“Thought of anything yet?” asked Ivy.

  “Maybe,” said Laz.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t got it firmly yet; I can’t yet put it into words. Still drifting in the shadows of my mind.”

  Ivy nodded. Maybe she knew what he was talking about. Maybe her brain worked in the same way. But it was more likely she took what he said as a metaphor or a lame excuse.

  “Here it is,” said Laz, not knowing what he would say but knowing that the words would come and the idea would rise up to meet them.

  Ivy lay back and rested her head on his lap.

  “That’s not comfortable,” Laz said.

  Ivy rolled over, off his lap entirely, so she was now lying on the grass.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Laz warned her.

  “Too late,” she said. “Your idea doesn’t sound workable to me.”

  “I haven’t said it yet.”

  “I skipped forward in time and listened to it, and came back to tell you it won’t work the way you mean it to.”

  “Then tell me my idea, because I’m not even sure what it is yet, since I haven’t spoken it aloud.”

  Ivy propped herself up on one elbow. “Instead of trying to shut down Portals or erase them, which we now realize we don’t know how to do, why don’t we go near to Portal Six and open about a hundred Portals or ten or however many, and then get all the people from Tessera who aren’t bloodthirsty soldiers to come out of Tessera and into a land of freedom.”

  “Wouldn’t the Tesseran soldiers just slaughter them?”

  “Not if their own families are there,” said Ivy.

  “A huge, wide-open Portal or Portals.”

  “So the people could just walk out of Tessera,” said Ivy.

  “You’re assuming they would want to go,” said Laz. And that they’re massed at the Portal, children and all, packed and ready to emigrate.

  “Okay. So then Ron’s army or squad or whatever he has, they can go through the Portals the other direction, and start destroying the Tesseran cities. If that doesn’t bring the Tesserans home and get them out of here, what will?”

  “This is a hopeful plan,” said Laz. “I can’t believe I thought of it.”

  “You didn’t,” said Ivy. “I thought of it.”

  “You put it into words first,” said Laz, “but the idea was exactly the one I had just formulated.”

  Ivy shook her head. “Do we go tell Ron, get an armed escort to get us across the Atlantic to the Portal?”

  “When we get there, I think we go find an elite squad like Willard’s or some of his crew from my trip to Morocco. They know me, they know how Portals are made. They come with us and go through the first Portal so they’re already on the other side.”

  “Maybe now is the time for me to be able to displace the timestreams, so you can land some of Willard’s team in different locations in Tessera.”

  “Does it work?”

  “If it does, it’ll be the first time I brought it off,” said Ivy.

  “Not encouraging,” said Laz.

  “But it might work,” said Ivy. “Wouldn’t it be good if it did?”

  “Okay, you’ll give me your displaced timestreams and we’ll put some soldiers through.”

  It took no time for Ron to arrange military jet transport for them to a base near Nantes.

  After fifteen minutes of inquiry, Laz gave up on finding Willard or his team close by—but they did find a battalion of troops from the Netherlands. They listened because he was Laz Hayerian, of course. And when he explained what they were going to do, the soldiers nodded and their commander said, “You promise we won’t just disappear?”

  “I promise,” said Laz.

  Ivy echoed the vow. “If it works at all,” she said, “you’ll be safe. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll still be right here.”

  The commander of the battalion—Laz couldn’t remember what rank a battalion commander would have: Colonel? Lieutenant?—led them to a place near enough to the Portal for them to see the thick traffic of trucks and tanks and troops coming through.

  “They’ve got us seriously outnumbered and outgunned,” said the commander.

  “Jackson at Chancellorsville. You come at them from an unexpected direction, they panic.”

  The commander shrugged. “Never thought a mere lieutenant colonel would be compared to Stonewall Jackson,” he said.

  Lieutenant and colonel. “You have a name, sir?” asked Laz.

  “I’m Riffle,” said the commander. “Lieutenant Colonel Riffle. I’ve heard all the jokes.”

