Soldiers Out of Time (29 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“So Mario McGillicuddy is still on Earth, eh?” asked Jason, taking a swig of
dugugkh
and handing the bottle back to Lizh’Ku with a shudder.

“Yes,” said the aged Zirankh’shi. “He told me he would be there in rehabilitation for a while after his arm was regrown. But he also assured me he’d be back.”

“He told me that too. I’m afraid he was probably telling the truth.” Jason shook his head and chuckled.

There was a delay while Narendra Patel arranged transportation back to Earth for him and Mondrago. Jason had decided to make use of the enforced wait to keep a certain promise. So he had made his way to Lizh’Ku’s shack, carefully avoiding bumping his head as he entered. And now Lizh’Ku reminded him of that promise.

“But surely you have a marvelous tale to tell me, of your adventures since we last saw each other,” he prompted, his tapering whitish-furred snout twitching with curiosity and his huge old eyes bright. Behind him, Luzho’Yuzho sat with writing materials at the ready.

“That’s right. I promised that you’d be the first to hear the story if I lived through it. I also told you that it would put a strain on your ability to believe strange yarns.” Jason retrieved the bottle, pleasurably imagining the stroke Rutherford would have if he knew some of the things that he, Jason, was about to reveal.
To hell with him. I owe this being.
He launched into the story, sometimes resorting to awkward circumlocutions in order to get certain concepts across. At first Lizh’Ku passed things on in translation to Luzho’Yuzho, but eventually he stopped and just listened.

By the time Jason was finished, night had fallen on Khankhazh and he was beginning to think one might get used to drinking
dugugkh.
Eventually. Maybe. As for Lizh’Ku, he sat silently for so long that Jason began to wonder if he had gone to sleep. But then his nictitating membranes shuttered open and his eyes held a twinkle.

“Thank you for the wonders you have shared with me. There’s only one problem: when Luzho’Yuzho writes this narrative, no one will believe him!”

Jason grinned. “There’s an individual named Rutherford who would be very relieved to hear you say that.”

He was still thinking of that exchange three weeks later, as he and Mondrago faced Rutherford across the desk in his Australian office.

The full report of the expedition, including the audio and video record of Jason’s implant, had been delivered and studied. It had given the Authority a great deal to think about, and Rutherford was still trying to assimilate its implications. When he spoke, he took refuge in the immediate and the concrete.

“You’ll be pleased to learn, Jason, that on the basis of your report the idea of disbanding the Special Operations Section has been dropped. Indeed, Councilor Kung has been going about declaring that he has
always
been strongly in favor of the Section, and that its successes—including that of this latest expedition—have always been due to the inspiration he has provided with his unswerving support and charismatic leadership.”

“Of course,” said Jason tonelessly. Mondrago’s face was absolutely expressionless.

Rutherford cleared his throat. “The Section may be more essential than ever, now that we know of the Transhumanists’ nefarious practice of exiling their transgressing personnel in the past. Of course, they can’t do this with any of the obvious cyborgs—only with those that are, to all outward appearances, human. And I gather that any internal bionics are removed or neutralized. But the fact remains that there are—or, rather, were—interlopers in the past with various genetic upgrades. Stronger, quicker . . .” His voice trailed off and his expression grew stricken as he contemplated the possibilities.

“As Ari Kamen told me, they’re counting on the Observer Effect to prevent any unintended consequences,” Jason reminded him. “Of course, we consider it irresponsible to rely on it that way. But if there’s any truth to our theories, anything these exiles do in the past has
always
been part of the past.” A thought occurred to him. “It might be worthwhile investigating some exceptional individuals known to history, especially those whose origins are mysterious.”

Rutherford’s eyes went wide, for he immediately grasped what Jason was driving at.

Mondrago spoke up, for the first time. “If we can locate any of these people in the past, they might be turned into sources of intel for us. After all, they can’t be too favorably disposed toward the Underground, after what it’s done to them.”

