more?”
“Now that you mention it: I still don’t understand one thing … I gather that, in your capacity as an investigator, you work for the government. Why that should be so, I—”
“That’s right, the city government of Denver. What of it?”
“Cities with their own governments? Well, let it pass. Now the pistol you took in the laboratory is marked ‘government property,’ yet you find it perfectly reasonable to assume it was in the hands of its rightful owner, correct?”
“Sure, the United States Government—not the same thing at all. Look, I know it sounds strange—hell, it sounds pretty strange to me —but sometimes the interests of various governments—local, state, national— conflict . That’s—”
“A good indication,” he said with a sour look, “that you have too many governments!”
“Let’s skip politics. All I seem to run into lately is anarchists—and garage doors.”
Ed got up and looked at my Browning again. “I wonder about your theory, Win. About us both being Indians. You figure we’re here because changes in history reached our ancestors too late to prevent us being born?”
“That’s right—setting aside the question of whose history is changed.”
“Very well, but can you account for us both being detectives—or even for us having the same name? And something else: these firearms—the Utah and the Nauvoo Brownings—both invented, presumably, by John Moses Browning?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“John Moses Browning wasn’t an Indian.”
“Damn you, Ed! Just when I’m getting things figured out, you have to confuse me with logic!”
“Not logic,” he laughed, “just the Bear facts!”
“Ugh. Well, where does that put us now?”
He thought a moment. “If we knew how your bad guys got here—assuming they’re not just local talent—that might tell us how to get you back to your own world.”
There it was again, that stomach-wrenching thought. “Wrong,” I said, unable to hold back my fears any longer. “Look, something caused this divergence, some event between the Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion that wound up with Washington getting prematurely dead, I—”
“What are you driving at? I thought all of this was—”
“Critical! Suppose time travel is possible, Ed, not sideways time travel, but the good old-fashioned linear, back-and-forth kind. Suppose somebody went back—maybe Vaughn Meiss, maybe the government—and killed the wrong dinosaur or his own grandfather! Suppose history has been fouled up for good!”
“What do you mean?”
“All along, I’ve been assuming that I traveled to get here. Suppose Meiss’s machine just sort of held me in place while my own world was ripped out from under me and yours slipped in to take its place! Ed, I’m really scared! How do I know that whatever change in history created your world didn’t destroy mine?”
VIII: Night of the Long Knife
Listen t’me, kid, ‘n’ listen tight. Y’won’t do yerself no good goin’ t’pieces every time y’fill some train robber fulla holes. Wasn’t you made ’im try fer our payroll, he decided that fer ‘imself. You mighta shot ’im, but the way I see it, it was his finger on your trigger, all along. Look, we’re th’ best Wells-Mulligan’s got: anybody’d break intuh our boxcar’s just committin’ suicide. An’ everybody’s gotta right t’commit suicide, ain’t they, kid?
—Mike Morrison as “Singin’ Sandy”
in Lone Star Gunmen
I had a hard time sleeping that night. I was exhausted, and not only from exertion and gunshot wounds. Clarissa’s wonderful machines were healing me at a rate that taxed my reserves and made me ravenous about every forty-five minutes. But sleepy I was not. Lying around in bed all day wired up like Donovan’s brain is not exactly conducive to a solid night’s hibernation.
I’m not the warm-milk type, and booze has never helped me sleep. This anarchist’s Disneyland apparently
“Now that you mention it: I still don’t understand one thing … I gather that, in your capacity as an investigator, you work for the government. Why that should be so, I—”
“That’s right, the city government of Denver. What of it?”
“Cities with their own governments? Well, let it pass. Now the pistol you took in the laboratory is marked ‘government property,’ yet you find it perfectly reasonable to assume it was in the hands of its rightful owner, correct?”
“Sure, the United States Government—not the same thing at all. Look, I know it sounds strange—hell, it sounds pretty strange to me —but sometimes the interests of various governments—local, state, national— conflict . That’s—”
“A good indication,” he said with a sour look, “that you have too many governments!”
“Let’s skip politics. All I seem to run into lately is anarchists—and garage doors.”
Ed got up and looked at my Browning again. “I wonder about your theory, Win. About us both being Indians. You figure we’re here because changes in history reached our ancestors too late to prevent us being born?”
“That’s right—setting aside the question of whose history is changed.”
“Very well, but can you account for us both being detectives—or even for us having the same name? And something else: these firearms—the Utah and the Nauvoo Brownings—both invented, presumably, by John Moses Browning?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“John Moses Browning wasn’t an Indian.”
“Damn you, Ed! Just when I’m getting things figured out, you have to confuse me with logic!”
“Not logic,” he laughed, “just the Bear facts!”
“Ugh. Well, where does that put us now?”
He thought a moment. “If we knew how your bad guys got here—assuming they’re not just local talent—that might tell us how to get you back to your own world.”
There it was again, that stomach-wrenching thought. “Wrong,” I said, unable to hold back my fears any longer. “Look, something caused this divergence, some event between the Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion that wound up with Washington getting prematurely dead, I—”
“What are you driving at? I thought all of this was—”
“Critical! Suppose time travel is possible, Ed, not sideways time travel, but the good old-fashioned linear, back-and-forth kind. Suppose somebody went back—maybe Vaughn Meiss, maybe the government—and killed the wrong dinosaur or his own grandfather! Suppose history has been fouled up for good!”
“What do you mean?”
“All along, I’ve been assuming that I traveled to get here. Suppose Meiss’s machine just sort of held me in place while my own world was ripped out from under me and yours slipped in to take its place! Ed, I’m really scared! How do I know that whatever change in history created your world didn’t destroy mine?”
VIII: Night of the Long Knife
Listen t’me, kid, ‘n’ listen tight. Y’won’t do yerself no good goin’ t’pieces every time y’fill some train robber fulla holes. Wasn’t you made ’im try fer our payroll, he decided that fer ‘imself. You mighta shot ’im, but the way I see it, it was his finger on your trigger, all along. Look, we’re th’ best Wells-Mulligan’s got: anybody’d break intuh our boxcar’s just committin’ suicide. An’ everybody’s gotta right t’commit suicide, ain’t they, kid?
—Mike Morrison as “Singin’ Sandy”
in Lone Star Gunmen
I had a hard time sleeping that night. I was exhausted, and not only from exertion and gunshot wounds. Clarissa’s wonderful machines were healing me at a rate that taxed my reserves and made me ravenous about every forty-five minutes. But sleepy I was not. Lying around in bed all day wired up like Donovan’s brain is not exactly conducive to a solid night’s hibernation.
I’m not the warm-milk type, and booze has never helped me sleep. This anarchist’s Disneyland apparently
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