  “I have no idea what those jokes would—”

  “So what’s our plan?” asked Riffle.

  “We thought about opening a bunch of Portals and getting Tesseran civilians to flood through into Central Time and stop the invasion.”

  “Not practical,” said Riffle. “The nearest civilian population centers are at least ten klicks inside the border. We’d never get enough of them to your Portals.”

  “How do you know they’re so far—”

  “Mr. Hayerian,” said Riffle. “We’ve been shown maps. You haven’t. Of course you didn’t know.”

  Ivy offered, “Maybe I can make a Portal to a place closer to the cities.”

  “Maybe let’s not count on something we haven’t tried before,” said Laz.

  “What, then?” Ivy demanded.

  Laz turned to Riffle. “We’ll put you inside their border very near to here,” said Laz. “You go through the Portal, what do you do?”

  Riffle turned to one of his aides—a major? A captain?—with a questioning look.

  “We’ve got a pretty small force,” said the major. “Reconnaissance?”

  “Mr. Hayerian already said what we’d do,” said Riffle. “Stonewall Jackson. Chancellorsville. Warfare of maneuver and surprise.”

  Laz realized now that Riffle was right. The Tesseran soldiers were concentrating on getting through the Portal in good order. They didn’t expect any kind of interference from the inside. So if Riffle used his men to attack the column inside the Portal, the whole formation might fall apart. Panic, try to set up a line to defend themselves.

  Riffle was talking to the nearby officers. “If we attack them all at once,” he said, “from behind, making as much noise as possible—”

  “With total confidence,” said one of the younger men. “As if we had a division behind us, backing us up, instead of… nobody—”

  “They can’t see how big our force is,” said Riffle. “They should panic, unless they’re extremely well-trained.”

  Another young officer spoke up. “How could they train for this? Nobody’s been on a battlefield ever where a stepper was ready to open Portals so the enemy could attack from anywhere.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Riffle. “How do you estimate our odds of success?”

  A couple of beats of silence. “Sir,” asked the last officer to speak, “can you tell us what ‘success’ would look like?”

  Riffle looked again at the gathered officers. Some enlisted men were now edging closer. “Fair question, Major Jacobs,” said Riffle. “Let’s say moderate success would consist of confusing them long enough for us to get the hell out and avoid any casualties.”

  Nods and murmurs from the men.

  “But first-order success would be that they panic so badly that they try to run away and there’s no organized resistance to us at all. Their panic spreads to the Tesseran army on the other side of the Portal, and all the Tesserans who are tearing up Central Time come rushing back, but so chaotically that we mow them down and the survivors surrender.”

  “Sir,” said Major Jacobs, “how much ammunition do we have?”

  “You’re the one I would have asked for that information,” said Riffle.

  “Sir, if all our men fire only single rounds, we have enough clips to fire well-aimed shots three times a minute for an hour.”

  “It would be nice to make more noise than that—nothing spreads panic like a machine gun—but having men drop to the ground all around you, that works just about as well.”

  Another aide piped up. “They’ll think they’re facing an army of sharpshooters.”

  Major Jacobs said, “This is where our training pays off, sir. All our soldiers will shoot, and pretty much all of them will hit their mark.”

  “So where does that leave us, men?” asked Riffle.

  “The only thing worth trying for is first-order success,” said Major Jacobs.

  The others assented to that idea.

  “If we act on that plan,” said Riffle, “and they don’t react with panic, we’ll be exposed and we’ll take casualties.”

  That stifled the enthusiasm.

  Riffle turned to Laz and Ivy, and pointed at a spot on a map. “Can you make us an escape Portal? Right there between those two hills?”

  “That’s what we’ll do the moment your attack begins,” said Laz.

  Riffle tapped his earpiece and spoke quietly, slowly, and clearly. He was talking to all the men now. He gave them the plan, including the single-shot, hit-your-man-every-time rule. Then he pointed out the gap in the hills where the new Portal would be. He had names for those hills, so apparently all the men had studied the map.