“The idea has distinct possibilities, and will be taken under consideration,” Rutherford approved, still looking shaken. Then he resumed in his earlier desperately matter-of-fact vein. “And now I suppose we can tell the IDRF—and the Deep-Space Fleet, if necessary—that it is all right to go ahead and destroy the Transhumanists’ temporal displacer installation on Planet A, as we’re calling it.”

Jason leaned forward and spoke sharply. “I strongly advise against that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t you see, Kyle? Stoneman told me that his slave-catching expedition in 1897 was their last visit to the Drakar colony, and that it was a one-way trip, made without TRDs. In other words, the Transhumanists in our era aren’t expecting him back. So they have no way of knowing that their colony came to grief. Hell, they don’t even have any way of knowing that we were there—or, for that matter that we know about the colony, or about their displacer.

“But if we destroy the displacer, they’ll know that at the very least we know about it. And they’ll have to wonder how much more we know—and how much we may have done.

“No. Let’s leave their displacer alone and let them think they’ve gotten away with planting their colony. They’ll just continue to leave that planet alone, for the reasons Stoneman gave me.”

“Hmm. Yes, I see your point. Let them keep expecting to have the support of a highly developed colony of Drakar on
The Day
, when in reality . . .” Rutherford’s eyes took on a faraway look. “To think, the colony of Frey is out there, not quite fourteen light-years beyond our frontier, and has been there since just before the turn of the twentieth century without our knowing it! One can’t help wondering what sort of cultural amalgamation has evolved there. To take just one example, they’re descended from nineteenth-century Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, plus the full range of twenty-fourth-century beliefs. What kind of religious fusion—or fusions—will they have developed in the course of almost five centuries?”

“That time-span brings up something else,” said Jason grimly. “Think about it. The Teloi battlestation was destroyed in the Solar System in 1669. Two hundred and twenty-eight years later Odin’s warship, following its course and trying to find out what had happened to it, came to the system of Drakar, or rather Frey—and then
it
was destroyed. As you’ve pointed out, that was almost five hundred years ago.”

“Are you saying—?”

“Yes. Even on their time-scale the
Tuova’Zhonglu
have had time to mount yet another search, this time for Odin’s ship.”

“If they’ve wanted to,” Modrago said suddenly. “Maybe they simply cut their losses and gave up on that particular route as bad luck. Oh, yes, I know:
we
wouldn’t, in their position. We’d keep on trying to find out what was eating our ships. But the Teloi don’t think like us. In fact, by our lights they’re madder than the March Hare.”

“Here’s another possibility,” said Jason. “At some point they
did
send another ship, and it got as far as Frey. But by then the Freyans, as I suppose we have to call them, were strong enough to deal with it.”

“Well,” said Rutherford, “the one thing of which we can be reasonably certain is that no Teloi warships have appeared here in the Solar System. So presumably one of your two theories is correct, and the problem has been halted, at least for now.”

“Thanks to Chantal,” said Mondrago bleakly.

“Ah, yes.” Rutherford suddenly turned solemn. “I understand how you feel, Superintendent, and we all share your loss. Dr. Frey’s act of heroism will be remembered.”

“It certainly will,” said Jason. “Especially by the Special Operations Section, as we deal with the Transhumanists.”

“As
you
deal with them? I remind you that you are an instrument of the Authority, and that your function is to carry out its policies, formulated by older and wiser heads.” Rutherford drew himself up rather huffily and spoke with an organization man’s prim disapproval. “Am I to understand, Jason, that the Special Operations Section has now taken it upon itself to unilaterally declare war on the Transhumanist underground?”

“War? No.” Jason turned to face Mondrago, and the two shared a moment of perfect though unspoken understanding. Then he turned back to Rutherford, and met the older man’s eyes unflinchingly. “No, we’re not declaring war. We’re declaring vendetta.”

The air of the room seemed to freeze into silence, and Rutherford could not quite suppress a shiver as he looked into the two men’s eyes and knew that this was not his rite, and that it was out of his hands. After a few meaningless words, he dismissed them.

