Legacy (33 page)

Deep within a whirling vortex of shock, Sarnac heard Tylar's voice continue, and he could hear the gentleness in it. "It was our single greatest act of policing history. We knew our own ancestry, and we knew that it involved a patent impossibility, for the human species—or any species—could not possibly have evolved independently on two worlds. So we travelled back thirty thousand years, confirmed that humanity had indeed evolved on Earth, and . . ."

"Tylar," Tiraena broke in, amazing Sarnac with her calmness, "are you about to say that
you
transported the ancestral Raehaniv from Earth to Raehan?"

"Nothing so crude. We obtained genetic material of various humans of that period, and of other Earth life forms necessary to establish an ecology that would sustain the humans, and then duplicated them on Raehan. So, you see, your races are even more closely related than you think."

"So," Tiraena breathed, "you—our own remote descendants—were the mysterious prehistoric spacefarers who have haunted Raehan's imagination for two centuries! But why did you leave behind the deserted bases in the Tareil and Terranova systems to tantalize us?"

"Surely, Tiraena, you know the answer to that. Think about it."

After a moment, she nodded slowly. "You had to. Your own history said we had found them there."

"Yes, and that the one at Terranova had provided Varien with certain technological hints, instrumental in liberating Raehan from the Korvaasha."

Sarnac struggled to shake loose from intellectual vertigo, but could not find a steady point to focus on, in what seemed an infinity of wheels within wheels. He started to speak, but then Tylar held up a forestalling finger.

"Excuse me," the time traveller said, and his eyes momentarily lost focus, as he gave his attention to a voice only he could hear. Then he nodded, and faced the other two with a smile.

"Your pardon, but I was receiving a report concerning the Korvaash officer who calls himself the Interrogator, and his most recent movements since his escape."

"
What?
" Sarnac sprang up out of his chair, head suddenly clear, with Tiraena close behind. "Tylar, you've got to do something! That is one very dangerous being! If he gets loose on Earth in this era . . ."

"Compose yourselves! He has, in fact, already done so, using a stolen gravitic raft . . . as he was intended to do."

"Intended? Damn it Tylar, if this is another of your little games . . . !"

"No games. Just another bit of the past that required policing. He was pursued—or, in reality, shepherded—just far enough to the west to make sure that his vehicle crashed in western Ireland, leaving him stranded among a proto-Celtic people known to later tradition as the Fomorians. His translator pendant incorporates a language analysis function which will enable it to produce the Fomorian tongue, after a time. He will earn his keep by terrifying the tribe's enemies and providing advice on strategy."

"You don't seem too concerned about all this," Tiraena observed darkly as Tylar settled even further back in his chair and took a sip of tea.

"Not in the least. You see, we had become aware that a Korvaasha, inexplicably present in this milieu, was the basis of the Irish legend of Balor, the one-eyed giant who was the Fomorians' champion. It was just one more thing we had to make certain of, albeit a relatively unimportant one."

They settled slowly back into their chairs. "Well," Sarnac said dubiously, "I don't suppose he can do any real harm."

"It seems unjust, though." Tiraena was clearly not mollified. "He's getting off too easily."

"Easily?" Tylar raised one eyebrow. "I would hardly say so. The only member of his species on this world, marooned under primitive conditions among a race he despises . . . and remember, his translator can't continue to function forever. Sooner or later it's going to give out, leaving him unable to communicate at all. I imagine he'll have gone quite mad by the time some local hero manages to kill him, as the legend requires.

"And one of the things driving him mad will be the knowledge that he failed, that the Solar Union and the Raehaniv will form an alliance against which the Realm of Tarzhgul cannot hope to stand. You, on the other hand, can take satisfaction in knowing you have made that alliance possible." He looked at them with an unreadable expression. "Whatever you may have felt in the presence of the technological trickery at my command, is nothing compared to what I feel in the presence of you yourselves. For I exist because of you. When you are once again in your own time, you will be able to look forward into a future made possible by what you did."

