TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

THE BEARER OF THIS LETTER AND THIS SEAL ACTS IN OUR INTERESTS IN THIS TIME AND PLACE.

SIGNED

NIKOLAUS ESZTERHAZA
SECTOR COMMANDER
TIME RANGERS

Robert Logue, on a Delta red-eye to LaGuardia, rubs his cheek hard, examines the document Ignace gave him. Though the paper was folded, open it shows no crease marks.

Below the English text is the same message in Spanish, French, and what he guesses are Russian and Chinese. Last is a kind of rebus. Robert studies this with a magnifying glass he bought in an airport gift shop.

The rebus greeting is shown as an open eye radiating beams. The message starts with a stick figure human with a rectangle held in one hand. Close inspection has shown Robert that the rectangle is a tiny duplicate of the page he holds. On that is an even more minute page. Deeper than that the glass will not take him. But it seems to continue to infinity. As the landing lights come on, he studies the concentric spiral seal at the bottom of the page.

Instead of landing amid the shoddy tangle of the main airport, his flight touches down at the graceful Marine Aviation Terminal on the outskirts of LaGuardia. Its art deco flying fish motif evokes sea planes, guys in trench coats, women with their faces half-hidden by veils.

Debarking amidst a sleepy throng, he crosses the silent, circular rotunda. Out of the night, two figures with painted faces, students or maybe musicians, walk through the front door moving against the tide of passengers.

They split as they approach Robert. Each grabs him by an arm. "I'm Justina," the one on his left says and flashes a spiral medallion. Justina is dark and in her twenties. Her English is Islands-tinged. The other face is younger and suddenly familiar. "This is Oman." Robert nods. He last saw him on a skateboard at the Minute Market.

They let Robert turn around and walk between them. The three pass through an "Employees Only" door and out a fire exit that's been wedged open. On the tarmac, a plane with all its lights on taxis toward a hangar. An Air Express two-engine freight flies low over Flushing Bay.

Without breaking stride, Justina says, "You'll relax." Robert nods and before he can exhale, her medallion pulses and the three of them are sliding not walking. Then he's stumbling, catching his footing on rough sea grass.

His escort neatly disengage themselves and him from the slipstream of a prop-driven sea plane rising from the water. Robert gasps and tries to catch his breath. Marsh lies where he just saw runways. Barrage balloons hang in the noon sky. His legs buckle under him.

Evening sun shines on the water as Robert Logue, wearing white robes over his clothes, looking rested, approaches a Quonset hut. Justina, his escort, knocks, opens the door, gestures him in. As he steps inside, she stops and says, "I will go and set up the meeting. We have left the briefing to you."

A teletype rattles in a corner, the windows are open to the sunset. On the wall, A calendar identifies this as April 1942. A man sitting with his feet up on a desk opposite the door says, "Thanks." He's burly, getting fat, in shirtsleeves, wearing a holstered revolver and suspenders. His suitcoat is draped on another chair. A wide-brim hat is pushed back on his head. A Lucky hangs out of his mouth. He's as old as Robert, but he asks, "Feeling better after your nap, Gramps?"

"Thanks. It's been a long time, Ed."

Ed Brown rises. "Smoke? Have a seat. Things been going okay for the last generation or two?"

"Not bad," says Robert shaking hands. "Until recently." Above Brown is an oil painting. It takes Robert a second glance to recognize the idealized image of J. Edgar Hoover. He indicates the picture: "FBI?"

"In Peace and War. They lend us this office. But just about everything around here is FBI." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "President Hoover the Second."

"I'm wondering how he feels about those guys in feathers and beads I passed outside."

"You looked closer, you maybe'd see they had fins and gills. Uncle Sam's glorious allies in this particular go-round."

"Nice costume you're wearing."

"We follow local custom. The good citizens here want G-Men right out of the movies." He holds up Ignace's warrant. "Little Danny, on the other hand, wanted a Captain Midnight decoder ring. My predecessor was happy to oblige."

"Must have set the Rangers back a fortune in Ovaltine box tops," says Robert. "Nice of you to sort my papers." He rises with his hand out.

"Saves comparing notes." Ed Brown gives them back. "Seems you've been looking up old acquaintances." He watches Robert rub his face. Looks inquiringly.

"A little reminder from Sandra. There's a dream that goes with it. I see myself from above, lying on sun-scorched ground. There's a hole in my cheek right where she kissed me. Through the hole I can see bones and dry tendons."

