Stephen Marlowe

“ Tears streamed down Hitler's face, yet he laughed. "Think how I feel. I, Hitler. A man today, a God tomorrow, because you showed me the way. Name your price, request your reward; when the world is mine the half you want shall be yours."
"I want only what is best for Germany and its people," said the man.
"What he means," Laniq whispered to Tedor, "is he wants what is best for the monopolist. Naturally he's one of our own people. Fortunately for the world, he drove this point home too strongly. Hitler will move, and soon, making a wild, incredible bid for power. ”

“ Laniq explained. "If a large body of horsemen arrives, they will see it in plenty of time. As for the lone traveler, he could be nothing but a friend. An enemy would not live long in this place."
They advanced on the oasis, the unfamiliar yakskin clothing itching Tedor's skin, the stain which converted him to a Mongol in appearance smarting in his eyes. Before long the black felt yurts were not ahead of them but all around them and they walked, completely uncontested, to the very door of Genghis Kahn's own yurt, the standard of the nine yak tails billowing above it in the stiff wind. ”

“ Laniq said.
Tedor looked at her, snorted in disbelief. But he put the weapon in his pocket and told her, "Go ahead and talk."
Laniq grasped his shoulder impulsively. "Barwan, you've got to listen! We can make a quick tour through time, just hitting the high spots. I can show you things; I can show you a man from our own time behind every important dictator in history. We've beaten them all along the line, so you don't have to worry about it. Except for the twentieth century. It's a crucial age, Barwan, and we're not winning. The whole course of future history might be changed if we don't. ”

“ Tedor had heard it before, but he found himself listening nevertheless, for Ruscar tackled this business of time-tinkering with sincerity.
"Think for a moment what would happen if the past ages became aware of us. What would you do if you learned a group of men five thousand years unborn were stealing mineral wealth from under your nose, conducting tours through your backyard, exploiting you and your century for the far future?" ”

“ We do nothing to encourage living in our own century."
Tedor frowned. "In a way, it's hard to argue with that."
"Precisely. They're leaving out one important fact, however: ours is a civilization which exists not along the usual spatial lines but a civilization which exists in time. That is a whole new concept, Tedor—something unique in the history of the world. If, for example, our ancestors had found life and conditions capable of supporting life on the planets of this solar system, we doubtless would have spread out to the planets and so geared our culture in that direction. ”

“ All the most powerful dictators through history have not worked alone. Someone in our own time—we don't know who—has been helping them. If he could control the most powerful rulers in history, he could control the entire time-stream from the dawn of civilization to our own age. Labor, raw material, armies—all the world would be under his control. You found something in the twentieth century which substantiates that."
"Maybe," said Tedor.
"Maybe nothing. You found the Russians were getting outside aid—from our century." ”

“ Laniq explained as the time-conveyor dropped out of the time-stream and cruised along above the desert. "We're building a spaceship, you see."
"A spaceship? What for? There is nothing worth while on the planets, nothing worth the trouble to mine it."
"My fault, Tedor. I should have said a starship. If necessary, we'll go to the stars. Oh, we can do it, although the trip will take generations and only a few hundred people will find room. We won't do it unless the monopolist forces us. If he gains the dictatorial control of time he's seeking, we'll have no choice. ”

“ My capital is a beautiful city, and I would rest."
"You must never rest, not with all mankind ready to fall at your feet! The Shah of Persia anticipates border actions, clashes, sorties, patrols. Fool him. Strike with your entire army at the gateway city. It is far to the south of here, in a warmer land, but it is the gateway to the West for your people, Oh Kahn."
"Who is he?" Tedor whispered.
"Working for the monopolist, from our own time. Here in this age they call him Chepe Noyon and he is one of the Kahn's two greatest generals. ”

“ The lips hardly moved, but Tedor heard: "La-niq? Laniq, you've come back."
She knelt by the bed, let her hand rest on her father's feverish brow. "It's all right now, Dad. Everything's going to be all right."
"They destroyed the starship, Laniq. Completely. We—don't have that way out any longer. We've got to beat the monopolist in Russia. It's his last chance." Domique Hadrien spoke without heat, with no emotion at all. The words spilled from his lips one after the other, tonelessly. "We have beaten him all along the line, without even knowing his identity. ”

“ Laniq grinned happily. "I could kiss you, Barwan. Here, let me at those controls."
Tedor stepped aside and waited with mounting impatience while she set the time-conveyor for their first stop. Would Ruscar approve? He doubted it. Still, he was on vacation and he sensed a ring of sincerity in what Laniq had told him. He wondered how much her breathless beauty had to do with his decision, then found himself snorting again. He'd never lacked women, not as a Century Agent. But they'd always come to him, whining his name, begging almost. Laniq he would have to go and fetch. ”

“ He was so young. So ridiculously young to be an Agent—even an Apprentice. A dying Agent, now, twenty-two years old.
Tedor propped a pillow under Fornswitthe's head, tried to staunch the flow of blood although he knew it was useless. Mechanically, he activated the transmitter buried in his palate, called Agent headquarters for help.
On the desk, a spool sat oddly askew in Fornswitthe's thinkwriter. Tedor switched it on, listened. ”

