Dictator

18

Steve shoveled in silence for the rest of the afternoon. He finally decided to call Hunter again on the ride home, after they had entered Moscow again. Even when the call was intercepted, as he was certain it would be, the movement of the truck through city streets would make locating the transmitter impossible. The NKVD would not be able to focus on a single truck and then hassle the people in his work brigade again. He would just have to be careful about exactly what he said.

The trucks came to pick them up when the sun was low in the west. All the workers began climbing wearily out of the ditches and plodding toward the trucks. Steve glanced around for Jane, then saw Judy quickly working her way toward the neighboring work brigade.

“Come on.” Steve grabbed Jane’s arm and pulled her after him. He tried to follow Judy, but she had a substantial head start. In the crowd of people moving toward the trucks, the only way he could catch her was to run and dart through the crowd, drawing everyone’s attention.

“What’s she doing?” Jane asked quietly, hurrying along next to him. “Did she tell you?”

“No, but I’m sure she wants to ride back with the other brigade.”

“We’ll never catch her. She’s already climbing into one of the trucks.” Jane stopped.

“I didn’t think they’d let her on the wrong truck,” said Steve, reluctantly pulling up, also. “She said everything was so well organized.”

“I guess she got herself lost in the crowd,” said Jane. “Everybody’s exhausted, including the guys who watch over the work brigades.”

“At least she looks the part enough to do that,” said Steve, with a tired grin. “I couldn’t.”

“We better get on our own truck,” said Jane. “Before it leaves without us.”

“Come on.” Steve glanced one more time at Judy, who smiled at them from the back of the truck she had mounted. He hoped she knew what she was doing. They could not call each other without risking being overheard by locals. At least for now, she was on her own.

Hunter spent the day quietly in the prisoner pen. Very few people spoke and he did not initiate conversation with anyone. They had been fed a tasteless gruel in the middle of the afternoon. Otherwise, the guards merely walked through the corridor on patrol once every hour.

As the hours passed, Hunter considered his situation. At first he expected that the NKVD would eventually take him out and question him further. The additional contact would have brought him new data and allowed him to make more judgments about how to free himself.

However, that had not happened. During the course of the day the NKVD had shown no interest in any of the prisoners. Now Hunter had to consider that perhaps the agents planned no further contact with any of them for a substantial period of time. Theoretically, they might all be shipped to another prison without any more interrogations.

The First Law pressed him internally to help these people. All of them were probably headed for either torture here or a slow death in the Siberian labor camps. Of course, his First Law imperative not to change history took precedence.

However, the internal stress was building. He remained in some danger of being neutralized by the conflict. Finally, of course, he was useless to his team while he simply sat in a cell. Late in the afternoon, he decided that he would have to take action to free himself.

The next time one of the guards came down the hall on his routine patrol, Hunter walked over to the bars. Every other prisoner in the pen was watching to see what he would do. No one spoke.

“I have changed my mind,” Hunter said loudly to the guard. “Tell the agents I have changed my mind.”

He could hear disapproving murmurs from the crowd behind him. The guard stopped, studying his face suspiciously. Then he came closer.

“You changed your mind?” The guard folded his arms. “About what?”

“I would like to speak to the agents who arrested me,” Hunter said calmly.

“Oh, would you?” The guard smiled grimly. “And why would they like to speak with you?”

“I did not answer their Questions previously. I am willing to do so now.” Hunter, of course, would have to improvise those answers. Right now, his focus was simply on getting out of this pen.

“Maybe you already had your chance.” The guard snickered. “Why don’t I just let you rot right here? Or maybe I’ll just let you freeze. Where you’re going, that will be easy.” He laughed harshly.

Hunter realized suddenly that the guard was angling for a bribe of some kind. Other prisoners might, from time to time, be able to arrange a bribe through family members or friends. Hunter did not have that choice.

“The agents will be very grateful when they hear what I have to say,” said Hunter. “They will appreciate the guard who brought me to them.”

“Yeah? How do I know that?”

“I have information about the Germans,” said Hunter. “If you do not report that I am willing to cooperate, then one of the guards on another shift will. He will get the credit. Those agents will not like hearing that you delayed my information from reaching them.”

The guard studied him without speaking.

Hunter forced himself to smile. “Maybe you will join me in here, comrade.”

“The Germans,” the guard said to himself, uncertainly. He looked at Hunter without speaking.

“Let him out,” called one of the other prisoners. He was followed by a few calls of agreement from others.

Most of the prisoners remained absolutely silent.

“Well, why didn’t you say this was about the war?” The guard drew himself up. “Of course I will speak to the agents for you. This is a matter of patriotism.”