Ed grimaces. "A Witch's Kiss. Made you promise to stay clear of the Sisterhood, did she? I have lots more faith in your discretion than she does. The way you turn the spotlight on old, buried crimes and never drop a clue as to how you really solve them proves that."

His lighter has a spiral emblem. He uses it, inhales deeply on a Lucky. "All of a sudden everyone's interested in a certain old crime. But this time you're not operating the spotlight. You're in it. You need a favor. You remember old friends."

Outside the window a fiery grid crosses the darkening sky. Ed jerks his thumb at it and says, "Another glorious ally. This particular USA is happy to have friends, especially ones with Upstream technology."

He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a bottle of Jim Beam. "Don't be shocked. This doesn't belong to the G-men." He locates a couple of glasses. "We have a little while. Let me try to explain our plans for you. Jeez, we were kids when we met."

My growing-up was in a South Chicago in a Great Depression. I was lousy in school. Never able to concentrate. Daydreaming they called it. Out the window, instead of bread lines and slums, I'd see bright cars and silver buildings. My family had nothing. I left school at sixteen. The police didn't need me. Likewise the Army and Navy and Marines.

So I rode the rails out of the city with a buck and change on me. I still saw bright colors just out of reach. Somewhere in the Dakotas, a Central Pacific boxcar load of hobos made an attempt on my dough, my shoes, my sacred honor.

My only chance was to swim towards a patch of silver light no one else could see. Wham! I was staggering and babbling on the median strip between a monorail and an industrial park. On that world, certain authorities knew about the Stream. Before long, this foreign guy showed up and old Nicky Eszterhaza described to me dreams he knew I had. I grabbed his offer to become a cop.

Cop is shorthand, a thing everyone can grasp. Maybe we're closer to a secret order. People call us by different names in different places. Time Rangers is as good as any. Let's say the Rangers try to make sure unauthorized parties don't mess too much with the Stream. And that we try not to attract too much attention doing it.

They put me through something between basic training and a brain rewiring. There were a couple dozen of us. All from the mid–twentieth century. Young. Teens, mostly. "None but the young are brave," a certain song says. It was everything from history and algebra to weapons systems and swimming the Stream by land, sea, and air.

After a year and a half of that, they needed a volunteer. Immediately. And young. We all knew this had to be in response to a Primary Event, an unscheduled ripple in the Stream. And we all wanted the assignment because it meant becoming a Ranger faster. Olney and Gonzalez? I sympathize with them. Being a cadet is purgatory. You're any good, you want that badge.

Others were smarter or more adept. But I was the best fit. The Site was almost thirty years Upstream from where I'd come from. But it was the same world and country or close enough not to make a difference. With all of Time to play with, they had only a few days to show me my Target Results and me give me a little background.

Then they revealed my contact and dumped me on Site with nothing but a change of clothes and five bucks in my boot. About all I had when I first leaped into the Stream. Except now I could speak French and kill someone with a tin spoon if I remembered to bring one.

Ignace was real jumpy when we met. And it bothered him a lot that I was so young. But mostly he was fine. Devised a cover story I could live with. Filled me in on LaRocca and Burke. Arranged safe spots for meeting him.

So, I let the cops find me. Then I let my tale dribble out. I was seventeen with weird dreams, on the run from trouble and not altogether swift mentally. Ignace insisted on that last because I couldn't always remember stuff like which was Elvis and which was JFK.

All I needed was to tell LaRocca about the other worlds I saw in dreams and he was hooked. They had me stay with Burke and his wife. She was okay-looking. But if she had two heads and both ugly, it wouldn't have mattered. As it was, I figured either she was as good as a widow or I was going to die trying to make her one.

Burke I felt sorry for. All he was looking for was a little graft. What happened? First the boarder screwed his wife. Then he got killed. Just an average, dishonest cop sucked into something by a partner he saw as being smart. My Target Results, however, were very clear on one thing. Both of these guys and Sally Dere, when she showed up, had to go.

Toward the end, there was money in the Stream for them. But for LaRocca it was mostly adventure. The weird thing was that he never learned to move in Time. Burke eventually caught on, some. But LaRocca always had to be led. Even to his own slaughter.

People think policing Time is easy. You know a bank will get robbed on Thursday morning, so you go back to Wednesday afternoon to arrest the perpetrators. But unless it's a bank robbery that's going to seriously alter the Stream, it's not your worry. If it is, you need to find a way of stopping it that doesn't itself alter the Stream. Which means operating so no one on Site notices. Places, like your world, where almost nobody knows about the Stream are naïve, happy places. This one where we are, for instance, they know all too much.