  “If things go wrong,” Riffle said, “and your officers order a withdrawal, that’s where you’ll retreat to, stopping to fire at the enemy once a minute. A slow, steady withdrawal under fire. But I don’t expect we’ll have to use that maneuver. Because I think you’re going to attack so effectively that the enemy will crap their pants and drop their weapons before they have time to realize we aren’t even a whole regiment.”

  The men laughed. Laz admired Riffle’s natural way with his men. The prerogatives of rank were absolutely preserved, yet the men felt Riffle’s personal concern for them and his trust in them as well. No wonder Ron wasn’t trying to be the general on the field. He was, above all, a bureaucrat and a diplomat. He didn’t know any more about military tactics and strategy than Laz did. Maybe less, because Laz had read a lot of history and much of that was about battles and war and tactics.

  Were the officers higher than Riffle even better? Or was Riffle where he was so he could inspire troops directly, and they didn’t promote him because they needed him in the field?

  Riffle turned to Laz and Ivy. He didn’t need to say anything.

  “I think that’s our cue,” said Ivy.

  “What’ve you got for me?” asked Laz.

  “I think I’m going to be making the Portal between here and a place about two hundred meters inside Tesseran territory.” She pointed at the map. “So they won’t get spotted while they’re getting into position.”

  “That’ll be great,” said Laz.

  “If it works.”

  “Whatever you give me will be great,” said Laz, “because the lieutenant colonel knows how to do his job no matter where we put him.”

  It took a full minute of standing there until Ivy fed him a timestream. Laz didn’t try to examine it. He just took it and side stepped.

  He held one end of two strings, and Ivy held the other ends. Each on their own side of the new Portal, they laid the strings loosely on top of the grass and bushes. They didn’t bother tying them to anything. They knew now that the strings weren’t holding the Portal open. They were simply marking the path for the soldiers.

  Lieutenant Colonel Riffle walked toward Laz through the new Portal. He murmured to his men, “Stay between the strings. Don’t know what’ll happen if we step over them.”

  The other officers dispersed, to bring their platoons or squads forward in good order. It took surprisingly little time for the whole battalion to be assembled on the other side.

  Ivy had been as good as her word. They had emerged among the buildings that abutted the highway leading through the main Portal. They were maybe ten to fifty steps from where they would need to emerge and start shooting.

  “Good job,” said Laz softly.

  “Doing my best,” said Ivy. Laz touched her hand, and the faintest smile came to her lips.

  Riffle stepped to Laz. “You two got us into a perfect place, and we haven’t been seen. Should we wait while I send a couple of men back to alert the Central Time command and have them send more troops to join us?”

  Laz thought for a moment. “Your men here won’t be covering a very large front. I think we’ve got all we need to get this started. But you should still send those messengers so that Central Time command will know what’s going on when the Tesseran troops in the Portal start going crazy.”

  Riffle sent two men back through the new Portal. Laz saw them staying as far from the strings as possible, moving dead center through the Portal. These were soldiers who listened to their orders and obeyed them conscientiously.

  “Any reason to delay any longer?” Riffle asked Laz, and then looked to Ivy for her answer, too.

  “I can’t think of any,” said Ivy.

  “Let’s do it,” said Laz.

  Riffle spoke clearly, but to Laz it seemed he was now talking only to his junior officers, assigning them where to place their troops. The soldiers seemed to flow like streams through the low hills and buildings, moving rapidly but quietly, their weapons at the ready. Laz wondered if he could ever go into the military. He couldn’t imagine himself taking orders and obeying immediately.

  Then he realized—Ivy gave me a timestream and I stepped. Not a question, not a thought. Where trust was strong, Laz was perfectly happy to obey.

  The men were in place; motion had stopped. Not a shot had been fired, so surprise could still be complete. Laz could see that a couple of the enemy must have been cut down using blades or garrotes, because there were bodies in Tesseran uniforms here and there.

