Episode 21: The Full Picture
Joe glared at him. Then sat down again, as abruptly as he'd arisen.
"Let's start all over again. I got this straight, you brought me, some screwy way, all the way ... here. O.K., I'll buy that. I seen what it looks like out that window�" The real comprehension was seeping through to him even as he talked. "Everybody I know, Jessie, Tony, the Kid, Big Louis, everybody, they're dead. Even Big Louis."
"Yes," Brett-James said, his voice soft. "They are all dead, Mr. Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren."
The two men of the future said nothing more for long minutes while Joe Prantera's mind whirled its confusion.
Finally he said, "What's this bit about you wanting me to give it to some guy."
"That is why we brought you here, Mr. Prantera. You were ... you are, a professional assassin."
"Hey, wait a minute, now."
Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring the interruption. "There is small point in denying your calling. Pray remember that at the point when we ... transported you, you were about to dispose of a contemporary named Alphonso Annunziata-Rossi. A citizen, I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to society."
They had him pegged all right. Joe said, "But why me? Why don't you get some heavy from now? Somebody knows the ropes these days."
Brett-James said, "Mr. Prantera, there are no professional assassins in this age, nor have there been for over a century and a half."
"Well, then do it yourself." Joe Prantera's irritation over this whole complicated mess was growing. And already he was beginning to long for the things he knew�for Jessie and Tony and the others, for his favorite bar, for the lasagne down at Papa Giovanni's. Right now he could have welcomed a calling down at the hands of Big Louis.
Reston-Farrell had come to his feet and walked to one of the large room's windows. He looked out, as though unseeing. Then, his back turned, he said, "We have tried, but it is simply not in us, Mr. Prantera."
"You mean you're yella?"
"No, if by that you mean afraid. It is simply not within us to take the life of a fellow creature�not to speak of a fellow man."
Joe snapped: "Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let's start all over again."
Brett-James said, "Let me do it, Lawrence." He turned his eyes to Joe. "Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?"
Joe looked at him blankly.
"In your day you were confronted with national and international, problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium ago."
"Sure, O.K., so we had problems. I know whatcha mean�like wars, and depressions and dictators and like that."
"Yes, like that," Brett-James nodded.
The heavy-set man paused a moment. "Yes, like that," he repeated. "That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn't they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter," he added musingly, "we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own era."
"O.K., O.K.," Joe Prantera growled. "So everybody's got it made. What I wanta know is what's all this about me giving it ta somebody? If everything's so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?"
Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on the table. "The bacterium of hate�a new strain�has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us."
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Brett-James took up the ball again. "Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?"
Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.
"Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?"
"Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin," Joe growled. "I ain't stupid."
The other nodded. "Such men are unique. They have a drive ... a drive to power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are genii in their way, Mr. Prantera, genii of evil. Such a genius of evil has appeared on the current scene."
"Now we're getting somewheres," Joe snorted. "So you got a guy what's a little ambitious, like, eh? And you guys ain't got the guts to give it to him. O.K. What's in it for me?"
The two of them frowned, exchanged glances. Reston-Farrell said, "You know, that is one aspect we had not considered."
Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, "Had we not, ah, taken you at the time we did, do you realize what would have happened?"
"Sure," Joe grunted. "I woulda let old Al Rossi have it right in the guts, five times. Then I woulda took the plane back to Chi."
Brett-James was shaking his head. "No. You see, by coincidence, a police squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr. Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera."
Joe winced. It didn't occur to him to doubt their word.
Reston-Farrell said, "As to reward, Mr. Prantera, we have already told you there is ultra-abundance in this age. Once this task has been performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present�"
"Waita minute, now. You figure on gettin' me candled by some head shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I'm going back to my own�"
Brett-James was shaking his head again. "I am afraid there is no return, Mr. Prantera. Time travel works but in one direction, with the flow of the time stream. There can be no return to your own era."
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