subatomic structure. He took on theappearance of a hologram. He had become a ghost with substance. His body hadbeen permanently “tachyonized.” He had become faster than the speed of light.He could move from place to place. traveling through time and space at will,but only by translocating or, as he called it. “taching.” He could not walk somuch as one step. He could appear to “walk.” after a fashion, but it was only aseries of incredibly rapid translocations, having the multiple-image effect ofhigh-speed photography.
Quite possibly, thought Forrester. the tachyonization hadhad an effect upon his mind as well, although with Darkness, it was difficultto tell. The man was incredibly brilliant, light-years ahead of all his peers(both figuratively and literally). They could not even begin to understand hiswork. His personality was, to say the least. idiosyncratic. He was a man ofimmense wealth, holding the controlling interest in Amalgamated Techtronics anda number of other large multinational corporations. he felt himself accountableto no one. What he had done with Lucas Priest was a perfect example.
Lucas should have died. thought Forrester, despite the factthat Col. Priest was his closest friend. He should have died and he should havestayed dead. What Darkness had done was inexcusable. Ever since he’d done it.Forrester had spent many sleepless nights. worrying about the possibleconsequences. As had Lucas Priest himself, on whom the strain was obvious.
It had happened in the year 1897, while Priest. Cross, and Delaneywere clocked out on a mission to Afghanistan, during the Pathan revolt againstthe British. A strike team of the S.O.G.. from the parallel universe, had comethrough a confluence in the Khyber Pass and was working to change the course ofhistory. Priest and Cross had been standing on a bluff with the British commandstaff, watching the fighting that was taking place below them, between theGhazis and the Bengal Lancers. A lone Ghazi sniper who had concealed himself inthe rocks had drawn a bead on the battalion surgeon, mistaking him for theBritish general. Priest had spotted the sniper and, without thinking about thepossible consequences of his interference, had shouted out a warning. Thesurgeon, his instincts honed by combat, had immediately dropped to the ground,but by doing so, he had left the young Winston Churchill, who was present as awar correspondent, directly in the line of fire. Churchill was too slow torespond and Priest. in his cover as a missionary. had not been carrying aweapon. He had done the only thing that he could do-he flung himself atChurchill. knocked him out of the way, and took the bullet meant for him. Or,more accurately, meant for the surgeon with whose destiny Priest had interfered.
Lucas was killed instantly. They had even buried him. ButDr. Darkness changed all that in a manner that Forester still could notcompletely comprehend. During a prior mission, Darkness had implanted each ofthe three commandos, as well as temporal agent Steiger, with a particle-leveltracer device of his own design. one that bonded itself to their molecularstructure. It allowed him to find them no matter where they were in space andtime. What Darkness had not revealed to them was the fact that these tracerdevices were also prototypes of a new invention he was trying to perfect-a newgeneration warp disc. The original warp disc, the one now issued to all temporalpersonnel. functioned on the same principle as the warp grenade and had supersededthe more cumbersome, obsolete chronoplate of Dr. Mensinger. The new modelDarkness had designed was not worn on the person, but was integrated on theparticle level, actually bonding itself with the individual. Moreover, it wasthought- controlled, an idea that still scared the hell out of Forester.
The prototypes had all malfunctioned. The tracer functionsworked perfectly, but the bonding process had damaged the temporaltransponders. rendering them useless-all except Priest’s. Rather than lose hisonly working prototype. Darkness had elected to bring Lucas Priest back fromthe dead.
How he had done it was a Zen physics puzzle. The leader ofthe S.O.G. strike team from the opposing timeline had been Priest’s twin fromthe parallel universe. A man whose personal history was apparently somewhatdifferent from the Priest that Forester knew, but who was identical to him inevery other respect, right down to his genetic code. After Priest had died.Finn Delaney had killed the “twin Priest.” Darkness had tached through time andtaken the body of the twin Priest, then tached back and, moving faster than thespeed of light, had substituted it for their Lucas Priest, snatching him out ofthe bullet’s path at the last nanosecond, pulling him into his tachyon fieldand taking him back to his headquarters on that unknown planet. There, he hadactivated the dormant, tachyon-based, thought-controlled transponder Priest hadbeen implanted with. And now Priest had returned, to see his own name listed onthe Wall of Honor, among those killed in action. There still remained thequestion-what had actually become of him? And what had he become’?”
