have to go by the rules. You have to go after this one just the same as one you did like. I mean, you came up with some good angles already. We get a few more, we might start getting a picture, something that'll give us a handle on it.'
'Yeah. We could get lucky.' Harald responded with all the enthusiasm of a man asked to fly off a cliff by flapping his arms. 'But what you want to bet we don't?'
XVI. On the X Axis;
1866-1914
The Austrian treasure lay exactly where Fial had predicted it to be. He took a small silver coin from the hoard.
'Fian, I'll flip you for who goes back to that last town.'
'What for?' Fiala asked.
'We need pens, ink, and paper. To list the coins. Dates, values, mint marks, wear, like that. It'll be years before we can replace any of them. Memory won't do. And it'll have to be right, else it might change something.'
'What about economic changes? Won't putting that money in circulation make changes? You didn't think about that, did you?'
Neither man had. Fian responded, 'We have to take the chance. We need the capital. I can't see how a few thousand florins would effect history much anyway.'
Fiala pursed her lips. They were compromising their resolve already. They would be able to rationalize their deviations any time convenience demanded it.
It was pretty much what she had expected. Anyone who attained any standing in the State machinery learned the trick early.
Fian lost the toss.
'Well, take a fistful,' Fiala said. 'I'm starved. And I could use some decent clothes. This thing must've been made out of a potato sack.'
'She has a point, Fial. We'll end up in prison if we go flashing a fortune looking like this.' He took a handful of small silver, studied the coins.
'Don't spend it all in one place. The more you scatter it, the less attention it'll draw.'
'I know. Can you remember these till I get back? To check me?'
'I'll have to, won't I?'
'What's your size, Fiala?'
'Think about that, Fian,' said Fial. 'This is eighteen sixty-six. You don't buy things off the rack here. You make your own. Unless you can afford a tailor. Just say yea by so. That'll be good enough till we get out of the country and find a tailor.'
'I suppose you're right again. I'm beginning to think you burying your nose in books all the time wasn't such a waste of time after all.'
Thus, by degrees, they upgraded their apparel and story as they stole westward across Europe.
Neither Fian nor Fiala could get over how little real control governments maintained over their citizens. Contemporary social organization, from their viewpoint, was only slightly more structured than anarchy.
And the amazing thing was that the political movements of the time, even those antecedent to their own, all seemed to espouse
'That Bakunin is a madman,' Fian said of one of the State's minor saints. 'He wants to destroy everything. Something must have been lost in the translation.'
Fial just chuckled. 'Maybe it
• • •
It was in Paris that they encountered and charmed the Americans. The people were even more naive and generous than their fool descendants.
The Atlantic storms were terrible during a December crossing. Their ship was a day late making New York.
'Damn, I wish they'd hurry,' Fian growled from his place at the promenade rail. 'I'm supposed to meet Handy today.'
'Use the English, father,' Fiala admonished remotely. She was captivated by the huge, rude new land rearing behind the piers, so different from the New York she had seen in her own time.
'Too slow, the strange tongue,' said Fial. He still fought
Fiala regressed to German herself. 'Look at them. Swarming like rats.' Hundreds of men crowded the piers. Less than half appeared to be stevedores, or otherwise employed.
'Unemployment problem,' Fial observed. 'The country hasn't successfully changed over to a peacetime economy yet. Plus immigrants. Looks like we'll be able to go ashore in a few minutes.'
Fiala rushed to be first.
