Part 30 (1/2)

From the hill north of the city, Rice saw eighteenth-century Salzburg spread out below him like a half-eaten lunch.

Huge cracking towers and swollen, bulbous storage tanks dwarfed the ruins of the St. Rupert Cathedral. Thick white smoke billowed from the refinery's stacks. Rice could taste the familiar petrochemical tang from where he sat, under the leaves of a wilting oak.

The sheer spectacle of it delighted him. You didn't sign up for a time-travel project, he thought, unless you had a taste for incongruity. Like the phallic pumping station lurking in the central square of the convent, or the ruler-straight elevated pipelines ripping through Salzburg's maze of cobbled streets. A bit tough on the city, maybe, but that was hardly Rice's fault. The temporal beam had focused randomly in the bedrock below Salzburg, forming an expandable bubble connecting this world to Rice's own time.

This was the first time he'd seen the complex from outside its high chain-link fences. For two years, he'd been up to his neck getting the refinery operational. He'd directed teams all over the planet, as they caulked up Nantucket whalers to serve as tankers, or trained local pipefitters to lay down line as far away as the Sinai and the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, finally, he was outside. Sutherland, the company's political liaison, had warned him against going into the city. But Rice had no patience with her att.i.tude. The smallest thing seemed to set Sutherland off. She lost sleep over the most trivial local complaints. She spent hours haranguing the ”gate people,” the locals who waited day and night outside the square-mile complex, begging for radios, nylons, a jab of penicillin.

To h.e.l.l with her, Rice thought. The plant was up and breaking design records, and Rice was due for a little R and R. The way he saw it, anyone who couldn't find some action in the Year of Our Lord 1775 had to be dead between the ears. He stood up, dusting windblown soot from his hands with a cambric handkerchief.

A moped sputtered up the hill toward him, wobbling crazily. The rider couldn't seem to keep his high-heeled, buckled pumps on the pedals while carrying a huge portable stereo in the crook of his right arm. The moped lurched to a stop at a respectful distance, and Rice recognized the music from the tape player: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.

The boy turned the volume down as Rice walked toward him. ”Good evening, Mr. Plant Manager, sir. I am not interrupting?”

”No, that's okay.” Rice glanced at the bristling hedgehog cut that had replaced the boy's outmoded wig. He'd seen the kid around the gates; he was one of the regulars. But the music had made something else fall into place. ”You're Mozart, aren't you?”

”Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, your servant.”

”I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. Do you know what that tape is?”

”It has my name on it.”

”Yeah. You wrote it. Or would have, I guess I should say. About fifteen years from now.”

Mozart nodded. ”It is so beautiful. I have not the English to say how it is to hear it.”

By this time most of the other gate people would have been well into some kind of pitch. Rice was impressed by the boy's tact, not to mention his command of English. The standard native vocabulary didn't go much beyond radio, drugs, and f.u.c.k. ”Are you headed back toward town?” Rice asked.

”Yes, Mr. Plant Manager, sir.”

Something about the kid appealed to Rice. The enthusiasm, the gleam in the eyes. And, of course, he did happen to be one of the greatest composers of all time.

”Forget the t.i.tles,” Rice said. ”Where does a guy go for some fun around here?”

At first Sutherland hadn't wanted Rice at the meeting with Jefferson. But Rice knew a little temporal physics, and Jefferson had been pestering the American personnel with questions about time holes and parallel worlds.

Rice, for his part, was thrilled at the chance to meet Thomas Jefferson, the first President of the United States. He'd never liked George Was.h.i.+ngton, was glad the man's Masonic connections had made him refuse to join the company's ”G.o.dless” American government.

Rice squirmed in his Dacron double knits as he and Sutherland waited in the newly air-conditioned boardroom of the Hohensalzburg Castle. ”I forgot how greasy these suits feel,” he said.

”At least,” Sutherland said, ”you didn't wear that G.o.dd.a.m.ned hat today.” The VTOL jet from America was late, and she kept looking at her watch.

”My tricorne?” Rice said. ”You don't like it?”

”It's a Masonista hat, for Christ's sake. It's a symbol of anti-modern reaction.” The Freemason Liberation Front was another of Sutherland's nightmares, a local politico-religious group that had made a few pathetic attacks on the pipeline.

”Oh, loosen up, will you, Sutherland? Some groupie of Mozart's gave me the hat. Theresa Maria Angela something-or-other, some broken-down aristocrat. They all hang out together in this music dive downtown. I just liked the way it looked.”

