At the Narrow Passage Read online

  The two guards came to attention as we approached, saluted me and Tracy across the receivers of their weapons, and one of them said, "May I help you, sir?" He was addressing me since I was the ranking officer.

  Kearns answered for me: "Captain Mathers and Lieutenant Tracy to see General Asbury." He produced a sheet of paper from a breast pocket and handed it to the corporal who had spoken.

  The corporal relaxed his grip on his tommy gun, took the paper, glanced at it, then back to me. "Certainly, sir. The general is expecting you. Go right in." He handed the paper back to Kearns, gave me another salute across his weapon.

  The other corporal turned, opened the door, and I entered the house, Tracy and Kearns behind me.

  The first room we entered was empty, though the floor was littered with paper and debris left behind when the former occupants had fled.

  "In here," a voice called from another room.

  In the next room there were three beings, two of them human, and enough furniture to make the place look as if it were habitable.

  A large oak table occupied the center of the room, and a gas lantern sat in its middle. Below the lantern lay a map, but from the distance I could not tell what the map was of. Six chairs of assorted sizes and shapes sat around the table. There was a bed, a sofa, a cabinet on which sat a bottle of wine and some glasses, and three overstuffed easy chairs completing the furniture. A picture of Jesus hung on the wall, holding open His robes to expose a radiant heart. I suspected that the picture belonged to the former occupants of the house, not to any of the present ones.

  One of the men was Sir Gerald Asbury, Brigadier General in His Britannic Majesty's Army. I had seen his picture often enough -- he had been something of a hero the previous spring when the Touraine, or part of it, was recaptured from the Imperial Germans -- though I had never before met him in person. He was a short, stocky, redheaded man, witha huge cavalry mustache, the stereotype of a British officer, but despite that, a bold and imaginative man, so I had been told. I rather liked his looks.

  The other man I had met before. His name was Pall, and his nearly seven-foot frame was all muscle. His swarthy face was expressionless, as always, as he stood behind Kar-hinter, his hands hanging at his sides. He was dressed in a harshly-cut black uniform, without decoration save for the ugly energy pistol that hung on his left hip. He was Kar-hinter's bodyguard and one of the deadliest beings I had ever met. I don't know what Timeline he came from, but I don't think I'd care to visit it, not if it's inhabited by very many like him.

  The third occupant of the room I knew also. That was Kar-hinter himself. A Krith.

  I suppose that this is as good a time as any to describe the appearance of the Kriths, and since Kar-hinter was a fair representative of his race, at least the males of the race, I'll describe him.

  Kar-hinter stood six-foot-four or so in his bare feet, which were always bare, as was the rest of him. Always. His coloring was brown tinged with green, a color that might have been olive had it been a little greener, but wasn't quite. I have seen Kriths who were a sable-brown and some who were a true olive. Their skin coloring varies within these ranges, though there seem to be no racial distinctions as there are supposed to be with human beings.

  His head was big and almost egg-shaped and somewhat lumpy-looking. He had no hair on his head, or on any part of his body, and his skin was a not-quite-shiny satin surface. His eyes were enormous, brown, liquid, equipped with two sets of eyelids, but without distinct pupils, irises, or anything else. They were like big brown marbles. I'm quite sure that they don't work anything at all like our eyes and of course, it was impossible to tell just where he was looking. A reflection of light on the moist balls gave the impression of pupils, but it was not so.

  Below his eyes was a row of tiny openings that dilated with heartbeat regularity. These were the nostrils of a Krith and all they had of a nose. The mouth below the nostril row was, like the eyes, enormous. Kar-hinter's lips were thick, heavy, moist, and hungry-looking. When his mouth opened, you could see rows of sharp, fanglike teeth. Kriths are primarily carnivorous and live mostly on a diet of uncooked meat, I understand.

  Along the sides of Kar-hinter's face, running from about where his temples were to the middle point of his jaws were two rows of feathery membranes that twitched in the air like a fish's gills. These functioned as ears and as something more, though I'm not quite sure what.

  He had virtually no neck, his head seeming to sit right on top of his broad, muscular shoulders. The arms that dropped from the shoulders were remarkably human, as were the five-fingered hands that grew from the slender wrists.

  His chest was broad with prominent, almost feminine nipples. His stomach was flat, well-muscled, and flowed smoothly into his pelvic region. And it was there that you could see that Kar-hinter was very obviously a male.

  His legs, in proportion to his long torso, were short and thick and terminated in wide, webbed feet. A short, prehensile tail grew from his buttocks and twitched aimlessly in the air as he rose to greet us.

  Kar-hinter, as I said, was absolutely naked. He wore no decorations, no instruments, not even a watch, nor did he carry a pouch to hold personal belongings. I had never seen a Krith wearing anything at all. Whatever they carried with them was locked inside their huge heads, and that was enough. More about that later.

  One more point about the Kriths: I assume that there are two sexes to their race -- else why would Kar-hinter have the masculine equipment he had? -- but in all the years that I had been working for them I had never seen a female Krith, nor had I ever heard of anyone who had. They refused to discuss the matter with humans. Krithian sex life was a complete mystery to the people who worked for and with them.

