“You’re going to be sorry for this, Quellen,” Lanoy said bitterly. “I wasn’t joking when I said Brogg had keyed all his telltales over to me. I can have the news of your African place in the hands of the High Government in—”
“You don’t need to inform on me,” said Quellen, “I’m letting you go.”
Lanoy was startled. “But you said—”
“That was earlier. I’m releasing you and wiping out as much as I can of the records involving you.”
“So you gave in after all, Quellen? You knew you couldn’t take the risk that I’d expose you?”
“On the contrary, I haven’t given in. I told the High Government about my African place myself. I let Kloofman himself know, in person. No sense wasting time talking to underlings. So your telltales won’t be telling anything that isn’t already known.”
“You can’t ask me to believe that, Quellen!”
“It’s the truth, though. And therefore the price for my letting you go has changed. It isn’t your silence any more. It’s your services.”
Lanoy’s eyes widened. “What have you been up to?”
“Plenty. But there’s no time for me to explain it now. I’ll get you safely out of this building. You’ve got to get back to your lab on your own power. I’ll join you there in about an hour.” Quellen shook his head. “Not that I think you’ll stay free for very long, Lanoy. Kloofman’s hungry for your machine. He wants to use it to send political prisoners back. And to raise public revenues. He’ll solve his unemployment problem by shooting the prolets back to 500,000 BC and letting them get eaten by tigers. You’ll be picked up again, I’m sure of it. But at least it won’t be my doing.”
He escorted Lanoy from the building. The little slyster gave Quellen a baffled look as he scuttled away towards the quickboat ramp.
“I’ll be seeing you in a little while,” Quellen said.
He boarded a quickboat himself, a local, and headed for his apartment to perform one last chore. Had Kloofman taken steps against him yet? Doubtless. They were having frantic conferences in the chambers of the High Government. It wouldn’t be long now, though, and Quellen would be safe.
He had come to understand a great many things. Why Kloofman wanted the machine so badly, for one thing: as a tool to extend his own power over the world. Unscrupulous, it was. And I nearly helped him get it.
Then, too, Quellen saw why the recorded hoppers had all come from 2486-91. It didn’t mean that the backward flow had been cut off next year, as he had assumed. It simply meant that control of the machine had passed then from Lanoy to Kloofman, and that all hoppers sent back after 2491 were hurled by the new process, which had a greater range, thrown back so far that they could be no possible threat to Kloofman’s regime. And would not, of course, show up in any historical records. Quellen shuddered. He wanted no part of a world in which the government held such powers.
He entered his apartment and activated the stat. The glow of theta force enveloped him. Quellen stepped through, and emerged in his African cottage.
“Mortensen?” he shouted. “Where are you?”
“Down here!”
Quellen peered over the edge of the porch. Mortensen was fishing. Stripped to the waist, his pale skin partly red and partly tan, he waved to Quellen affably.
“Come on,” Quellen said. “You’re going home!”
“I’d rather stay, thank you. I like it here.”
“Nonsense. You’ve got a date to hop.”
“Why hop if I can hang out here?” Mortensen asked reasonably. “I don’t understand why you brought me here, but I don’t feel like leaving now.”
Quellen had no time to argue. It did not fit into his plan to keep Mortensen from making his 4 May hop. Quellen had no vested interest in disturbing the recorded past, and Mortensen’s value as a hostage would shortly be zero. It was conceivable that Mortensen’s failure to hop on schedule would jeopardize Quellen’s own continued existence, if he happened to be a descendant of the hopped Mortensen. Why take the risk? Mortensen would have to hop.
“Come,” Quellen said.
“No.”
Sighing, Quellen moved in and once again anaesthetized the man. He hauled the limp Mortensen into the cottage and thrust him through the stat, following a moment later himself. Mortensen lay sprawled out on the floor of Quellen’s apartment. In a short while he’d awaken and try to comprehend all that had been happening to him, and perhaps he’d attempt to get back to Africa. But by then he would have registered on the Appalachia televector field, and Kloofman’s men would be on their way to pick him up. Kloofman would make sure that Mortensen hopped on schedule.
Quellen left the apartment for the last time. He ascended the flyramp and waited for the quickboat. He knew the route to Lanoy’s place, thanks to Brogg.
He would rather have triumphed over Kloofman than have taken this route. But he had been in a trap, and a man in a trap must seek the sane path to freedom, not the most glamorous one. There was irony in the decision, of course: the man assigned to police the hopper problem becoming a hopper himself. Yet there was a kind of inevitability, Quellen saw, right from the start, that made him one with Norm Pomrath and Brogg and the others. He had begun to make his hop the day he secured the African retreat for himself. Now he was merely completing the logical course of action.
It was late afternoon by the time Quellen arrived. The sun was dipping to the horizon, and colours danced on the polluted lake. Lanoy was waiting for him.
“Everything’s ready, Quellen,” he said.
“Good. Can I rely on you to be honest?”
“You let me go, didn’t you? There’s honour even among slysters,” said Lanoy. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Positive. I can’t stay here. I’m anathema to Kloofman now. I gave him an uncomfortable ten minutes, and he’ll make me pay for it if he ever catches me. But he won’t catch me. Thanks to you.”
“Come inside,” Lanoy said. “Damn you, I never thought I’d be helping you this way.”
“If you’re smart,” said Quellen, “you’ll go the same way. Kloofman’s bound to catch you sooner or later. It can’t be avoided.”
“I’ll take my chances, Quellen.” Lanoy smiled. “When the time comes, I’ll look Kloofman in the eye and see if I can’t strike a deal with him. Come along. The machine’s waiting.”
Sixteen
It was done.
There was a swirling and a twisting, and Quellen felt as if he had been turned inside out. He was floating on a purple cloud high above some indistinct terrain, and he was falling.
He dropped, heels over head, and landed in a scrambled heap on a long green carpet. He lay there for a moment or two, breathless, clutching at the carpet for stability in an uncertain world.
A handful of the carpet tore off in his hands. Quellen looked at it in puzzlement.
Grass.
Living grass. Strands of it in his clenched fingers.
The clean smell of the air hit him next, almost as a physical shock. It was painful to pull air like that down into his lungs. It was like inhaling in a room with full oxy turned on. But this was outdoors. The air in Africa was not like that, because it held an overstratum of residues from the more densely populated regions of the world.
Quellen gathered himself together and stood up. The grassy carpet extended in all directions, and in front of him there was a great thicket of trees. Quellen looked. A small grey bird came out on the overhanging branch of the nearest tree and began to chirp, unafraid, at Quellen.
He wondered how long Kloofman’s minions would search for him before they concluded that he had hopped. Koll would be apoplectic. And would Kloofman cope with Lanoy? He hoped not; Kloofman was a sinister unreal monster, and Lanoy, despite his slyster habits, had a sense of honour.