Bridgehead by David Drake Page B

energy would have justified. “There was, we had a bit of a problem here today with some equipment, and I believe Dr. Gustafson went off for a conference with the chairman.” He nodded toward Shroyer’s empty, darkened office.
    â€œAh,” he continued, “the office is in the basement, if you’d care to try back another time. Down those stairs, just across the hall”—he pointed—“will get you there. But I don’t think he’ll be back tonight.”
    Gustafson and Shroyer had paused to pick up a file from the chairman’s office before they went out again. The faculty members were talking about the way the two Travelers had disappeared in the middle of a sentence. That had shocked Cooper even more than the memory of what he had gone through himself. The fact that his body had winked out, had ceased to exist in the only world there really was—destroyed, expunged, made never to have existed!
    Two policemen had vanished the night before, just outside the building. The search for them had caused a stir among the office staff, though few of the faculty had arrived early enough to hear about the incident directly. Had the same thing happened to those men? Danny’s eyes glazed, and he shuddered again.
    â€œLook,” said the woman. She shifted to stand hipshot in front of the desk. “This is because of Professor Gustafson’s project, right? What…” Sue paused, because she had once before seen the look on Cooper’s face. She had been interviewing the mother of an accident victim. It was several minutes before she realized the woman had actually watched her six-year-old dragged down the street by the truck’s undercarriage. Now the tall woman hooked a chair from the wall and pulled it around beside the secretary’s desk. She sat in it so that it was to him and not toweringly at him that she said, “Sir, are you all right?”
    Danny’s attention had drifted again. He did not usually go to Friday-night meetings, but there was one at the hospital. Expunged. He needed AA tonight, or he needed—
    â€œYou look like you need a drink,” the woman said in what seemed to be real concern. “Was someone injured in the experiment?”
    â€œBest idea I’ve heard in five months and seventeen days,” Danny Cooper said in a jagged counterfeit of cheerfulness. He rolled his chair back and stood. “Want to come have a drink, Miss Susan Schlicter”—his unconscious mind had retained information, and the tall woman wore no rings at all—“and hear about the things that happen to me when I’m straight?” The light tone evaporated. “Oh,” he continued, “but I don’t have a car.…” Or a license, of course, since the last conviction.
    Sue cocked her head but did not rise for the moment. “This is the professor’s project, isn’t it?” she said.
    â€œSo it seems,” Danny agreed carelessly.
    â€œThen,” the woman said as she stood, “I’ve got a friend with a cupboard full of Scotch who’d like to hear about it, too. And I’ve got an extra helmet, if you don’t mind traveling by motorcycle.” If there had been trouble, Mustafa was probably at Charles’s house already. If he weren’t, they could summon him for a stereoscopic description of the event.
    â€œIf there’s a drink at the end of it”—Danny Cooper took the woman’s arm with exaggerated gallantry and led her toward the door—“then I wouldn’t mind traveling with a rocket shoved up my ass for thrust. Not since this afternoon.”
    *   *   *
    â€œ Hel -lo, m’dear,” said the cheerful voice. “Something happened this afternoon and we need to talk about it.”
    Lexie Market looked up. She thought she had locked the office door after briefing the last of her laboratory assistants for the coming