By unspoken mutual consent, Jason and Mondrago stepped outside. It was a moonless night, and the desert air was chilly, for it was July—mid-winter in the southern hemisphere. It was also the time of year when Serpens, though a northern constellation, was visible even in these southern latitudes.

They looked up into the sky, so clear that the lights of the installation could not altogether banish the stars. Their eyes turned toward the northern horizon.

Jason had never had any interest in descriptive astronomy, least of all from the vantage point of Earth. But since his return he had learned how to pick out Serpens, that strange bifurcated constellation. He had also learned where, relative to the constellation’s stars in that region of the sky, HC+31 8213 lay.

Of course a mere G3v star was not a naked-eye object at a distance of 63.7 light-years. But Jason liked to fancy that if he stared at that particular spot of velvet blackness long enough, and squinted hard enough, his sight could penetrate that unthinkable gulf and discern a tiny yellowish gleam.

He mentioned the absurd thought to Mondrago. The Corsican didn’t laugh. He nodded, never taking his eyes off the sky. “I know what you mean. I’ve tried it too, but every time I do my eyes sort of blur.” He was silent for a moment. “I wonder how they’ve fared? I wonder what they’ve built there, in almost five hundred years, with no one here even guessing they existed?”

“We’ll find out. And I don’t think we have long to wait.” Jason drew a deep breath and released it. “Buy you a drink?”

“Sure.”

They went inside, leaving the night to the stars and their mysteries.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For the interested reader, Charles Miller’s
Khyber
is a lively history of the North-West Frontier of British India. (The subtitle,
The Story of an Imperial Migraine
, pretty much sets the tone.) And Captain H. L. Nevill’s
Campaigns on the North-West Frontier
will tell you at least as much as you will ever want to know about the military details, while unconsciously providing insights into the mindset of British officers at the time of its publication (1904). Speaking of mindsets, Byron Farwell’s
Armies of the Raj
is a fascinating social history of that unique organization, the Indian Army.

I wouldn’t
dare
make up Brigadier General Sir Bindon Blood’s expedition into the Swat Valley against Sadullah the Mad Mullah. It occurred as described herein, and the commanders and units I have named actually participated. And it was in fact accompanied and reported on by the young Winston Churchill, who the following year wrote a book about the campaign,
The Story of the Malakand Field Force
, which today is required reading for American and British officers on the ground in Afghanistan. There is no evidence that he got separated from General Jeffreys’ brigade on August 19, 1897, much less that he encountered an isolated unit led by my (of course) entirely fictitious three sergeants. But neither is there any proof that he didn’t.

I have used traditional words like “Pathan” and “Pushtu” rather than the politically correct modern versions (“Pakhtun,” “Pashto”) because of their greater familiarity and the fact that they better reflect the flavor of the nineteenth-century period. Incidentally, “Pathan” is pronounced “p’
tahn
,” not “
pay-
than.”

At this writing almost seventeen hundred extrasolar planets (for which the neologism “exoplanets” has been coined) have been discovered. By the time this novel sees print, the total will undoubtedly be far higher. The debate about the frequency of planets (freakish cosmic accidents versus normal side-effects of the formation of stars) is over. Robert Heinlein was right: planets are as common in the galaxy as eggs in a hen yard. I have therefore felt at liberty to give the stars I have used—all of them actual stars, by the way—whatever planets I choose, within the limits of astrophysical reasonableness. In other words, none of these planets are impossible, but that doesn’t mean they will turn out to actually exist. In fact, by the time anyone reads this they may have already been consigned to the realm of might-have-been, where they will be in good company alongside the Mars of Burroughs and Brackett and Bradbury.

To Rudyard Kipling, and to everyone connected with the production of the movie
Gunga Din
(including and especially the actors who brought to life Sergeants McChesney, Cutter and Ballantyne), my acknowledgments, and my most heartfelt thanks for inspiration. And finally, to Barry Hughart, wherever you are, my humble apologies. And please, please give us more wondrous tales of Master Li and Number Ten Ox.