The officer in the black beret and combat fatigues stood stiffly at attention atop the mahogany writing table, all six and a half inches of him. His fatigues were crisply pressed and his combat boots were spit shined to a glass-smooth gloss. He looked like a toy soldier, except that this toy soldier was alive.
“It wasn’t anything we could have foreseen, sir,” he said, his voice as formally correct as his stiff, military bearing. “The mission plan was followed to the letter. Gulliver was released in a manner that allowed him to think he had escaped. We tracked him until he returned to England and then the assault team was clocked out to make the strike. It turned out that Gulliver was not alone at the time of the engagement, a contingency we had prepared for, but there was no way we could have prepared for the target employing a warp disc to escape, sir.”
“He did what?”
The officer winced from the volume of the full-sized voice. “Used a warp disc to escape, sir.”
“Gulliver? Impossible! Where the hell would he obtain a warp disc? And how would he know how to use one?”
“As I’ve already stated, sir,” the Lilliputian officer continued, Gulliver was not alone. The advance scouts clocked in first, according to the mission plan, and they established that there was another man with Gulliver. The mission plan called for them to wait until the target was alone before calling in the strike. However, the scouts were able to establish that the man Gulliver was with was a Temporal Observer and they decided to go ahead and call in the strike. “
“An Observer? Are you sure? How d
id they know?”
“Gulliver was apparently suffering from a hangover. The man gave him some aspirin. The scouts also observed that he was writing a report. In shorthand, with a ballpoint pen. “
“Go on,”
“Based on what they saw, the scouts called in the strike and the field commander made the decision to go in. Because the Observer was deemed the greater threat, he was designated the priority target. The intention was to take him out quickly and then take care of Gulliver, but the man was a good soldier. He kept his cool under fire and used his own body to shield Gulliver while he put the warp disc on him and clocked him out. The transition co-ordinates must have been pre-set; he didn’t have time to reprogram the disc. The Observer could have escaped himself, but Gulliver had all the information. It was an unexpected move, although a tactically sound one, assuming you don’t mind committing suicide.”
“What did they do with the body?”
“The field’ commander determined that with the target clocked out, presumably back to the Observer’s base, a Search and Retrieve team could be coming through at any time, so they left the body, clocked out the dead and wounded and got the hell out of there. With Gulliver clocked ahead to tell them what happened, destroying the body would have been pointless in any case. And too time consuming. The risk was deemed unjustifiable. “
“Unjustifiable, indeed! All they did was leave behind incontrovertible evidence to confirm what happened. “
“Even using lasers to dismember the corpse, disposing of a fun-sized human body would have taken hours,” said the colonel. “And with Gulliver in their hands, they’d already know what happened.”
“Assuming the shock of the experience didn’t make him take leave of his senses. According to your report, he was already disoriented and drinking heavily. Either way, the T.I.A. will be investigating for certain now. Allowing Gulliver to escape was a serious mistake. Your team bungled the entire mission and jeopardized our security.”
The lilliput colonel drew himself up to his full height, but since his full height was only six and a half inches, the effect was negligible.
“I lost fifteen men on that mission,” he said, through gritted teeth. “And six seriously wounded, four of them critically. Twenty-five men went out on what was supposed to be a routine training exercise and only four returned in one piece!”
“And what does that tell you, Colonel? Your assault team was almost completely wiped out by one man, and a mere Observer, at that! What do you think would have happened if he had been a time Commando?”
“Sir, those men were green,” the colonel said. “Only their commander and their sergeant had any field experience at all. It was supposed to be a routine training exercise. How were they supposed to expect—”
“They’re supposed to expect anything! Anything at all! And be ready for it! Nothing is routine! Those fifteen men were lost because they were not good enough! And that was your responsibility, Colonel! It’s your command! Don’t come to me with excuses! I am not concerned with excuses, only with results! Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
“The entire operation has been jeopardized as a result of this fiasco. I want you to Execute Plan Delta immediately.”
Sandy Steiger’s apartment on Threadneedle Street had been thoroughly cleaned up by the S & R team. There was no sign of the battle that had taken place there, nothing to indicate that it had been used as an Observer outpost.
Temporal Observers were trained to become completely assimilated into the time periods to which they were assigned. With the sole exception of the warp discs that they carried on their persons at all times, they were under strict orders to have nothing else that could not be obtained within their assigned time zone. In practice, however, this regulation proved difficult to enforce. Observer postings were long term and often entailed hardship. It was difficult to resist smuggling back some seemingly inconsequential items.
Such things as deodorant, or toothpaste or even toilet paper were easily concealed and served to make the posting a bit more pleasant. A carefully doled out ration of cigarettes served to remind one of home just as much as they satisfied the cravings of a habit. A favorite paperback novel reread over and over by candlelight was a harmless way of maintaining contact with the world one came from, so long as precautions were taken to ensure that no one else would ever see the book, especially if the posting was in a time period when the only writing to be found was in the form of serious or illuminated manuscripts or cuneiform.
In the early days, a number of Observers became a bit too casual about following such regulations and, having gotten away with a few seemingly inconsequential items, they took to accumulating more. Miniature portable stereos with head-phones began appearing in the 14th century. Minicomputers and microwave ovens were brought back to Victorian London. In one celebrated case, a tiny, portable holographic projection system smuggled back to 17th century America led to the burning of an Observer as a witch when she was seen (by a peeping tom) “consorting” with demons in her bedroom, demons who were, in actuality, merely holograms of actors in an entertainment feature. The Army finally clamped down and instituted the practice of surprise inspections with stiff penalties for the slightest infractions. Still, in many cases, Observers continued to smuggle back some small conveniences.
The S & R team had gone over Sandy Steiger’s apartment with a fine tooth comb and, according to their report, they had found nothing more esoteric than some aspirin tablets, a ballpoint pen, some timed-release decongestant pills, a modern tooth brush and nine cartons of cigarettes concealed beneath a loose floor board. Their report stated that Sandy had clearly broken regulations, but the few items he had smuggled back had not seemed very significant. They had no way of knowing that the contraband had been enough to cost Sandy his life. The S & R team had been quite thorough. Nevertheless, the commandos conducted their own search.
Gulliver stood by the door and watched them anxiously, He was clearly uncomfortable at being back in the same room where Sandy had been killed and where he had almost met the same fate.
“One thing puzzles me,” he said, as Creed Steiger, Finn Delaney, and Andre Cross carefully searched through the apartment once again. “Since you have this astonishing ability to travel back and forth through time, is it not possible that you could go back and prevent Sandy from being killed by those horrible Lilliputians?”