Too bad about LaRocca. He was naïve. It got him killed. Still, He had a real talent for spotting special abilities in others. Alan was a plant, same as I was. But LaRocca found Angie by himself. And you. He didn't know what to make of you. Hell, I didn't either. You were this twitchy kid who just wanted to run home and hide under his bed or something.

It turned out, Alan understood how you could be used. Ignace had passed the word that Alan was supposed to be cooperating with us. Alan wasn't real warm. Not much to say. He was waiting, the same as me, for Miss Dere to show up.

First glance at Sally, you wouldn't think this little chippie could cause a major Branch in the Stream. Second look, it wasn't so hard to imagine.

LaRocca, like I say, was trusting. Sally Dere put a stop to that. Along with being able to navigate the Stream, she could pick up your thoughts if you weren't careful. A trick of the Sisterhood. I had to watch myself around her. Alan did too, I'd guess. Ignace avoided her.

Once LaRocca had Sally, she made sure he didn't need the rest of us. Angie was in a bad way. First she lost LaRocca, on whom she had this huge crush. Then Sally appropriated Ted because she couldn't be seen going around all the time with LaRocca.

The three of us formed an alliance. I didn't care about Teddy but I had orders to nail all the others. Alan's only interest was Sally. The others could walk. Angie didn't care about Burke. But vengeance was going to be hers. Sally was going to get it, of course. And Teddy. And she wanted LaRocca real bad.

Angie wasn't in Sally's league in looks. But she was okay when she was a kid. And you may have gathered that the Rangers aren't a monastic organization. So I was in there as soon as she became available. Finding out what Angie was like when she got crossed took a lot of the zest out of that.

By the new year, my bosses were pressing me for results. My guess is that Alan's were too. But it got harder to track Sally and LaRocca once they started getting suspicious.

And the Stream can be a nasty place. You go looking for a spot where, maybe, they already have next week's Derby results and discover yourself in the hold of a slave ship. Or still in your hometown but now the big betting sport is football with human heads.

I was sent to stop something very wrong. Only instead of Roger Deveraux and a battalion of marines, I had Daniel Ignace and a handful of screwed-up kids. One of whom was me. The cops could eliminate us in a dozen different ways. We were in more danger than they were. The question was who was going to get the jump on the other one. I moved out of Burke's and didn't stay any one place for very long. Ignace was terrified.

Angie was the key. Old Trollo's connections Upstream kept her informed. Sally and LaRocca were seen in a New York about twenty years up a real bad branch of the Stream. The partly-wrecked New York that scared you was nothing. Further up, things were a lot worse and civil government was nil.

Because Sally and LaRocca were muscling in on their turf, Trollo's friends were willing to spring a trap. It was the best I could do. I let Ignace know. Word came back fast from HQ that it was okay. And my Target Results got changed.

Original Target Results are always optimum solutions. Neat and seamless. Something like, "The two police officers and Miss Dere die in a car accident that harms no one else."

As a sign of how desperate things were, all they wanted now was that the Rangers not be connected with the deed. Which seemed possible. And that I give Ignace evidence beforehand that it would work.

That was hard. Since this would be a Primary Event it hadn't happened yet in the Stream. Only further up that branch would we be able to tell if we had succeeded. And I didn't know how to be sure. Then Alan said, "We use the bloodhound." He had kept track of you. For just that reason.

My other problem was with the worlds on that particular branch. It's not like in Ignace's stories where everybody goes rollicking around the centuries. As you will discover, Rangers have definite beats. Up that branch things were wild and woolly, Rangers were few and unpopular, and the Sisterhood was openly hunted.

Headquarters had a contact about twenty years Upstream from the Site where we had decided to ambush Sally and LaRocca. They told me how to get in touch with him.

We acted fast. Angie went to see her friends. Alan got you out of the hospital where you'd been stashed. You were shaky, haunted. Just seeing death all around had pushed you over the edge. I was afraid of what this was going to do to you. But we had no choice. Alan and I brought you up the branch.

It was hot the way it gets Upstream even in winter. My contact was a kind of cop. He was not happy to see us. Order of a sort had been restored to that New York. Nothing and nobody from Upstream or Down was supposed to come there. As soon as we arrived we got stripped of everything off-world.