”Mozart? You've been fraternizing with him? Don't you think we should just let him be? After everything we've done to him?”

”Bulls.h.i.+t,” Rice said. ”I'm ent.i.tled. I spent two years on start-up while you were playing touch football with Robespierre and Thomas Paine. I make a few night spots with Wolfgang and you're all over me. What about Parker? I don't hear you b.i.t.c.hing about him playing rock and roll on his late show every night. You can hear it blasting out of every cheap transistor in town.”

”He's propaganda officer. Believe me, if I could stop him I would, but Parker's a special case. He's got connections all over the place back in Realtime.” She rubbed her cheek. ”Let's drop it, okay? Just try to be polite to President Jefferson. He's had a hard time of it lately.”

Sutherland's secretary, a former Hapsburg lady-in-waiting, stepped in to announce the plane's arrival. Jefferson pushed angrily past her. He was tall for a local, with a mane of blazing red hair and the s.h.i.+ftiest eyes Rice had ever seen. ”Sit down, Mr. President.” Sutherland waved at the far side of the table. ”Would you like some coffee or tea?”

Jefferson scowled. ”Perhaps some Madeira,” he said. ”If you have it.”

Sutherland nodded to her secretary, who stared for a moment in incomprehension, then hurried off. ”How was the flight?” Sutherland asked.

”Your engines are most impressive,” Jefferson said, ”as you well know.” Rice saw the subtle trembling of the man's hands; he hadn't taken well to jet flight. ”I only wish your political sensitivities were as advanced.”

”You know I can't speak for my employers,” Sutherland said. ”For myself, I deeply regret the darker aspects of our operations. Florida will be missed.”

Irritated, Rice leaned forward. ”You're not really here to discuss sen-sibilities, are you?”

”Freedom, sir,” Jefferson said. ”Freedom is the issue.” The secretary returned with a dust-caked bottle of sherry and a stack of clear plastic cups. Jefferson, his hands visibly shaking now, poured a gla.s.s and tossed it back. Color returned to his face. He said, ”You made certain promises when we joined forces. You guaranteed us liberty and equality and the freedom to pursue our own happiness. Instead we find your machinery on all sides, your cheap manufactured goods seducing the people of our great country, our minerals and works of art disappearing into your fortresses, never to reappear!” The last line brought Jefferson to his feet.

Sutherland shrank back into her chair. ”The common good requires a certain period of-uh, adjustment-”

”Oh, come on, Tom,” Rice broke in. ”We didn't 'join forces,' that's a lot of c.r.a.p. We kicked the Brits out and you in, and you had d.a.m.n-all to do with it. Second, if we drill for oil and carry off a few paintings, it doesn't have a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing to do with your liberty. We don't care. Do whatever you like, just stay out of our way. Right? If we wanted a lot of back talk we could have left the d.a.m.n British in power.”

Jefferson sat down. Sutherland meekly poured him another gla.s.s, which he drank off at once. ”I cannot understand you,” he said. ”You claim you come from the future, yet you seem bent on destroying your own past.”

”But we're not,” Rice said. ”It's this way. History is like a tree, okay? When you go back and mess with the past, another branch of history splits off from the main trunk. Well, this world is just one of those branches.”

”So,” Jefferson said. ”This world-my world-does not lead to your future.”

”Right,” Rice said.

”Leaving you free to rape and pillage here at will! While your own world is untouched and secure!” Jefferson was on his feet again. ”I find the idea monstrous beyond belief, intolerable! How can you be party to such despotism? Have you no human feelings?”

”Oh, for G.o.d's sake,” Rice said. ”Of course we do. What about the radios and the magazines and the medicine we hand out? Personally I think you've got a lot of nerve, coming in here with your smallpox scars and your unwashed s.h.i.+rt and all those slaves of yours back home, lecturing us on humanity.”

”Rice?” Sutherland said.

Rice locked eyes with Jefferson. Slowly, Jefferson sat down. ”Look,” Rice said, relenting. ”We don't mean to be unreasonable. Maybe things aren't working out just the way you pictured them, but hey, that's life, you know? What do you want, really ? Cars? Movies? Telephones? Birth control? Just say the word and they're yours.”

Jefferson pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. ”Your words mean nothing to me, sir. I only want... I want only to return to my home. To Monticello. And as soon as possible.”

”Is it one of your migraines, Mr. President?” Sutherland asked. ”I had these made up for you.” She pushed a vial of pills across the table toward him.

”What are these?”

Sutherland shrugged. ”You'll feel better.”