Гарри Гаррисон - Rebel in Time

'Lieutenant Harmon.'

'Harmon, Lieutenant Anderson here. We've established cause of death for Harper. He died of poisoning. Strychnine. Very painful, very fast. The glass of milk was filled with it, the carton on the table as well.'

'Was it suicide?'

'Not likely. There was also an unopened carton in the refrigerator. This was also heavily laced with strychnine. Further examination found a minute puncture mark under the flap. The stuff was probably squirted in with a hypodermic. No reason for a suicide to play around like that.'

'But it is something that a murderer might do. I have a suspect for you. Colonel Wesley McCulloch.'

'Do you have any grounds for this suspicion?'

'I certainly do,' Troy said grimly, clutching the computer print-out so hard that the paper tore in his grasp. 'What I'm going to tell you is off the record for the moment. But McCulloch was the only one with access to security files here. He wiped Harper's record clean. It's gone completely. In its place he left a brief message for whoever accessed the file next.'

'Can you tell me what it is?'

'Yes. It's very short. As follows.

'Jig, I said that you weren't going to find me.'

'It has been over a week now since McCulloch vanished,' Admiral Colonne said. 'Have you come up with any answers yet?'

The meeting was taking place in the conference room again, not the admiral's communication cubby where most of his work was done. He could relax here, lean back in the deep chair and smoke his pipe. But while his body rested his mind was as alert as ever; Troy shifted under the penetrating gaze.

'Not as many as I would like,' Troy said, sliding the stack of papers out of the file onto the table before him. 'If anything we seem to have come up with more questions.'

'And they are…?'

'First and most important — what was McCulloch's motive for killing Allan Harper, the electronics engineer from the laboratory?'

'You're sure that he is the killer?'

'The police are so certain that they have issued a warrant for his arrest. McCulloch made absolutely no attempt to cover his trail. A forged prescription, in his own name, was located in a drug store not three blocks from his home. It was for a large amount of strychnine hydrochloride, the same substance found in the containers of milk. A handwriting expert believes that McCulloch wrote the prescription — while the doctor remembers him visiting his office some months ago during the course of a security investigation.'

'When he could have pocketed some prescription blanks?'

'Correct. But while we have evidence to tie McCulloch to the murder — we have no motive. But I keep coming back to the work done in the Weeks laboratory. I am sure that there is a tie-in between the gold, McCulloch's disappearance — and the murder as well. Have you been informed yet what kind of research is being done in the lab?'

'No. But at your suggestion I put the question to the authorities. They have responded and I have been cleared to receive all classified information about what they called the Gnomen project, on a need-to-know basis. So you can tell me just what they are doing there and how it affects this case.'

'That will make it a lot easier to explain my thinking. Could I please see the authorization?'

The admiral took the pipe from his mouth and leaned back, with real or assumed surprise. 'I'm your superior, my boy, you may take my word for it.'

'I can't, admiral,' Troy said grimly. 'However I will contact General Stringham…'

'There's no need, I have the authorization here.' He took an envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it across the table. Troy opened it, having the feeling that he had just passed a test that he hadn't even known he was taking. He scanned the page, checked the signature, then handed the papers back.

'Is this room security tight, admiral?' he asked.

'Swept twice a day. We can call it secure.'

'All right, then. The scientists at the lab have built a working time machine—'

'You had better be serious,' the admiral growled.

'Never more serious in my life. It is still being perfected — but I've seen it operate and it works. Now what use could McCulloch have wanted to put the machine to? Harper could have been in on this, he knew all about the operation of the machine. He could have been killed because he knew too much about the colonel's plans. There is even a chance that he might have known just what McCulloch planned to do with the gold.'

'Given that this time machine does work, and I will accept that for the moment without thinking about the terrifying possibilities inherent in the supposition, I can instantly think of one good plan. You could send the gold back in time to yourself. A man could make a fortune that way. Invest it at ten per cent, compounded, you could treble the sum in less than thirteen years. Send it back thirty years — ha!' The admiral took out a pocket calculator and punched quick figures into it. 'There's your answer, Troy. In thirty years that ten thousand would be worth — my goodness! — over one hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars. And his gold was worth a lot more than that. That would be motive enough.'

'It would be, sir. But the time machine doesn't work backwards. It just sends things into the future.'

'Then forget that.' The admiral cleared the calculator with a swift poke and put it back into his pocket. 'What else have you found out?'

'A few things. Corporal Mendez is not involved. He gave me a hard time when I interviewed him because McCulloch told him, and I quote, that a nigger MP was looking for trouble. But the urgent investigation that I ordered done on McCulloch has brought in a mountain of reports.' He tapped a thick sheaf of paper. 'This is an abstract of the material. Let me tell you some of the most important parts. First, and most important, McCulloch has been lying about himself ever since he got into the army. He tried for OCS but didn't make it, his high school marks and test results weren't good enough. So he worked his way up through the ranks. Everyone he talked to knew his background. He told anyone who would listen. Rich antebellum family fallen on bad times since the War between the States. That's what he always called the Civil War. But they still have an historical family name and are related to a lot of the great families in the South. Among his noted ancestors was the important Confederate General Ben McCulloch. It makes a great history.'

'It does. So what is wrong with that?'

'Everything. It's all a lie. The colonel's kinfolk appear to all be white trash, and he has had nothing to do with them since he left home. You might say that they are all spongers and grafters, with the whole lot on welfare as far as we can find out.'

'So what's wrong with that? Local boy makes good. It's an American success story.'

'Not quite. McCulloch has worked very hard to conceal this background from everyone — including those same relatives. Just once, as far as we can discover, one of them found him and paid a visit. A first cousin came to see him when he was stationed at Fort Dix. McCulloch gave him such a beating that the man was in the hospital for three weeks. At first there was talk of a lawsuit, but the cousin dropped the charges and went home. Rumour at the time had it that a large sum of money changed hands to shut him up.'

'I'm beginning to like your colonel less and less. What else have you found out?'

'That in the last year he has had some new interests that just don't fit his past history. You'll remember that he never read, never bought a book, never went to the movies or even looked at television. That all changed quite suddenly. He began to buy books, to go to libraries and museums. I am very curious to know why. The FBI is feeding all the details that we can uncover into a computer, to see if we can uncover trends, topics, interests of some kind that might explain what he was doing. And in about one hour I have an appointment that may help to clarify things.' Troy held up a letter.