The Proteus Operation Read online

  Since the first objective of the operation was simply to set up a dialogue between the United States governments of the two eras and not to create any sensations before this could be accomplished, the policymakers in 1975 had decreed that construction of the return-gate should proceed covertly. Furthermore, for ease of future logistics and communications, they had deemed an East Coast, metropolitan location to be desirable. That was how Ferracini and the rest of the mission's U.S. Group, officially known as Sugar, came to be ferrying components from temporary storage in New Mexico to a leased warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront. They were transporting the more critical parts themselves, by truck—things like computers and electronic devices whose futuristic origins could hardly be disguised. The larger structural members and pieces of the dismantled capsule, which were deliberately made from materials available in 1939 and could have been anything, had been trucked into Albuquerque and sent on from there by rail.

  The mission's second objective was to intervene in the political situation in England, where the year 1939-1940 had brought disaster in the Proteus world. In this case, the mission could not wait for the return-gate in Brooklyn to be completed. The pace of impending events in Europe demanded immediate action by the West's leaders if the collapse there wasn't to be repeated. Accordingly, Winslade and the other two members of the mission's U.K. Group, King, had gone straight on to London, flying DC-3 to New York and continuing by ship; Pan American's Clipper flying-boat service to Lisbon wouldn't be operational until later in the year.

  After crossing the Mississippi at the Eads Bridge, they stopped at an all-night eating place on the Indianapolis road out of town. The parking area at the rear was dark, but on entering the diner they found a warm, cozy atmosphere with yellow lights, good-food smells, and a coal stove throwing out heat from one corner. Between one and two dozen people were sitting at tables and booths around the room, most of them truckers. At the far end, framed in the serving hatch of the steamy kitchen, a brawny cook was thumping down plates of ham and eggs and beef ribs behind a stout, Mexican-looking woman working at the counter. Posters, newspaper clippings, and photographs of baseball players were pinned to the walls, and an enormous wooden radio on a shelf by the coffee urn was playing something that Ferracini could recognize by now as Duke Ellington. In their leisure time during training, the team had been saturated with radio recordings and movies from the period.

  No one paid much attention as Ferracini and Cassidy stamped snow and slush from their boots, undid their topcoats, and walked up to the counter to order two steak dinners. They picked up a cup of coffee apiece and carried them to an empty booth in the far corner, near a chattering group of respectably dressed younger people whose snatches of conversation sounded a little too intellectual for the surroundings.

  "It's warm," Cassidy said, gulling off his cap and ruffling his flattened hair with his fingers. "Want me to take over for a spell when we get moving again?"

  Ferracini nodded. "Sure, I could use a break. Maybe I'll try and get a few hours' sleep."

  "Four days a trip, and that's going twenty-four hours. They could use a few interstates." Cassidy sprawled in his seat and looked around as he raised his cup to his mouth and took a sip. "I'm still getting over this whole scene, you know, Harry. No papers for anything, no permits . . . Claud was right about it—everyone here does pretty much what they want. And I thought he was just selling the mission."

  "Mmm . . ." Ferracini replied.

  Cassidy leaned forward and eyed Ferracini for a moment in the way he did when he was scheming something. "You know, Harry, sometimes I think, ah, well, a guy could do a lot worse than stick around in a place like this permanently, know what I mean? When Claud's got his machine and can do what he wants with it. . . ."

  "You're crazy! Quit talking like an asshole."

  "No, seriously. What's there for us where we came from? It's all over back there."

  "That's why we're here—to change all that. It'll be different, okay?"

  "You mean everything—we just go back through the machine sometime later and find a whole new world waiting?" Cassidy looked unconvinced. "Things don't happen that easily, Harry. And Claud and all those scientists back there—they tried to sound reassuring and make like it was all gonna work out okay, but if you really listened to them, they didn't really know, either. They didn't know for sure how this whole business works."

