Soldiers Out of Time (24 page)

Palanivel finished his colloquy with the engineer and turned to Jason. “It could be worse. The damage to the drive is repairable. But it will take time.”

“That’s exactly what we haven’t got. Try using photon thrusters to break loose.”

But, as Jason more than half-expected, this proved futile. Inexorably,
De Ruyter
was drawn toward her captor, which soon became visible in the viewscreen under maximum magnification.

Mondrago and Chantal joined them. Mondrago didn’t even need to ask what had happened. “The Transhumanists?” he queried.

“No,” said Jason. “It can’t be them. I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed to a halt as he stared at the slowly expanding image of the strange ship. It could now be seen to be roughly an oblate spheroid, but with twin drive nacelles on the underside. No details could be made out, but . . .

All at once, Jason
did
know.

So, evidently, did Mondrago. “Am I losing my mind,” he breathed, “or Is that—?”

“Yes,” Jason nodded, not wanting to believe it, unable to take his eyes off the totally unanticipated horror in the viewscreen.

“What are you two talking about?” Palanivel demanded.

“Superintendent Mondrago and I have seen a ship like that. We saw it in the seventeenth century. It was much bigger than this one—a battlestation rather than a ship, really—but the same design philosophy. That, Captain, is a warship of the
Tuova’Zhonglu
Teloi.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Palanivel stared uncomprehendingly. “But I thought the Teloi all died centuries ago, long before this era!”

“So does everyone else, except a select few,” Jason sighed. This was no time for quibbling about security clearances or for wondering what Rutherford would say, and it looked as though Palanivel was going to have a definite need to know. “Since my expedition to Bronze Age Greece, it’s been public knowledge that the Teloi were the reality behind the Olympian gods and all the other versions of the Indo-European pantheon, and that they had created
Homo sapiens
. But we’ve tried to be as low-keyed as possible about it, and I think most people are still in denial about the second part . . . or maybe it’s just that it still hasn’t registered on the popular consciousness. And we’ve emphasized the fact—and it is a fact—that the last of those ‘gods’ were long dead at least as far back as the seventeenth century.

“What we
haven’t
made public is something else I learned on that seventeenth-century expedition to the Caribbean. The Teloi who, for their own crazy reasons, marooned themselves on Earth a hundred thousand years ago were the members of the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
, a . . . well, apparently ‘zhonglu’ is untranslatable. A subculture, or kinship group, or association, or . . . hell, club, for all I know. At any rate, while they were on Earth in their self-imposed exile, playing at being gods, their race entered into its ultimately suicidal war with the Nagommo. The military formed its own ‘zhonglu,’ the
Tuova’Zhonglu
, lements of which escaped the final cataclysm.

“That was sometime between the fourth and second millennia B.C.—probably a little more than forty-five hundred years before our time, hence four thousand years ago as of now, although we can’t narrow it down any more precisely than that. Ever since, the
Tuova’Zhonglu
have been prowling the spaceways, stewing in their own hate, telling themselves that they didn’t
really
lose the war—they were betrayed by the other Teloi, who’d proved themselves unworthy by failing to give the military their unstinting support and unquestioning obedience. As far as they’re concerned, the near-extermination of the Teloi was a good thing, purging decadent, effete types like the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
and leaving only themselves—the purified and distilled essence of the race.”

Palanivel stared at Jason. “And this is all they’ve done for
four thousand years?
”

“Remember, the Teloi gengineered themselves into near-immortality ages ago. The first generation of the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
were at least a hundred thousand years old when I made their acquaintance in the Bronze Age, although for some reason the lifespans of the younger, Earth-born generation were drastically reduced. They simply have a different time scale from ours. And the need to find something to fill their interminable, empty lives drove the Teloi insane, at least by our standards. I believe living beings simply aren’t
intended
for immortality—evolution hasn’t fitted them for it. But the
Tuova’Zhonglu
take the madness to another level. They are to the Teloi what people like the Nazis and the Transhumanists are to humanity.”

“How do you know all this?”