Ishihara drove as fast as he dared, using all of his faculties to escape the NKVD car behind them. As they rode roughly over the open, frozen ground, Ishihara scanned the terrain with magnified vision. He picked out the smoothest pieces of ground, utilizing his precise eye-hand coordination to steer so that the tires would get the best traction and the clearest path. Gradually, he began to circle back toward the road they had taken from Moscow.

As Ishihara drove, he watched the pursuit car in the rearview mirror as much as he could. He observed that the human driver behind them was not handling the steering over open ground nearly as well. The NKVD agent was not able to hit the Quick turns, twists, and shifts of gears that Ishihara could maintain. As a result, the pursuit car bumped and bounced much more severely. Ishihara slowly gained ground, leaving the other car behind.

Behind them, the sun was already down. Through the waning light, he could barely see the unpaved road which he and Wayne had taken to reach the ditches. Some of the trucks carrying workers back to Moscow were visible on it, the beams of their headlights marking its path. Ishihara headed for the road.

Wayne turned to look over his shoulder at the car following them. “Finally! We’re leaving them behind now, aren’t we? You see that?”

“Yes.” Suddenly Ishihara picked up another communication from the car behind them to their colleagues. “They have realized it, too.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Up to now, they had not called for help.”

“Really? Why not?” Wayne looked at him in surprise. “What’s going on now?”

“I believe they wanted to catch us and take all the credit for themselves. However, they just radioed our position and direction for the first time to the NKVD at large.”

“Oh, no!”

“Do not panic. The nearest NKVD cars which have responded are well behind us. They were spread out along the length of the ditches and have not returned to Moscow.”

“But Moscow must have plenty more agents! They’ll cut us off on our way back to the city.”

“They will try,” Ishihara said calmly. He knew that Wayne needed some reassurance. Since Ishihara did not have any good news for him, he tried to convey confidence through a calm and reassuring demeanor.

“But what are we going to do?” Wayne asked frantically. “I mean, at some point we’ll have to jump in time again. But I still hate to do that.”

“The trucks on the road haven’t answered by radio; I don’t think they have radios. I think we should be able to reach the edge of Moscow without being caught. At that point, we have a chance to get lost in the city.”

“But the whole NKVD will be coming for us now, won’t they?” Wayne looked behind him again.

“Yes, I expect so. Once we have eluded the immediate pursuit in Moscow, we shall have to plan on abandoning the car out of sight and escaping on foot.”

“Okay.” Wayne looked at him for a moment, a little calmer now. “Okay. Just tell me what to do.”

Ishihara decided not to tell Wayne at this time that he was not sure what to do. Leaving the car somewhere in Moscow was not enough. To escape the current pursuit effectively, without moving through time again, they required a crowd of people in which to lose themselves and shelter for the night.

By the time Ishihara reached the road, the NKVD car following them had fallen well behind. Its headlights bounced crazily in the darkness. Ahead of Ishihara and Wayne on the road, the trucks were roughly a half kilometer ahead.

Ishihara drove in silence, gradually catching up to the ponderous trucks. Since the car pursuing them would soon reach this road, too, and speed up, he passed the first truck. When he could, he passed the next one. Slowly and patiently, he moved to the front of the convoy and eventually faced an open road to Moscow.

In the distance behind them, he soon saw the headlights of the pursuit car swinging around the trucks, also. Soon they were in a simple race on the frozen, unpaved highway. Ishihara drove as fast as the car would safely go, still using the edge that his robotic skills and reflexes gave him. Slowly, they simply pulled away from the car behind them.

When Ishihara came to an intersecting road near the edge of Moscow, he slammed on the brakes and took the turn sharply. The tires squealed and Wayne hooked one arm over the back of his seat to steady himself.

“I apologize,” said Ishihara. “But from now on, we are in greater danger, as you mentioned earlier, of being surrounded by the NKVD.”

“We have to find a place to abandon the car,” said Wayne. “Right?”

“Perhaps not yet. I have the address of the work brigade in which MC 4 was working.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me!” Wayne laughed suddenly, a little anxiously.

“I was concerned about escaping the pursuit,” said Ishihara. “If we were caught, I did not want to harm you by adding additional disappointment.”

“That changes everything! Let’s just go get him-if more NKVD guys don’t find us first.”

“We are on our way now,” said Ishihara. “I am taking an evasive route. Now that we have the complex of city streets in which to lose ourselves, I believe we have a good chance of success.”

“What about their radio communication-are they going to surround us or something?”

“They are trying already,” Ishihara said calmly. “The pursuit car has continued to radio ahead for help. However, as long as they use the radio to communicate and report their positions, I shall know where each of their cars is moving.”

Wayne nodded. “Okay. Good.”

Ishihara chose not to worry him further by telling him just how close the pursuit had become.