  I gave both Sir Gerald and Kar-hinter a British salute, which they both returned, though Kar-hinter seemed to have a mocking expression on his alien face.

  "Please be at ease, gentlemen," Sir Gerald said. "Sit down, won't you?"

  "Thank you, sir," I said in English.

  "I am Sir Gerald Asbury," the British general said, "and, I say, you might as well drop the formalities. I am quite aware of who and what you fellows are. And the men outside" -- he gestured toward the front of the house -- "are yours as well. I am the only local here."

  I nodded, took off my cap and dropped it onto the couch near me. After unbuttoning my coat, I took one of the chairs that the general indicated.

  "Greetings, Kar-hinter," I said awkwardly, since I never did know quite what to say to a Krith.

  "Hello, Eric," Kar-hinter said, clasping his hands behind his back. "And you, Hillary, and you, Ronald." The last was directed at Kearns. "Please, do all of you sit down and make yourselves comfortable. You, as well, Sir Gerald."

  When we were all seated, Kar-hinter gestured to Pall, who got the bottle of wine and five glasses from the cabinet behind the Krith. He poured wine into each of the glasses and passed them around without speaking. I noticed that he poured none for himself. Then he returned to his statue-like position behind his master.

  "Again, gentlemen, please make yourselves comfortable," Kar-hinter said. The Krith spoke local English without trace of an accent, a policy which the Kriths prided themselves on, though at times it must have been quite difficult. Their speaking mechanisms aren't made much like ours, but they do a damned good job with them anyway.

  "I am sure that you are wondering why you are here," he said when we had each taken a sip from our glasses -- the wine was excellent.

  Tracy and I nodded, though Kearns didn't seem concerned at all. He had said before that he was going Outtime later on in the day, but for some reason I felt some doubts about that, though I didn't know why.

  "Good wine, is it not?" Kar-hinter asked. "French, though not local. Pall acquired it from a few Lines East of here where they are not plagued by war. Not just yet, at least. Please, drink up. I brought this bottle especially for this meeting, and I would hate to see it go to waste."

  Obediently we drank our wine and wa
ited for Kar-hinter to get around to telling us why we were here. Kriths don't hurry very often, though they certainly expect it of humans when it's necessary. Well, that's what they paid us for. And I rather liked the pay. I could never have made that kind of money back in my Homeline.

  "Now," Kar-hinter finally said after he had Pall refill our glasses, "let me tell you about it. Or, rather, I shall let Sir Gerald begin. Sir Gerald, please."

  "Yes, certainly," the British general said awkwardly, reaching for the map that lay on the table and then pushing it back, apparently deciding that it wasn't time for it yet. "To get straight to the point, gentlemen, Royal Intelligence has reason to believe that the Imperial Germans are working on something called an atom bomb. Kar-hinter assures me that you fellows know of such weapons, Outtime, that is.

  "Yes, we do," I replied.

  "Our scientists seem to have suspected that such a weapon is possible, but they are a very long way from developing it. Kar-hinter tells me that it is basically quite a simple thing."

  Right then I was hardly listening to Sir Gerald's words. I was too stunned by what he had said. The Imperials building atomic weapons! It was fantastic. They were still three or four or even five decades from that. Hell, the locals hadn't even developed a really decent radio yet.

  "Nevertheless," Sir Gerald was saying, "the Germans seem to have gotten somewhere with the idea. Seems they have a rather bright group of young scientists working for them, developing the theories of some fellow named Eisenstein or something. He has been dead for years, I'm told, but he left some rather impressive theories that weren't published until a few years ago, and then only in the Holy Roman Empire. The book fell into our hands only a few months ago. And then we began getting reports that the Imperials were actually trying to build such a bomb."

  Kar-hinter waved Sir Gerald to silence with a careless, unconscious gesture of one accustomed to command.

  "It is not necessary to tell you," Kar-hinter said, facing the three of us, "what atomic weapons in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire would do to our efforts here. They could, of course, if produced in sufficient quantities, put the Imperial Germans in command of this entire Line, even with their primitive delivery systems -- and we certainly cannot afford that." He paused. "Please go on, Sir Gerald."

  "Yes, of course," the British general said. "Well, as soon as we learned of the German efforts, we sent intelligence teams in to gather more detailed information." Sir Gerald paused reflectively for a moment, then continued. "The first two teams failed to report back. The third team did come back, rather badly mauled, I must say, but with some information." Sir Gerald paused again.

  "Yes?" I asked.

  "The Imperial Germans have a plant on the Baltic, near Königsberg, actually on the Gulf of Danzig," Sir Gerald went on slowly. "It's very well hidden and extremely well guarded. We are not exactly sure what they're doing there, but it is in some way connected with the atom bomb project. That is all we know." The British general looked at Kar-hinter.

  "Thank you, Sir Gerald," Kar-hinter said. "As you might suspect, His Majesty, King George, ordered that this information be turned over to us. When we learned of the Imperial efforts to build nuclear weapons, we gave His Majesty a simplified explanation of just what they are. His own physicists were able to confirm this to his satisfaction.

