aralleled yours very closely. We had a Professor Mensinger as well, only he was considerably more successful than his counterpart in your timeline. He managed to prove to the Council of Nations that temporal warfare could interfere with history. Consequently, a ceasefire resolution was passed and temporal warfare was abandoned. The temporal armies were redirected toward space colonization, which I understand you have not pursued as extensively as we have. We found other means of settling our conflicts. Not perfect solutions, admittedly, but that need not concern you.
“Several years ago, by our Plus Time reckoning, we came under attack. A colony transport fleet was almost completely annihilated while en route to its destination with new settlers in coldsleep storage tanks. The few surviving ships could give no indication of why they were attacked, from where, or even by whom. Not long after that, the city of Altaira on the colony world New Queensland was destroyed. Reduced to slag. Again, no indication of who launched the attack nor from where it came. Other, similar attacks followed, apparently without rhyme or reason. Sometimes populated areas were destroyed, sometimes uninhabited moons or planetoids, sometimes the explosions occurred in space. Yet they all had the same things in common. No one could tell who was responsible. No one could tell where the attacks came from. Each attack was a nuclear strike. And we have now learned that each attack came from your timeline, through an artificially created warp in spacetime.”
“Warp grenades,” Delaney said in a low voice. “Sweet Jesus, what have we done?”
“Killed thousands, millions of innocent people,” Priest said. “And, until Nikolai Drakov fell into our hands, we had no idea who was responsible.”
“How could we have known?” said Andre in a shocked voice.
Priest shrugged fatalistically. “Perhaps you couldn’t have. Your moral culpability, on purely ethical grounds, is certainly open to debate, but that’s neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that while it may be understood, in principle, that you didn’t realize what you were doing, a great many people don’t see it that way. If you had known, I have no doubt you would have stopped teleporting nuclear explosions through corridors in spacetime that bridged to our universe. But would that have been enough? What about all the lives that were lost? How could you possibly make reparations for them? Besides, the situation is considerably more complex than that.
“I was in retirement when I was reactivated. I thought I had seen an end of military service, but there was a need for personnel with my qualifications. The Special Operations Group was brought together based on information obtained from Nikolai Drakov. One of my main objectives on this mission was to locate you. Not you specifically, but the temporal adjustment team we were certain would be sent back to this time period when a discontinuity became evident.
“You traced our warp discs somehow,” said Delaney.
“It took a good deal of time,” said Priest, “but that was to be expected. We weren’t sure when you would arrive or where you’d be.”
“And now that you’ve found us?” Andre said.
“First, I need to establish to my satisfaction that you two are the only temporal soldiers in the group. You were the only ones carrying discs, but I need to be sure. This one,” he approached Din, who sat wide-eyed, totally bewildered by it all, “is probably exactly what you say he is, unless he’s one hell of a damned good actor. The others I am equally disposed to believe are native to this time period. Scanning procedures will quickly establish that.”
“And then?” said Finn.
“One of you will return with us for some rather extensive debriefing. The other one will be allowed to return to Plus Time—your own Plus Time, that is—with an offer of terms.”
“What sort of terms?” said Andre.
“It should be obvious that unrestricted warfare between our two timelines would have devastating results for all concerned. It would be impossible to control. Neither you nor we would be able to target our weapons with any reasonable degree of accuracy. There are massive fluctuations in each timestream, resulting in points of confluence between our two timelines. That was how Drakov fell into our hands. The prevailing theory among our scientists is that discontinuities created by temporal actions in your timeline are responsible. The confluence effect may have been brought about by a single, massive disruption, or it could have been cumulative. The possibility was briefly considered that one of the two timelines was created by a timestream split, but fortunately that hypothesis was dismissed when we discovered significant differences in our histories and even in certain of our natural laws. I say fortunately because if that were not the case, we would be faced with certain insurmountable … philosophical questions, for lack of a better way of saying it. However, that still leaves us with other problems.
“We are confronted with the fact that you have committed hostile acts against us—knowingly or unknowingly, that’s not at issue. We are also confronted with the fact that our timelines are intertwining in a completely unpredictable manner, like some cosmic double helix. Our scientists believe there’s a possibility that our two timelines, as a result of interactive temporal inertia, could stabilize by merging into one. The results could be disastrous, on an unimaginable scale.
“Even without that possibility, our Council is still faced with overwhelming pressure. People want retribution for the destruction of the colonies. We don’t have any choice in the matter. If interactive temporal inertia compensates for the instability of our timelines by making them flow together into a single timeline, then the only course of action open to us is to maintain that instability. Perhaps if the instability were magnified, temporal inertia would be overwhelmed and our timelines would be forced apart.”
“Perhaps?” Delaney said. “There’s no way of knowing that! What you’re suggesting could work the way you say, but hell, that’s only theoretical! It could also result in a massive timestream split!”
“That possibility was taken into consideration,” Priest said. “Our scientists think a timestream split could serve to overcome the confluence effect. True, it would create a whole new, possibly more serious problem, but if the split took place in your timeline, it would create no difficulties for us.
“We were not responsible for this situation,” he continued. “We foresaw the dangers and we stopped our Time Wars. You did not, and we have suffered for it, so we’re not terribly concerned about splitting your timeline if that solves our problem. However, that may prove to be difficult. It may take some doing, so we’d like to negotiate a treaty—call it agreeing upon conventions of war—wherein both sides agree to limit the conflict to temporal actions. Otherwise the result would be incalculable loss of life on both sides from advanced weaponry which may, because of the confluence effect, become redirected at the user. The war is already a fait accompli. We merely wish to limit the potential casualties and wage it as logically as possible.”
“Logically?” said Delaney. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”
Priest nodded. “Unfortunately, Lieutenant Delaney, I realize only too well. I don’t like this any better than you do, but I have no choice. We must interfere with your history in order to protect our own. We must increase the instability in your timeline, even to the point of bringing about a timestream split if necessary, in order to maintain our temporal integrity.”
“A war like that would have disastrous consequences for both our timelines,” said Andre. “There has to be another alternative!”
“There is,” said Priest. “We’d like to avoid an all-out temporal war, if possible. The only way to ensure that is with a massive first strike. And that is my other objective on this mission. You are prisoners of war. You will be treated fairly, with the respect due to your rank. But I must warn you that any attempt to escape will result in execution. Lock them up.”
The soldiers from the alternate timeline led them away. Priest watched them go, a strange expression on his face. Captain Bryant came up to stand beside him.
“Well,” he said
laconically,” that certainly was interesting. I thought you handled that very well, considering.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Priest said tensely.”I had to keep telling myself she’s a different person.”
“She’s not, you know,” said Bryant. “Her genetic makeup is the same. She looks the same, she talks the same—”
“Enough!” said Priest. “What are you trying to do?”