TW09 The Lilliput Legion NEW (10 page)

His winnings enabled him to purchase a new suit of clothes and have a satisfying dinner in a Chinese restaurant. He then found a different Off Track Betting parlor and repeated the performance, placing larger bets and spreading them out more. He slept that night in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, using the name—but not the credit cards—of the man whose wallet he had stolen. The next morning, he had room service send up breakfast and a copy of
The Wall Street Journal.

He spent several hours looking over the stock market and commodities reports, then without leaving the room, clocked ahead one day and went out to pick up that day's copy of
The Wall Street Journal,
taking care to note the time so that he could avoid encountering himself the following morning. Having picked up the paper, he clocked back to the previous day and spent another several hours in the hotel comparing the performance of the various stocks and commodities. Then he took a cab to a brokerage firm on Wall Street and opened an account with twenty thousand dollars in cash, using the identity of his mugging victim, Charles Forman. He then took a cab to the public library and spent the rest of the day reading historical survey texts. It was not as efficient as computer learning, but it would do for a beginning.

He returned to the hotel that evening, had dinner, went to bed, and left a wake-up call for seven A.M., early enough to ensure that he could leave the room before he was due to clock in from the previous day. He had breakfast in a coffee shop, then went back and checked out of the hotel. By now, Charles Forman would probably have reported the theft of his credit cards and cash, and if he had the time, he might possibly have gotten around to getting a new driver's license, but it would never have occurred to him that someone might use his name and social security number to open an account. He'd be more concerned with fraudulent charges on his credit cards, which Hunter had avoided doing, merely using the cards to reinforce his position, by allowing the broker to catch a glimpse of the gold American Express card while he was filling out his account application.

By the end of the week, Hunter was living in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. He had purchased a conservative wardrobe at Brooks Brothers (for visits to the brokerage firm and lunch at '21') and somewhat sleeker, more fashionable suits at Barney's (for the track and dinners in Little Italy). He made daily trips to Belmont Park by rented limousine, increasing his cash flow dramatically each time and attracting attention with his unerring instinct and ostentatious style. Some people started to approach him and he made his choices carefully after some initial probing conversation on both sides. He traded tips for information. And for certain services and introductions.

His disbelieving stockbroker had about a million question but wouldn't dare to ask a single one so long as he could make the same investments as his apparently clairvoyant client. The broker didn't want to scare him off. And in order to be helpful the broker fell all over himself when Hunter requested a few favors, such as certain introductions to certain types of people.

By the end of the month. Hunter had become a multimillionaire with bank accounts in Switzerland and the Bahamas He had also established a number of different identities for himself, each fully documented and backed up by impeccable forged credentials, enabling him to drop the identity of his mugging victim, leaving the unfortunate Mr. Forman with interesting tax problem. Hunter was soon on a first name basis with some of the most influential citizens of New York City, Miami and Geneva, as well as some of the most powerful figures in organized crime. He was moving fast, establishing connections, putting out feelers, making inroads. Surviving. Doing business. And, as the old saying went, sooner or later everyone does business with everyone. Though Hunter didn’t know it, through one of his connections, he had started doing business with the Network.

"What do you mean, you lost him? How the devil could you lose him? Explain yourself!"

The officer in the black beret and combat fatigues stood stiffly at attention atop the mahogany writing table, all six and a half inches of him. His fatigues were crisply pressed and his combat boots were spit shined to a glass-smooth gloss. He looked like a toy soldier, except that this toy soldier was alive.

"It wasn't anything we could have foreseen, sir," he said his voice as formally correct as his stiff, military bearing. "The mission plan was followed to the letter. Gulliver was released in a manner that allowed him to think he had escaped. We tracked him until he returned to England and then the assault team was clocked out to make the strike. It turned out that Gulliver was not alone at the time of the engagement, a contingency we had prepared for, but there was no way we could have prepared for the target employing a warp disc to escape, sir."

"He did
what?"

The officer winced from the volume of the full-sized voice. "Used a warp disc to escape, sir.-

"Gulliver?
Impossible! Where the hell would he obtain a warp disc? And how would he know how to use one?"

"As I've already stated, sir," the Lilliputian officer continued, "Gulliver was not alone. The advance scouts clocked in first, according to the mission plan, and they established that there was another man with Gulliver. The mission plan called for them to wait until the target was alone before calling in the strike. However, the scouts were able to establish that the man Gulliver was with was a Temporal Observer and they decided to go ahead and call in the strike."

“An Observer? Are you sure? How did they know?"

"Gulliver was apparently suffering from a hangover. The man gave him some aspirin. The scouts also observed that he was writing a report. In shorthand, with a ballpoint pen."

"Go on.”

"Based on what they saw, the scouts called in the strike and the field commander made the decision to go in. Because the Observer was deemed the greater threat, he was designated the priority target. The intention was to take him out quickly and then take care of Gulliver, but the man was a good soldier. He kept his cool under fire and used his own body to shield Gulliver while he put the warp disc on him and clocked him out. The transition coordinates must have been preset; he didn't have time to reprogram the disc. The Observer could have escaped himself, but Gulliver had all the information. It was an unexpected move, although a tactically sound one, assuming you don't mind committing suicide."

"What did they do with the body?"

"The field commander determined that with the target clocked out, presumably back to the Observer's base, a Search and Retrieve team could be coming through at any time, so they left the body, clocked out the dead and wounded and got the hell out of there. With Gulliver clocked ahead to tell them what happened, destroying the body would have been pointless in any case. And too time consuming. The risk was deemed unjustifiable."

"Unjustifiable, indeed! All they did was leave behind incontrovertible evidence to confirm what happened."

"Even using lasers to dismember the corpse, disposing of a full-sized human body would have taken hours," said the colonel. "And with Gulliver in their hands, they'd already know what happened."

