Dictator

6

Steve angrily marched down the hall away from Room F-12 in the Bohung Institute. He was mad at Jane for arguing with him. Even more, he was mad at himself for handling his resignation so poorly.

As he furiously replayed the conversation in his mind, he realized that he should have raised the subject earlier. Jane had a legitimate point about that. He could have shared his thoughts over breakfast, while he was still undecided.

At the same time, the episode reminded him that he really did not belong with educated, sophisticated company. Jane and Hunter would have handled themselves properly. So would all the historians who had joined them for one mission or another. He was better off up in his mountain shack.

Steve also pictured Jane in his mind. He had grown to like her a lot and, in Jamaica, he had felt they were growing closer. Then in Germany, they had not spent much time alone together. After all, those missions were serious, not a time to socialize. In any case, he still saw no reason that a woman with her education would be interested in a desert rat like himself. He was better off just going home.

Steve turned the last corner into the main lobby and headed for the front doors. Then running footsteps behind him got his attention. Puzzled, he stopped and turned around.

“Steve!” Hunter’s voice boomed from down the hall. When he came bounding around the corner, his long black overcoat flapping around him, he was recognizable, but much altered-shorter and broader than usual. “We need help.”

“Huh? Come on, Hunter. We already settled that. You don’t need me.”

“I have an emergency, Steve. We already left.” Hunter walked up to Steve, calmly now.

“You already left-and came back again?”

“Prematurely, I assure you. We have not even begun to locate MC 4.”

“What happened? You would never even consider coming back here like this in the middle of the other missions.”

“The First Law gave me no other choice. I had to bring Judy back here to escape the potential of extreme harm. Jane is in 1941 alone. Please help.”

“Well, you can rejoin Jane right after you left her, can’t you? You can take care of her.”

“I have considered this. The society we entered is more complex than that of the Roman frontier or the Jamaican buccaneers. The Stalin regime is very dangerous and unpredictable. Finding MC 4 near the front of a major war will be more difficult in the industrial age than in earlier times. I am desperate for your help.”

“You sure?” Steve looked at him skeptically.

“I even took another step out of desperation. In prior missions, I would not knowingly allow any local to see the team appear or vanish in time, because it might set up lines of thinking or behavior that have a significant effect on them. However, I had to escape with Judy from a confined room. NKVD agents saw us go in and will find us gone, even though the room has no exit except the one they are watching.”

“Really? That’s a big change for you.” Steve suddenly realized how serious this was. “You must have been desperate.”

“I have just taken two risks I would not have considered before. The irrationality and viciousness of the NKVD required me to take this lesser risk, rather than allow them the chance to torture Judy for information.”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “If they questioned her under torture, and she broke, they would learn that people were coming back from the future.”

“These were among my considerations, yes.”

“Well, I approve of your looser interpretation of chaos theory. But if any of you had changed history, it would be different right now, already.”

“It could be changed, right now, in ways that we have not noticed in the few seconds since I have returned. Judy and I must go back. Please join us.”

Steve sighed, but nodded. As much as he did not want to rejoin the team, he did like feeling needed. “I have one request, though, Hunter.”

“What is that?”

“Would you change your appearance back to normal, at least until this masquerade becomes necessary again? I can’t get used to this.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

Steve walked with him quickly back to Room F-12.

In the room, Judy was pacing anxiously. “Are we ready? Can we go right back?”

“One more moment,” said Hunter. He altered the shape of one forefinger slightly and plugged it into an electrical outlet. “I used an usually large amount of my stored energy during the night. Recharging from here will be very brief. Steve will come with us this time.”

“Ivana can’t survive the NKVD,” said Judy frantically. “We have to help her somehow. Let’s go right back.”

“No,” Hunter said firmly. “The NKVD took you because you happened to be with her. It was the result of our presence and I could justify taking you away again. However, the NKVD came for Ivana for reasons of their own. We did not precipitate her arrest in any way.”