“While in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, we were captured by Transhumanists who had made contact with a wandering
Tuova’Zhonglu
battlestation and, by making false promises involving time travel, tricked the Teloi into helping them found a cult by posing as gods. The battlestation was also going to share Teloi military technology with them.” Jason saw the effect that had on Palanivel. “Now you’re beginning to see why we’ve kept this from the public. No need to create panic and hysteria. Especially inasmuch as we managed to destroy the battlestation and scotch the Transhumanist scheme.”
With the help of that brilliant bastard Henry Morgan
, he mentally added.

“But now here they are again, and they’ve got us,” observed Palanivel glumly. “What are they doing here, in this system?”

“Who knows why they’re ever in any particular place at any particular time?” Jason shook his head. “They wander the spaceways on the kind of incredibly extended schedules you’d expect, especially since they use suspended animation to prolong their lives even further I gather they’re only occasionally in contact with each other or with their hidden base, wherever it is.”

“I think you may have come up with the answer to your own question, Jason,” said Chantal.

“What do you mean?” asked Jason, giving her a sharp look. It belatedly occurred to him to wonder why Palanivel didn’t object to a civilian on his bridge.

“Well, the battlestation you and Alexandre destroyed came through the Solar system in the 1660s, almost exactly two hundred and thirty years ago. Given the long independent cruises you’ve described, many years probably went by before the others became aware it was missing. But then they naturally wanted to find out what happened to it, and where—”

“Of course!” Mondrago snapped his fingers. “Right. Remember, their movement schedules are
very
long-term—and, for something as big as the battlestation, probably pretty inflexible. So they knew what course it was supposed to follow.”

“And so they sent ships to scour the systems along that course,” Jason continued the thought.

“In the direction of Earth,” said Chantal very quietly.

“And now,” Palanivel added, gesturing at the magnified image in the viewscreen, “one of them has got us.” He sagged in his seat, and for the first time Jason noticed how exhausted he looked. “I need a short break. Chantal, will you take the con?”

“Sure,” she affirmed, then turned to meet Jason’s and Mondrago’s astonished stares. “Well, I had to find something to occupy my mind while waiting out here in the outer system all that time. So I got interested, and asked if I could have the controls explained to me, and—”

“She’s turned into a pretty useful second relief pilot,” said Palanivel. Then the realization seemed to penetrate his weariness-dulled brain that he had just admitted to a flagrant breach of any number of regulations. “Er . . . you won’t . . .?”

“Relax,” Jason assured him. “Extraordinary circumstances, and all that. We won’t turn you in.”

“Somehow,” said Mondrago dourly, eyeing the viewscreen, “I have a feeling that getting in trouble when you get back to Earth is the least of your worries.”

The Teloi reeled them in very slowly and carefully, lest undue haste cause the tractor beam’s hold to waver and enable them to break loose. It gave them time to stare at the gradually waxing magnified image in the viewscreen and contemplate its implications.

Presently, details could yet be made out. The alien ship was bumpy with a variety of weapon blisters, external sensor components and superstructures of less readily obvious function. And it had the apertures that denoted a reaction drive. The battlestation had not possessed one. It had been purely a creature of deep space, and Henry Morgan, visualizing it as a hulk drifting at the mercy of the currents, had insightfully grasped its vulnerability as it approached Earth in free fall. This ship, on the other hand, would be able to maneuver within a planet’s Primary Limit, although it wouldn’t be exactly nimble, and it obviously wasn’t designed to land on the surface and therefore wouldn’t incorporate grav repulsion. Instead, it carried what looked like a fair-sized surface-to-orbit shuttle partly recessed into a ventral housing.

They made no attempt to communicate with their captors. Jason was certain any such attempt would be met with dead silence, knowing the supreme arrogance of the
Tuova’Zhonglu
Teloi. And besides, he wasn’t ready to reveal the fact that he could understand and haltingly speak their language, having had it rammed into his brain by unsubtle direct neural induction during his captivity in 1628 B.C. So they could only stew.

Jason took advantage of their enforced idleness to go aft and give their nineteenth-century passengers an explanation of what was happening. It was extremely abbreviated but true as far as it went: their ship had been grappled by a ship crewed by beings from another planet. After all they had already been through, they took it surprisingly well. “I
knew
it had to come to that!” said Hazeltine with a weary smile. McCready merely grunted. The Sikhs’ fatalism was unruffled. Carver gave Jason a hopeful look.

