Read L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 for Free Online

to’ve disappeared before. Not many (I think), but enough t’make you wonder just how real history is, after all.
    I had more immediate problems: Cromney, Kent, Janof, even Heplas—was everybody here a mutineer? What did they want from me? What did they intend for me afterward?
    There was movement in the door behind us. Denny Kent had arrived from wherever he’d been keeping himself. Neither he nor Heplar, I noted with some amusement, was armed. So much for democracy. I turned my red, roughened, dishpan ears toward Cromney again:
    “Naturally, it will be necessary at first to display ourselves in a manner to effectively enhance our credibility. In primitive cultures, this requires a show of force and wealth. But only for the sake of our eventual, benign goal, a truly egalitarian social order where such displays are unnecessary.” He threw a glance at Kent, suppressing a shudder which he somehow managed t’transform into a broad, manly wink. “Yes, Captain,” he said—more for the Professor’s benefit than mine—“and despite the cynical manner in which you chose to express it, we shall have need of many local women. An unavoidable necessity in our show of power and riches.”
    He drew himself closer now, lettin’ the laser muzzle drop a bit. “Moreover, I freely acknowledge that women have been oppressed, historically. Men, owing to their superior sensibilities, are more emotionally vulnerable. In any engagement of wills, the more ruthlessly destructive party always triumphs. And women, sir, recognize no bounds to ruthlessness. Like any dangerous animal, they must be controlled, as much for their own good as anyone eise’s.” Talk like that made me a mite uncomfortable. I wasn’t prepared t’write the whole gender off, but thinkin’ back, I couldn’t recall ever meetin’ a woman who had all her oars in the water. I’d often lamented m’self—usually over the seventh or eighth beer—what a shame it was they couldn’t all be sensible, rational. Sorta like my Georgie.
    He straightened again. “Also, as a practical matter, we have only one woman—”
    “An’ from what you tell me, she ain’t much of a prize t’anyone, ’specially poor ol’ Kent here, right?”
    There was a feral growl. Before I could lift m’shoulders an’ swivel m’head, Cromney an’ Heplar’d both jumped up, pilin’ themselves in fronta Kent t’keep him from doin’ me an injury. My harpoon’d sunk home. They danced around awhile gettin’ the Professor quieted down, but I had other concerns: by now my fingernails’d started turnin’ black.
    Wonderin’ how all these loonies’d gotten assigned t’gether on a mission ticked off another point on m’ worry list: I hadn’t seen the Freenies since this nastiness’d begun. They were probably the reason the Academy’d been hasty an’ careless settin’ up this excursion. I’d been afraid t’ask after ’em in the faint hope the hijackers’d somehow overlooked ’em.
    How do y’tie up a Freenie, anyway?
    It was suddenly quiet again. Cromney—an’ his pistol— rejoined me, his face livid, his hands shaking in fury. With nothing much to lose, I decided to risk pushing him further: “Gotta question for you, Doc. What d’you think the Academy’s gonna do while you’re messin’ around with their past—sit on their hands? Lemme tellya, the first misplaced virgin or purloined golden idol, an’ there’ll be ripples up an’ down the continuum that’ll have a fleet of planet-wreck-ers on your ugly neck so quick it’ll—”
    Alarmingly, Cromney threw back his bushy head and began to bray, his lesser cohorts essaying nervous chuckles behind him.
    “By heaven, Captain, I’ve looked forward to telling you this for days! It’s precisely where you come into the picture. You see, we aren’t going back directly to Cuzco. Instead, we shall spend some little time patrolling the Fifteenth-Century Atlantic Ocean, destroying any exploratory European vessel which sails