“You mean you refuse to help her?” Judy’s eyes were wide with shock.

“I must. The First Law imperative to avoid changing history requires it.”

“Hunter,” she wailed. “Please. How can one elderly woman’s freedom change the course of history? How? Tell me that, will you?”

“The potential chain of events we could set in motion would be impossible to predict.”

“Maybe it won’t make any difference. If you can’t predict it, you can’t know.”

“The chance of harm to all the humans in the time line is too great to risk,” Hunter said patiently.

“All right. All right.” Judy took a deep breath. “Just indulge me for a moment, though.”

“How?”

“Give me an example of how saving Ivana might ruin history as we know it. She’s already old, Hunter. And she probably won’t survive long after this battle anyway, but her suffering could be eased.”

“Ivana alone is not the problem. We must also consider the NKVD agents with whom she is in contact. The agents are younger and may survive into the Cold War era at the end of World War II, less than four years from her time. Their actions and opinions may be influenced by what happens to her-”

“Specifically, Hunter? What could these agents do that would matter?”

“Perhaps these agents will be politically active when the Soviet Union comes to an end in the early 1990s,” said Hunter. “What if seeing the cruelty of their system to a helpless old woman in 1941 helped to change their opinion of the system they served? If we rescue Ivana somehow, maybe they will have one less doubt about their country.”

“That’s a very small change.”

“I hate to argue his side,” said Steve. “But in this case, I agree. These agents may have relatives who will remember family stories about this time, too, and be influenced.”

“Ivana has two sons in the Red Army,” Judy said slowly.

“They may die in the war or they may live into the Cold War years, too,” said Hunter. “What if the fate of their mother spurred them to participate in the later dismantling of the Soviet Union? If she is rescued, they might-”

“Might not turn against the system,” Judy finished for him. She sighed. “I get it. I guess I always did. I just wanted to hear you convince me.”

“I am already worried that vanishing with you out of the room the way we did may have disturbed the NKVD agents significantly,” said Hunter.

Judy nodded solemnly.

“Judy, did the agents photograph you?”

“Uh, no. They just put us in the room and made us wait Maybe they were working out what questions to ask or something.”

“You are still in danger of being recognized by the two agents who took you. We shall have to be especially careful to avoid them.”

“Yes, I see.”

“What’s my identity this time?” Steve asked. “I can’t be a slave, as I was in Roman times. But you still have to account for my not being Russian.”

“Judy, do you have a suggestion?” Hunter asked.

“You can be a Turk from Central Asia,” said Judy. “Or a Tatar, of old Mongol descent Both were in the Soviet Union at that time.”

“I took the sleep course for Russian, but not Mongol or any kind of Turkish,” said Steve.

“In Moscow, Russian will be sufficient,” said Judy. “Hunter, are we ready?”

“Yes. We shall go back to Moscow the following day, well after sunup, to look for Jane.”

“What if something happened to her during the night?” Steve asked.

“I want to avoid returning Judy during that same night,” said Hunter. “If something has happened to Jane, we shall return here and then go back earlier to find her if necessary. For now, we shall return after people have begun their daily routine, so that we can get lost in the crowd. Now that I have returned to my original appearance, the NKVD will not recognize me.” He turned to Judy. “Perhaps we should wait while you get some sleep. You will lose a night’s sleep with my plan.”

“I’m too upset to sleep now,” said Judy. “I want to go right back.”

“Let’s go,” said Steve.

Early the next morning, Jane woke alone in the corner after a nervous, fitful sleep. She got in line with her companions for breakfast and then returned to her corner to eat a thin, tasteless gruel. After returning her bowl and spoon, she queued up for the rest room.

Jane finally took her turn and moved into a stall. She flushed the toilet to cover her voice somewhat from her neighbors on each side. Then she switched on her lapel pin.

“Hunter? It’s Jane. Where are you?”

