“You are, aren’t you?” Forester said quietly.
Darkness regarded him with a steady gaze. “Very good. Moses.Very good, indeed. I see I’ve underestimated you.”
“Jesus Christ.” said Finn Delaney. “Now it all suddenlymakes sense!”
“When did you first suspect’?” asked Darkness.
“I’m not sure when the idea first occurred to me,” said Forrester.“I’m just amazed that it didn’t occur,to me sooner. I’ve been doing a lot ofdigging, trying to cheek you out. I didn’t get very far. Everything about yourbackground is classified. Even I can’t get to it. It’s restricted to anaccess code that no one seems to know.”
“I know you couldn’t have cracked the code,” said Darkness.
“No. I wasn’t able to,” Forrester admitted. “But I have afeeling that if I had, I would have discovered that the records had somehowbeen erased. Or something like that, right? There would have been some sort ofmalfunction that would have rendered them inaccessible, because past a certainpoint, your background would either be a forgery or it would simply stop. So,frustrated in that endeavor, I decided to do the next best thing. Find out whohad the clearance to access your file.”
“Only you could not discover that, either,” said Darkness.smiling.
“No. I couldn’t. However. I’m not the sort of man to give upon a problem. So I began to trace the authorization for the file’s beingclassified.”
“And you couldn’t find it.” Darkness said.
“That’s right.” said Forrester. “I couldn’t find it. Only Ishould have been able to find it. You see. that’s the trouble with coveringyour tracks. Robert. Sooner or later, it becomes obvious that they werecovered. And that’s when I knew. You were worried that someone might getcurious, find the authorization order, and clock back to the date that it wasissued to investigate. So you buried the order. If there even was an order tobegin with. The whole thing was a sham. But I wanted to be absolutely certain.so I put a research team from Archives Section on the project and had them doit the hard way. They clocked back as far as we could trace you and starteddigging. And the trail just ran out. Past a certain point, you simply ceased toexist. That’s why none of your peers in the scientific community can understandyour work. It’s why you’ve always been so far ahead of them. Because you were,quite literally, ahead of them. Years ahead.” He paused. “How many years,Robert?”
“As you people in Temporal Intelligence are so fond of saying,”Darkness replied laconically, “you have no need to know.”
“I think I do,” said Forrester. I think we all do.”
“What you think is really of no consequence.” Darkness replied.It is what you do that matters. And as you should know, better than anyoneelse, what you do must not be affected by your knowledge of what will be done.”
“Just tell me one thing. Robert. Are you a temporal agentfrom the future or are you doing whatever it is you’re doing on your own?”
“I think I’ve answered enough questions.” Darkness said. “Youalready know a great deal more than you should.”
‘The one thing I don’t understand is, why the warp grenade?”asked Forrester. “You had to know what it would do. Didn’t you? So why?”
“There is a reason for everything I’ve done. Moses,”Darkness said. “And everything that I will do. At the proper time. That isreally all that I can tell you.”
“God damn it. Robert, don’t you-”
Suddenly he simply wasn’t there anymore.
“Jesus Christ.” said Steiger.
“It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it?’ Delaney said. “We thinkof ourselves as being the ones who go back into the past to adjust things andhere we are, being adjusted ourselves. Sort of like the big fish eating thesmall fish eating the smaller fish.”
“It does explain a lot.” said Andre. “What do you think happenedwhere he came from? You think it all finally fell apart and now he’s trying tofix it?”
“We have, unfortunately, no way of knowing.” Forester said. “And,though I don’t like it. we may well be better off not knowing. However, we doknow at least one thing. What we’re doing, or what we will do, is significantenough from the standpoint of the future for Darkness to have taken as muchtime as he has to involve himself with us.”
‘“Swell.” said Lucas. “So not only is the past messed up,but something’s screwed up in the future. too. It figures. I knew it had to hitthe fan one of these days. Well, at least there’s a bright side to all of this.With that particle gizmo of his going on the fritz, pretty soon I won’t have toguard my thoughts so carefully. No more dreaming of ancient Rome and waking upthere.”
‘“Funny you should say that.” said Forester.
2
“We’ve received a report of what appears to be a temporalanomaly from one of our L.T.O.’s,” said Forrester.
“That sounds serious,” said Steiger. “L.T.O.’s don’tgenerally jump to conclusions.”
“No, they don’t.” said Forrester. “The man’s name isTravers. Capt. Jonathan Travers. I’ve had his file pulled. He’s one of our bestpeople. He’s assigned to Julius Caesar. “