Time's Chariot (16 page)

'He told me he didn't think anyone had transferred.

He said setting co-ordinates without the
Register was too complicated.'

Rico blew a raspberry. 'He had field training? He
knew how to do it. We all do.'

'This is getting ridiculous,' Marje said. 'Cease
projection.' Rico blinked as suddenly they were
back in her office. Marje dropped down into a
chair. 'We have personal contact with a correspondent.

We have unauthorized transferences. I
want this answered and I want it answered now. Is
there any way, any way at all, of establishing exactly
where he went?'

'Let's see those transferences again,' Rico said,
and the list symbed into their minds. The transferences
they had thought were made by Daiho had
all been through a regular transference chamber.
'Mr Asaldra,' Rico said. 'Fond of home comforts, is
he?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Transferences from the eleventh to the seventeenth
centuries,' Rico said, 'and then this'. He
jabbed at the last item on the list. 'Twenty-first century.
Almost the start of the Fallow Age. I'd guess
that's where he went, but it's pure guesswork.'

'So what is—' Marje said.

'I'm already there,' Rico said, symbing into the
database. 'It's . . .' His jaw dropped. 'Oh my god, it's
Matthew Carradine's headquarters!'

'Who?' Marje said.

'Matt Carradine.' Rico stood up and paced the
office. 'The first great biotech giant. He's on
the Specifics' list of secondaries – one of us drops in
on him, incognito, every couple of years to see how
he's doing. Not a primary like Einstein, under
constant surveillance, but—'

'Getting back to the point?' Marje said, breaking
Rico's flow.

'Ah. Getting back to the point, in the twentieth
century they discovered penicillin and other
powerful antibiotics. And they overdosed on them
so badly that by our boy's time, most of the lethal
bugs were immune to them. Tuberculosis, smallpox,
measles and all sorts of things with strange
Latin names . . .'

'The plague years,' Marje said.

'Exactly. Carradine's company, BioCarr,
developed the next generation of antibiotics that
attacked the bugs at the genetic level. He was
already rich and powerful through BioCarr at the
time – he fed the world and he helped cure
SuperAIDS – but after that he was one of the most
powerful men in the world. That's all in the Fallow
Age, of course. Mr Asaldra went to see him when he
was just starting to flex his muscles.'

'Perhaps he went to observe?' Marje said.

'Hardly. The database says these are the
co-ordinates for his actual office. Unless he was out
taking a whiz, your friend must have appeared right
in front of him.'

'You're being frivolous.'

'I am not.' Rico's face was cold and thoughtful.
This, Marje thought suddenly, was the other
Garron. Not the boy in a man's body that she had
been becoming used to. Give him something worth
taking seriously and this was what happened.

'So what is it?' she said, almost afraid of the
answer.

'The main BioCarr site was excavated a few years
ago. They found . . . well, things. By the end of his
career, Carradine wasn't bothering with smart
viruses and super crops. His clients wanted people
who can breathe underwater, or live in a vacuum.
He never provided successful models but it didn't
stop him trying. I can't help wondering where he
got his technology from . . .'

'Oh God,' Marje said. She saw from his face that
there was more. 'And?'

'Just a feeling,' Rico said, 'but remember, I was a
Specific. I'm trained to be suspicious.'

'Suspicious about . . . ?'

'Commissioner Daiho.'

'Oh, for goodness sake!' Marje exclaimed. She
threw up her hands. 'You're going too far. The
Commissioner died of an aneurysm, that's been
established.'

'They can be induced, and there wasn't much of
him left to conduct an autopsy on.' Marje opened
her mouth to object: Rico interrupted. 'No!
Listen!' More quietly: 'I'm dealing with facts, that's
all. An aneurysm can kill you on the spot. What it
can't do is lift you up and chuck you twenty feet
through the air, because that's what must have
happened for the agravs not to catch the body.'

Marje opened her mouth again. Her mind had
simply been cruising on the assumption that
Daiho's death had been an accident and anything
that said otherwise was nonsense. But she knew
conviction when she saw it, and that was what was
on Rico's face.

'Social preparation would prevent anyone from
doing that,' she said, 'assuming they were strong
enough in the first place.'

' 'Tals could do it, and they don't have social
preparation.'

' 'Tals need to be told what to do, by one of us.
Social preparation would prevent that from
happening.'

'Not if the person telling them what to do was a
former Field Op,' Rico said quietly. 'Especially not
one who still works for the College and therefore
has access to the 'tals in the first place.'

