Dorn’s human eye blinked. He rocked a step backward. “How could they create an artifact that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here long ages ago. They must have studied us—our ancestors.”
Dorn regarded her silently.
Coming closer to him, Elverda went on, “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.
“Communicate?”
“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device.”
“Not an artwork at all.”
“Oh, yes, of course it’s an artwork! All works of art are communications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”
Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.
Finally, he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”
“Yes, it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Sterling and anyone else who would try to destroy it—or pervert it to his own use.”
“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now.”
“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”
“Perhaps,” he said softly.
“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to end the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”
“End the corporate wars?”
“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars.”
“Sterling and others will have you killed”
“I am a famous artist; they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”
“The scientists—do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”
“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”
The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm, and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son, they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.
Introduction to
“The Café Coup”
Time travel. The ability to move at will into the future—or the past.
Of all the possibilities that science fiction has tinkered with, time travel seems the most fantastic. Yet the known laws of physics tell us that time travel is not forbidden.
And what is not forbidden may one day become possible.
It seems unlikely, a dream of traveling across time to a different age. But once, space flight seemed like a dream. So did skyscrapers and modern medicine and electromagnetic communications systems that link the world almost instantaneously.
The question, then, is this: who would travel through time? And why?
Thereby, as they say, hangs a tale.
THE CAFÉ COUP
Paris was not friendly to Americans in the soft springtime of AD 1922. The French didn’t care much for the English either and they hated the victorious Germans, of course.
I couldn’t blame them very much. The Great War had been over for more than three years, yet Paris had still not recovered its gaiety, its light and color, despite the hordes of boisterous German tourists who spent so freely on the boulevards. More likely, because of them.
I sat in one of the crowded sidewalk cafés beneath a splendid warm sun, waiting for my lovely wife to show up. Because of the crowds of Germans, I was forced to share my minuscule round table with a tall, gaunt Frenchman who looked me over with suspicious eyes.
“You are an American?” he asked, looking down his prominent nose at me. His accent was worse than mine, certainly not Parisian.
“No,” I answered truthfully. Then I lied, “I’m from New Zealand.” It was as far away in distance as my real birthplace was in time.
“Ah,” he said with an exhalation of breath that was somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “Your countrymen fought well at Gallipoli. Were you there?”
“No,” I said. “I was too young.”
That apparently puzzled him. Obviously, I was of an age to have fought in the Great War. But in fact, I hadn’t been born when the British Empire troops were decimated at Gallipoli. I hadn’t been born in the twentieth century at all.
“Were you in the war?” I asked needlessly.
“But certainly. To the very last moment, I fought the Boche.”
“It was a great tragedy.”
“The Americans betrayed us,” he muttered.
My brows rose a few millimeters. He was quite tall for a Frenchman, but painfully thin. Half-starved. Even his eyes looked hungry. The inflation, of course. It cost a basketful of francs, literally, to buy a loaf of bread. I wondered how he could afford the price of an aperitif. Despite the warm afternoon, he had wrapped himself in a shabby old leather coat, worn shiny at the elbows.
From what I could see, there were hardly any Frenchmen in the café, mostly raucous Germans roaring with laughter and heartily pounding on the little tables as they bellowed for more beer. To my amazement, the waiters had learned to speak German.
“Wilson,” my companion continued bitterly. “He had the gall to speak of Lafayette.”
“I thought that the American president was the one who arranged the armistice.”
“Yes, with his Fourteen Points. Fourteen daggers plunged into the heart of France.”
“Really?”
“The Americans should have entered the war on our side! Instead, they sat idly by and watched us bleed to death while their bankers extorted every gram of gold we possessed.”
“But the Americans had no reason to go to war,” I protested mildly.
“France needed them! When their pitiful little colonies rebelled against the British lion, France was the only nation to come to their aid. They owe their very existence to France, yet when we needed them, they turned their backs on us.”
That was largely my fault, although he didn’t know it. I averted the sinking of the Lusitania by
