Allan whistled. “No shit?”
‘ ‘None. Now, how this was to have occurred, I do not know, but I have been assured that eventually I would have had access to the president’s ear, and as such, would have, could have, influenced national policy in times of great crisis. The two world wars I have read about? Those and other pivotal events would have been substantially altered by my presence.”
“Damn. For better or for worse?”
“Who can say for sure? That’s why they call it an alternate event horizon. The flow of time-the time line would have been different.”
“So what? Go back anyway. What will be, will be.”
“Que sera sera, Allan?”
The sec man showed off his own shining white teeth. “Damn straight. And fuck Doris Day.”
“I would risk doing as they wish, my friend, but with the knowledge I now possess, who is to say how I might change things? My own guess is that if I go back with their mental programming, the facts of the future I already know consciously or subconsciously would assure them of occurring…at least, within my sphere of influence. However, I would not be in full control of my actions. They will not tell me how or why, only that my cooperation must be absolute for the planned mental programming to work. To regain my wife and children, I must become a pawn and follow a combination of predetermined maneuvers on the chessboard. To take back what I have lost, I must give them my soul.” “Can you do that?” “No, Allan, I cannot.”
“Then you’re going to need some help.” Allan opened the door to Doc’s cell, stepping inside.
“Now, if I were to turn my back on you, like this, I might be accidentally opening myself up to another one of your escape attempts, mightn’t I?”
“Yes,” Doc said, feeling his heart sing in response to Allan’s ploy. He got to his feet. “You just might, were I the type to betray your trust.”
“And there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do if you bashed me over the head with that bookend next to the TV, would there?”
Doc reached over and picked up the object, hefting the heavy ceramic bookend in both hands. “Not if you were taken by surprise, no.” “Two things before lights out, Doc.” “Yes?”
“Take my tunic and pull up the hood like I was wearing it before and you might make it past the security cameras in this sector. Once you’re past the cell block, they won’t be looking for you immediately, and you can move a bit more freely.”
“Very well. What is the other thing you wished to relate to me?”
“When you raise that bookend up and clobber my noggin, try not to kill me.”
DRESSED IN THE SECURITY bodysuit with the hood pulled up over his head, Doc hoped Allan was right in assuming he would escape detection from the security video cameras scanning the hallways of the redoubt. He had quickly memorized by rote the numbers to push for entry into the control room of the Chronos mat-trans device, and was hoping against hope the chron-jump transport was still using the same command codes.
As he already knew from his previous freer days, a skeleton crew would be on duty inside the control room. Looking inside through an observation portal, he spied three figures-two men and a woman. Doc hovered outside the access door for a moment, his fingers poised to tap in the entry code, and then he decided to wait. He nimbly stepped into the nearby men’s room and went into a stall and sat. He knew the shift break would come soon, and if he were quick, he could go inside with the advantage of having only a single technician watching over the dormant equipment. Tune-trawling tests were rarely done after daylight, and those on watch inside were only there to run computer simulations, more or less.
Doc checked his wristwatch, also liberated from Allan. He’d made note of the patterns of the curious lair he was kept within and found all of those who shared his world in the redoubts to be almost painfully predictable in a military sort of way. If, at a designated time Tab A were to be inserted within Slot B, nothing short of World War Three could prevent such an order from being carried through.