Death Ray Butterfly

in an outside line to buy a different stamp from somebody else who takes some money. There's no way out of this, even for a member of the police force, or an ex-member like myself. I could probably get an exemption from the general, but he wasn't very happy with me last time I saw him.

  The general had gone to the trouble of bringing me from the future to help him with a case he had. It's true, he wasn't looking for me in particular; I just happened to be there, and there wasn't much I could do for him anyway, nothing much that anyone could have done. He knew, or said he knew, that a three year old girl was going to kill someone, he didn't know who, and he didn't know where or when, but she'd have a gun and she would be doing it deliberately. She was an assassin. A three-year old assassin. It sounded pretty crazy to me. Although I had a nephew once and I wouldn't have put anything past him. My little sister's kid, Wilhelm. Brat used to whack me with a sword every time I came within striking distance. Had a notion to pick him up and heave him across the room. Sister wouldn't have been too thrilled with that so I just put up with it.

  The general put me in a nice hotel room. I appreciated that. The lobby was draped with curtains that looked like they were made of gold, and maybe they were. And the lounge chairs, velvet and red, were very cozy. I took some real good snoozes there. Couldn't complain about the liquor either. I was never much of a booze hound but they had some fine Scotch in that place. Every day the general would join me for breakfast and barrage me with questions about my plans. Where to begin? What to do? Where to look? How would what he called "a seasoned investigator" approach such a problem.

  All I could do was press him for every detail he could remember about the case. Which wasn't much. On his first trip to the future he'd seen a headline in a newspaper machine, stooped to read the story but didn't have any change to actually buy the paper, and before he could run off to get change he was pulled back into the machine and returned to his own time. The girl had no name. The woman she shot had a name but it wasn't her real one. She was rushed to a hospital. That was pretty much it. I made him tell me the story over and over again.

  I didn't get was so urgent about this. Clearly, people running for president got protection, and this candidate, whatever her real name, would have more protection than usual because of the general's discovery, but when I told him this, he became very nervous and finally admitted his real concern was that there even was a presidential candidate. Because, as it turned out, there were no elections to be had. The general and his friends ran the country themselves and were quite happy to keep running it indefinitely. The last thing they needed was an election. I began to get the idea that it wasn't the little girl he wanted to stop, it was the other one, the candidate. I was in no hurry to help him. Politics has never been any of my business.

  People who cheat. That's another one of my peeves. The general was out to cheat history. That's almost as bad as people who take on some enormous challenge and then do everything in their power to make it easier, like sailing around the world and going in an enormous yacht with all the comforts and conveniences. Why bother? Might as well stay at a nice hotel for a few days until the machine pulls you back and returns you to your own time and place.

  Eight

  I'm not used to having all this time. It's bugging me. I was so busy for so long I never stopped to think about what I'd do when I retired, so when the time came it took me by surprise. I hate to be one of those reminiscers always going on about the old days, but I do miss the action. There weren't too many boring days back then. Now it's all I've got. The memories come flooding back sometimes, a bit scattered I have to admit but they do come in a rush all jumbled up. My assistant, Kelley, probably thought that talking it all out like this would help me sort them all out in my mind, but too many things run together, too many coincidences, too many loose threads. Just when I think I've put some pieces together, it all comes unraveled. I had cases that took years and years to come to some kind of conclusion.

  I'd get called in on all sorts of things. I'd wonder why they were bothering with me at all, like the time they brought me in on the Reyn Tundra situation. Here was a job for a scholar, I thought, an archaeologist or an anthropologist at least. They'd found this body, frozen in a block of ice inside a glacier somewhere in Europe. He'd been dead, oh maybe twenty thousand years or so, they said. Said he'd been murdered. Now they wanted me to solve the crime! What could I tell about a frozen stiff that old? Some kind of Neanderthal at that. They flew me over there to see the body in person. I had to think that was the most ridiculous case I'd ever been dragged into.