  "Sir Gerald was then put in charge of the British operation to prevent the construction of the bomb, with our technical advice. We do not wish nuclear weapons in this Timeline at this stage." The Krith looked at Sir Gerald. "As much as we admire and respect the British Empire, we are in no position to give them nuclear weapons, nor will we assist in their local production. Considering the world conditions on this Line, we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons. I hope you understand, Sir Gerald."

  "Of course," Sir Gerald said without conviction. "It has been explained to me several times."

  "Very good," Kar-hinter said, imitating a human smile without much success. "Will you proceed, please, Sir Gerald?"

  "There is very little more to tell," the British general said. "We have made three attempts to gain entry into the Baltic plant. All have failed miserably. Considering its location within the Empire, it is, of course, impossible for us to get a large force near it, even by sea. Nor, I doubt, would it do us much good. As I said, the plant is well guarded: there are several regiments of infantry stationed within a few miles of the plant, and the Third Imperial Fleet is presently situated at Gdansk. The emperor is taking no chances of our getting anywhere near it. And, of course, we have now put him on guard."

  "Then I assume you're planning a cross-Line attack?" I asked Kar-hinter.

  "Ah!" Kar-hinter exclaimed, then made another of those expressions that were supposed to be smiles. He motioned to Pall to refill our wineglasses, scratched himself thoughtfully in an intimate place, and finally spoke. "It has been considered." He looked at Sir Gerald. "What Eric is asking, Sir Gerald, is whether we will establish a force in an alternate Timeline where the area is uninhabited and then skud the force into the plant and destroy it."

  "Well, I was thinking of simply skudding a bomb across," I said.

  "As I said, such things have been considered," Kar-hinter said, "though if we were to do so we would probably skud a spy in first to see exactly what they are doing there. But, ah, no. To answer your question, we will not do that. We are already interfering with this Line a bit more than is wise, or so the Tromas in the Homeline tell us. They will allow a cross-Line venture only after we have tried all other avenues. If all else fails, then we will be allowed to cross-Line at the Baltic plant. As I said before, this Line is not to be allowed nuclear weapons under any circumstances." He glanced at Sir Gerald.

  "I'm sure you know best, Kar-hinter," Sir Gerald said, though he didn't seem to really mean it.

  "Then what?" I asked.

  "Now it seems," Kar-hinter said, belching politely and raising his wineglass, "a very fortunate set of circumstances has arisen that may allow us to gain all the information we need without ever approaching the Baltic plant." Kar-hinter, like a second-rate actor, paused dramatically.

  "And what's that?" I asked on cue.

  "The Imperial Germans have placed Count Albert von Heinen in charge of the atomic project. As well as being a distant cousin of the emperor, he is a highly trained engineer -- for this Line -- and has made himself an impressive record as a military field commander. Quite a young man, as well, I understand."

  "Now it seems that Count von Heinen is presently visiting Beaugency. I am not sure why, but as I said, he is a man of many talents. Just why he is in Beaugency is of no great moment. The fact that he is here is of great importance to us. We shall kidnap him."

  Kar-hinter paused again, finished his glass of wine, placed the empty glass on the table with a flourish. As he continued to speak, he paced back and forth at the head of the table, his short tail whipping in the air.

  "Von Heinen will be spending the night in a villa just north of Beaugency. His American wife is with him, I understand, so we shall take her when we kidnap him. It may be that she can give us some additional information."

  "I don't follow you," I said.

  "The wife?" Kar-hinter asked. "An American, I said. Doesn't that mean anything to you, Eric? Ah, well, let me tell you. The Countess von Heinen, née Sally Beall, is the daughter of the late Archer Beall. What does that mean to you?"

  "The ARA leader?" Tracy asked, speaking for the first time since the conversation began.

  "Exactly, my dear Hillary," Kar-hinter said. "The late Mr. Beall, killed recently in the New York riots, was one of the major leaders of the American Republican Army, as well as president of the Mad Anthony Wayne Society. A very, very important man in American revolutionary circles."

  Sir Gerald's red face showed obvious anger at the mention of the Bealls. As a loyal British officer -- though he was, I believe, born in the American colonies -- he was properly outraged at the rebels in America who were causing so much trouble du
ring the war, siding with the Imperial Germans by their very presence, draining desperately needed troops from the European war.

  "Beall's daughter married Von Heinen for purely political reaons, I am told," Kar-hinter said. "To cement German and American rebel relations, so to speak. But her capture will be merely a by-product of the main effort -- an in-depth interrogation of Count von Heinen."

  In-depth interrogation, Kar-hinter had just said. Mind probe! Now just how in hell were they going to pull that off, I wondered.

  "Let me outline the plan, gentlemen," Kar-hinter said, scratching his more intimate parts again. "We will go into greater detail later. But for now, the high points. You, Eric" -- Kar-hinter pointed a finger at me -- "assuming that you wish to take out a new contract, will lead the kidnapping party. At approximately midnight you will take four boats into the Loire, row upstream across the German lines and into Beaugency."