TW07 The Argonaut Affair NEW by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online

to make particle level chronocircuitry. The fact that it's molecular bonding drives them nuts. If they could figure out
how
to do it, they'd do it with warp discs."
    "If they could make that work, it wouldn't be a bad idea," said Delaney.
    Steiger smiled. "No, it wouldn't. I didn't have the heart to tell them Darkness was already working on it.
    We know warp discs function in either timestream, because soldiers from the congruent universe had no trouble getting around in ours. It's my understanding the symbiotracers work on similar principles, which means they might work here. Just the same, I wouldn't count on any help from Dr. Darkness. He told me he's not going to attempt crossing over until he has more information about the congruent universe. He has no way of telling how his subatomic structure would react to a convergence."
    "Why should it react any differently from ours?" said Andre.
    "How much do you know about tachyons?" said Steiger. "Not much," she said.
    "Well, he won't admit it," Steiger said, "but Darkness probably doesn't know much more about them than you do. How do you study something that's faster than light? Especially when it's yourself. He has no way of knowing what will happen to his tachyonized state if he crosses over through a confluence. He might very well wind up departing in all different directions at six hundred times the speed of light."
    "Instant discorporation," Andre said. "I can see why he might be concerned. He's a strange man. You know, you never told us how you met him."
    "That's because I'm not exactly sure myself," said Steiger. "He just materialized out of thin air one day and started giving me instructions, as if we'd been working together for years. He's quite a character.
    Sort of a human
deus ex
machina.
He has agents of his own scattered throughout all of time, mostly people in the Underground. He knew all about me, so he obviously has access to all sorts of top secret information. Then again, how hard would it be for him to find out anything he wanted to know? How do you stop someone who's faster than light? He's living proof that there are more things to heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, as the old saying goes."
    "Shakespeare," Delaney said, identifying the quotation. "Prince Hamlet to Horatio."
    Steiger smiled, "No, actually it was Mooney Dravott."
    "Who?"
    "Mooney Dravott," Steiger said. "He was a fine old Elizabethan drunk. Shakespeare used him as the model for Falstaff. Mooney would get ripped and say the most amazing things. Bill wrote them down and used them in his plays."
    "Bill?" said Delaney. "You
knew
Shakespeare?"
    "Oh, yeah," said Steiger. "Nice fella. I met him while I was gathering intelligence on the Temporal Underground in the late 16th century. He would have been amused to know how well his work came to be regarded and how long it has survived. He didn't take it all that seriously himself. To him, it was just a living, something he did for enjoyment and to make money. He used to say, 'It beats acting.' He did a lot of his writing in pubs, soliciting reactions and taking suggestions from just about anybody. He wrote for the people, so he had a high regard for their opinion. Much of what he wrote was taken from history, but he was more interested in the story for its own sake than in historical accuracy, which is one of the reasons I always suspect history as handed down to us by storytellers."
    "Such as Apollonius of Rhodes, you mean," said Andre.
    "Exactly."
    "I keep thinking about the mission programming," said Delaney. "I've seen a lot of strange things, but if it wasn't for the centaur, I wouldn't have bought any of it."
    "I'm not sure that's not the right approach," said Steiger. "Just because we caught a centaur who-or is it which?-corroborated some of the details of an ancient fable doesn't necessarily mean it's all true. If Apollonius really was picking up on psychic impressions of this place, how much of what he wrote can be