Rebel in Time

Chapter 18

'What exactly is the question that you are asking? What things are special about the Sten-gun? I am afraid that I don't take your meaning, sir,' Dryer said. The curator turned the submachinegun over and over in his hands as though he were searching for an answer.

'Then I'm not expressing myself very well,' Troy said. 'Let me try again. We have a common ground in that neither of us looks at guns in the same way that the man in the street does. You are curator of the technological archives here, a specialist in weapons of all kinds, I'm a specialist too. I've used them in the field. As did Colonel McCulloch…'

'The colonel, yes. You were in about him some days ago, weren't you? Have you recovered my missing items yet?'

'No, but the case is still being worked on. That's why I need to know more about the gun the colonel walked away with. Is it a particularly accurate weapon? Does it have a high rate of fire, or low rate of stoppages?'

'No, quite the opposite, in fact. It was a gun designed in a great rush at the beginning of the Second World War. The rate of fire is slow, it is not very accurate — and the clip has a tendency to jam.'

'Not very attractive indeed,' Troy said. He picked the gun up himself now and ran his finger along the crude welds that held the receiver to the metal tube that formed the stock. 'Were many of them manufactured?'

'Over four million in all.'

'That's an awful lot of guns. But why? If the weapon was as unsatisfactory as you say, why on earth did they make so many?'

'Young man, you must understand the situation that existed at the time. The Germans were winning the war hands down. France and the Low Countries had been lost and the British were facing this deadly foe almost single-handedly. And they were fighting with few if any modern weapons. Despite all of the clear lessons about the future of modern warfare that the Spanish Civil War had spelled out, the British began the war without a submachinegun of any kind. It was a time of panic, the Germans were expected to invade at any moment. So any weapon was better than no weapon. This particular gun, the Sten-gun, was conceived in an atmosphere of extreme haste and emergency. Although it had all of the shortcomings I mentioned, it was nevertheless very simple to produce. Subcontractors literally made parts in converted barns and sheds. And it was cheap. Each one costing in the neighbourhood of around two pounds and ten shillings if my memory serves me correctly. That is less than six dollars. An unbelievable sum in this day of multi-million dollar weapons. So Sten-guns were churned out by the millions. This ugly little gun proved to be one of the most outstanding weapons in the Allied armoury. And that was only the Mark One, mind you. The Mark Two had an even more interesting history.'

Dryer laid the gun to one side, then unwrapped the other weapon that he had brought out of the storeroom. If it were possible, this one was even uglier than the previous one. There were file marks on the receiver, rough welds on the bolt housing. Dryer patted it affectionately.

'Over two million of these were made — in less than two years. Probably the most basic automatic weapon ever conceived, certainly the most basic submachinegun. The barrel is a simple steel tube held in place by a screwed-on jacket, the stock nothing but a piece of bent tubing. See, the firing mechanism could not be simpler, little more than a bolt and a spring. You pull the trigger and it blasts away. Sprays bullets like water from a hose. A deadly — yet simple — weapon.'

'Simple is the word. It couldn't be cruder if it were made by hand.'

Dryer smiled and patted the gun. 'But it was, Mr Harmon. Resistance fighters in many countries did make copies by hand. This one was manufactured in Copenhagen by the Danish resistance, right under the Germans' noses.'

The pieces of McCulloch's plan were beginning to click into place. Troy remembered very little about the weapons that the Civil War had been fought with — but he was certain that no gun like this had existed at the time. The colonel might be insane — but that did not mean that he was stupid. He knew weapons, he knew tactics — and he knew war. He had fought in Nam where a primitive army, fighting with weapons not even as good as this one, had licked the most technologically advanced country in the world. McCulloch must have learned his lesson well.

'Is there anything else I can tell you?' The words cut through Troy's dark thoughts, and he shook his head.

'No, no thank you, Mr Dryer. You've been of immense help. We'll let you know if there are any developments in this case. But just between the two of us, I think you had better write the gun and the blueprints off as shrinkage. You'll not get them back.'

'Oh, dear, that is bad news. The blueprints can of course be replaced, but the weapon itself was unique.'

'Sorry. Good day, Mr Dryer, and thank you again for the help.'

The drive out to the laboratory was a quick one, and Troy had only a single moment's worry as he drove up to the outer gate and the guard waved him down. Had Major Van Diver remembered his security pass — and had it cancelled?

'Message for you, Lieutenant. From Doctor Delcourt. She says for you to come to her office when you get in.'

'Thanks, Charley, I'll go there now.'

He drove the opposite way around the buildings to avoid the security office. If they had forgotten about his pass he wasn't going to remind them about it by letting them see him now. He used the back stairs that emerged close to the director's office.

The secretary sent him right in. Bob Kleiman was there, sprawled back in a chair and sipping from a mug of coffee; he waved hello with his free hand. Roxanne looked up from the papers spread across her desk and smiled.

'Troy, come in,' she said. 'You got my message then. Your office said that you weren't in, but they would let you know.'

'I was on my way here in any case: the guard at the gate told me you wanted to see me.'

'Yes. To let you know that we have pinned down exactly the temporal displacement your Colonel McCulloch used.' She picked a sheet of paper off her desk. 'He returned to this date, to the Fourth of July, eighteen fifty-eight. It appears that our friend the colonel must be quite a patriot.'