  Laz was standing right beside Riffle when he heard the reports from his junior officers. Laz breathed about ten times before Riffle went ahead and said softly, “Make every shot count. Stay safe. Go.”

  Nothing frantic nor urgent. No trite “Go go go!” like in the movies. Just two last-second reminders, and a single word.

  And the popping of gunshots started—a lot of them at once. Riffle’s men did not start moving forward right away. They stayed in half-kneeling or prone positions, firing three shots each during that first minute, though not in organized volleys. Each man took his time to aim. And the men walking along the highway through the Portal began dropping like tenpins.

  The Tesserans were looking around, ducking down, trying to hide behind vehicles, throwing themselves on the ground. But they couldn’t see where the shots were coming from, and nobody was even trying to organize them. Apparently the real combat officers were all with the troops that had invaded Central Time. The officers running the transportation through the Portal were essentially bureaucrats. There weren’t supposed to be any bullets on this side of the Portal, and they were as confused and scared as their soldiers.

  After the second minute—three more shots from all of Riffle’s men—more soldiers on the Portal highway spilled out of the trucks and took off running toward Central Time.

  “They aren’t carrying weapons,” said Riffle softly.

  “Left them in the trucks?” asked Ivy.

  Laz spoke up. “Something your men would never do. Run away without their weapons.”

  “They’d be ashamed,” said Riffle.

  After five minutes, there were no targets left on the highway. Everybody had run away, either to Central Time or off to the sides of the highway. Nobody was firing back at Riffle’s men. And Riffle’s men, having no more targets and aware of the limited amount of ammo, stopped firing. An eerie quiet settled on the scene, except for a few wounded men calling out for help. Some of the wounded tried to crawl or stagger or wriggle off the highway, but every man that moved was hit with one or two bullets and stopped moving.

  Then crowds of Tesseran soldiers, mostly unarmed, began running along the highway from the Central Time side of the Portal. Instantly Riffle’s men began shooting, and out of the hundreds of panicking soldiers, none of them reached the first buildings on the Tesseran side. They either dropped on the highway, with well-placed bullets in their bodies, or they tried to run to the side, to take refuge with the Tesserans hiding there. The trouble was, there was no cover, not even a declivity in the ground, so that they were still easy targets as they moved along trying to find safety.

  There was no safety.

  Ivy took Laz’s hand. “Do they have to kill them all?” she asked softly.

  “I think that’s the plan,” said Laz.

  “A lot of those men never fired a weapon.”

  “They were part of the force that murdered children at school, that beheaded their prisoners. They’re the soldiers the Malefactors would use if they ever tried to invade again.”

  Ivy thought about it a little. “So our men are not just fighting to win right now,” she said. “They’re fighting to try to win the next few times in advance.”

  “You got it,” said Laz. He noticed that she said “our men.” Like Laz, she had definitely chosen a side.

  Then things began to change. The Tesserans coming through the Portal were now in good order, and many of them still had their weapons. These had not panicked, they were retreating but still prepared to fight.

  Riffle murmured an order. “Offer surrender terms,” he said.

  Major Jacobs was the one who went forward alone, raising up a white kerchief in one hand. Nobody shot him; all of Riffle’s men refrained from firing.

  “A truce?” asked Ivy.

  “No,” said Laz, thinking of what would best serve Central Time’s purpose: to discourage any nation, any timestream, from trying this again. “A complete and total surrender.”

  “They still have an army larger than ours,” said Ivy.

  “They don’t know that. And their leadership is not prepared to cope. Look at how many bodies they have to walk over just to go home. That is discouraging for even the best-trained, battle-hardened soldiers.”

  Soon the arriving Tesseran soldiers began filing out onto the open grassland beside the highway. They dropped their weapons in piles, then came forward and lay down in the grass, their heads on the ground, not even daring to look around. Yes, thought Laz. This is what total surrender looks like.