Timegods' World (19 page)

Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy

BOOK: Timegods' World

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A WISP OF condensing water vapor floated from the steamer like a momentary banner in the cool of the early morning. The subforcer seated next to the technician at the controls checked the map, noting the steamer’s position. While the topography and the road remained, most of the towns were no longer even recognizable.

“Should make Bremarlyn before long.” observed the officer.

“Yes, sir. Nice day.”

“Really wish we could get power at Herfidian, the way they do at the base camp on the plateau …”

The driver ignored the officer’s comments and concentrated on the controls to guide the top-heavy steamer along the old stone-paved highway where it curved through a low point between two hillocks.

Crump!

“Verlyt!”

Crump!

“Power. Full power to the drive wheels! Down below—skirmish squad out! Skirmish squad out!

“Sir? They’re firing from in front of us!”

“Full power!”

Clang!

“Skirmish squad is clear, sir.”

“Hunt down those bastards, Froman!”

“Yes, sir. Good luck.”

Crump! Thud!

The steamer lurched.

“Full power!”

Crump!Crump!

XXIX

“ … IN THEORY, INTENSE gravitational relativistic pressures exerted by collapsed stellar masses should narrow the perception of ‘black’ pathways …”

I yawned. Just as I thought I might read three straight paragraphs of interest, the material lapsed into speculations. I had enough personal speculations not to have to worry about theoretical abstractions on the reconciliation of space-time theory with time-diving observations. And the personal speculations kept nagging at me, unlike the dry words on the screen.

Why did the doctor want me to call her Wryan? Why had a few kind words, well meant, dissolved me? Why did she seem to trust me? Or why, for Verlyt’s sake, was I trusting her?

Without answers, I stifled another yawn and pushed onward through the theoretical material on time-diving, trying to ignore the questions at the back of my mind.

“ … even in the absence of empirical or validated experimental data, several facts are clear … .”

Clear as swamp water, I reflected, stretching and taking a quick look around the console room. Only Amenda and two other women I had not met were in the long room. None of them glanced up from their consoles.

My nose twitched from the faint odor of ozone. I rubbed it and
shrugged my shoulders to release the tightness. Then I looked back at the screen.

“ … that the so-called time-paths are tied to the intensity of gravitational forces, or more precisely, to the proximity and concentration of mass and energy …”

I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep going through the text.

“Sammis?”

I looked up to see a tall figure standing just inside the doorway. Since Deric had caught me studying the material on my console, boring stuff if ever there was, I was more receptive to the interruption than I might have been. I waited. I didn’t bother standing.

He ambled over. “Dr. Relorn would appreciate it if you would meet her in the main travel laboratory.”

“Just a moment.” I flipped to the front of the notebook to find the log-off code and used it. “Is that the big laboratory around the corner and across … ?”

“Right … but I’ll go with you to make sure.”

I didn’t shrug, but felt like it. “All right.” After stacking the notebooks on the shelf, I stood up..“Lead on.”

Deric said nothing until we were in the corridor, where he took a half dozen steps, then stopped. “You were rather … effective … the other night at dinner … With your size … I mean … one wouldn’t normally assume …”

“Rarden’s always been after me. I felt it was my problem to solve.”

“Do the others … ConFeds … feel the same way about you?”

“Deric, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. No one bothers me.”

“Oh.”

“How do your Secos feel? Like the one who reacted too late?”

“Karsnish?” Deric looked at the floor, then toward the end of the corridor.

I waited.

“Karsnish … understands why we need the ConFeds on our side … now …”

With a shake of my head, I turned and started toward the laboratory. Deric caught up quickly, but only to match steps with me.

He stopped outside the doorway. “Your colonel-general is there also.”

The colonel-general? Why? Another setup? Had my trust in Dr. Wryan Relorn been misplaced after all?

I stepped inside, leaving Deric, who showed no intention of following me, outside.

She was standing by the same master console where I had first found her. She wore pale ice-green trousers and a matching short-sleeved tunic. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, though her mouth was stern, and she still wore the old lady makeup.

The head ConFed wore his usual off-purple fatigues, sharply creased, and his eyes followed me all the way from the doorway.

“The colonel-general has a request, Sammis.” Her voice was neutral. I bowed slightly to them both, denying Odin-Thor the salute he would have liked.

“Trooper Sammis … you’re still a trooper … on detail.”

“Yes, Colonel-General … you wanted something …”

Odin-Thor cleared his throat, and his eyes centered on me.

I met his glare.

