains pouring into the catch basin. In the stillness they sounded like huge waterfalls, the noise caught by the buildings and echoed back again and again.

It was a short wait compared to London, but it seemed forever in the stillness. When the church clock struck the three-quarter hour, Moosic tensed, checked his pistol for the hundredth time, and began to look for signs of another, either Sandoval or Marx. At approximately 1:50 the policeman patrolling the area walked into the square, panicking him for a moment. The cop checked all the doors facing the square, looked around, and finally made his way from the square and down a side street, but not before the clock chimed two. The minutes now crept back as the patrolman’s footsteps receded and finally died away in the distance, but there was still no sign of anyone else in the square.

Then, quite suddenly, he heard the clicking of shoes on cobblestone. Someone was coming down the same street the policeman had used to leave, coming towards the square. He tensed, praying that Marx had decided not to come after all, and waited until the oncoming figure strode into the square. He strained to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, and saw him at last, in the glow of a street lamp.

It was certainly no one he’d ever seen before. He was tall, thin, and at least in middle age, with a long and unkempt black beard and a broad-brimmed hat that concealed much of the rest of his features. He was dressed in the seedy clothes of one who was used to sleeping in his only suit. He didn’t seem armed, and he certainly didn’t have the time suit with him, if indeed he were Sandoval and not just some bum avoiding the policeman.

Moosic stood up and was about ready to go out and confront the man, when there was a sudden noise behind him. He felt a pistol at the back of his head, and quietly the man’s voice whispered, “I think you better remain where you are and not make a sound. Put the gun down, nice and quiet, on the ground. No false moves, my friend! At this range I could hardly miss.”

He did as instructed, then slowly got up as the pistol was pulled away. He turned, and saw his captor. The man was tall, lean, and dressed entirely in black, in a uniform rather similar to the one his mysterious woman in London was wearing. But this was no ordinary-looking chubby woman; this man was extremely muscular, with a strong face like a Nordic god’s, his pure blond hair neatly cut in a military trim. Behind him lurked two large black shapes that looked somehow inhuman, but whose features were impossible to determine in the near total darkness of the alley. One thing was clear, though—from the blinking little lights—all three wore belts similar to the one the woman had worn. This, then, was the true enemy.

Knowing it was hopeless, he turned again to watch the scene in the square. More footsteps now, and the seedy-looking man leaning on the lamppost stiffened, then stepped back into a doorway for a moment. In another minute, Moosic saw Marx walk nervously into the square from his right and look around. He appeared alone and unarmed.

The twin personalities inside the Neumann body converged in an emotional rage. He glanced back briefly at the mysterious blond man, and noted with the professional’s eye that his captor was looking less at him than at the scene in the square. The time agent was larger and more powerful than Neumann, but if he could just idly get one step back, just one step, that might not mean a thing. Pretending to watch what was going on in the square, he measured the distance and moves out of the comer of his eye.

Quickly he lunged around, his knee coming up and hitting the blond man squarely in the balls. The man in black cursed in pain and doubled over, dropping his strange-looking pistol. Quickly Moosic rolled, picked up his own pistol, and was out of the alley and to his right.

“Heir Marx! It’s a trap! Drop to the ground!” he shouted.

Marx was about ten feet from Sandoval, and at the noise and yell he froze and turned to look back in utter confusion. Sandoval reached into his pants and pulled out a gun, while behind Moosic, in the alley, two strange figures ran out into the light. Two figures out of nightmare.