Alternate Wars by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg

Author:Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg [Benford, Gregory & Greenberg, Martin H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0553290088
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1991-12-15T08:00:00+00:00

Smith contrived to look carefree as he and Drinkwater hauled a wicker basket through the streets of Rijeka. The necks of several bottles of wine protruded from the basket. When he came up to a checkpoint, Smith took out a bottle and thrust it in a policeman’s face. “Here, you enjoy,” he said in his Italian-flavored Croatian.

“I am working,” the policeman answered, genuine regret in his voice. The men at the previous checkpoint hadn’t let that stop them. But this fellow, like them, gave the fishermen’s papers only a cursory glance and inspected their basket not at all. That was as well, for a Sten gun lurked in the straw under the bottles of wine.

Two more checkpoints and Smith and Drinkwater were up into the hills. The road became a dirt path. The Englishmen went off into a narrow meadow by the side of that path, took out a bottle, and passed it back and forth. Another bottle replaced it, and then a third. No distant watcher, assuming any such were about, could have noticed very little wine actually got drunk. After a while, the Englishmen lay down on the grass as if asleep.

Maybe Peter Drinkwater really did doze. Smith never asked him afterwards. He stayed awake the whole time himself. Through his eyelashes, he watched the meadow fade from green to gray to black. Day birds stopped singing. In a tree not far away, an owl hooted quietly, as if surprised to find itself awake. Smith would not have been surprised to hear the howl of a wolf—or, considering where he was, a werewolf.

Still moving as if asleep, Smith shifted to where he could see the glowing dial of his wristwatch: 2030, he saw. It was full dark. He sat up, dug in the basket, took out the tin tommy gun, and clicked in a magazine. “Time to get moving,” he said, relishing the feel of English on his tongue.

“Right you are.” Drinkwater also sat, then rose and stretched. “Well, let’s be off.” Up ahead—and the operative word was up—Trsat Castle loomed, a deeper blackness against the dark, moonless sky. It was less than two kilometers ahead, but two kilometers in rough country in the dark was nothing to sneeze at. Sweating and bruised and covered with brambles, Smith and Drinkwater got to the ruins just at the appointed hour.

Smith looked up and up at the gray stone towers. “In England, or any civilized country, come to that, a place like this would draw tourists by the bloody busload, you know?”

“But here it doesn’t serve the state, so they didn’t bother keeping it up,” Drinkwater said, following his thought. He ran a sleeve over his forehead. “Well, no law to say we can’t take advantage of their stupidity.”

The way into the castle courtyard was open. Whatever gates had once let visitors in and out were gone, victims of some long-ago cannon. Inside … inside, George Smith stopped in his tracks and started laughing. Imagining the sort of mausoleum that

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