Marje had gone pale. 'Hossein has a tame 'tal as
a servant . . .'

'There you are,' Rico said, as if that solved everything.

'Perhaps Commissioner Daiho learned your
friend was using his name in vain, or—'

'That's enough!' Marje said. 'I'm sorry, this is
suspicion and circumstantial evidence. I'm not
going to convict Hossein Asaldra on a charge of
murder in his absence. We stick with what we know,
and that's already got him into enough trouble.'

'There's an easy way to find out,' Rico said.

'Damn straight.' Marje Orendal was a woman
whose world had collapsed around her. She had
taken a new job upon the death of a friend and had
thought herself surrounded by like-minded professionals,
serving the College and the Home Time.
And now she discovered that at least one of those
like-minded professionals was casually engaged in
activities that blew the code by which she ran her
life to pieces. She had reached her decision: no
more meekly sitting back and letting the others run
her life for her. 'I'm hiring you full-time,' she said.
'I want you to locate Hossein Asaldra, bring him
back here and find out just what the hell is
happening.'

Jontan, grinning, crept up behind Sarai who was
crouched next to one of the culture regulators,
peering into its innards. He pounced forwards and
covered her eyes.

'Guess who?'

She shrugged him off. 'Leave it, Jon.' She didn't
even look round.

He retreated, wounded. 'I thought . . .'

'Jon, I know. I just . . . I just need time to think,
OK?' She snapped her fingers at the toolkit. 'Pass
me a joiner.'

He mutely obeyed and crouched down a few feet
away; close enough to enjoy her presence and make
himself useful when required, far enough to be
only on the fringes of the zone of hostility. And he
could think happy thoughts of when they had been
closer. Still not as close as he might have
liked, but closer than ever before. Just a few hours
ago.

But not today. It had started with the silence at
breakfast, which he had put down to the continuing
frostiness from Mr Scott, but even during the day
when Mr Scott wasn't present there had been a
growing chill between them.

He had just been happy that they seemed to be
getting it right at last. It was all so straightforward
for him – why couldn't it be for her? Why did she
need this 'time to think'? He shook his head. He
would never understand.

Waking up with limbs like lead and a clogged
head hadn't helped. At breakfast, to his surprise,
Mr Scott and Mr Daiho had looked fairly hung over
too. Maybe some antediluvian germ had got into
the food, but he had had the strange sense that the
night had been full of activity which he just
couldn't remember.

Something shimmered in the corner of his eye
and he blinked as something seemed to cloud his
concentration for a moment. What was . . . where
was . . .

He shook his head to clear it, glanced up, then
quickly jumped to his feet.

'Sa . . .'

Sarai looked up over the top of the regulator,
then shot to her feet herself. The man standing in
the middle of the lounge was in College dress, and
the College was the last place they had seen him; or
rather, deep beneath the College, as the doors of
the transference chamber closed. He looked at
them.

'Get me Mr Scott or Mr Daiho, now,' he
said.

'What the hell are you doing here?' Mr Scott
shouted.

'I couldn't help it.' The newcomer, Mr Asaldra,
was flushed and ran a finger round his collar as he
spoke. 'Marje Orendal was on the point of finding
out about us.'

'Who's she, and how?'

'She was my designated successor,' Mr Daiho
said calmly. 'But the how, Hossein?'

'I don't know what alerted her but she's got a
Field Op working for her. I saw him on one of my
trips but I didn't recognize him until now.'

(Their personal differences forgotten, Sarai and
Jontan were working side by side on the regulator
with only half their minds on the task. Listening to
their betters falling out was much more interesting.
Jontan tightened the last valve, and they glanced at
each other. Then he untightened it again, and they
began methodically to undo all the work they had
been putting in.)

'Yul Ario was meant to be keeping an eye on that
sort of thing,' said Daiho.

'This is a private arrangement.'

'Oh, great!' Scott exploded. 'And by running,
you've proved her suspicions!'

'If they'd taken me in,' Asaldra said, 'they'd have
got the plans out of my mind and this place would
be swarming with Specifics come to take us home.
Ario couldn't sit on that. As it is – yes, they know
something's going on but, no, they don't
know where I am or what it is.'

'I suppose you used the duplicate controls to
come here?' Daiho said.

'And destroyed them. That's right. We can't go
back that way, but then, they can't come for us
either.'

'You said Ario knew,' Scott said. 'They could get
it from him.'

'He knows the gist of it. Not the details. Not
where we are.'

Scott was beginning to sound desperate. 'So
when it comes to getting back to the Home
Time . . .'