She waited for an answer as long as she dared. She repeated the message twice more, flushing each time to create more noise. Other people came and went. When she realized that Hunter could not or would not respond, she gave up and left the rest room. Now she was really alone.

Out in the main room again, she heard the rumbling of trucks outside. Everyone else gradually began moving toward the front door. She wanted to stay here, where Hunter could find her, but she did not dare risk attracting attention. To avoid that, she would have to stay with everyone else.

No one else spoke very much. Everyone plodded patiently out to one specific truck and climbed into the back, where picks and shovels were stored in barrels. For them, of course, this was an established routine.

Jane boarded also and soon found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with the other women out in the cold, clear winter morning. Their truck, part of a convoy, jerked and moved away. The convoy wound through the streets of Moscow, stopping at other large buildings that had been converted to emergency housing. When all the trucks were full, they snaked out along an unpaved highway to the west.

All the women in the work brigade were well bundled against the cold. Jane could not remember if Judy had told her how long they had been doing this. No snow lay on the ground right now, but Jane could tell by the way the truck bounced and rumbled on the unpaved road that the mud was frozen solid. At one point, she overheard a woman say that the temperature was about minus twenty centigrade.

Finally Jane saw the ditches appear in the distance. As the convoy turned to run parallel to them, heading for the ends still under construction, Jane looked down at them. She estimated that the nearest ditches were about eight meters wide and three or four meters deep.

When the truck creaked to a halt, Jane jumped to the ground with the others and accepted a shovel from someone. No one told her what to do, so she followed the other women. They walked down an earthen ramp into the middle of the ditch.

Some women stood in the center of the ditch, digging the deepest groove. They moved dirt to an intermediate ledge, where other women shoveled it up to the surface. There, a few more women began arranging the dirt into a ridge on each side of the ditch to make the ditch seem even deeper.

Relatively few men were in the brigade. The ones Jane could see were either too old for the military or else injured in some way. The men took picks to the undisturbed, frozen ground at each end of the ditch and began to break it loose.

Jane could see that the purpose of the brigade was to create a ditch big enough and steep enough that German tanks would go front-down into them so sharply that they could not roll forward to come up the other side. Jane picked out a spot a short distance from the other women and switched on her lapel pin. That way, at least, she would hear Hunter in the unlikely event that he called her, despite their agreement that he should not risk it. Right now, it was her best hope. Then she started to dig. If nothing else, the activity helped her keep warm.

Hunter chose to return at midday following the night he left. As before, he took his team to a spot outside the city to avoid being noticed on their arrival. They landed east of Moscow, on the opposite side of the city from the front. He hoped that would help them avoid army patrols from either side.

“You going to call Jane?” Steve asked. “I’m worried about her.”

“I do not dare, at least until taking the risk becomes justified,” said Hunter. “I am not receiving any sound from her, which means she has either turned off her lapel pin or else she is out of range. I calculate the chance of her being surrounded by other people to be extremely high. Jf her lapel pin is turned off or out of range, calling her will not matter. If it is turned on and within range, I would risk attracting attention.”

“Wait a minute,” said Steve. “She’s been through this long enough to know how it works. If it’s turned on, that means she figures it’s safe to hear from you.”

“At this time I will not take the risk,” said Hunter. “We must walk back to the warehouse and see if she is there.” He pointed toward the city.

“Look that way,” said Judy, pointing north as they began to walk.

Hunter saw a faint, dark line on the horizon, too vague to identify. “Do you know what that is?”

“The Sixteenth and Twentieth Soviet armies are encamped that direction,” said Judy. “They’ll be opening the counterattack soon, to drive the Germans back from Moscow. I think we’re looking at the very southern end of their line.”

“Can they help us in any way?” Hunter asked.

Judy shook her head emphatically. “No. The military has political commissars all through it.”

“They are as unpredictable as the NKVD?”

“Well…let’s just say that the potential exists all through the Soviet system. We should avoid all the authorities as much as possible.”