Darkness had gone back into the past and changed somethingthat had already happened. Or had he? Had he actually altered the past or hadhis actions in fact restored the past to the way it had originally happened? Itseemed to Forrester, and to Priest as well, that there had to exist a point intime, somewhere. a moment in which Lucas Priest had actually died. Logic wouldseem to dictate that for Darkness to have gone back and saved him from death,he would have had to have died in the first place. otherwise there would havebeen no necessity for Darkness to do what he had done. However, when it came to‘Zen physics, logic frequently broke down.
After the mission was completed, an S amp; R team wasclocked back to retrieve Lucas Priest’s remains. But had Search amp; Retrievebrought back his body. or that of his twin? Even if the remains had not beencremated, how would it have been possible to tell, since both were identical,right down to their DNA? Had Priest actually died, or had the corpse of histwin taken the bullet? Had Darkness merely caused a temporary “skip” in thetime stream’s continuity, or had what he had done in saving Priest become atemporal disruption that could have unforeseen consequences further down thetimestream? Those questions plagued not only Forester, but Lucas Priest, aswell. And there were still more problems that Priest had to contend with,beyond the metaphysical riddle of his own existence.
By experimenting on himself. Darkness had created an instabilityin his own subatomic structure, an instability that seemed to be increasingwith the passage of time. Darkness believed that, eventually, his tachyonizedstate would decay into discorporation and he would depart at multiples of lightspeed in all directions of the universe. Forester shuddered at the thought ashe stepped into the lift tube and punched out the restricted code for the penthouse.Knowing that something like that would inevitably happen to you had to have aneffect upon your mind.
He stepped in front of the scanner and a beam of lightplayed on his right eye, reading his retinal pattern. Then the tube started toascend. Priest could be facing the same thing. Although the process he had beenexposed to via the particle-level implant in his body was different from thatwhich had tachyonized Darkness, it was based on similar principles. Priest hadno idea whether or not it would eventually do the same thing to him. Moreover,he had to contend with the problem of having been turned into a living timemachine. It had become necessary for him to learn an entirely new level ofmental discipline, because now any stray thought could launch him on a tripthrough time. It had already happened on a number of occasions. The thought-controlledtemporal transponder was unable to differentiate between when he was awake andwhen he was asleep. Consequently, a dream could launch him on a trip throughtime as well. As Darkness had typically understated it. the device still “had afew bugs” in it.
The trouble was, since the transponder had become permanentlybonded to Lucas, fused with his atomic structure, there was no way to removeit. Priest would simply “have to adapt.” as Darkness had put it. Forresterwould have dearly loved to take a swing at Darkness and lay the bastard out,then throw his ass in jail, but how could you hit someone who was faster thanthe speed of light, much less hope to incarcerate him?
The tube arrived at the penthouse floor and revolved to letForrester out. Priest had called him the moment Darkness arrived. He “droppedin” from time to time to check on the progress of his living prototype.Forrester had asked Priest to prevail on Darkness to stay long enough to talkto him. but he had no idea if the man would still be there. Darkness did notwait on generals, or anybody else, for that matter. He could already have left,thought Forester, and arrived back where he had started from before he haddeparted.
However, when he entered the penthouse. he saw that Darknesswas still there. The scientist was standing behind the bar. helping himself toForrester’s twelve-year-old Scotch. Andre Cross was there, as well, along withFinn Delaney and Creed Steiger.
Delaney, a brawny, powerfully built man with a face like anoveraged delinquent’s, looked, as usual, as if he’d slept in his black basefatigues. His dark red hair was uncombed, his heard scruffy, and his bootsunshined. a stark contrast to Steiger, who always looked like a smartlyturned-out member of a S.W.A.T. team. Col. Steiger’s hair was dusty blond, hewas clean-shaven and his hooked nose and cruel mouth gave him a predatory look.Andre Cross sat beside Priest. Her long, ash-blond hair fell to her shouldersand her fatigues were neatly pressed. Her movements denoted a finely honed,athletic muscular control. Her sharp features were striking and attractive.Sitting next to her. Priest looked, as always, like a model military officer.Slim, dark-haired, and handsome, he would have made a perfect model for arecruiting poster. The very vision of an officer and a gentleman.