He cleared his throat again. Then, he blinked. His jaw tightened, and he pursed his lips. “Yes. You were from Bremarlyn. We have lost two supply steamers in the area. Both without any trace. I was hoping that someone from the Travel Laboratory would be able to find some sign of what happened.”

He nodded at the doctor. “Dr. Relorn has informed me that none of her other travelers has the capability of … travelling … here on Query. With your background and training, I was hoping that you might be able to find out what happened.”

I didn’t like it at all. I glanced from the colonel-general to the doctor. Not only was she wearing the heavy makeup again, but there were dark circles under her eyes, almost too dark to be real. Her lips stayed tight after her statement.

“That might not be as simple as it sounds, Colonel-General. It takes a great deal of energy to use mental travel here on Query. I
might
be able to find out something if I knew what I was looking for and where it was supposed to be. There’s no way that I can search the entire Bremarlyn area. I can get to specific points instantly, but it takes as much energy as though I’d spent half a day on a steamer getting there.”

The ConFed leader nodded. “So you could check several points quickly, but not sweep an area?”

“I can sometimes tell if there’s anyone nearby, but not always.”

“Here’s what happened. A regular convoy steamer from Herfidian to here disappeared. We sent a light armed steamer with a skirmish squad. It vanished as well. They both went by the highway—the Eastern Highway from Inequital toward Herfidian.” The colonel-general glanced at Dr. Relorn, then back to me. “If you could even discover what happened—a wreck or attack, or if there’s a large group of bandits … that would be most helpful.”

“I’ll do what I can, assuming that meets with your approval and the doctor’s approval.”

His frown was momentary as he turned toward her. “If you could—”

“If Sammis can help you, it would benefit all of us.” The clarity and professionalism with which she spoke reminded me again that, despite her youthful looks under the makeup, Dr. Relorn probably had more experience than the colonel-general might ever have.

“Thank you, Doctor.” He bowed.

“Not at all. You and your men have already done so much. We would only be repaying a portion of that debt.” Her tone remained matter-of-fact.

He nodded again, and I tried to keep from shaking my head.

“Here is the general area where we think both groups disappeared.” He extended a map, basically a reproduction of an Imperial road map, and pointed to an area highlighted in yellow, slightly east of Bremarlyn.

After studying the general topography, I straightened. “May I keep this for a while, sir?”

“Of course … ah … how long … ?”

“I’ll try now. Trying isn’t the problem, you understand. I just can’t make many trips.”

“Oh … I see …”

He didn’t, and I looked at Dr. Relorn. “While I’m searching, Doctor, perhaps you could explain the energy deficits associated with diving. And …”

“I’ll have something waiting for you, Sammis.”

I thought I heard a trace more than professionalism there, but I wasn’t sure.

XXX

SO I HAD lied to the great colonel-general? Was that so great a moral fault?

Dropping under the now, sliding away toward Bremarlyn and the apparently missing ConFeds, I still worried whether Odin Thor would find out about my ability to look at events from the undertime, whether Dr. Wryan Relorn would tell him what she knew, and how long it would take for Odin Thor to find out that I could do more than I said I could. Or would he find out at all?

I pushed the doubts and questions away, focusing instead on the hazy black path that carried me closer to Bremarlyn. Although I tried to
follow the road, it didn’t really work that way. What sliding under the now or diving through time really follows is the patterns of mass and energy concentrations, and you skip from concentration to concentration—in a way. It was hard to parallel a real road from the undertime, and after a few attempts I didn’t even try.

Then I tried to locate a steamer backtiming. Backtime was what the red direction represented. But a steamer doesn’t have that much energy, and I tried to latch onto the point source that I thought was a laser rifle.

Except that it disappeared. But energy just doesn’t disappear. It dissipates when the rifle is fired. That was how I located one attack where I could see ConFeds firing shells from a short-tubed cannon that lofted shells over a hill and down around the steamer. Finally a shell blew the boilers and steam-cooked the subforcer and the driver.

Then the strange ConFeds just waited for the steam to clear, picked off the handful of survivors with projectile rifles, and appeared with a tug to cart off the wrecked steamer. All very dispassionately.

I could follow them, but nothing more. That squared with what I had read in the notebooks and with my own past experience. On Query, you can only enter and leave the undertime in your own subjective present. Period. No exceptions. Because the ambush took place in my past, I could only watch. And I could tell from my growing lightheadedness that the watching alone took some effort.

Before I was totally exhausted, I tracked the strange ConFeds back to a concealed tunnel less than five kays from the ruins of a house I knew well. While I was too exhausted to follow further, what I could see showed an elaborate underground installation, and an old one at that, with lots of metal and energy concentrations.

By then, black spots were interspersed with the light-headedness.

