“She met herself,” Brent explained. “I think she found it pretty confusing.” Stephen barked: “I can imagine. It bees only now that I have realized who that woman beed who corned with you and so much resembled our mother. But you be so late. I have beed waiting here since I evaded Stappers.”
“Alex—” Brent began.
“I know. Alex haves gived you magnetic disruptor and losed his life. He beed not man to die so young. He beed good friend . . . And my sister haves gived and losed too, I think.” He gently stroked the gray hair that had once been red. “But these be fifty-year-old sorrows. I have lived with my unweeped tears for Alex; they be friends by now too. And Martha haves weeped her tears for . . .” He paused then: “Why have you beed so long?”
“I didn’t want to get here too long before May Day—might get into trouble. So I allowed a week, but I’ll admit I might be a day or so off. What date is it?”
“This bees May 1, and Barrier will be launched within hour. We must hurry.”
“My God—” Brent glared at the dial. “It can’t be that far off. But come on. Get your sister home and we’ll plunge on to do our damnedest.”
Martha roused herself. “I be coming with you.”
“No, dear,” said Stephen. “We can do better alone.”
Her lips set stubbornly. “I be coming. I don’t understand anything that happens, but you be Stephen and you be John, and I belong with you.”
The streets were brightly decorated with banners bearing the double loop of infinity, the sacred symbol of Cosmos that had replaced crescent, swastika, and cross. But there was hardly a soul in sight. What few people they saw were all hurrying in the same direction.
“Everyone will be at dedication,” Stephen explained. “Tribute to Cosmos. Those who stay at home must beware Stappers.”
“And if there’s hundreds of thousands thronging the dedication, how do we get close to Barrier to disrupt it?”
“It bees all arranged. Our group bees far more powerful than when you knowed it fifty years ago. Slowly we be honeycombing system of State. With bribery and force when necessary, with persuasion when possible, we can do much. And we have arranged this.”
“How?”
“You be delegate from European Slanduch. You speak German?”
“Well enough.’”
“Remember that haves beed regularized, too. But I doubt if you need to speak any. Making you Slanduch will account for irregular slips in English. You come from powerful Slanduch group. You will be gladly welcomed here. You will occupy post of honor. I have even accounted for box you carry. It bees tribute you have bringed to Cosmos. Here be your papers and identity plaque.”
“Thanks.” Brent’s shorter legs managed to keep up with the long strides of Stephen, who doubled the rate of the moving sidewalk by his own motion. Martha panted along resolutely. “But can you account for why I’m so late? I set my indicator for April 24, and here we are rushing to make a date on May 1.”
Stephen strode along in thought, then suddenly slapped his leg and barked. “How many months in 1942?”
“Twelve, of course.”
“Ha! Yes, it beed only two hundred years ago that thirteen-month calendar beed adopted. Even months of twenty-eight days each, plus Year Day, which belongs to no month. Order, you see. Now invaluable part of Stasis—” He concentrated frowningly on mental arithmetic. “Yes, your indicator worked exactly. May 1 of our calendar bees April 24 of yours.”
Chalk up one slip against Derringer—an unthinking confidence in the durability of the calendar. And chalk up one, for Brent’s money, against the logic of the Stasis; back in the twentieth century, he had been an advocate of calendar reform, but a stanch upholder of the four-quarter theory against the awkward thirteen months.
They were nearing now the vast amphitheater where the machinery of the Barrier had been erected. Stappers were stopping the few other travelers and forcing them off the moving sidewalk into the densely packed crowds, faces aglow with the smug ecstasy of the Stasis, but Brent’s Slanduch credentials passed the three through.
The representative of the German Slanduch pushed his way into the crowd of eminent dignitaries just as Dyce-Farnsworth’s grandson pressed the button. The magnificent mass of tubes and wires shuddered and glowed as the current pulsed through it. Then the glow became weird and arctic. There was a shaking, a groaning, and then, within the space of a second, a cataclysmic roar and a blinding glare. Something heavy and metallic pressed Brent to the ground.
The roar blended into the excited terror of human voices. The splendid Barrier was a mass of twisted wreckage. It was more wreckage that weighted Brent down, but this was different. It looked strangely like a variant of his own machine. And staring down at him from a warped seat was the huge-eyed head of a naked man.
A woman in a metallic costume equally strange to this age and to Brent’s own straddled the body of Dyce-Farnsworth’s grandson, who had met his ancestor’s martyrdom. And wherever Brent’s eyes moved he saw another strange and outlandish— no, out-time-ish—figure.
He heard Martha’s voice. “It bees clear that Time Barrier haves been erected and destroyed by outside force. But it haves existed and created impenetrable instant of time. These be travelers from all future.”
Brent gasped. Even the sudden appearance of these astounding figures was topped by Martha’s speaking perfect logical sense.
Brent wrote in his journal: The Stasis is at least an admirably functional organism. All hell broke loose therefor a minute, but almost automatically the Stappers went into action with their rods—odd how that bit of crook’s cant has become perfectly literal truth—and in no time had the situation well in hand.
They had their difficulties. Several of the time intruders were armed, and managed to account for a handful of