'We use the fallback plan,' said Asaldra.
'Inconvenient, but that's life. Why do you think I
came here now, not when you first arrived?'

'You're joking!' Scott sounded aghast. 'That's—'

'We all knew there might be costs.' For the first
time, Asaldra looked as if he were standing up to
Scott. 'This is one of them.'

'That's easy for you to say, when all you have to
go back to is that woman . . .' Scott began.

Asaldra bridled. 'Don't speak about my wife that
way, Scott.'

'That will do, Phenuel,' Daiho said. 'Hossein is
right. Sacrifices were to be expected.'

And Jontan and Sarai glanced at each other.
Sacrifices?

Matthew Carradine nodded his head slowly as he
studied the picture.

'Well, well, well,' he murmured. 'My old friend.'

'He's the one you made the arrangements with?'
said Alan.

'He's the one. When did he turn up?'

'Oh-nine thirty-three.' Alan handed him a
dataslate. 'And we have a transcript of their
conversation.'

'You've broken through the bug jammers?'
Carradine said hopefully.

'Still using the lip readers with binos.'

'Oh well.' Carradine read the slate and his eyebrows
rose higher. 'We have dissent in the ranks,'
he said. He read further . . .

'Yes!' He slammed the slate down on his desk
and jumped to his feet. He paced about the room
in his excitement. 'I knew it! I knew it!'

'Matthew?'

'They
are
doing something illegal! I got the vibes,
I had my suspicions, but I couldn't prove anything
and they weren't saying. But now! Look! This man,
Asaldra, he was responsible for bringing them back
but now something's gone wrong at his end and the
Home Time don't know where he is, Alan.
They
don't know where he is
.'

'There's this fallback plan of theirs,' Alan said
quietly.

'That's how they plan to return. But look at this!
This line here!' He picked the slate up again and
jabbed a finger at a line of text. 'Oh-nine thirty-seven,
fifty-two seconds. Asaldra, quote,
we can't go
back that way but then they can't come for us either
,
unquote.'

'That is interesting,' Alan said, even more quietly
but now with a very faint smile.

'And if we keep a suitably close eye on them then
they won't be able to implement this fallback plan,'
said Carradine. 'I take it you have something set up
for this contingency?'

'It just needs your say-so, Matthew.'

'You have it.' Carradine thumped a control pad
on his desk. 'Get me the security chief and Holliss
from the hotel. Priority one.'

Jontan was leaning over the mixture regulators
when the doors flew open and armed men poured
into the lounge.

'Move away from the equipment!' Jontan was too
surprised to notice that the man was shouting in
badly-accented Home Time. 'Stand up! Move away
from the equipment!'

They shoved him against a wall and held him
there at gunpoint. Two of the others grabbed hold
of Mr Daiho and lifted him off his couch. He
shouted angrily but a second later he too was
pinned against a wall.

Another thug thrust Sarai into the room. Jontan
took a step forward and a gun barrel jabbed into
him just below the ribs. Mr Scott and Mr Asaldra were
herded in after her. The five Home Timers
were spaced around the room, each with their own
personal bygoner thug pointing a gun at them.

The kit chose that moment to symb an alarm
signal at Jontan. A valve needed closing or the
whole mixture would be rendered non-viable. Sarai
heard it too and they both instinctively took a step
towards the regulator. They collapsed, wheezing, as
two fists caught them hard in the stomachs.

'Move away from the equipment!'

'Please,' Jontan gasped, 'the mixture's going
critical.'

'Move away from the equipment!'

'I think you've exhausted their grasp of our
language,' said Mr Daiho from across the room.
The man guarding him raised his gun. Mr Daiho
looked calmly back at him.

'Sir,' Jontan pleaded, 'you can talk like them, tell
them I've got to adjust the mixture . . .'

'I don't think they care.'

'We care.' Two more bygoners had come into the
room. The speaker was small and slight; his accent
was imperfect and he spoke slowly, but he could be
understood. 'What is the problem?'

'I have to adjust a valve,' Jontan said. The small
man spoke to his companion, a broader man with
confident, appraising eyes. This other man nodded
and said something; Jontan's guard stepped back.

'Mr Carradine says you can do what you have to
do,' said the small man. Jontan gratefully hurried
over to the regulator, picked up a phase adjuster
and switched the flow over to a backup valve.

'Can you shut all this down?' the small man
asked.

'Not without ruining the mixtures and killing
the cultures,' said Jontan.

'What do you do at night? When you go to bed?'

