Lightning

Frowning, the dictator said, “You used the belt without the gate? Is that possible?”

Dry-mouthed with fear but speaking with conviction, Stefan

LIGHTNING • 325

said, “Oh, yes, my Furhrer, it is quite simple to … adjust the belt and use it not merely to home in on the beacon of the gate but to skip through time as one wishes. And we are fortunate that such is the case, for otherwise, if I’d had to return to the gate to get here, I would have been stopped by the Jews who control it.”

“Jews?” Hitler said, startled.

“Yes, sir. The conspiracy within the institute is organized, I believe, by staff members who have Jewish blood but have concealed their heritage.”

The madman’s face hardened further in a look of sudden anger. “Jews. Always the same problem. Everywhere, the same problem. Now in the institute as well.”

Upon hearing that statement, Stefan knew that he had pushed the course of history back toward the proper path.

Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be.

Laura said, “Chris, I think you better hide under the car.”

Even as she spoke, the gunman to the southwest of her rose from concealment and sprinted along the edge of the arroyo, angling toward her and toward the meager cover offered by another low dune.

She leaped to her feet, confident that the Buick would shelter her from the man at the Toyota, and opened fire. The first dozen rounds kicked up sand and chips of shale at the running man’s heels, but then the bullets caught up with him, tearing into his legs. He went down, screaming, and was hit on the ground as well. He rolled twice and fell over the edge of the arroyo to the floor thirty feet below.

Even as the gunman slipped over that brink, Laura heard automatic fire, not from the Toyota but behind her. Before she could turn to meet the threat, she took several bullets in the back and was thrown forward, facedown on the hard shale.

“Jews,” Hitler said again, angrily. Then: “What of this nuclear weapon that they say may win the war for us?”

“Another lie, my Furhrer. Though many attempts to develop such a weapon were made in the future, there were never any successes. This is a fantasy the conspirators have created to further misdirect the resources and energies of the Reich.”

A rumbling came through the walls, as if they were not underground but suspended high in the heavens, in a thunder­storm.

The heavy frames of the paintings thumped against the concrete.

The pencils jiggled in the copper pot.

Hitler met Stefan’s eyes and studied him for a long time. Then: “I suppose that if you were not loyal to me, you’d simply have come armed and would have killed me the instant you arrived.”

He had considered doing just that, for only in killing Adolf Hitler might he expunge some of the stain on his own soul. But that would have been a selfish act, for by killing Hitler he would have radically changed the course of history and would have put the future as he knew it at extreme risk. He could not forget that his future was also Laura’s past; if he meddled sufficiently to change the series of events that fate ordained, perhaps he would change the world for the worse in general and for Laura in particular. What if he killed Hitler here and, upon returning to 1989, found a world so drastically altered that for some reason Laura had never even been born?

He wanted to kill this snake in human skin, but he could not take the responsibility for the world that might follow. Common sense said that only a better world could result, but he knew that common sense and fate were mutually exclusive concepts.

“Yes,” he said, “had I been a traitor, my Furhrer, I could’ve done just that. And I worry that the real traitors at the institute may sooner or later think of just such a method of assassination.”

Hitler paled. “Tomorrow, I shut the institute down. The gate will be closed until I know the staff is purged of traitors.”