"Not sidestroke all the way; that's not possible."
"Come off it. Dinosaurs."
"What about dinosaurs? I like to hunt them. I took John Sterling with me once; he got a truly magnificent tyrannosaurus rex. Would you like to try it?"
"Are you serious? Uncle, you know I don't hunt. I don't like to shoot anything that can't shoot back."
"Oho! You misunderstood me, nephew. We don't kill the poor beasties. Killing a dinosaur is about as sporting as shooting a cow. And not as good meat. A dinosaur more than a year old is tough and tasteless. I did try them, years back, when some thought was being given to using dinosaur meat to quench a famine on time line seven. But the logistics were dreadful and, when you come right down to it, there is little justice in killing stupid lizards to feed stupid people; they had earned their famine. But hunting dinosaurs with cameras, that's real fun. It even gets sporting if you go after the big carnivores and happen to flush a bull who is feeling edgy and sexy-it improves your running. Or else. Dickie, there is a spot down about Wichita where I can promise you triceratops, several sorts of pterodactyls, duckbills, thunder lizards, and maybe a male stegosaurus all in one day. Once this caper is over we'll take a day off and do it. What do you say?"
"Is it that easy?"
"With the installed equipment the Mesozoic is no farther away than is THQ or Boondock. Time and space are illusions; the Burroughs irrelevancy gear will plunk you down in the middle of a herd of feeding and fornicating flapdoodles before you can say sixty-five million years."
'The way you phrased that invitation seemed to imply that you assume that I have closed on Task Adam Selene."
"Dickie, the equipment does indeed belong to the Time Corps... and it is expensive, how expensive we don't discuss. It was built to support Plan Long View; its recreational use is incidental. Yes, I implied that. Aren't you going to do it?"
Mannie Davis looked at me, with no expression. Rufo stood up, said loudly, "I've got to mosey along; Star has a chore for me. Thanks and thanks for the last time. Jock. Nice meeting you. Colonel." He left quickly. Harshaw said nothing.
I let out a deep breath. "Uncle, I might do it if Hazel insists. But I'm going to try to talk her out of it. Nothing has been offered me that convinces me that I am wrong about the two options I offered. Either of them is a more sensible approach to recovering the programs and memories that embody Holmes IV or Mike... and I am glad to stipulate that they should be recovered. But my methods are more logical."
Harshaw said, "It is not a matter of logic. Colonel." "It's my neck. Doctor. But in the long run I'll do what Hazel wishes... I think. It's just-" "Just what, Dickie?"
"I hate to go into action with inadequate intelligence! Always have. Uncle, for the past week or ten days-hard to figure it, the way I've bounced around-I've been haunted by unexplained and, well, murderous nonsense. Is the Overlord you talk about after me? Does the fact that I'm mixed up in this account for the endless near misses? Or am I getting paranoid?"
"I don't know. Tell me about them." I started to do so. Shortly Harshaw took out a pocket notebook, started taking notes. I tried to remember all of it: Enrico Schultz and his weird remark about Tolliver and his mention of Walker Evans. His death. If it was his death. Bill. The curious behavior of the management of Golden Rule. Those rolligons and the killers in each. Jefferson Mao. The muggers at the Raffles- "Is that all?"
"Isn't that enough? No, not quite. What cargo was Auntie carrying? How did we get chivvied into flying a heap that durn near killed us? What were Lady Diana and her fat-headed husbands doing away out there in the wilds? If I could afford it I would spend endless money on sherlocks to dig out what was going on, what was truly aimed at me, what was just my nerves, what was simply coincidence."
Harshaw said, "There are no coincidences. One respect in which World as Myth is far simpler than earlier teleology is the simple fact that there are no accidents, no coincidences."
Uncle Jock said, "Jubal? I don't have the authority." "And I do. Yes." He stood up. "Both of us, I think." My uncle stood up, too. "Dickie boy, you wait right here; we'll be gone five minutes or so. Errand to do."
As they left, Davis stood up, "Excuse, please? Need change arm."
"Sure, Papa Mannie. No, no. Pixel! Beer is not for baby cats."
They were gone seven minutes by my Sonychron. But not, quite apparently, by their time. Uncle had grown a full beard. Harshaw had a new, pink knife scar across his left cheek. I looked at them. "Ghosts of Christmas past! What happened?"
"Everything. Is there any beer left there? Cissy," he said, not raising his voice, "could we have some beer? And Jubal and I have not eaten in some time. Hours. Days, maybe."
"Right away," Aunt Cissy's disembodied voice answered. "Dear? I think you ought to take a nap."
"Later."
"Just as soon as you have eaten. Forty minutes."
"Quit nagging me. Could I have tomato soup? For Jubal, too."
"I'll fetch soup and more of your picnic. Forty-five minutes until your nap; that's official. Til says so."
"Remind me to beat you."
"Yes, dear. But not today; you're exhausted."
"Very well." Uncle Jock turned to me. "Let's see, what'U you have first? Those rolligons? Your friend Hendrik Schultz handled that one; you can be sure it's thorough. He has turned out to be an ichiban field investigator. You can forget paranoia on that one, Dickie-two opponents, the Time Lords and the Scene Changers... and both of them after you as well as each other. You have a charmed life, son-bom to be hanged."
"What do you mean?-Time Lords and Scene Changers? And why me?"
"May not be their own names for themselves. The Lords and the Changers are groups doing the sort of thing the Circle does... but we don't see eye to eye with them. Dickie, you don't think that in all the universes to the Number of the Beast or more, we of the Circle would be the only ones to catch on to the truth and attempt to do something about it, do you?"
"I don't know anything about it, one way or another."
"Colonel," put in Dr. Harshaw, "a major shortcoming of World as Myth lies in the fact that we contend with... and often lose to... three sorts of antagonists: villains by design such as the Galactic Oveiiord, and groups like us but with different intentions-bad in our opinion, perhaps good in theirs-and the third and most powerful, the myth makers themselves-such as Homer and Twain and Shakespeare and Baum and Swift and their colleagues in the pantheon. But not those I have named. Their bodies have died; they live on by the immortal corpus of myth each has created... which does not change and therefore does not imperil us.
"But there are living myth makers, every one of them dangerous, every one of them casually uncaring as he revises a myth and erases a character." Harshaw smiled grimly. "The only way one can live with the knowledge is to realize first that it is the only game in town and second that it does not hurt. Erasure. Being X'd out of the story."
"How do you know that it doesn't hurt?"
"Because I refuse to entertain any other theory! Shall we get on with our report?"
"Dickie boy, you asked, 'Why me?' For the same reason Jubal and I left a pleasant lunch to work our tails off and to set many others to arduous and dangerous investigation in several time lines. Because of Task Adam Selene and your key part in it. Near as we can tell, the Time Lords want to kidnap Mike while the Scene Changers want to destroy him. But both groups want you dead; you're a menace to their plans."