  All these skinny men and women with spectacles and white lab coats were gathered around this ancient body, now encased in a vacuum-sealed clear chamber in some chemical stenchy lab. The dead guy looked pretty pissed. Brutal. What eyes, and eyebrows, and thick long brown hair, and the body all wrapped up in some kind of wolfskin or bearskin or mastodon. What the hell did I know? Nasty looking fellow. So there I am, this fat old cop from the great southwest of the U.S. of A. - I was always kind of heavy, and I was already getting old by that time - anyway, there I am along with my assistant, Kelley, and we are like some kind of fish out of water to say the least. Kelley, smelling like tobacco as always, and me, smelling like burgers most likely, and looking like hell because I hate to fly, absolutely hate it. Makes me sicker than a dog most every time. And the time change wasn't doing me any favors. I was ready to puke already and then one of those scientists flicked some switch somewhere and the chamber started to revolve. The dead guy rolled over like a chicken on a spit and then the scientist who did that, he must have been the main guy, says in some kind of German-English, 'you see, Inspector, why we wanted you', and he pointed at the back of the dead guy's head, and sure enough, there was the entry wound.

  Small caliber, close range, unmistakable. The caveman had been murdered with a gun.

  The scientists had waited for me to witness the fact first hand, before proceeding with any further extraction of the bullet. I gave them the go ahead. For once, there were no crime lab "detectives" mucking up the scene. These scientists did a clean job of it. They had used some imaging machines and knew precisely where the bullet was - what the bullet was - and had some very fancy medical techniques for getting it out of there. Wasn't long before the thing was on a table in front of me, clean as a whistle.

  Of course it would have its own unique markings. Anyone who ever watched a cop show would know about that. What they never tell you is the chances of finding a match were a billion to one, let alone the gun it came out of. This thing could have come out of any yard sale, any gun show, any time from the second half of the twentieth century on. I ventured to say it was American. They agreed. It was why they hadn't brought in Maigret, I suppose. The working theory was, the guy had somehow got himself forward in time at least long enough to get shot, and then was somehow shipped back to his own time as a corpse. Or else somebody went back to his time and did it.

  Yeah, I said, why not? If only it was so easy. Turned out there were some further complications.

  Nine

  Of course it wasn't always homicides. I started out on a regular beat like any other cop, but those were different times. It all seems so innocent now. I can't even remember too much about it; things have gotten all jumbled up and confused since then, which reminds me of another case that caused me a lot of trouble. I'd been in narcotics until that whole situation suddenly disappeared with the legalization of all substances. Man. You spend a lot of time tracking down hoodlums for doing something that the very next day is perfectly all right in the eyes of the law. Some of those that got themselves arrested and locked up were right back out there, back at work but now wearing business attire and doling out firm handshakes!

  Some others moved on to trafficking in substances that remained illegal - I guess it was the thrill that got them hooked, or maybe just the independence, being your own boss, living that adrenaline lifestyle. Now it was banned subatomic particles and boy, were those some tricky items
to trace. Not just the particles themselves - everyone knows about the quantum effects - but the dealers and their minions too. Just when you thought you'd busted the girl who was carrying, it turned out she was clean, and maybe the loot was on her grandma instead. Hard to know. In the early days we didn't have too many ways of testing so it was easy for them to move the stuff around and get away with it.

  There was a lot of panic in high places, top officials publicly worrying about these particles slipping into the mainstream and causing catastrophic anomalies, black holes and such. As if the criminals were going to suck all the air out of the cosmos for fun and profit! They always sold those suckers short. The criminal mind is said to be devious, and there are always rumors of 'masterminds' and geniuses and such, but really these guys are just out to make a buck, get laid and look good. Last thing they want is cataclysmic Armageddons. Even Root Turagu. This guy was said to be the kingpin of the whole nanoptic subworld. Ruled the whole East Coast from an over-sized