Fred Saberhagen - After the Fact

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

AFTER THE FACT

Fred Saberhagen

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact
CONTENTS
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   
13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21
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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

"YOUR ONLY CHANCE LIES IN PREVENTING

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT

ABRAHAM LINCOLN…"

"What?"

A burst of audio and visual static reduced reception to unintelligible

noise. Then the paradox-generated interference was gone again, as

suddenly as it had come.

"…Fourteenth of April at Ford's Theater—" blast, crackle.

"…you must be within two meters of the President… just before the

bullet smashes into Lincoln's brain. Your total window of

opportunity will be three seconds."

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

FRED SABERHAGEN

AFTER

THE FACT

BAEN

BOOKS

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

AFTER THE FACT

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

260 Fifth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10001

First printing, March 1988

ISBN: 0-671-65391-1

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

Cover art by David Mattingly

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

ONE

Central Illinois was about the flattest place that Jerry Flint had ever

seen. Plowed fields, islanded here and there by clumps of trees and

farm buildings, seemed to go on forever. The horizon was lost in an

indeterminate haze more appropriate to Indian Summer than Spring.

Here and there along the interstate that stretched southwest from

Chicago, grain elevators in tiny towns stood up like junior

skyscrapers. Occasionally the highway would line up on one of

them and rush straight at it for three or four miles, only to swerve at

the last moment, bypassing both tower and town completely.

Jerry had intended to use the driving time to prepare himself for the

interview facing him in Springfield, but found himself listening to

the wind rushing past instead. Before he was well out of Chicago he

had begun to realize that there was not a whole lot in the way of

preparation that he could do; since he knew next to nothing about

the people who ran the Pilgrim Foundation for Historical Research,

it was difficult to imagine what sort of programming or systems

work they might want from him.

Tom Scheffler, a fellow student at St. Thomas More in Chicago,

had told Jerry that he had worked for the man Pilgrim himself about

a year ago, had been well paid for his labors, and recommended that

Jerry give the Foundation a try.

Or had Scheffler said even that much? Jerry couldn't remember now

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

but certainly Scheffler, a big kid from Iowa, had been generally

encouraging. Scheffler was an undergraduate in computer

engineering at the University, where Jerry Flint was now working

on his master's in computer science. The two of them had shared

one class and a couple of seminars, and over the past few months

had become moderately well acquainted.

Jerry didn't have the impression that Scheffler was much given to

jokes, at least no more than the average student. So now Jerry,

looking back at the brief discussion the two of them had shared on

the subject of the Pilgrim Foundation, began to find it rather

strange, and even a touch ominous, that the big youth had seemed

secretly amused—or even a bit excited by the prospect of Jerry's

coming interview.

Their only important conversation on the matter, Jerry recalled, had

been conducted between classes, in something of a rush.

When Jerry brought up the subject, Scheffler had shrugged and

smiled. "Sure, if Olivia says it's okay,—and she told you to talk to

me, right?—give it a try. The guy does pay well, I can testify to

that. He wasn't 'the Pilgrim Foundation' when I worked for him,

though."

"Oh? What did you do?"

Scheffler's inward amusement seemed to grow. "No computer stuff,

really," he said at last, apparently groping for the right words. "My

work involved some traveling," he added, finding them. "And there

were some historical artifacts."

"Oh?" Jerry was squinting, scowling, trying to understand, and at

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

the same time not wanting to be late for his next class. "This Pilgrim

is a collector, then? In some kind of private business?"

"I'm sure he is. Look, I can't really give you any details. He'll have

to do that. But I know Olivia, too, and if she's the one who's trying

to recruit you, I'd say it was definitely okay." And with a wave of

hands they parted company as each hurried on to his next class.

Olivia—Jerry knew her only by her first name—the person who had

suggested that he talk to Scheffler about this, was something of a

mystery herself. She was only a voice on the phone to Jerry Flint;

she had started the whole business by phoning him one day out of

the blue, and suggesting that as a bright student he might be willing

to accept a summer job that would guarantee the financial support

he was going to need if he wanted to go on and get a doctorate in

computer science.

Did he want that? For Jerry that degree was life's big brass ring: not

only was the subject matter incredibly interesting, but people with

such advanced degrees in computer science were currently going

directly from school into jobs that started at a hundred thousand a

year. Still, it was a little odd that Olivia was also the one who

recommended that he talk to Scheffler.

When Jerry, having been given a phone number to call in

Springfield, came to talk to Dr. Pilgrim himself, he was assured that

if he were hired, a grant could be arranged, above and beyond his

pay for the coming summer, that would finance his schooling all the

way to a Ph.D. in computer science.

Jerry's preliminary research in the university library had failed to

turn up any reference to grants from a "Pilgrim Foundation." Of

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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact

course the library's list might well be out of date. Nor could he even

find a foundation of that name listed anywhere; but, he told himself,

that that meant little; these organizations came and went.

So on the appointed day, with a week of spring break clear ahead of

him, he rented a car and started driving south.

Jerry hadn't visited the state capital since a seventh-grade historical

tour, and he was vaguely surprised that the place turned out to be a

modest scale model of the metropolis to the north, complete with

suburbs. There were no grain elevators here, but as Jerry drove in he

observed a couple of buildings even taller than grain elevators. One

of these, as he got close to it, turned out to be the hotel that he was

looking for. At twenty stories or so it loomed far above everything

else in sight.

There was no difficulty in finding a parking space on the street

close to the hotel. Jerry climbed out of his little red rented Ford, and

pulled on the suitcoat that had been riding on the back of the front

seat. He tightened and straightened his unaccustomed necktie, and

set out for the hotel lobby, leaving his bag in the car's trunk for the

time being. Wondering if Dr. Pilgrim might possibly be waiting for

him right in the lobby, he checked his image in a passing plate-glass

window. Jerry had about given up wishing that he looked a little

bigger, older, more mature. The key word for his appearance, he

thought, was really nondescript. He could try raising a mustache,

but it would probably be thin, and certainly the same commonplace

brown as his hair. There was, of course, even less to be done about

physical size. At five-seven at least he was a comfortable way from

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