A matter of time

And I took time to make sure they didn't find out. I cleaned the house top to bottom.'

'But… Neulist. You should have let me know. I could have come in and surprised him. I could have… I've got contacts. Hans knows people who would have loaned us an assassin. As a favor.'

'I didn't know till it was too late. I didn't run from him anyway. I could have handled him. He's vulnerable. But the police aren't.'

'But we took care of the O'Brien thing back when.' A wrinkle of distaste marred Fial's expression.

'Back when isn't the problem.'

'Fiala? Don't tell me. Not again? Not another one?'

'A policeman this time. And I had no choice, Fial. It wasn't like before, just madness and meanness.

'I went to the funeral for the O'Brien doppelganger. And Neulist showed up, like I said. That left me in a state, not thinking very good. Otherwise, I might have handled it differently.

'While I was out, one of the detectives got into the house. He must've lost track of time. He was still there when I got home. He left the door open a crack. Because I was upset, I was ready to be suspicious of anything. I snuck in. He was in the little west parlor going through my journals. I did a lot of them in English, to practice. He was so preoccupied that it was child's play to slip up with a hypodermic… It just didn't occur to me that I didn't have to kill him, not if I was going to run anyway. What I should've done was sedate him while I scoured the house and got out. Nobody would have believed him. But at the time I just didn't see that there was any choice.'

'Okay. I understand. I don't like it, but I understand. What about the body?'

'I shipped it in a trunk again.'

'I'm running out of room in the basement.' He smiled weakly. 'You're sure you can't be traced? The police are more sophisticated now.'

'I made it as complicated as I could. I bought a railway ticket to Indianapolis. The police sergeant looked the type to think me too old-fashioned to travel any other way. Then I went to the airport. I spent the last five days hopping from Memphis to Chicago to Detroit, to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit again, Buffalo, then here. Sometimes I used the bus, the railroad, or went by plane. The luggage I sent by bus and several other shippers, skipping every other city. I used three different names and paid for everything in cash. I changed my clothes every time, and I wore wigs.' She was unable to put into words the fright, the feeling of anachronism that had accompanied her every step of the way. She had kept going on sheer willpower.

'Okay. You used your head. If they can untangle that at all, it'll take a month. We'll get the jump on them in the meantime. It's time we went back to Europe anyway. The international situation is going to get nasty soon. The Chinese are going to start in. I've been getting ready for ten years, aiming for seventy-eight, just before it hit. But now is just as good.

'The route will be as complicated as yours was. We'll use four different identities. They've existed for years, and they've been leaving the necessary paper residue in the files of several governments. They'll keep on, because these people really exist. We'll eventually end up tenants on a little farm near Tirschenreuth, at the edge of the Bohemian Forest, just on the Bavarian side of the Czech border, in West Germany. We can cross over whenever we want. Hans handled the arrangments. He knows some ex-Nazis who can manage things like that. I've done them a few favors over here.

'When Hans gets back I'll have him contact his people. I'll contact my brokers in New York and tell them to start moving our money. To Beirut, not Zurich. They always look in Switzerland first these days. After that, we can leave as soon as your body is buried. For my part, I'll apparently die and be buried here. I made the arrangements a long time ago. Seemed the best way to disappear. Hans will get this place. He'll cover our backtrail.'

Fial chuckled. 'Now we've even got a body to put in my coffin.'

'Father couldn't have done better, Fial.'

'He couldn't have done as good. That's why he always left me the staff work.'

For ten minutes they said little, just sipped tea and contemplated the dramatic tricks fate had played with their lives.

'Eighty-one years to go,' Fial muttered. 'It'll be one colossal drudge.'

'And no way of knowing what we'll face when we get there. Things are so different.'

'Not so much. It's our perspective and revisionist educations, more than anything. The real difference peaked around nineteen fifty. Since then history has been undergoing a normalization. It's as if the fabric had been stretched, but now it's going back to its normal shape. But, still, I sometimes wonder why we bother.'

'What are we doing here, Fial? A surgeon and a physicist playing secret agents in somebody else's time.'

'It's no game. Not with a crazy colonel out there somewhere, willing to shuffle history all over again. Not with Fian killed…'

'Don't forget an angry St. Louis police sergeant named Norman Cash. He'll get me if he can, Fial. He's another Neulist. You'd think the young policeman, the dead one, was his son, the way he acted toward him.'

'Cash? Norman Cash? A homicide detective? From St. Louis? In Missouri?'

'United States of America, planet Earth. Yes. So?'

'Fiala, think! Christ, how bizarre is this thing going to get? Girl, there has to be a God. Not even a dynamic of historical restoration can explain this. Don't you see? He has to be Michael Cash's father. Just has to be. There couldn't be two policemen with the same job in the same city with the same name.'

'You think so? Really? I never thought of it. But you might be right. His wife said they lost a son in Vietnam. Her name was Ann, and I think she said her son's name was Michael. Or Matthew…? I just never made the connection. You see how stupid I am sometimes?'

'No. You've never been that interested in history or geneology.'