  Ferracini frowned. "Come on, Cassidy, we've been here long enough now to see what it's like, what the people are like. You really want to live surrounded by jerks like these? They've got it made, and they're throwing it all away. They can't see past their noses to what's really happening. It's like a country of overprotected kids. I mean—"

  Cassidy held up a hand. "Okay, Harry, okay—save it." He didn't want to go into all that again. Ferracini shrugged and lapsed into silence. Cassidy sat back and looked around, and after a short while leaned forward once more to rest his elbows on the table. "I figure we'll have earned ourselves a spell of R&R by the time we hit Big A—a day or two at least. I mean, I wouldn't want to risk going off the road through over-dedication to duty and fatigue or something, and bending any of Mortimer's parts. What do you think, Harry? Don't you figure we owe ourselves a forty-eight?"

  Mortimer Greene, formerly director of the Air Force's Advanced Weapons Systems Development and Testing Center in Nevada, was head of the mission's three-man scientific and engineering group. As such, he was responsible for getting the return-gate assembled. Also, as overall second-in-command, he was in charge of Sugar while Winslade was in London.

  Ferracini grinned faintly and pulled his coat off his shoulders to drape it on the back of his seat. "Oh, I guess probably we'll be able to justify something," he said. "But first we deliver the load. Then maybe I'll have a word with Mortimer about getting us a forty-eight."

  Cassidy leaned closer across the table. "You remember those guys we were talking to in that place on West Thirty-fourth on the last trip?" He licked his lips and dropped his voice to a more confidential level. "Anyhow, it seems there's these high-class hookers over on the East Side. For a buck and a half you can get—" He broke off as the Mexican woman arrived and deposited two large plates of food on the table along with a basket of thickly cut bread.

  Cassidy was about to resume speaking when a voice from the group at the nearby table rose above the general background talk and distracted him. It belonged to a pudgy-faced, youngish looking man with greased-down hair, wearing a maroon blazer. "Coughlin's right. Why should we get involved with any foreign wars? We bailed them out once before, didn't we, and what good did it do? They've never even repaid their debts. If you ask me, that was what caused the '29 Crash in the first place."

  "That's what I meant," a girl in a blue coat said from across the table. "Their governments are all rotten, anyway. Wars are endemic over there. I hope Hitler does a good job and cleans the whole place up thoroughly. It could do with it."

  "Hear, hear," a fair-haired man next to her agreed. "He's only taking back what's theirs, after all, and restoring some pride and discipline. As Fiona says, a bit more of that could do them all some good. I mean, what alternative do they have?"

  "Well, there is Cha-amberlain . . ." the man in the maroon blazer said with emphasized sarcasm. Somebody sniggered.

  A thin youth sitting on the other side of the fair-haired man ruffled his eyebrows, widened his eyes, stuck a finger across his upper lip, and waved a menu card over his head. "Yesterday, I had another talk with Herr Hitler," he declared, mimicking a prim English accent, and his companions erupted into laughter.

  Ferracini glowered at his plate and chewed his food savagely. "Aw, why let it bug you, Harry?" Cassidy said. "They can't make any difference to anything."

  "It's what they represent," Ferracini muttered. He shook his head. "This country doesn't have a chance, Cass. It's all over already."

  At the next table the man in the maroon blazer went on, "Well, let's face it, Fascism does seem to wo
rk. Perhaps nothing else can in an industrialized age. I mean, democracy was fine in the days of landed gentries and that kind of thing, but look where it led in the end."

  "You've got to have someone in authority," the girl in the blue coat said. "And the only other people who understand that are the Communists."

  "Yes, and we all know what that means," the fair-haired man told them.

  "Shirkers of the world, unite!" the thin youth exclaimed, going into his Russian impersonation routine.