Still, breaking out in the laboratory was not particularly difficult. Standing up after I did was a real problem.

“Sammis … are you all right?” Dr. Relorn reached out to steady me.

With no strength and no ability to maintain my balance, I practically collapsed on her.

Her strength was far greater than I would have expected, and she eased me into one of the padded armchairs. The faint scent of trilia surrounded her, like a mist from my past.

While the colonel-general looked as though I had crawled from the sewer, his sour expression didn’t stop his questions. “Did you find anything? What happened? Who did it?”

My head was pounding, and each question sounded like a thunderbolt.

“Just wait a moment, Colonel, and let him take a sip of this.”

What she shoved under my nose was pungent, though not unpleasant. After just a sip or two, the headache began to subside.

“The whole steamer crew was ambushed … by a group of ConFeds … same kind of uniforms … tracked them to a hidden underground base near Bremarlyn …” Talking was a slight effort. So I stopped and took a full gulp from the narrow beaker that the doctor had handed me.

She was staring intently at me, but I couldn’t understand the expression.

“So … they found it …” The colonel-general pulled at his chin. Then he looked at me. “Could you locate it on a map?”

“Why bother? I’ll take you there … once I recover … in a day or so …”

If looks could have buried people, the doctor would have had me at the bottom of an ancient graveyard. But she said nothing.

I ignored her. Odin Thor, colonel-general or not, had to understand what he was playing with.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a latent diver, Colonel-General. So I’ll take you there through the undertime, and you can mount your own assault from inside, if you want, while your troops hit the outside.” I finished the beaker. “Do you have a map?”

He thrust it at me.

I ignored it, too. Instead, I closed my eyes and rested, almost in a trance.

“Trooper …”

“Colonel … don’t push him—”

Even in my dazed state, I could recognize the steel in the doctor’s words.

“—he did what you asked. You’ll have answers as soon as he’s able to give them. Mental travel is extremely fatiguing.”

I was feeling better, but decided to keep my eyes closed.

“But he was only gone a few instants …”

“Wasn’t Sammis one of your better trainees? Physically?”

“That’s what they told me.”

“That should tell you something about the physical effort required.”

I could hear the doctor’s soft steps moving away.

“He only went a handful of kays. You say that you have mapped the stars.” The colonel-general’s voice was more like a rumble.

“If you will recall your earlier briefings, Colonel Odin Thor, it takes more energy to cross a room here on Query than to reach the nearest star.”

“Then what good are your travelers?”

I wanted to open my eyes and enter the discussion, but even more to hear what the doctor might say. So I kept them closed a while longer and listened, listened to the soft footsteps and a gentle strong woman’s voice.

“Could any dozen of your scouts found out what Sammis just did? Those are some of the immediate benefits. Over the longer term, once we find other civilizations, we should provide knowledge, better ways to generate or use energy—the possibilities are considerable.”

“But for now, Doctor, I have to defend this base with rather limited resources. Not only against bandits, but against a renegade group of ConFeds.”

“Odin Thor.” Her voice was cold, and I almost sat up right then. “We know who the renegades are.”

“Survival is a matter of strength, madam.”

“We add to your strength.”

“Just see that you do.”

I yawned, groaned, and tried to imitate coming awake. It wasn’t entirely an act.

Odin Thor still stood there like a tree that had scarcely moved, while the doctor was on the other side of the console. She began to rummage through a small locker and stacked something on a tray.

“Try these. They might help.”

I rubbed the back of my neck where it ached, and the self-massage helped ease some of the remaining headache. Several bites of the crackers that tasted like the pungent liquid helped.

Odin had the map ready, waiting for the moment when I stopped stuffing my face, tapping his booted feet on the cracked insulating tiles of the laboratory floor. The fingers of his free left hand clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched, almost in rhythm to my chewing.

After a large pile of crackers, I began to feel better. “Could I see that map, Colonel-General?”

He glared. I stayed seated, since standing wouldn’t have done me any good.

“Here.”

“Here’s a stylus, Sammis …”

The map had enough landmarks for me to be able to locate the stronghold of the real ConFeds. The fact that they were the real ones made it easier for me. A great deal easier.

“Be difficult to get them out …”

I shook my head. “Very easy. Very easy.”

“I know the kind of installation they’re in. Couldn’t burn your way through with a battle laser …”

“They still have to breathe …”

The doctor turned whitish-green as she understood what I had in mind.

Odin Thor looked puzzled.

“Gas. Any kind of gas. Like the monarchy used on the Eastron installations that refused to surrender.”

“But how … ?”

“Leave that to me, Colonel-General. My pleasure …”