"Tylar," Sarnac said after a long moment, "there's still one thing I don't understand about that. You talk about preserving history as you know it. But aren't you going to change history by returning us to our own time? I mean, when we get back there knowing what we know now, knowing all you've just told us . . ."

He let the sentence die, when he noticed an expression on Tylar's face that he had never seen there before. It was complex and mostly unreadable, but one thing was unmistakable: an odd sadness.

"Ah," the time traveller said, "but
do
you?"

Sarnac scarcely heard him, for reality began to waver and swirl, leaving nothing for consciousness to focus on, save the dark pools of Tylar's eyes and his suddenly all-pervading voice.

"Farewell, Bedwyr. You were a true and gallant knight,
sans peur et sans reproche
."

"What . . . what . . . ?" Sarnac tried to speak, but the spinning of reality was a whirlpool that sucked him down into oblivion.

Taeronn turned from the communications console and smiled at the others.

"The escort squadron is matching orbits with us. It won't be long now."

"It sure won't," Sarnac agreed, giving Tiraena's hand a squeeze and grinning in the sunlight that flooded
Norlaev
's bridge. Then he glanced at the holo tank. "That's a fair-sized squadron—they've even got a Sword-class battlecruiser for a flagship. Yeah, we'll be in Earth orbit before you know it." His grin flashed again. "And not a minute too soon. I mean, you're all great company and all that, but . . . !"

"Easy for you to say," Rael put in when the chuckles had died down. "I'm the only one who'll have any work to do, negotiating with the Solar Union. The rest of you can just sit back and be lionized!" Nevertheless, years seemed to have fallen from her age.

"With all the modesty we can muster," Saefal added from the command chair.

Their uneventful voyage under continuous-displacement drive from Sirius had ended shortly after they had come within Sol's mass limit and Sarnac had begun broadcasting. He had been picked up more quickly than he'd expected—maybe the butt-warmers in Surveillance did something for their salaries after all—and it hadn't taken long for him to convince Fleet that he really was who he claimed to be. Now they were coasting on a sunward course that would intersect Earth's orbit. But before reaching the mother planet they would rendezvous with the squadron that Fleet had dispatched to serve as an honor guard for the little ship that carried an end to years of war and centuries of bafflement.

Tiraena pointed at the tiny blue point of light in the viewport, not yet close enough to show a planetary disc. "Earth," she breathed. "I always knew intellectually that it was a real place, but the idea of actually seeing it is still hard to accept."

"You're going to love it," Sarnac promised. "So many things I want to show you. . . ."

"Robert," Taeronn spoke again from the comm station. "I've got another hail from the flagship. This one's personal, for you!"

"What? I didn't know there was anybody aboard that ship I knew. Put 'em on visual."

The screen awoke, revealing SUS
Excalibur
's communications officer. She was smiling—a lot of people had seemed to be doing that since their arrival.

"Lieutenant Sarnac, I've gotten a request—repeatedly!—to contact you. Now that we're close enough to eliminate any significant time lag, the individual in question has gotten positively insufferable, and the skipper has decided to put me out of my misery by letting me grant the request. I'm going to patch you into the wardroom pickup."

Excalibur
's wardroom appeared. In the background was the bulkhead with the traditional mural illustrating the legend of the sword for which the battlecruiser was named. But in the foreground, in front of a small crowd of ship's officers, was a woman whose face was a dark sun of joy.

"Winnie!"

"Bob! I'd just been assigned to
Excalibur
for an expedition out along the Achernar Chain when the news of your arrival hit. You wouldn't believe what it's like on Earth—everybody's going nuts down there! Some of the rumors we've heard . . . well! Bob, what's
happened
?"

"Winnie, it's a long story." As he paused and tried to decide where to begin, his eye strayed to the mural on the bulkhead behind Winnie Rogers. And as his mouth opened to speak, his words died aborning. He could only stare at that mural, in which Sir Bedivere, clad in fifteenth century armor,
a la
Thomas Malory, gazed out over the water at the samite-clad arm of the Lady of the Lake, rising from the waves and grasping the bejeweled broadsword he had just thrown.