  Cassidy's patience snapped abruptly. Without warning, he whirled around in his seat, leveled his fork menacingly, and waved it up and down with a piece of steak still impaled on the end. "You people had better cut it right there if you know what's best for you." he warned, narrowing his eyes and speaking in an ominous growl. "You ain't been there—don't know nothin'." He jerked his head in Ferracini's direction without looking away. "See this guy here? Well, he knows. Two years in Spain, volunteerin' with th' Abe Lincoln Brigade. Got hi'self bombed by them Fascists and ain't been right in the head ever since. Gets mean an' ornery real easy when he hears talk like that—see them big starin' eyes? So you just quit it right there if you don't want him gettin' mad, okay?"

  Ferracini groaned beneath his breath. For a few moments of awkward silence, Cassidy continued to stare mean-eyed over his fork, his mouth grimacing crookedly beneath his shaggy mustache. Then, turning her head away with a sniff and making an effort to sound as if nothing had happened, one of the girls said haughtily, "Has anybody read Of Mice and Men? I find Steinbeck to be really so-o visual. . . . The conversation picked up again, and Cassidy turned back with a satisfied grunt. Nobody else in the room showed any sign of having noticed, and the rest of dinner passed without further incident.

  When they were ready to leave, Ferracini went to the rest room, leaving Cassidy waiting just inside the front door. But when Ferracini came out, he found that Cassidy had come back and was waiting in the dark, narrow corridor, stacked with potato sacks and vegetable crates, leading from the restaurant. Cassidy's normal easygoing air was gone, leaving him tense and alert. "What?" Ferracini asked.

  "Guy hanging around by the truck, Cassidy said in a low voice. "I just caught a glimpse of him moving around to the far side."

  "Figure it's a heist?"

  "Maybe."

  "See any others?"

  "No, but it's black out there."

  "How're we fixed?"

  Cassidy nodded in the shadows toward a back door that opened to the outside from the corridor. "We could set up a sitting duck with cover going out that way. What d'you think?"

  Ferracini moved forward to bring his face close to the glass pane in the door. He moved his head from side to side to scan what he could of the scene outside, then stepped back. He gave a brief nod. "Who's going to play duck?" There was an obstinate silence. He sighed resignedly. "Okay, I'll do it. On your way. I'll give you five minutes." Cassidy disappeared noiselessly out through the door, and Ferracini went back into the rest room to rinse his face.

  Five minutes later, Ferracini emerged, sauntered back into the restaurant, and bought a couple of candy bars. He put on his coat, went outside, and walked into the shadows of the parking area and around to the far side of the truck, at the same time making a show of fumbling in his coat pocket for his keys.

  The man came round the front of the truck to face him as Ferracini reached the cab. The light from a distant street lamp silhouetted his frame, tall and broad, with stooped shoulders. He was wearing a soft felt hat and shabby overcoat. Ferracini tensed expectantly, but the man stopped a few feet back. "Say, buddy, ya wouldn't happen ta be going as far as the coast, would ya?" he said in a wheezy voice. "Any chance I could get a ride? Got a woman and three kids back in Kansas. . . . Need work real bad."

  "Can't do that, pal," Ferracini told him. "Rules. Boss checks up all the time." He took his hand from his pocket and held out a note, at the same time straining every nerve-fiber to catch any hint of movement behind him—a foot falling stealthily, or the almost inaudible intake of breath as an arm was raised to swing. This was the moment when he placed total trust in the timing and judgment of his invisible partner. "Here's a dollar—go get a meal."

  Even in the darkness he could see the man's eyes widen. "A whole dollar! Say, are you sure you—"

  "Take it and get something to eat. There's more guys inside."

  The man took the bill, mumbled something in acknowledgment, and shuffled away toward the door of the diner. Cassidy materialized silently out of the blackness behind where Ferracini was standing. "No problem?" He sounded mildly disappointed.

  "No—just a guy trying to find a job."

  But taking precautions had long ago become second nature. Ferracini tossed Cassidy the keys, and five minutes later they were Indianapolis-bound once more.

