Borrowed Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

attention.
    The stun charge would keep him out for about a half hour, after which he’d look and feel like he was suffering from a severe hangover. Since the stun crystal didn’t leave a noticeable entry wound, he’d hopefully have a hard time making anyone believe he’d been knocked out by an intruder instead of a bottle. I propped the guy up, weapon at his feet, and left him snoring away. "Sleep tight."
    #
    Richmond in 1861 had that ugly ambiance which seems to afflict every capital of every warring political entity. The streets were packed with smiling generals in crisp, pretty uniforms who'd probably never gone anywhere near a battle, a few other generals with grim expressions and outfits battered by hard use who looked eager to get out of town again, hordes of hearty men in suits who flashed money and talked about war contracts, and lots and lots of kids in new, ill-fitting battle garb who gawked at the big city while passing through on their way to the ironic immortality that death in battle brings. Money, glory and death walking hand-in-hand. I've never cared for it, but you couldn’t do jumps without running into that kind of scenario, and if I wanted to keep tabs on what the Confederates were doing, I had to be where they made their big decisions, which meant Richmond.
    I'd made a short jump downtime so there'd be enough time to get my counter-Intervention going, but I wasn't sure yet what form it should take. Try to short-circuit the other Intervention before it happened, or whip up a counter-Intervention to stop it later? I could only afford a few more jumps on what my client had paid me, so I had to do things right the first time. For now I sat in a fancy restaurant with war-profiteer inflated prices, eating Smithfield ham while surrounded by Southern aristocrats all confidently predicting a short and victorious war. Funny how nobody ever predicts long and losing wars.
    "Greetings, Citizen Holmes."
    The anachronistic title brought me slowly around, staring poker-faced at a tall, slim and familiar figure in a here-and-now expensive suit. I pretended to smile. "Harry Dawson. Small world.” Harry came from a period about a century Uptime from my own, but we’d met when we were students and he came Downtime to study under one of my professors who’d become famous in the intervening decades. Unfortunately, Harry’s idea of studying was to suck up to a professor tighter than a lamprey to a shark, a method which worked just often enough to earn him a degree and my lasting dislike. “What brings you here-and-now?”
    He smiled back just as falsely. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
    I shrugged. “Research. I wanted to check out the old Civil War battlefields.”
    "There aren't any old Civil War battlefields yet. Some are new and the others haven’t been fought."
    I scratched my head in mock puzzlement. “I wondered why so many locals were still running around in uniforms. I’ve got to talk to my Assistant about her scheduling of my jumps. So, why are you here?"
    Harry flashed another smile notable for its lack of sincerity. “Good old, Mike. Always kidding.” He leaned forward, smirking. “I’m a T.I. Working for a big outfit. I guess they could recognize real talent.”
    “Congratulations.” It wasn’t too hard to guess what kind of outfit would hire someone like Harry. Exactly the same sort of outfit working to ensure a Southern victory in the here-and-now.
    Harry seated himself opposite me, playing idly with the heavy silver place setting before him. "Thanks. I hear you’re a Temporal Interventionist, too, Mike.”
    "It’s one of the few jobs history majors are suited for,” I noted. “I’ve done a few Interventions."
    “Yeah. I heard about that bit with the Wright Brothers. How’d you swing that?”
    I couldn’t help smiling a trifle smugly. “Somebody wanted them to be the first to achieve powered heavier-than-air flight, but their craft was a touch too heavy. I slipped them