Partly too it was intimidation. And a way of showing contempt for Rangers in general and me in particular. I was afraid you were going to flip out.

We got questioned. They wanted to know if we were from the Sisters. Alan bluffed his way through that. Maybe they figured anyone hung like him couldn't be a witch. Kind of a waste considering what happened. If they'd found out who he was, we would all have ended up like LaRocca and company.

Finally, they made us dress as locals and let us lead you around. Most of midtown Manhattan was bombed out. And that seems to be how they wanted it. Shells of buildings. Piles of rubble. A kind of memorial. They had an amusement park on the river.

It was hard locating the spot we were looking for. Lots of dying had gone on around there. You were sobbing and puking. Then I noticed a sculpture sticking out of the ground, a chunk of a wing. The Busted Eagle. I led you toward it. All of a sudden, you halted and screamed. "They put LaRocca's eyes out!" That was what I needed. It took a while to quiet you down.

Back home, Angie met us. Everything was set. Out in back of the cafeteria, Ignace was in a major lather. LaRocca and Burke had just been around looking for Alan and Angie and me. Talking about arrest. They'd be back shortly.

When he heard your story, Ignace was scared. Said you knew too much and were a security risk. "Like a time bomb," he said. And I should get rid of you. That I didn't like. Besides, where you were going, nobody was going to pay attention to anything you said.

I got Ignace's mind off that by making him work out a cover story about having just seen Angie and Alan and me. He'd say we were high and babbling about something called the Broken Eagle and the fortune we were about to make there. It must have been quite a performance because the four of them came after us.

Meanwhile, we took you back to Penn Station, the first place I'd ever seen you. Angie kissed you good-bye and Alan took you back to the hospital before we headed back Upstream.

With what you'd told us, springing the trap was just a nasty detail. Justice up that branch was mighty rough. Blinding is what they do to time travelers before they do anything else. So they can't see the future or something.

One thing Angie had agreed to was that the bodies would be dumped back on the world they came from. A public display and a warning to others. She was enthusiastic. Alan didn't object. And that fell within my Target Results. What got called the Switchyard Massacre was the consequence.

In the aftermath, Alan disappeared. I guess what happened to him was his reward. Headquarters encouraged Ignace to stop writing Time Ranger stories and go West. We had connections in Hollywood. He did fine. Served us well until recently.

My commission came through fast. Your world was part of my beat. Angie stayed where she was, of course. We used her as a contact over the years. And I overlooked a lot because of what she'd done for me. What she can't understand is that time has passed and she's in someone else's jurisdiction.

A couple of months after the Massacre, I checked you out. You'd been given more shock treatments. An orderly told me you wouldn't remember your own mother unless she dropped a few clues. I figured that was good enough.

With luck that would have been the end of it. But forty-plus years later, one Brian Olney gets interested in the Switchyard Event. What we've pieced together is that he hears old rumors. Other kids, including his new girlfriend, Mirabel Gonzalez, are talking about Time. Ms. Gonzalez had some prior contact with the Sisters. And the Sisters feel they have reason to meddle with things up that branch of the Stream.

Brian and Mirabel think how hot it would be to solve this case. They start asking around. Olney meets you. We think it's Gonzalez who comes up with Angie's name.

But it's Olney who approaches her. Angie is scared. By now, she regards the Stream as a kind of dumping ground. Brian is young. As we see it, she throws him off balance, tosses him into Time immediately. Before he can tell anyone. Leaves him in a place where the civil authorities deal out summary justice and dump him back where he came from.

Cadet Gonzalez goes through shock, recrimination, anger, guilt. All the usual. She arms herself. Finds Angie. Maybe sticks a gun in her face and says show me where you took him. Angie does. Mirabel Gonzalez dies in a shoot-out. After which they treat her the same as her boyfriend. As a warning.

And here we are, you needing answers and me feeling I owe you a favor. With Ignace out of the picture and Angie clearly a liability, I'd want to be able to count on someone like you on that Site. But that's not up to me. Like Angie, you're on somebody else's beat.

Justina's the one who gets to decide if she wants you. For old times' sake, I put in as good a word as I could. It's late in your career, I know. But this is the best deal I can see for you. Oman's still in training. He's real bright. But he's a kid. There's a lot you can teach him.

Me, I've had long service. Lots of interesting stuff. But right now anyone who stands between me and my pension is on the most dangerous spot in the Stream.

You know, I think Ignace used me in one of the Time Ranger stories too. The very last one. Good luck Bobby.