  CHAPTER 3

  ANY PROCESS THAT INVOLVED tinkering with the past was bound to have implications which by normal standards would be judged peculiar. In fact, it wrought havoc with all the conventional notions of common sense, logic, and causality.

  One peculiarity that followed from the ability of the machine constructed at Tularosa in 1975 to communicate with a return-gate assembled at some point in the past was that as long as the return-gate had, in fact, come into existence, it made no difference what particular sequence of events took place later in time to produce it. Thus, by setting the 1975 machine's range to the appropriate value, it could be connected through to the completed return-gate, up-and-running by mid-1939, as soon as the 1975 machine became operational. There was nothing which said that in the 1975 sequence of events, the mission scheduled to go back to build the return-gate had actually to have been dispatched.

  Given that such a possibility was implicit in the bizarre logic of the situation, it was inevitable that the mission planners would exploit the fact to test the entire system's rationale before the final decision to send the mission was taken. And that was precisely what had been done: As soon as construction of the 1975 machine had progressed to the point of its being able to receive simple, static communications messages (handling objects would require additional hardware), a message had appeared from May 1939, confirming that the mission had arrived safely and was assembling the return-gate on schedule, This constituted the preliminary "test," which the troops were told had proved satisfactory.

  President Kennedy had approved the final "go" order, and the mission had departed as soon as the minimum hardware needed to confer projection capability was installed. Further investigation of the physics, it was agreed, could be left for others to worry about later, along with such seemingly paradoxical issues as what would have happened if the mission were never sent, since it had evidently arrived, anyway. The main thing was to see the team on its way, safely removed from the uncertain world of 1975.

  "Yes, yes, I can see your point, Anna, but it provided us with as much in the way of reassurance as anybody could have hoped for in the circumstances." Mortimer Greene, the mission's senior scientist and head of the U.S. Sugar group, straightened up and gestured with the crowbar that he had been using to open the crates around him. "The urgency of the situation ruled out any possibility of examining all the theoretical unknowns."

  Greene was in his early fifties, of medium height and broadly built, with a solid, imposing face, heavy brows, a square jaw, and a white, clipped mustache. His bald, domed head, fringed by a half-moon of hair that petered out above his ears, was the kind that sculptors like to find when commissioned to produce statues of great personages. He was wearing a white shirt with maroon and black pinstripes, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and over it, red suspenders.

  Anna Kharkiovitch, the congressional historian sent as the mission's current-affairs specialist, looked dubiously over the clipboard on which she was marking off items from a checklist. Of slight build, with graying hair, she was somewhere in her mid-forties, with gaunt features that retained traces of the striking lines that had graced her in earlier years. S
he had escaped from the Soviet Union prior to its final partitioning between Germany and Japan in 1950. "I know the information was all we had to go on at the time," she said. "And I'm not saying the decision wasn't taken in good faith. But all this talk about random statistical perturbations doesn't explain what happened. The fact still remains that there was an error."

  They were working in a large open space at the rear of the building code-named "Gatehouse," the warehouse off Van Brunt Street in Brooklyn that had been leased from the New York Dock Company to house the return-gate. The front of the warehouse was screened off by a dummy wall of bales and packing cases that was more solid than it looked; the windows and entrances back of the screen had been sealed; and the whole building was protected by a system of detectors and surveillance devices that many electronics enthusiasts indigenous to the times would cheerfully have given a year's salary to study.

  "An error, yes," Greene conceded. "But of what significance? What matters is that the gate was working. That's what we are here for, and it's all we need be concerned with for the time being."

  "But that's my whole point," Anna persisted. "If one part of the message has been shown to be wrong, how can we trust any of it?"

  Greene lifted the top off another crate and began lifting out cartons. "The fact that the message was received says that the gate was working," he said. "That much at least, has to be true."

  "But how could it have been mistaken about something as fundamental as the machine's location? Something very strange has happened. It worries me."