Dimly, he heard a voice that he recognized as his own speak in bewildered tones. "No . . . that's not right . . . it wasn't . . ."

"
What
isn't right, Bob?" He didn't hear Winnie's question. In fact, he didn't hear anything at all, until he became aware that he was slumped in Tiraena's arms. She was kneeling on the deck, and the others were looking down at him anxiously.

"Bob, are you all right? What happened?"

He looked up into Tiraena's concerned face, and reflected that that was a damned good question. What
had
caused him to momentarily blank out? What had he thought he'd seen? He clutched vainly at tantalizing scraps of memory, like those of an old dream, but they fluttered off into darkness and were gone.

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine," he assured them as he struggled to get up. "Was I out long?"

"Only a couple of seconds," Saefal said. "Just long enough to say something about not being able to see because the sun blinded you. What did that mean?"

"No idea," he answered honestly as he rose to his feet. "Sorry, everybody. Winnie, I'm okay now," he said, turning to the anxious face on the screen. "But there's too much to tell right now. When we're all dirtside, we'll get together and I'll tell you all about it. And . . . there's someone I want you to meet."

"That was inexcusably sloppy," Tylar said in a voice of flint. "You were responsible for editing their memories, and your instructions were clear. Everything since the moment before the Korvaash ship overhauled them was to be wiped, and replaced with synthetic recollections of the short time that they would have spent en route to the point to which we returned them, just outside Sol's mass limit. Do you have any idea of what the consequences would have been if he had gotten a firm grasp on the vignette you left just below the surface of his consciousness, and gone on to recall everything?"

Actually, not even Tylar had any conception of the full potential of those consequences, and he had been badly frightened by the close call they'd had—which, he admitted to himself, was why he was being such a prick, to use the vernacular of this early Solar Union era in which they were temporally located.

The chief neural technician stood her ground. "Memory erasure is not, and never can be, an exact science, especially when it's being done selectively. Anyone not an ignoramus in the field knows that—and that there was no real danger of the kind of mnemonic chain-reaction you're imagining. And how could anyone have foreseen that they'd be met by that particular battlecruiser, before the press of present-sense impressions had had time to push all of the unavoidable subliminal residue into oblivion?" She visibly dug her heels in. "If you impose any disciplinary sanctions, I shall appeal! The facts will bear me out. And," she added sulkily, "you're in no position to be criticizing!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know precisely what I mean! The
really
dangerous memories were the ones you yourself created by telling them things they had no business knowing!" Her indignation gave way to mystification. "I can't understand why you did it. Aside from being a major breach of protocol, it was all so pointless. After all . . ."

Tylar suddenly smiled and gestured acquiescence. "You're right, of course. I apologize for overreacting, but as you know, we've all been under a strain. There'll be no disciplinary proceedings. It was a near thing, but it wasn't your fault. And . . . all's well that ends well," he finished, quoting the title of what he had always regarded as its author's most underrated play. He had once pulled rank to catch the world premiere.

"But," the other persisted, "I still don't understand why you . . ."

"Because they had earned it," Tylar stated simply. "They deserved to know the truth, if only for a few moments. And, to be perfectly honest, after all my prevarications I felt a need to 'get it off my chest' as Robert would say. It was a profound relief, and I don't regret it in the least."

"But the pointlessness! Why give them knowledge that you knew they couldn't be allowed to keep?"

"Why," Tylar said blandly, "that's the whole point. I was able to assuage my conscience
harmlessly
." He waited for the gasps and splutters to subside, then continued. "And I didn't quite tell all, you know. Oh, everything I said was true as far as it went. But I never conveyed to them the real criticality of what was happening in both eras, especially this one."

Critical indeed—so many factors to juggle. There had never been even a momentary lull in the tension, as they had interposed the unwieldy temportal in the path of the Korvaash ship, as though catching a butterfly in a net. The problem had been unique, for nowhere else in the timestream was there a case in which the same individuals were at the focus of events in two different eras.