Time Riders

indicated a very small raidingparty.’

‘How small?’

‘Well, actually, just one man.’

‘What?’

‘Clearly it can’t be just one man. That would bemadness. But among some of the prisoners that we’ve managed to recapture there’s aspreading rumour that some sort of… of a superman… hascome to their aid. They describe a large figure off which bullets bounce — ’

‘A superman?’

Karl smiled. ‘Clearly it’s wishful thinking, a fantasy. The Americans have alwaysliked their comic-books, their heroic figures in silly costumes. It’s not unreasonablethat their hopes and prayers have taken the form of this kind of mythical figure.’

Karl was unsettled by the sudden look of distraction on his Fuhrer’s face, as ifhalf his attention was elsewhere, listening to a faintly heard tune, or a conversation comingfrom the room next door.

‘In all likelihood, sir, the insurgents may well be a small group of well-trainedsoldiers, US marines… US airborne, highly motivated and well equippedand so far they’ve just managed to be very lucky.’

Kramer nodded. ‘Yes… yes. Perhaps you’re right.’

‘Nonetheless, sir, I suggest it would be wise to double the garrison strengths on theother camps in the region. Too many successful raids like these might just encourage otherinsurgents to join in.’

Kramer was silent, his face clouded, his brows locked in a frown of concentration as if hewas trying to listen to someone else. Karl noticed he’d not shaved this morning, a faintblur of silver-grey bristles on his chin, and he spotted the slightest sporadic tremble in theman’s jaw. Small things that only a close friend would notice.

Small things that worried him.

He’s having some kind of a breakdown?

‘Paul? Are you all right?’

‘Yes… yes, of course,’ said Kramer absently. His gaze returned from whereit had been and focused back on to Karl. ‘Take what action you think is necessary withthese raids.’

Kramer hastily scribbled his signature on the last few sheets of paper, handed them back andoffered him a flickering smile. ‘Thank you, Karl. You may leave now.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He offered a clipped salute, turned on his heel and departed the observation lounge.

Kramer waited until he heard the footsteps recede down the hallway outside.

To work.

‘To work,’ he agreed, stepping quickly across the polished floor towards hisstudy door. He turned the brass handle and stepped through into his sanctum sanctorum: book-lined walls, several leather armchairs anda work table littered with drafting materials. It was very much a replica of his private studyback in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, a place to think, to tinker with his weapons designs,to ruminate on empire-wide policy.

From his desk drawer he pulled out a little black notebook, the corners curled and scuffed,the pages of handwritten notes beginning to yellow with the years now. A precious book ofthoughts and ideas, theories and secrets. His younger handwriting so scribbled andimpatient.

In the year 2056, he’d been barely twenty years of age and such a devout fan of themysterious inventor Roald Waldstein. His reputation as an elusive genius, the one and only manto mathematically formulate a displacement field that could fold a gap through space-time. Theonly man to have actually tested the theory with a workingprototype. An honorary director of the International Institute of Quantum Research, and theAmerican Museum of Natural History, a wealthy entrepreneur, a scientific adviser topresidents… a complete enigma.

Kramer’s hard work and promising talent had earned him an internship atWaldstein’s prestigious New Jersey research centre, several months in the company of thegreat old man himself. Waldstein liked to be in the company of keen young minds. He’dtaken warmly to Kramer. The other keen young minds, jealous fellow interns, suggested thatPaul Kramer reminded the sentimental old man of the son he’d lost many years before.

Kramer smiled at the pleasant memories, those weeks with that great mind, earning hisconfidence, listening to his theories about how the unseen dimensions of the metaverse heldeverything together in a way beyond the comprehension of most human minds. Struggling to keepup with him, yet understanding just enough, parts of it fittedtogether in his young head.

The old man’s over-riding passion, though, what kept him awake lateat nights and fired him up with a preacher’s zeal, was to bury the technology he alonehad pioneered — the potential for time travel. To ensure absolutely no one followed in his footsteps. For Kramer, it had been frustrating to bediscussing with this great man his most advanced theoretical work and then for Waldstein tosuddenly grow cautious on the subject of displacement theory.

An old man. He must have been about sixty then, but he seemed so much older and frailer thanthat, with hands that shook and trembled constantly, and watery eyes that always seemed todart towards dark corners. And his bizarre rituals — every morning after breakfast,Kramer watched him shuffle towards a curious sheet of yellowing newsprint, framed behind glassand hung on his wall. Waldstein stared at it for several minutes every day with eyes thatleaked tears down his sunken cheeks.

Kramer had glanced at it once, nothing more than a page of personal ads from some oldnewspaper, lonely men seeking lonely women.

Waldstein was losing his mind… and in the quiet moments, sitting with young Kramerbeside the warming fire, he let slip perhaps a little too much. Old enough and perhapstrusting enough of Kramer to let him know a little more than he should have.

Kramer fingered his tatty old notebook now. Pages of mathematical characters and equations,the parts of the old man’s puzzle that he’d carelessly let go, interspersed withpages and pages of angrily crossed-out formulae that Kramer himself had worked on over theyears. Pieces of equation that he’d tried to squeeze into the spaces, to make right with Waldstein’s elegant work… and that alwaysseemed to not quite fit.

He smiled at the notes scrawled across the draftsman’s sheet on the desk.

It fits together now, though, Paul. Doesn’t it?

Some of it did — the ‘Waldstein displacement field’. It had taken Kramer fifteen years on and off, thinking the problem over in his privatemoments. A personal hobby, an affliction, perhaps.

The field — the Waldstein field — in theory, on paper, was merely a method tocrack open the tiniest gap in space-time. That alone didn’t make a time machine, just away to open a peek-hole into the very fabric of space- time. Kramer needed computing power athis fingertips to make a time machine. Computing power to precisely navigate through theswirling chaos of a dimension that mankind had no business entering. There were no Apple Macshere in 1956, no PCs, no palmtops or organizers that could be cannibalized, adapted.

The schematic sketched out on the sheet of paper in front of him was for a device he couldconstruct merely allowing him to open a tiny window and tap infinite energy from the swirlingchaos beyond.

There’d been something Waldstein had once said to him: ‘To open time-space is toopen a door into Hell itself.’

You’ve been through that door before.

‘Yes,’ he uttered softly, ‘stepped into Hell.’ His voice trembledwith a mixture of fear and excitement. Waldstein had also once said something to a muchyounger Kramer, something that had unsettled him back then, and did so now.

‘Consider this, Paul… If a man can place a foot in Hell,then whatever exists there might just as easily use the same door and place a foot in ourworld.’

Those words tormented him now because he realized it was something far worse than some agentfrom the future after him. Something far more frightening.

You must hurry, Paul… before it seeks you out.

‘To work,’ said Kramer, pushing a forgotten plate of food aside on his desk.