21. In the Words of the Poet

The detainee was slouching defiantly when Stephens came with Short to pay him a visit, although he became visibly nervous as Stephens came in sight. But now he also seemed slightly but visibly impatient of the trappings of being a prisoner. He was searching their faces in suspense, with a kind of irritated nervous urgency he had never shown before, evidently trying to work out if they thought he was mad.

Between talking with him and the standard psychiatric test, Dearden had assured them that Smith was as sane as any and saner than most. Under considerable stress and fraying slightly around the edges, but not mad. Dearden had been puzzled as to why this was only now being tested if it had been in any question, but Stephens was in no mood to satisfy idle curiosity, especially not from Dearden. He found himself believing in Smith's absurd tale, with Short and Goodacre finding themselves actually giving it serious consideration. Maybe it was the foolish desperation of grasping at straws, but it would be far more the act of a fool to fail to grasp at a saving rope because it was made of straw.

"Why did you wait until now to tell the truth?" Stephens asked him.

He half-shrugged, half shifted, like a man preparing to snatch a heavy load. "Because I didn't know wher--when I was until I saw the fry wrapper. I thought I was in some BS future, that's how time travel is supposed to work if it was real. Uh, you know what I mean."

"Captain Short informs me you volunteered to assist with the war effort."

"Yeah."

"To what end?" "To ... help out?" He frowned a bit. "Why the heck else? Maybe I remember something from history class or some thing you need."

"You seem to regard this as your fight, despite your origins in another time." "Well yeah, I'm here now. Plus it’s World War freaking TWO."

He was still fidgeting like he hadn't before. He might have been wisely throwing his lot in with the power that currently had him in its cells, but Short thought it was something more, and he somehow agreed. Both self-interest and ideology could be useful, though. He would have to determine which it was, if it wasn't both. Ideology was interesting, suggesting something as it did about the state of the future. Was it the ideology of the embattled last holdout or the complacency of a total victor? The fact that one of the more artless and cacophonic compositions in his music player rejoiced in the noble title of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” suggested the former, while Smith’s sheepish admission that he had never paid much attention the words and simply (inexplicably) enjoyed the music, the latter.

In any event, careful comparison of Smith’s accounts, both to himself and to Captain Short, revealed no inconsistencies at all, leaving aside the ordinary stylistic differences from one day to the next. Smith-Ramirez’s information was hastily classified at a much higher level of secrecy than before.

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