“ Stalin, in truth, had asked for Chenkov as well as Malenkov. Stalin. Malenkov trembled when he thought of it. That was not Stalin—that was nobody. A thing, not a person. It spoke even with a mechanical voice. Stalin—the Old Stalin—never answered to a cabinet of ministers and sub-ministers. As for the new Stalin, the strange horrible thing which the bio-chemist, Zhubin, insisted was Stalin, there was no telling what he would want or demand. Malenkov wished passionately he could get his hands around Zhubin's scrawny neck and choke the life from him. ”

“ Munich, Germany, city of commerce, transportation hub noisy with the sounds of arrival and departure, its byways crowded with small homburgs, bicycles, checkered caps. The Munich of the Beer Halls and great steins of hearty German beer and singing and raucous laughter. But also the Munich of unrest, distrust, intense intellectual turmoil, and the Munich which, not many months later, was to be the scene of the abortive putsch in a beer cellar which started a slight little man with stray-locked dark hair on his path toward world conquest. ”

“ Tedor kept running, for he lacked Athenian money to pay the fish vendor. But by then he had lost Laniq Hadrien once more.
Her trail led him through all the stalls of the Agora but he did not see her again. He began to realize it would be foolish to remain in Athens any longer for fear he might lose her entirely when he became aware someone was following him. The man maintained two dozen paces distance between them. The man hurried when he hurried, slowed when he did. Tedor stopped, then turned swiftly and sprinted toward the mantled figure. ”

“ What would you say to five thousand century notes for the exclusive rights to your next assignment?"
Tedor was interested in spite of himself. He was moving at top speed through the crowds and if Dorlup could keep up with him, they'd talk. "I thought the whole idea of solidiofilms was to keep clear of time travel," Tedor said.
Dorlup puffed like a blowfish out of water, lighting a big cigar. "Used to be that way. But time's become the universal solvent. Business, pleasure, anything—all else is a dull routine. If the solidios don't turn to time, they'll go out of business in a couple of years." ”

“ When it turns, as assuredly it will, to still a third and now unthinkable hatred, frenzy will ride high the crest of a wave—and the legions of the Third Reich will turn suddenly and devastatingly on the West, which today the German people cannot hate but which will one day bear the brunt of their hatred and power and rage because I, Hitler, tell them so. ”

“ Stalin has come back, sort of like a totalitarian Communist Messiah. All people have a culture-hero who's supposed to come back in times of trouble and lead his nation to glory. Even though Stalin's been gone only a year and a half, he's the Russian culture-hero. If somehow they can rig up a setup—the men in the Kremlin, I mean—which convinces the people he has come back and wants war, there's no telling what Russia might do. ”

“ Tedor demanded.
"Risk everything on that when we know Hitler will fail? This man probably doesn't know the monopolist, anyway. He is a shadow figure, a ghost. None of them knows his identity, at least that has been my experience."
"Still—"
"Still nothing. The twentieth century's middle years are the significant ones. Let all else ride if we must, for it is there the monopolist will either succeed or fail with plans that will make the dreams of a dozen Hitlers seem something less than child's play."
"Okay, Laniq. You win. ”

“ What do you mean, no?"
"I want Laniq Hadrien. She's mine." If he lived forever he would never forget her face last night in Fornswitthe's place, with Fornswitthe dying on the floor. "I feel responsible, Ruscar. Forget the regulations this one time."
"Regulations clearly say the century agent is responsible for his own hundred years. Six to ten for a century, depending on its importance. Apprentices for each one. Like you, all the agents did intensive work in their own hundred years, learning the culture, mores, traditions. ”

“ Today the figure has grown to three quarters of a billion, and it's still increasing.
"And seventy-five million people have vanished into the past. They simply preferred the past ages and broke all relations with the present. But that's the problem of you Agents, not us."
"Don't I know it!" Tedor said.
"The non-temps say this is a dangerous trend. They further maintain it is our own fault. We provide no real culture of our own, no sense of belonging. We gear everything to the past ages, converting our own world to a sort of administration center and nothing more. ”

“ Wild claims have come out of Russia, rumors, whispered talk—all saying that Stalin, miraculously, is living again. It's sheer imagination, I suspect. It's an attempt to pan a make-believe Stalin off on the people in case Malenkov falls on his face while playing God."
"Then we go to Moscow," said Tedor, "as Russians, of course. We must discredit Malenkov where possible, disprove the Stalin re-birth theory—"
"And incite the people to revolt," Laniq finished for him. ”

“ The voice was deep, metallic of timbre. "A lone woman is unusual on these avenues, as you of course know." Women were second class citizens in Athens, remaining in their homes except on rare intervals and never venturing out alone unless they were so old and so ugly no men would care to look at them. "Further," the slave went on, "this girl carried a strange black box which she pointed at me. I heard a clicking sound and wondered what kind of magic might dwell within it."
"You have nothing to fear," Tedor assured him. So Laniq Hadrien was taking pictures. ”

“ In the first place, privately owned time-craft were rare, belonging only to the few rich people who could afford them, to members of Laniq Hadrien's organization or to Time Agents. The century coaches carried most traffic through time, and no century coach would go off the well-traveled trails to follow Tedor.
One of the Hadrien woman's people? Perhaps, but he wouldn't have immediately accelerated through time to chase Tedor, not if he were trailing the woman for protection. A rich man on a pleasure jaunt? Hardly likely. Certainly not another Time Agent! ”