"Assuming the shock of the experience didn't make him take leave of his senses. According to your report, he was already disoriented and drinking heavily. Either way, the T.I.A. will be investigating for certain now. Allowing Gulliver to escape was a serious mistake. Your team bungled the entire mission and jeopardized our security."

The Lilliput colonel drew himself up to his full height, but since his full height was only six and a half inches, the effect was negligible.

"I lost
fifteen
men on that mission," he said, through gritted teeth. "And six seriously wounded, four of them critically. Twenty-five men went out on what was supposed to be a routine training exercise and only
four
returned in one piece!"

"And what does that tell you, Colonel? Your assault team was almost completely wiped out by
one
man, and a mere Observer, at that! What do you think would have happened if he had been a Time Commando?"

"Sir, those men were green," the colonel said. "Only their commander and their sergeant had any field experience at all. It was supposed to be a routine training exercise. How were they supposed to expect—"

"They're supposed to expect
anything!
Anything at all! And be ready for it!
Nothing
is routine! Those fifteen men were lost because they were not good enough! And that was
your
responsibility, Colonel! It's
your
command! Don't come to me with excuses! I am not concerned with excuses, only with results! Is that clear?"

"Yes,
sir."

"The entire operation has been jeopardized as a result of this fiasco. I want you to Execute Plan Delta immediately."

Sandy Steiger's apartment on Threadneedle Street had been thoroughly cleaned up by the S & R team. There was no sign of the battle that had taken place there, nothing to indicate that it had been used as an Observer outpost.

Temporal Observers were trained to become completely assimilated into the time periods to which they were assigned. With the sole exception of the warp discs that they carried on their persons at all times, they were under strict orders to have nothing else that could not be obtained within their assigned time zone. In practice, however, this regulation proved difficult to enforce.

Observer postings were long term and often entailed hardship. It was difficult to resist smuggling back some seemingly inconsequential items.

Such things as deodorant, or toothpaste or even toilet paper were easily concealed and served to make the posting a bit more pleasant. A carefully doled out ration of cigarettes served to remind one of home just as much as they satisfied the cravings of a habit. A favorite paperback novel reread over and over by candlelight was a harmless way of maintaining contact with the world one came from, so long as precautions were taken to ensure that no one else would ever see the book, especially if the posting was in a time period when the only writing to be found was in the form of scrolls or illuminated manuscripts or cuneiform.

In the early days, a number of Observers became a bit too casual about following such regulations and, having gotten away with a few seemingly inconsequential items, they took to accumulating more. Miniature portable stereos with headphones began appearing in the 14th century. Minicomputers and microwave ovens were brought back to Victorian London. In one celebrated case, a tiny, portable holographic projection system smuggled back to 17th century America led to the burning of an Observer as a witch when she was seen (by a peeping tom) "consorting" with demons in her bedroom, demons who were, in actuality, merely holograms of actors in an entertainment feature. The Army finally clamped down and instituted the practice of surprise inspections with stiff penalties for the slightest infractions. Still, in many cases, Observers continued to smuggle back some small conveniences.

The S & R team had gone over Sandy Steiger's apartment with a fine tooth comb and, according to their report, they had found nothing more esoteric than some aspirin tablets, a ballpoint pen, some timed-release decongestant pills, a modern tooth brush and nine cartons of cigarettes concealed beneath a loose floor board. Their report stated that Sandy had clearly broken regulations, but the few items he had smuggled back, had not seemed very significant. They had no way of knowing that the contraband had been enough to cost Sandy his life. The S & R team had been quite thorough. Nevertheless, the commandos conducted their own search.

Gulliver stood by the door and watched them anxiously. He was clearly uncomfortable at being back in the same room where Sandy had been killed and where he had almost met the same fate.

"One thing puzzles me," he said, as Creed Steiger, Finn Delaney, and Andre Cross carefully searched through the apartment once again. "Since you have this astonishing ability to travel back and forth through time, is it not possible that you could go back and prevent Sandy from being killed by those horrible Lilliputians?"

"You think I wouldn't save my own brother if I could?" said Steiger, grimly.

"Why can't you?"

"It's difficult to explain, Doctor, but the fact is it would be too dangerous. What's done is done. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Can you not tell me why?" said Gulliver.

"Go ahead," Delaney said. "We'll check out the sitting room."

Steiger sighed and sat down on the bed. "Very well, Doctor. I'll see if I can explain it in a way that you can understand. Think of time as a river. A very swiftly flowing river. That current of that river is the timestream, specifically, the inertia flow of the timeline."

Furrows appeared in Gulliver's forehead as he frowned trying to follow it. Steiger grunted and shook his head.

"Look, just imagine that the current of our river of time is the force that impels events, all right? And the length of the river itself is all of history, the timeline. Got that?"

Gulliver nodded. "Yes, I think I understand."

"Good," said Steiger. "Now, when someone from the future, someone like myself, goes back into the past, he risks doing something that would somehow interfere with the flow of events. Actually, everything I do back here constitutes form of interference. Even my presence in this room is a form of interference, because after all, there was a point in time at which, in this particular moment, I was never
in
this room at this particular moment, do you understand?"

Gulliver was frowning once again.

Steiger grimaced. "Hell, I told you it was complicated. Look, as we sit here right now, this very moment, I won't even be born for about another thousand years. And yet, here I am, sitting here and talking to you, a man who lived almost a thousand years before my time. That's an example of what we call temporal interference." He picked up a pillow. "Even an action as insignificant as my picking up this pillow is an example of temporal interference, because there was a point in time, before we came back here, when this moment passed and I was not
here
to pick up this pillow and the action of this pillow being picked up didn't happen, see?"