“This is hardly a suitable occasion for name calling. You youngsters are about to do something stupidly dangerous, and it was felt that I was the only person who had sufficient authority to dissuade you from your childish foolishness.”
” ‘It was felt?’ By who? Last time I heard, Tom and I owned two thirds of this outfit, so we’re the only ones around here with any clout!”
I cut in with, ” ‘Youngsters’? ‘Childish’? When we arrived here, Jim, we were all the same age, and the fact that you have decided to act like an old fart doesn’t give you any enhanced authority in our eyes. If you want us to have any respect for you, you should start by coming around now and then and having breakfast, or better yet a beer with us. As things are, well, you are just a silly, old fool who used to be a friend of mine. I mourn the loss of that friend, but you aren’t him any more.”
“Please, gentlemen, you are embarrassing me in front of my associates. This should be a memorable occasion, the first test of our first temporal canister with human occupants. Please, boys, just step aside and let those who are properly trained for the task enter the device.”
“Wrong,” I said. “First off, there’s nobody who’s ‘properly trained’ because nobody has ever done this before. Secondly, Ian and I know more about it than anyone else, so we’re going on the first trip. We have a digging crew scheduled to go with us, and a squad of infantry to handle any emergencies. The rest of you are not supposed to be here. I want you to leave. Please. Do it now.”
The managers and officials in the crowd looked uneasily at Jim and me, and then at one another, uncomfortable with receiving contradictory orders from the various parts of their upper management team. They didn’t like what was going on, but they didn’t leave, either. Not even my own damn subordinates.
Well, they’d hear from me later. First things first.
James Hasenpfeffer was not about to be ordered out. He marched ostentatiously over to the front of the canister’s heavy, vacuum-proof door and stood obstinately in front of the thing with his arms crossed. I glanced over to Bob McMahon, an infantry lieutenant I knew from drinking with him at the Bucket of Blood. He was wearing a period outfit, so I assumed that he was in charge of the infantry squad I’d ordered up. I was about to ask him to clear the area of non-essential personnel, but then I changed my mind.
Asking Bob to decide which of his bosses he was going to obey wouldn’t be fair to him. It would be better management technique to handle the problem myself.
With that thought in mind, I walked over to Hasenpfeffer, grabbed him by his carefully tailored wool lapels, and lifted him up in the air at arm’s length. I’ve always been a lot stronger than most people, and the modifications made on me by that annoying Killer doctor hadn’t weakened me one bit.
Jim was so shocked that someone would actually use physical force on him that he didn’t even struggle. I carried him like a limp doll over to the opposite wall and set him down. Meanwhile, Ian had cranked open the canister doors and was gesturing the construction workers inside. Embarrassed at being present at a disagreement among their upper management, they obeyed him with alacrity.
Hasenpfeffer got over his initial shock and became furious. You could see his complexion go from dead white to beet red, starting at the top of his slightly balding head and progressing downward. He started to move toward the opened canister when I heard a hissing, crackling sound.
A thin line appeared on the pavement in front of Hasenpfeffer’s polished, wingtip brogues. He came to an abrupt stop, and his face went from red back to white again.
Ian had his temporal sword in his hand.
“Jim, we just had a meeting of the Board of Directors, and you were outvoted on this one. Tom and I want to take a ride in our new time machine, and we’re going to do it. Now, go back to your office and administer something. Leave the technical stuff to the technical people.”
I could tell that Hasenpfeffer wanted to rant and rave a bit, but seeing that we were willing to use both force and violence, he thought better of it. He stalked away, muttering under his breath like a very old man.
I said, “Lieutenant, get your men in the canister. The train is leaving the station.”
As we sealed the door on the stationary vacuum canister and then the door on the traveling can, the orange, glowing Nixie tube numbers on the countdown timer said that we had four and a half minutes to go.
The controls used on these big canisters were almost exactly the same as those used on the small test canisters we’d used in the early part of the program. After all, we knew they worked, and we were producing them on an assembly line, so they were fairly cheap. They were automatic, and worked whether people were around or not. The only difference was that on the big canisters, there was a keyboard available, and if you knew what you were doing, you could reprogram the thing. Normally, though, it was to be just a matter of going aboard and letting it take you where you were supposed to go.
I sat down next to Ian, carefully sliding my steel sword down between the seats, and said, “Maybe we were a bit rough on our old friend. Maybe we shouldn’t have humiliated him in public the way we did.”
“Well, he was the one who made it public in the first damn place! If he wanted to talk it over with us, he could have come over to our places, or to our offices, or even invited us over to his. We could have discussed it privately, but no, he had to round up all of our managers at the shop, and our girlfriends, and act the thing out in front of them.”
“I didn’t like Barb and Ming Po being there either. I mean, yes, they’re both managers subordinate to us, but they both are a lot more than that, too. Jim used to be so slick when it came to handling people, but he sure botched this one. He didn’t really leave us much choice but to do what we did. It’s like he was having some sort of mental aberration, or delusions of power.”
“I don’t think he’s gone crazy. I mean, all three of us are getting used to being big shots, and generally getting things done our own way, but you and I have had the advantage of being engineers. Mother nature has a way of maintaining the humility of a man who works with her. Jim has had nothing to work with but people. It’s like you said, he’s not the same man any more. He’s gotten so used to having his every word be the law that he’s forgotten that he has partners in this business. We are the ones who made this whole thing possible. Jim just helped out with the business side of things,” Ian said.
“I don’t think that he looks at it that way. I think that he really has gotten old, administering this island and everything else. I think that he has put many, many years of his life into this project, doubling back and forth through time in machines that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
“So? Did we ask him to do that? Did we ever authorize him to go off on his own, and create this sick little society of time travelers who can’t think up a new joke, or invent a widget, or even whistle a tune unless somebody else plays it for them first? Was our opinion asked before the fruits of our labors were used to create an entire culture that I, for one, consider to be downright immoral?”
“Well, no, to all of your questions. But you’ve also got to ask, could we have done all of this without him? And you’ve got to answer no to that one, too.”
“True, but neither of us would have wanted to do all of this. We would have been quite content to run a profitable little business just outside of Ann Arbor, and maybe not so little a one at that. We probably wouldn’t have had all the palaces, and certainly not all the women, but we would have built a good life for ourselves, Tom.”
“I can’t argue with you. But things are what they are right now, and we’ve got to play it from here.”
“Right. And what we’ll do now is make our first trip into history.”
Ian’s timing was dead on, because just then the Nixie tubes read six zeros, and we left home.