Mammoth

If he ever got out alive.

THEN one day Argyle showed up without Albert. Another well-known fact about prisoners in solitary confinement is that any change in routine, while it may be welcome in some ways, is also upsetting. When you are utterly in the power of someone else, and you don't even know who that someone else is, there is a superstitious feeling that any change is probably going to be for the worse. Matt swallowed hard, and got up from his seat on the bed.

"Am I ever going to learn your name?" he asked, trying to put on a brave face. Argyle ignored the question, as he had ignored every question Matt had ever asked. He walked up to within a pace of Matt and put his hands on his hips.

"I want you to know something," Argyle said. "I know you've been lying, right from day one. I know how to get the truth out of you, I could have you talking in fifteen minutes, tops. I could have you telling me things you didn't even know you knew. I just wanted you to know that." And he hit Matt in the nose with a right hook before Matt was even aware the man was moving. On his way down Matt caught a left jab to the stomach that explosively brought up the powdered eggs and greasy bacon and coffee he had eaten a few hours earlier. After a moment of blackness Matt found himself on his knees staring at a mixture of vomit and blood on the floor between his hands. The vomiting had stopped, but the blood was still spurting.

So this is how it begins, Matt thought. From the first he had been expecting this. In fact, he'd expected it a lot sooner. He had dueled with them for a long time, doing his best to conceal the one nugget of information that might, might, be of some use to them, and did it while always telling the truth. Always, and it hadn't been easy. He hadn't fooled them—the punch in the nose was proof of that—but he hadn't given them anything useful, either. He wasn't going to give it all up now, not after two punches, not simply because he was petrified at the very concept of torture. He had to hold out longer than that, didn't he?

So what would a movie hero do? What would Indiana Jones do? Come out with a snappy line, that's what he'd do.

Matt stared at the brown wingtips inches from his face, and at the argyle socks he had come to hate so much. "I get it," he said. "You don't wash them at all." Well, it wasn't Hasta la vista, baby, but he wasn't an indestructible machine, either.

The door was still open when Howard came in and stopped dead in his tracks. His face flushed bright red and he turned on his heel and leaned out the door.

"I want that man charged with assault and battery!" he screamed, so angry his voice came out at the high-pitched squeak that had been the bane of his school years. "I'm a witness! I want him fired, and I want him in prison!"

Howard came back into the room, shaking with fury, and strode over to the sink, where he grabbed a towel and hurried back to kneel beside Matt. He started to mop at the blood on Matt's face, but Matt pulled away and Howard just handed the towel to him. Matt used it to scrub at the back of his head.

"He spit on me," Matt explained.

There seemed to be two Howards kneeling before him. He realized his eyes were starting to swell up. He squinted one eye closed, which probably gave him the dubious expression he was going for.

"Took you long enough to get here."

"Matt, I..."

"Never mind. So what is this? Stage three of the interrogation? Start out soft, go hard, then try sweet reason? Or is there more brutality to come?"

"There was never supposed to be any brutality in the first place. That man was taking out his own frustrations, and I promise you he's going to pay for it. Here, let's go sit down and we'll talk about it." He grabbed Matt under the arm and Matt submitted, letting himself be helped to his feet, where he staggered to the table and fell heavily into a chair. The flow of blood had dried to a trickle but his nose hurt like hell. He busied himself wiping his face, giving himself time to think about this new development.

Was this staged for his benefit? Rough him up, then bring in a familiar, if not exactly beloved face, and go at him again while he's presumably at his most vulnerable?

You could sure make a case for it, but Matt couldn't buy Howard Christian as that good an actor. He looked across the table and saw a man who might be a real bear at a conference table doing a business deal, but who simply didn't have it in him to simulate the shaking hands, the sick expression.

He decided to trust him, tentatively. Matt knew himself to be a poor judge of character, not having spent a lot of time studying the human species, but he felt he'd learned a lot during his weeks in here when there was nothing at all to do but study his interrogators. He'd certainly read Argyle correctly.

"Who is it?"

Howard grimaced.

"All right, I understand you haven't told any lies, so I won't either. Part of the deal that got me in here is that I can't tell you that. Think of them as the NNSA."

"Americans, right? What's it stand for?"

"The No Name Spook Agency. That's all you need to know about them, because there's absolutely nothing you can do about your detainment here, or the treatment you've received. Have you been physically abused before today?"

"No. Well, they never turn off the lights, and they drugged me."

"I'm not surprised. Again, nothing to be done about it. It took me another two weeks to find out

where you were."

Matt raised an eyebrow, and regretted it. It hurt.

"New Jersey," Howard said.

"They kidnapped me in California."

"It's taken me until now to get in to see you. Matt, believe me when I tell you that I've been

working on nothing but the mammoths, and your situation, and my situation, from the moment this happened."

"Your situation?"

"You think I'm immune? It's possible that the only reason I'm not in your situation is that I didn't run afterward."

"Right," Matt said. "That, and forty billion dollars."

"Probably thirty-nine now, after my expenses since the mammoths showed up." Matt realized it was an attempt at humor, but he didn't find it amusing, and after a moment neither did Howard. He hung his head briefly.

"You're right, of course. My questioning was done with my lawyer at my side. But don't think it was pleasant. My wealth shielded me from all this"—he waved his hand at the room, glanced once more at the pool of vomit and blood—"but make no mistake about it, the government wants the time machine, and they intend to have it. I've convinced them that I don't have it. Hell, I don't have my warehouse, my frozen mammoth, my caveman, or any of the things you were working on. But Matt, I told the government everything. I told the truth, and they tell me they can't prove you ever told them a lie. But we both know you're hiding something. And I'm not sure I can get you out of here unless you tell them."

"Howard... I'm still not sure there is a 'them.' It might be you, keeping me here."

Howard looked Matt straight in the eyes.

"Maybe I deserve that. I can see how you might think it, anyway. There's no way I can disprove it, because the people who do have you are never going to reveal themselves to you, they're not going to come in here and say, 'Howard Christian has had nothing to do with this; in fact, he's been using every ounce of influence he has to stop this travesty.' All I can do is tell you it's not me, it's not my people."

Matt sighed. "Let me go through it all once more. I don't have the time machine. I don't know where it is. I have told you the last place I saw it, but I don't know where it went after that. I might be able to find it if I was out of here, but I'm not even sure of that.

"There is only one hope here. If I am allowed to leave this place, if they cut me loose and don't bother me, I might be able to figure out how it works. Or how it worked, anyway. I am on the track of something... but Howard, it is so crazy, it is so ephemeral, that it goes away every time I look at it. I haven't even tried to explain this to the questioners, whatever their names are, because I can't explain it to myself. I need time to think. I need time to explore new avenues. The answer will not be where we expect to find it, I know that much. This requires a new way of thinking, and I don't know if my brain, if any human brain, is equipped to think about it. It needs new tools. Mathematics isn't enough. Science isn't enough. And... that's about all I can tell you." Matt spread his hands, and looked toward the one-way mirror.