This was an ill-named city for certain. He remembered reading about Burton’s complaint over the lack of sewage in the Argentine capital. He now thought the point had been weakly made by Burton’s biographer. The reek of the town was deeply textured, but one could sort it out: a distant slaughter yard; horseshit steaming beneath his very feet; open sewers overflowing with human waste on the street below; wood-smoke hovering over the homes for a nice accent; and the distinct acidic scent of coal-fumes drifting up from the harbor anchorage some seven miles out, where coal-fired steam engines provided power for the warships of the newly modernized navies that had sunk anchor or tied up.

What a terrible harbor!

He counted himself lucky to have come in on a shallow draft fishing skiff, right up to the dirty cobbled beachfront, where stevedores hauled cargo from long boats and ketches on rusting wheeled carts that needed to be dragged to dry land.

This is not a harbor. It is testament to lazy engineering resulting in excruciating operational friction.

He stood on the cold cobblestones of the deserted street before the cantina that his companions had just entered, on the horns of a dilemma. He turned for one last survey of the harbor, already worried about a timely return to Baltimore.

Their plan was to entice Burton into The Service just at the beginning of the six-month stretch of time in late 1868 and early 1869 when he went missing with two adventurers in Argentina, eventually reappearing in Peru. Burton could work with them for as many years as he wished and still return in time to complete his life’s work, so long as they had two months leeway.

For some reason far beyond his comprehension, the devices they employed for time-travel could only be targeted to a season of the year, with a two-month variable—they thought.

They bring you through at the same time-of-day, but never on the same day?

They were using a ‘loop’ capacitator, not a ‘branch’ capacitator, and were therefore laboring under the Sword of Damocles that had worried speculative scientists since the dawn of the Atomic Age: the ‘grandfather paradox’.

Christ, we have already killed a half-dozen people. What chance do we have of not changing Time?

The butterfly effect was a popular pseudo-scientific notion in the early 21st Century among those who spent time thinking about such unlikely circumstances—my unlikely circumstance!

The theory postulated that even a small change would have increasingly disruptive effects on the course of history and the progress of those caught up in it. The notion was based on the supposition—by no means proven—that even the beating of a butterfly’s wings could set in motion a chain of reactions that might cause a storm in some other portion of the world—nonsense!

They certainly were not in danger of accidentally killing one of their ancestors and thus erasing themselves. He took comfort now, in the theory postulated by Asimov in his story The Ugly Little Boy, concerning the effects of disruptive time-travel. In that seminal work, in which a science corporation engaged remotely in the grabbing of people from the past, the esteemed author stated a truism that would appeal to many political scientists, namely that the tide of events is just that, a tidal force, and that a man, even a great man, is nothing before its wave.

Perhaps great men are like the surfer, risking drowning beneath the unstoppable tide. The peasant or soldier—or time-traveler perhaps—would by this analogy be nothing but the sand ground beneath the breaking waves of events?

Jan had done extensive research into the British Navy of 1868. He found much to his horror, that available deployment records were patchy and generalized, and, more ominously, that much of the sailing and even hybrid propulsion fleet was being broken up, scuttled, sold off, or reduced to training vessel or static supply duty as the new steam-powered vessels came online.

He looked over the harbor for any hope of timely transport, but he saw no British or American flags fluttering in the foul breeze. Brazilian, Uruguayan and Argentine military vessels dominated, with one outgoing German screw-frigate and some fishing vessels constituting the balance of the anchored vessels.

Damn, it is winter down here and obviously not the time preferred for trade. Damn!

All you have is that British frigate putting into Peru for supplies in early 1869. That is an eternity away. Hell, you’ll be 65-years-old by the time Burton is done with his stint in The Service .

Yes, hit the books and find out what makes the man tick. Thus far you have only looked at it from a logistical standpoint. The books are only two, but all that will be left of Burton’s legacy if you screw this up.

The ‘recruiters’ working for The Service in a time-travel capacity had agreed, that anytime they went into the past to retrieve a man of letters, that they should at least take a biography and/or a prominent work of theirs. This was done for two purposes. If the perspective recruit disbelieved them than having a book obviously published after what was to them the ‘present’ should go a long way in convincing them. Also, in case some unforeseen circumstance should arise beyond their control, or even because of their own actions, that might erase this person’s work from or diminish it in the historical record, than they would have salvaged something.

Is it really a viable insurance policy?

The ‘displaced time-capsule’ theory had yet to been proven. However, even Doctor Robinson and Mister Shuei thought it a prudent measure. And all hoped, that if, for some reason their actions resulted in the death of their subject, and hence the erasure or reduction of their literary legacy, that the books that had been taken out of the 21st Century would not—could not—be lost. As he hefted his briefcase he was all too conscious of the unfelt weight of that which it contained.

Randy’s lean hand between his shoulder-blades brought him out of his reverie. The sound of his murderous side-kick’s raspy smoker’s voice was like sandpaper on the soul, but it made ‘Jan the Man’ as he now thought of himself in the presence of his very own personal killing machine, feel bulletproof.

Randy’s voice was almost subservient, “Sensei, we’re in luck. The passengers on an Italian yacht that was impressed into service in this mud-war are stranded in that fancy hotel just up the street. At the very least that means high-end snatch for Sensei. I’ll get you set up. Belson is drinking himself to death in the cantina. Little Peso is your house-boy now.”

He was still feeling somewhat numb from his musings, and had barely realized that night was falling on the narrow street as he had gazed out at the vast naval presence that was all but useless to them. Another nudge from Randy brought him groggily out of his calculating frame of mind and made him feel for a moment like the old warrior that had felled two men with a cattle-pole earlier that day, a day that seemed infinitely far away, as far away as his townhouse in Perry Hall Maryland, in 2012.

As he turned and looked into Randy’s empty searching eyes he found his voice, but it sounded like the voice of another, harder man, “Yes, that’s good. Peso is a good boy. I will live in style Randy; a maid, a butler, cigars, good wine, and a beautiful lady that has never done a chore. Make it happen.”

Even as Jan’s inner intellectual cringed at the reverberations of his own words, Randy seemingly came to life, and tilted his bald head supporting the sinister black hat as his lean creased face was slashed with a crooked grin and he winked a wink the like of which Faust must once have seen, “Yez Mazder, yez!”

I’m sorry Sister Mary Rose. A man has his needs, and a man does not live forever.

He kept his vigil on the harbor as he listened to Randy’s long menacing steps recede up the street towards some unknown hotel.

Wait, is that the jangle of spurs I hear? He wasn’t wearing spurs before. What is that bloodthirsty bastard up to?