“See ’ere, mate, if there’s going to be a fight, you know you can count on us. What do you want us to do?”

“We’re working on that,” Jason assured him, wincing inwardly at his own dishonesty. “Just wait here.” He hurried back to the bridge, where Mondrago, Palanivel and Chantal were indeed hashing over plans. It didn’t take long, given their extremely limited options.

“We can’t fight them,” said Palanivel, summing up the consensus. “Our weapons might be able to do them some damage, but this ship simply isn’t intended to fight a major space combatant like that. They’d reduce us to our component atoms.”

“They could have done that already,” said Mondrago glumly. “The reason they haven’t must be because they want information from us.”

Palanivel turned to Jason and spoke like a man who didn’t want to be the one to bring something up and didn’t want his motivations to be misunderstood. “Sir . . . I know it’s not my place to remind you of this, but you
do
have the capability to get us out of this and leave the Teloi wondering where we went.”

“I’ll well aware of that,” said Jason, feeling all three pairs of eyes on him.
Yes, get us out of this and back to twenty-fourth-century Zirankhu. Us . . . and five nineteenth-century people. While leaving Rojas, Armasova and Bermudez permanently stranded on nineteenth-century Drakar as slaves.

Once again, I’m face to face with my ethical dilemma.

And this time I may not be able to afford the luxury of ethics.

He was still thinking about it when Chantal spoke hesitantly. “Jason . . . there may be another way. In fact, we could even turn this situation to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . . are we agreed that they’re probably here to find out what happened to the battlestation?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And didn’t you tell me once that, for all their mutual contempt, the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
and the
Tuova’Zhonglu
did very occasionally communicate with each other?”

“Right. That’s how the Transhumanists—through their
Oratioi’Zhonglu
contacts in the fifth century B.C.—learned that the battlestation was due to pass through the Solar System in 1669. Remember those extremely long-term movement schedules.”

“Very well, then. Perhaps we could . . .” She spoke on for a few moments, improvising as she went. Jason listened with gradually decreasing skepticism. By the time she was done, he was nodding slowly.

“It might work,” said Mondrago.

“At least it’s worth a try,” said Jason with a final, emphatic nod.

They spent the few minutes remaining to them brainstorming the plan.

By the time the tractor beam brought them to a halt relative to the Teloi ship, that ship was close enough that magnification was no longer required. It filled the viewscreen in all its ugly, massive functionality, so different from the mannered, almost overdecorated look the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
had imparted to Teloi engineering.

For all its hideousness, the
Tuova’Zhonglu
aesthetic (if it could be called that) at least had the virtue of making it easier to recognize certain things for what they were. Like the point-defense blisters that stood ready to obliterate any missiles
De Ruyter
might launch in desperation. And like the heavy weapons turrets trained on them, ready to unleash gigawatts of ravening coherent energies.

As they watched, a gig detached itself from a docking cradle and crossed the space between the two ships. They made no move to resist as it extended a passage tube to
De Ruyter
’s ventral airlock, in the engineering spaces near the stern. Jason left Palanivel on watch on the bridge and, accompanied by Mondrago and Chantal, both of whom knew Teloi, went aft and opened the inner hatch to admit two boarders.

This was only Chantal’s second glimpse of Teloi. But by now Jason and Mondrago were almost used to the sight of the seven-to-eight-foot humanoids, with hair shimmering in tones of silver and gold, deathly pale skin, and long narrow faces whose sharp features included upward-slanted cheekbones and brow ridges. Beneath the latter were their most disturbing feature: enormous tilted eyes whose opaque blue irises seemed to have leaked some of their color into the “whites,” which were scarcely less blue.

These were the characteristics shared by all Teloi, as was arrogance. But in place of the affectedly languid, supercilious arrogance of the
Oratioi’Zhonglu
of Jason’s Bronze Age acquaintance, the arrogance of these two was of a harsh, stiff, intense kind, their almost nonexistently thin lips set in a permanent sneer. They seemed to belong to a different subspecies, despite the lack of physical divergence. Their clothing accentuated the difference: a kind of jumpsuit that Jason imagined could serve as an emergency light-duty vacuum suit, basically plain in shades of gray and bluish-gray but bedizened with insignia that gave it the unmistakable look of a military uniform.