Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt Read Free Book Online Page A

vision, but it had not changed much in recent decades, a few books moving here and there, piles of dust shifting across the floor.
    The Old Doctor shook his head. “I am the living history of the Table, but if I died, a new doctor would be sent from the archives to take over operations, and though his approach might differ from mine, his role would be the same—to protect the cup.”
    “The cup,” Sigmund said, sensing the cusp of mysteries. “You mean the Holy Grail.”
    The Old Doctor ran his fingers along the spine of a dusty leatherbound book. “No. The Table predates the time of Christ. We guard a much older cup.”
    “The cup, is it here, in the vaults?”
    “Well.” The Old Doctor frowned at the book in his hands. “We don’t actually know where the cup is anymore. The archives have... deteriorated over the centuries, and there are gaps in my knowledge. It would be accurate to say the agents of the Table now seek the cup, so that we may protect it properly again. That’s why you’re here, Sigmund. For your ability to see into the past. Though we’ll have to train you to narrow your focus to the here-and-now, to peel back the gauze of time at will.” He looked up from the book and met Sigmund’s eyes. “As it stands, you’re almost useless to me, but I’ve made useful tools out of things far more broken than you are.”
    Some vestigial part of Sigmund’s ego bristled at being called broken, but not enough to stir him to his own defense. “But I can only look back thirty or forty years. How can that help you?”
    “I have... a theory,” the Old Doctor said. “When you were found on the streets, you were raving about gruesome murders, yes?”
    Sigmund nodded. “I don’t know about raving , but yes.”
    “The murders you saw took place over a hundred years ago. On that occasion, you saw back many more years than usual. Do you know why?”
    Sigmund shook his head. He thought he did know, but shame kept him from saying.
    “I suspect your unusual acuity was the result of all that speed you snorted,” the Old Doctor said. “The stimulants enabled you to see deeper into the past. I have, of course, vast quantities of very fine methamphetamines at my disposal, which you can use to aid me in my researches.”
    Sigmund said, “Vast quantities?” His hands trembled, and he clasped them to make them stop.
    “Enough to let you see centuries into the past,” the Old Doctor said. “Though we’ll work up to that, of course.”
    “When I agreed to join the Table, I was hoping to do field work.”
    The Old Doctor sniffed. “That business isn’t what’s important, Sigmund. Assassination, regime change, paltry corporate wars—that’s just the hackwork our agents do to pay the bills. It’s not worthy of your gifts.”
    “Still, it’s what I want. I’ll help with your research if you let me work in the field.” Sigmund had spent a childhood in cramped apartments and hospital wards, beset by visions of the still-thrashing past. In those dark rooms he’d read comic books and dreamed of escaping the prison of circumstance—of being a superhero. But heroes like that weren’t real. Anyone who put on a costume and went out on the streets to fight crime would be murdered long before morning. At some point in his teens Sigmund had graduated to spy thrillers and Cold War history, passing easily from fiction to nonfiction and back again, reading about double- and triple-agents with an interest that bordered on the fanatical. Becoming a spy—that idea had the ring of the plausible, in a way that becoming a superhero never could. Now, this close to that secret agent dream, he wouldn’t let himself be shunted into a pure research position. This was his chance.
    The Old Doctor sighed. “Very well.”
    ***
    “What’s it like?” Carlotta said, the night after their first mission as a duo. She’d enthralled a senator while Sigmund peered into the past to find out where the microfilm was hidden. Now,