"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Brown pays me, and I stay here, like the first technician." He
took his hand out of his pocket with the two empty cartridge cases in
it and rolled them gently back and forth in his open palm.
Moirta stared at them fascinated. "Oh," she said faintly, "I didn't
know. I thought ... I didn't know...."
"Well, you know now," he said. "And your job is to keep me cheered up
and plugging away at the job until payday comes. Right?"
"No," she said. "Oh, no. Please, George. They wouldn't do that ... that
is, I don't think ... it's so unnecessary."
"Unnecessary?"
"Yes. You see--I shouldn't tell you this, but I can't have you
thinking ... you see, after we are gone, you will forget all this. Why
should they kill you when there's no reason?"
She did not seem very strongly convinced herself, Dolan thought.
"How do you mean, I'll forget it? You mean they'll hypnotize me,
something like that?"
She shook her head. "No, they won't have to do anything. It's the
displacement effect. You see, we are not _really_ here, in a way,
it is a sort of illusion, but more real for us than for you. When
we return to our own time, we will remember all that happened, but
you will remember nothing, since the translator does not really
exist in your time. You will just forget, it will be as if none of
this had ever happened, as if you had never met me, never heard of a
'time-translator'."
It sounded plausible, in a way, but there was a flaw in the logic.
"If everybody in this time forgets, why so much to-do about secrecy?
Won't anyone else I tell forget too?"
"There is a limit to the possible displacement. If the limit is
exceeded, according to the Alwyn hypothesis the continuum itself may
be altered, and one of the ways in which it might change would be to
eliminate the irritant--in other words, all of us concerned directly."
"I see. So they figured two of us put too much of a strain on the
displacement, that's why they killed this other joker--what was his
name, anyway?"
"Nelson. Perhaps," she said uncertainly, "that might be it."
"And maybe they figure even one is too much strain, better to be safe
than sorry, huh?"
"No, I don't think so. Killing requires even more displacement
than ... loss of memory. Really, I don't understand it, you see, I
am just a sort of employee, they don't confide in me. If they knew I
had been talking to you about these things like this--" she shuddered
and smiled wryly. "Perhaps I too know too much, perhaps I should be
worrying about the pros and cons of various types of displacement for
myself."
Dolan looked at her thoughtfully. "This displacement thing," he said
gently, "I'll forget you too?"
She nodded. "You will forget me. But I will remember you--for a long
time, I am afraid."
He frowned and kicked at a tuft of sod. "I don't want to forget you.
Do you have to leave with the others? Couldn't you stay? For a little
while anyway? You haven't really had a good chance to see our world
yet."
"No. They would never trust me out of their control. If I refused to
go ... well ..." she shrugged.
"And I don't suppose I could go back with you to your world, spend some
time there, either?"
"No, that would be to travel into your own future, which cannot be
done."
"I see." Dolan leaned back against the tree, thinking.
"Well, there's one thing sure," he said. "If the machine can't be
fixed, it can't be fixed, there isn't much they can do about it. You
may _all_ stay in this time yet."
She shook her head gently. "Not all. At least, not all alive. There
would be no displacement, and the only hope they would have to avoid
the Alwyn action would be to preserve absolute secrecy. You have a
saying, I believe: 'dead men--'" She hesitated. "Even if you and I
could find a way to escape, even if they _told_ me I might leave, I
could not trust them. They are very dangerous men. As long as we and
they are both in this time, there would be no safety for me, nor for
you."
"I suppose you're right," Dolan said reluctantly. He looked down at her
searchingly. "What do you _want_ to do?" he asked. "Do you want to stay
with me, or do you want me to forget you?"
"I want to be with you," she said softly. "Always."
"And I, with you," he said. He bent his head toward hers.
Below, the door of the cottage opened. Smith's figure appeared. He
glanced around and then came plodding up the path.
Moirta pulled away and got to her feet. "We might as well start back, I
suppose," she said unenthusiastically.
"Let's go back in the woods, he won't find us there."
She hesitated and then shook her head. "No. We have both been very
indiscreet today, and they are suspicious men. It is important in their
trade to be suspicious. It would not be wise to let them think we are
avoiding them."
"OK, I suppose not," he acknowledged glumly. He rose and followed her
down the path.
* * * * *
Like all true artists, Moirta tended to submerge herself completely in
her role, a failing which the senior gun runner recognized and allowed
for in his calculations.
In the following days, Dolan held her hand often, and kissed her
sometimes, and talked with her frequently, and took her in his arms for
short periods; but at the crucial moment Smith or Brown always casually
appeared upon the scene. Dolan suspected, accurately, that they were
deliberately permitting him just enough contact with her to keep him
constantly on edge, keep his mind off other matters.
They made no overt threats, but he was constantly aware of the body
in the gully, the bulge in Smith's pocket, Brown's cold eyes studying
him. Dolan was not a submissive person, and under the pressure a cold
malevolence toward the two gun runners began to develop in him. He
concealed it, as well as he could, under a shell of impassivity.
His time would come. The sketch of a plan was beginning to form in his
mind, it was not very solid yet, but if it worked out they would be
laughing on the other side of their faces.
What was it Moirta had said? There would be danger "as long as we and
they are both in this time." The answer to that was simple. Eliminate
"they" and eliminate the danger.
In his work, Dolan kept running into reminders of the first technician,
and the matter bothered him. The man seemed to have been making
progress, and surely he would not have been such a fool as simply to
refuse to work, the message he had left showed he understood quite
clearly his danger. He asked Moirta about this, and got another shock.
"That was a mistake," she said. "We did not fully understand your
world then. In our time, medical science is very exact. There are no
incomplete men or incomplete women. We assumed that because this
man ... person ... looked like a man, and seemed to be a man, he was
one. However, we have since discovered that this is not always true,
and it was not in this case. We could not allow him to work on the
machine, since we could not predict his reactions adequately."