Rebel in Time

'The shrink says that McCulloch is a homicidal violently racist nut case from way back in the Mississippi slashes. Now we have to add to that the police report that he killed three people in order to push his secret plan through. All we know about this plan is that it involves a large quantity of gold, as well as a sub-machine-gun, complete with blueprints for same. Since McCulloch went to a great deal of effort to obtain these items we can be reasonably certain that they were important to him. If he travelled back in time the chances are that he brought them with him. To the year eighteen fifty-eight. Why? And why that year? What was important about it? Nothing that I can remember. A relatively quiet period in American history, with nothing much happening to make it memorable in any way. A lot of politicking and trouble between the different states, but the Civil War didn't start for two and a half more years.

'I don't know what he is up to!' Troy shouted, in sudden anger, slamming his fists down on the piles of paper. 'All I know is that he is up to no good, no damned good at all. People are going to get killed — or why else is he carrying that weapon around? And, knowing the colonel, I don't need a crystal ball to tell me that a lot of these people are going to be black. I'm sure of that.'

But anger wasn't the solution. Any explanations of the colonel's motivations would be found by reason and logic, not by emotion. Troy tore off his note and put them to one side, then started a fresh sheet of paper. Question; what had the colonel taken with him? Answer; gold, the gun, the blueprints.

Question; how did these fit together?

Answer; not easily. Think. Gold is money, the kind of money that is good any time, any place. When McCulloch arrived back in 1858 he would be a rich man — and he was certainly going to be rich in the South. No chance of him going North! He would dive into Dixie, good Old slave-holding Dixie. He would be right at home there. This alone would be motivation enough for a man with his prejudices to make the trip back through time. Live in the land he loved best, where integration was just a mathematical term. Great. But why did he pick the year 1858? Within three short years the Civil War would begin and the world the colonel loved would disappear forever. If he went back to 1830, or even earlier, he could live a full life cracking the whip over the darkies' backs. He would love that. But this way, 1858, he only had a couple of years to enjoy the fun.

But he had taken more than gold. The gun. The approaching war — and the deadly sub-machine-gun. They went together. They fitted together.

Troy had a sudden, terrible and depressing feeling that he had hit on the truth. No, it couldn't be possible. But it was possible. It had been done. The colonel had gone back in time with his gold and his blueprints and his gun.

The psychiatrist's report had suggested that McCulloch was a paranoid with criminal schizophrenic tendencies. That was another way of saying that he was insane. And his idea was insane. Just about the most insane idea that a certified nut case had ever dreamed up.

Colonel McCulloch had travelled back in time to change the outcome of the Civil War.

He wanted to alter history so that the South would win.

Chapter 18

'What exactly is the question that you are asking? What things are special about the Sten-gun? I am afraid that I don't take your meaning, sir,' Dryer said. The curator turned the submachinegun over and over in his hands as though he were searching for an answer.

'Then I'm not expressing myself very well,' Troy said. 'Let me try again. We have a common ground in that neither of us looks at guns in the same way that the man in the street does. You are curator of the technological archives here, a specialist in weapons of all kinds, I'm a specialist too. I've used them in the field. As did Colonel McCulloch…'

'The colonel, yes. You were in about him some days ago, weren't you? Have you recovered my missing items yet?'

'No, but the case is still being worked on. That's why I need to know more about the gun the colonel walked away with. Is it a particularly accurate weapon? Does it have a high rate of fire, or low rate of stoppages?'

'No, quite the opposite, in fact. It was a gun designed in a great rush at the beginning of the Second World War. The rate of fire is slow, it is not very accurate — and the clip has a tendency to jam.'

'Not very attractive indeed,' Troy said. He picked the gun up himself now and ran his finger along the crude welds that held the receiver to the metal tube that formed the stock. 'Were many of them manufactured?'

'Over four million in all.'

'That's an awful lot of guns. But why? If the weapon was as unsatisfactory as you say, why on earth did they make so many?'