Millennium

"Okay, folks," Lilly bawled in a voice like a drill sergeant. "I want you to shut the fuck up. Calm down and listen! You, shithead, pipe down before I cram my foot up your ass sideways. Is that your wife, mister? You got two seconds to shut her fucking mouth before I blow you both away. One ... that's better.

"Now. These people are not injured. They're alive. Look at 'em and you'll see they're breathing. They can even hear us. But I can kill with this weapon, and I promise you I'll snuff the first son of a bitch that gets out of line.

"You are in great danger."

"You will all die if you do not do exactly as I say.

"Each of you grab the nearest unconscious person and drag him toward the front of the plane. When you get there, the stewardess will tell you what to do. You have no time to waste. If you move too slowly, I'll show you what else I can do with this weapon."

She got them moving, with a few more shouts and obscenities. That's one of the main things we study when we bone up on a culture: what words will shock the hell out of 'em In the twentieth century, it was mostly intercourse and excrement.

The other ability of the stu

I heard all this going on in the background. What I was doing was ripping up the seats in the front rows of the tourist section. Pinky was across the aisle from me, doing the same thing. I don't think she was aware she was crying. She worked steadily, monomaniacally.

She was rational. She was doing her job.

She was also scared spitless.

"You're sure it's on the plane?" I called across the aisle.

"I'm sure. I saw it in my purse after I got on."

She had to think that, since there was nothing to be done if it was on the ground in whatever city this flight had come from. But she was probably right. My people seldom fall apart during an operation, not even if things have become hopeless. If she said she saw it after she got on the plane, then she saw it. Which meant we could find it.

While we looked, the conscious goats were busy dragging the sleeping goats to the front of the plane. When they got there somebody was directing them to toss their loads through the Gate and go back for more. It quickly became a routine. They huffed and they puffed, but there's hardly anything stronger than a 20th. They abuse their bodies, drink, smoke too much, don't exercise, let the flab build up, and they think they're worn out after they've licked a postage stamp. But they've got muscles like horses -- and the brains to match. It's amazing the physical feats they can do if we push them hard enough.

There was one guy pulling his share of the load, and I swear he must have been fifty years old.

Jesus! Fifty!

The plane was soon emptied. As each walker carried his last body to the Gate he was shoved through himself. Then there was only the snatch team. Even the pilots had been caulked this time. W e really hate to do that, and we usually can't. One of my people was flying now. If she didn't do exactly what the pilot would have done the plane would come down miles from where it ought to. However, this one was on autopilot and would remain so until the explosion in the engine. There was not going to be anything the pilot could have done (if you can thrash your way through that thicket of verb tenses) to alter anything once that wing fell off.

Which was fortunate. There is one more trick I can use on a flight where the cockpit crew becomes aware of the snatch before it's finished, but I really hate to use it.

We could bring in a man from my Very Special Team. (I'm speaking 20th Amerenglish; 'man' includes 'woman,' or so it says in my Strunk and White.) This would be a man with a bomb in his head to insure no teeth survived for identification. A man who was willing to fly an airplane into the ground.

Did I hear someone say flight recorder? Ah, yes. Those people up front do chatter when they get into trouble. There is an interesting solution to that problem. Uptime, it was already being prepared, had been set in motion as soon as the cockpit crew came through and we knew it might have to be used. It was an elegant solution. More than a little puzzling, but elegant.

With our time sca

(Time travel is tough on verb tenses.) So we couldn't know we'd have to take the pilot. But we could now scan ahead to the investigation afterward. (See what I mean about verb tenses? This was happening now -- if that word retains any meaning- uptime, in the future. They were sca

Paradox!

Because of what we were doing now or had already done, those words would never be spoken by the man whose voice everyone would hear. They would have been/will be/had been merely recorded from the recording itself, which had never been made, because of what we were doing or had already done.

Look at this sequence hard enough and you realize that cause and effect become a joke.

Any rational theory of the universe must be shitca

Well, I shitca

I was getting nowhere with my search for the missing stu

"Hey! All you zombies!" When I had their attention I went on. "Everybody keep looking.

Tear this plane apart. Don't rest until the wimps start arriving, and don't even rest then. I'm going uptime to see what I can do from there."

I hurried to the front of the plane and ... stepped through.

And landed on my ass at the bottom of the sorting floor.

I saw instantly what had happened and started yelling bloody murder. That did me no good. Every goat through the Gate comes through yelling bloody murder.

At the uptime end of the Gate is a complex series of cushioned, frictionless ramps.

They're designed to catch people who are unconscious or out of their minds with fear and shuffle them off very quickly before the next goat comes through. Sometimes this process breaks bones, but seldom important ones: Time is of the essence. We can't be too fussy.

But the system is designed to sort snatch team perso

There was no way to get a grip on anything (that's why they call it frictionless). I slid through a series of chutes and onto a flat surface coated with a sheet of plastic that clung to my skin. It all happened so fast I never aid understand the sequence. At some point mechanical hands removed my pants and I found myself wrapped in a tight cocoon of clear plastic. I was straitjacketed, arms at my sides, feet together.