'I doubt that very much. He must have other reasons altogether. Probably wanted to be sure that he could arrive there without being seen. On the glorious Fourth everyone might be watching the parades and that kind of thing.'

'I'm sure that you are right. I never thought about it that way.'

'I have,' Troy said, grimly. 'For some time now I have been trying to get inside the colonel's head, to reason like him — react like him. I think that I have succeeded to some degree. But it's not very nice in there. The colonel is a sickie. I won't go into every step of the logic involved, but I am pretty certain now that I know what plan he had in mind. It may sound a little far-fetched, so try not to laugh when I tell you.'

'Nothing is laughable about that man,' Kleiman said. 'Allan Harper was my friend. That poisoning, that was an awful way to die.'

They listened, patiently, with disbelief at first — then with growing understanding. 'You make a strong case,' Roxanne said, 'and what you say could be true. It is an insane idea — but McCulloch is no longer sane, is he?'

'Nutty as a fruit cake,' Kleiman said. 'And let me tell you, I hope that Troy is right and that this is what he has done. Because it means that he has gone forever and, from our point of view, he is long since dead. He may have lived for a time in the past, but at least he never brought this particular insane plan to fruition.'

'How do you know?' Troy asked.

'Because history hasn't changed, has it? The South lost the war and that is that.'

'They lost the war here — but perhaps they didn't in a parallel branch of time,' Roxanne said.

Troy lifted his eyebrows. 'I don't follow you.'

'One of the many theories of the nature of time. It rejects the most accepted theory which holds that time is like a river, sweeping from the past, through the focal point of the present, and on into the future. Unchangeable. We can watch it, but we can't affect it. A modern version of the ancient argument of predestination. But this comes into instant conflict with the argument for free will. If the future cannot be changed, then we are all just puppets of time, predestined to live out our lives with no more freedom of choice than actors in a movie. But if we have free will, and can alter our future, then from the point of view of the future — we will have altered the past.'

'Deep stuff,' Kleiman said. 'Physics shading off into philosophy. But we really have to think about these problems now, since we know that travel through time is possible. Which brings us to this other theory about the nature of time, the multi-branching time of parallel possibilities. For instance, let us say that the British killed George Washington as a traitor before he could win the Revolution. If that had happened, the US today might still be a British colony. So perhaps there exists another universe where this did happen, a world parallel to our own. There may be an infinity of such universes, each one brought about by a probability in time, a choice, a selection made that launched a different possible world.'

'Some theory,' Troy said.

'Indeed it is,' Kleiman agreed. 'Which returns us to our starting point. If the theory of parallel probabilities exists, then it doesn't matter to us what McCulloch did back in the past. It can't affect us. If he accomplished nothing, then our world remains the way it is. If he got away with his fiendish plans, then he started another branch in time and we are still not affected. But if time can be changed for us — and it hasn't changed, why then, his plans have failed.'

'You have forgotten another possibility,' Troy said. 'Perhaps his plans failed because someone stopped him. Someone from the present time who knew what he was up to, who went back and prevented him from carrying those plans through.'

'An interesting speculation,' Roxanne agreed, 'but one which we will never be able to answer. It's another time paradox. Either the colonel failed because he was doomed to fail, therefore there is no need for someone to stop him. Or he was stopped by someone from the present, but since we know he has been stopped there is no reason to stop him. What's done is done, and it is certainly not our problem.'

'I still think that it is,' Troy said grimly. 'The colonel, I can't forget him. Nor can I forget what he has done — and what he might do. Whatever you say, I still feel that he has to be stopped.'

'If he could be stopped, fine, but how can that be done?' Kleiman asked. 'I think you will find that is not an easy question to answer. He has escaped justice here by fleeing through time. Perhaps the best thing for all of us to do is just to forget him. We can do that if we concentrate on the fact that as far as this world is concerned he has long since been dead and buried in the past.'

'That's all right for us here, today,' Troy agreed. 'But what about the people whose lives he might affect? We know that he is there, in the past, with some murderous plan. Isn't there a way that he could be apprehended?'

'I doubt it,' Kleiman said. 'What do we do? Send a message back through time to the police? Warn them to be on the lookout for one Wesley McCulloch wanted for murder in the next century?'

'No, that's impossible, I realize that. But you have the time machine. There must be some way it can be utilized to stop him. If only there were some way to send a posse after him, to bring him in. It wouldn't even need a posse. One man could do it. One determined man. McCulloch wouldn't be expecting it, not to be tracked down through time.'

'Agreed. But what you are talking about is too much to ask any man to do. To leave the world where he has been born, to go back in time to the past, to a more dangerous existence. And to know that this was forever, a one-way trip. No, Troy, forget it. The colonel's gone — and good riddance I say.'

'Yes, I know that he's gone from here — but I can't forget that he is still causing trouble somewhere, or somewhen, else.'

'But we have analysed that situation in great detail,' Kleiman said. 'There are no options open, no way that it can be done. I think you will find that you have posed a question that is impossible to answer. He has escaped justice in the present by fleeing through time. The best thing that you can do now is just to forget him. As far as the world is concerned he is dead and buried in the past.'

'No,' Troy said. 'I won't forget him.'

He said it firmly, without emotion. He had reached a decision, something he knew that he had been thinking about for days now at a subconscious level. The realization had finally surfaced, and with it the knowledge that the decision had already been made.

'McCulloch is not going to escape. Because I'm going after him.'