“That’s enough!” said Brocius. “Let’s get on with it!”
“Jen. as soon as I let you go. I want you to get out of here.” said Scott. “Don’t ask any questions, just run. Can I count on you?”
She nodded. He gave her a quick kiss and let her go. She ran back toward the saloon.
“Okay, Kid. Turn around and make your play.”
Instead of turning around. Scott quickly hit the button on his warp disc and disappeared.
Brocius quickly drew his gun, then blinked and stared with disbelief. “What the.
Scott reappeared on the roof of the Oriental Saloon, directly behind the rifleman. The man still hadn’t recovered from his shock at suddenly seeing his target vanish into thin air.
“Psst! Over here,” said Scott.
As the startled man spun around. Scott fired. The bullet took him in the chest and he went flying off the roof to land in the street below.
Scott moved to the edge and looked down. Brocius, having heard the gunfire, was staring up at him, his jaw hanging open. The moment he saw him, he lifted his gun and let off a wild shot, then took off running.
Scott ducked hack from the edge as soon as Brocius fired at him. When he heard his running footsteps on the boardwalk below, he moved forward again and looked down at the body of the sniper, sprawled on the street below. It was Ross Demming.
Scott’s lips were set in a tight grimace. It was possible that Demming and Brocius had been acting on their own, but he didn’t believe it for a second. It had to be O’Fallon, in his guise of Johnny Ringo, setting him up for an ambush. The gloves were off. He moved back from the edge of the roof as people came running out into the street to see what happened. He set the transition coordinates on his warp disc for his room back at the hotel and clocked out. As soon as he materialized, he spun around quickly, his guns out, but the room was empty.
It would no longer be safe to stay here. Only where else could he go? It would no longer be safe anywhere. Brocius didn’t seem in the least bit worried about having Jenny witness the shooting. Nor did he try to stop her when she ran. Which could only mean one thing. He was not concerned about the Earps. He checked the date on his disc. October 25. 1881. The eve of the O.K. Corral shoot-out.
He frowned. That couldn’t possibly be right. That was still days away. But the warp disc couldn’t be wrong. He had never heard of one malfunctioning. And if it had malfunctioned… no, he didn’t want to think about that. It was getting late. He hurried downstairs to the bar and got a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph. He stared at the front page with disbelief.
“Like a drink, Kid?” asked the barman.
“Yeah,” said Scott, dully, “Whiskey. Make it a double.”
The date on the front page was October 25. 1881. It seemed impossible. Somehow, without even being aware of it, he’d lost an entire week.
He downed the whiskey in two quick gulps, feeling the fire as it burned down his throat and in his stomach. A whole week? How was it possible? He paid for his drink, put the paper down on the bar and went back up to his room, in a daze. He locked the door and sat down on his bed, his mind racing.
He could think of only one possible explanation. The temporal instability was increasing rapidly and dramatically Either he had somehow crossed over from one timeline into the other without realizing it, and lost a week in the process, or the timeline had started to ripple and the effect was concentrated in this sector. Somehow, a week had passed in a matter of hours. And he hadn’t even noticed. It was as if he’d been picked up by a timewave and deposited farther down the shore.
He tried to think what implications this new development could have for the mission. Had he alone experienced this effect, or were Priest. Cross and Delaney caught up in it as well? And, if so, were they aware of it? Would he be able to warn them, or were they still in the other timeline? And what would happen if they’d been caught in the ripple effect and carried farther down the timestream than where he was now?
He had no answers. No idea what to do. Priest was in command of the mission. Only Priest was not around to give commands. There was no going by the book because the book had never covered situations such as this. There had never been a situation such as this before and, quite possibly, there never would be again. Was this where the whole thing fell apart? Was the temporal instability in this sector going to grow into a timewave that would travel down the timestream, eventually breaking somewhere in the future in a massive timestream split? Was it possible that he was the only one who could prevent it?
No. Not prevent it. Change it. Because whatever it was he was fated to do, according to history as it was seen from the time that Darkness came from, he had already done it. If, in fact, he was the one. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps it wouldn’t have anything to do with him at all. in spite of the powerful gut instinct that he had, telling him that he was about to be involved in something of monumental significance.
We can change history. Scott thought. We learned that the hard way. Everything that’s happened from the first time a man traveled back into the past has led to this point. And it was a point of no return, because they had learned that there was really only one chance to effect a temporal adjustment. If it failed the first time, and another effort was made to clock back to a point before the original adjustment mission was attempted and try again, it only contributed to the instability of that temporal scenario and increased the odds against them.
If a temporal anomaly or disruption was discovered and a team was clocked hack to effect an adjustment, they were already working against the force of temporal inertia and their very presence meant there was a chance that instead of adjusting the disruption, they would only make it worse. If they failed, and another team was clocked hack to try again, they would be clocking into a time sector that was already unstable to begin with and they would also encounter the original adjustment team, which in itself could bring about a temporal paradox. They had learned that the hard way, too.
Temporal anomalies that had been brought about by the actions of the Time Wars had resulted in historical disruptions that had to be adjusted, but the adjustment missions themselves, even though successful, had undoubtedly affected temporal inertia in ways that manifested themselves as more anomalies and disruptions further down the timestream. Nor was there any way of knowing how many temporal anomalies brought about by time travel had gone completely undiscovered.
It was like trying to plug a hole in a pipe that had sprung a leak, only each time one leak was stopped, two more appeared. There seemed to be no end to it.
Only what if this was the end? What if, this time, history could not be changed? What if, this time, they had run out of time?
Scott took his pistols out of their holsters and laid them on the bed, beside him. One had been fired when he had killed Ross Demming a short while ago. Or was it a week ago?
He picked up the fired piece in his left hand, pulled the hammer back to half cock and opened the loading gate on the right side of the frame. Strange, he wondered, how for so many years no one had thought to question that. It was simply accepted. To load or unload the gun, a right-handed shooter had to transfer the weapon to his left hand, open the gate on the right side, and manually rotate the cylinder, using the ejector rod to push out one empty brass casing at a time, then load with the right hand. For a left-handed shooter, the procedure was much simpler and more natural. One simply continued to hold the gun in the shooting hand, pulled back the hammer halfway, opened up the gate and proceeded to reload. Colonel Sam Colt had been left-handed and he had designed the Peacemaker as a left-handed gun. Thereafter, the entire world had unquestioningly used the left-handed design for well over a hundred years, until the late 20th century, when a man named Bill Grover had finally hit upon the idea of manufacturing a right-handed Peacemaker with the loading gate on the left side of the frame. It seemed incredible that no one had ever thought of that before. It was a testimony to the genius of Sam Colt that his Single Action Army had been considered so perfect that for over a hundred years, no one had thought of modifying the design.