'Well, we put it on standby.'

'Then do that now.'

'I . . .' said Jontan, with a glance at Mr Daiho.
Yes, these people were now in control; yes, they had
guns; and yes, they didn't have social preparation
and would no doubt use them if necessary. But
sheer instinct made Jontan seek Mr Daiho's
approval for any course of action.

'Do it,' Mr Daiho said, and Jontan symbed the
appropriate commands to the control module. The
action also had the automatic effect of activating
the forcefield that protected the gear from the
wandering hands of bygoners.

The other man, the one who seemed to be in
charge, walked into the centre of the room and
gazed longingly at the gear. Then he spoke again.

'Mr Carradine says that you two journeymen are
to be put under guard for the time being,' said the
interpreter. The guards shouldered their weapons;
hands like vices grabbed hold of the journeymen's
arms; and Sarai and Jontan were frog-marched
from the room.

Scott, Daiho and Asaldra were shown into one of
the hotel's meeting rooms and, finally, things were
a little more civilized. They were allowed to sit
down and drinks were served. Guards still stood
around the room.

Matthew Carradine sat facing the three Home
Timers as if they were an interview panel.

'We've played around enough,' he said.

'This wasn't the agreement,' Asaldra protested.
'We arranged—'

'Oh, shut up,' Scott murmured in their own
language. Carradine speared him with a glance and
Scott interpreted his comment into twenty-first
century English.

'And kindly keep it that way,' Carradine said. 'Mr
. . . Asaldra, wasn't it? Yes, of course. No, it wasn't
the agreement. However, as things have obviously
changed at your end, I don't see why they shouldn't
change at this end too. Tell me, gentlemen, what
should I do with you?'

It wasn't the question they had expected.

'I thought you already had ideas along those
lines,' Daiho said. Carradine chuckled.

'Interrogate you, get the secret of time travel,
perhaps?' He shook his head. 'No. We might pump
you for everything you know, yes, but we'd be very
selective about what we used and time travel
wouldn't be part of it. It would be wonderful to be
able to travel back and forth like you do, but your
people are obviously far more advanced than we
are and I can imagine what I would do in their
place, if a bunch of primitives started monkeying
about with my prize technology. They'd be on me
like a ton of bricks. No, what I'm after is your more
elementary tech. Your mind-to-mind communication.
Those clothes you wear. Your amazing state
of health. And anything else our surveillance hasn't
picked up yet.'

'I'm not sure there's so much we can tell you,'
said Scott.

'Of course not!' Carradine pointed up at one of
the ceiling lights. 'Any more than I could describe
how the power grid works. I have a pretty good
idea, but actually communicating it to a savage so
that the savage can make it work . . . no, I'm just a
layman. As are you and Mr Daiho.' He took a swig
of coffee. 'Your journeymen, on the other hand,
must be wonderfully well-informed.'

'They work for me!' Scott sounded outraged.

'Back in the Home Time,' Carradine said calmly.
He grinned. 'Where I expect they're the lowest of
the low. Here, I can give them a level of luxury and
freedom they've never known in their lives. They're
young and they're only human. I think I can get
through to them.'

Until now he had only been looking at Daiho
and Scott when he spoke. Now he looked pointedly
at the third Home Timer present. 'And then there's
you, Mr Asaldra. You're obviously a trained agent of
your organization. You travel through time
routinely. You must know a few useful things, and
from those few useful things, who knows what
might spin off?'

The sudden change of subject caught Asaldra by
surprise and his mouth worked a couple of times
before he answered.

'Yes, I was a Field – an, um, trained agent, but
that was a long time ago,' he said.

'And I was a Boy Scout a long time ago but
I can still remember my knots,' said Carradine.

Asaldra laughed, disbelieving, almost desperate.

'I'm not telling you anything, Mr Carradine, so
please get used to it.'

'Whatever.' Carradine nodded to one of the
guards at the back of the room. There was the buzz
of a stunner and Asaldra crumpled in a heap on the
floor.

Daiho and Scott just watched, not daring to
move, as two of the guards lifted their stunned
colleague up and carried him from the room.

Carradine calmly watched them go, then stood
up. 'And that just leaves you two,' he said as he
turned to leave. 'A philosopher, and management.

I don't have any vacancies for philosophers and in
this century we have managers coming out of our
ears. However, one of my staff did tell me she'd
welcome the opportunity to do a post mortem of a
Home Timer, should the opportunity arise. I'll
leave you to think up ways of convincing me you're
more valuable than just dead meat.'