Time's Chariot (26 page)

'Excuse me?' Rico said. 'They gave two kids a
farm each?'

'Legally we were post-minors – young enough to
still be under adult protection, old enough to own
a business. But yes, sure, they were hoping we'd go
under in five minutes flat, so we'd end up working
for them again and they could say, well, they'd done
their best for us.'

'What went right?'

'Sarai.' Even with the slightly raised voice and
the partition, there was no disguising the pride and
love in Jontan's voice. 'Me, I'm a biotechnician,
always will be, but she's got a business head. She
suggested combining the farms, which we did – I
mean, I can read a balance sheet and I know when
I'm about to go broke – and one thing led to
another and, well, we fell in love all over again, as
adults. We're due to be grandparents in four
months time and the farm's booming. We'll never
be Holmberg-Chabani-Scott, but who needs it?'

'Congratulations,' Rico said. 'Tell it to stop the
water and turn on the air, will you?' he added –
God, he missed symb – and Jontan obliged. 'Bit
warmer . . . bit more . . . that's it.' He turned slowly
in the flow of perfumed, warm air. 'And now, I
gather Asaldra's the big hero?'

'And how. They turned on the PR the moment
Op Zo got back. She was proof it worked and he
became like a posthumous hero, except that
he wasn't actually dead. Ekat Hoon's still on the
Oversight Committee for the College, and she'll
have worked out a nice patrician post for him in the
new order.'

'And the new order is?'

'Much the same as the old one,' Jontan said with
a lopsided grin. 'A few different names in the top
posts, but for the rest of us, life goes on. Except that
transference is going to be a lot less regulated than
before and Hoon's lot are full of plans for using it
against the space nations. They're popular.'

'And Daiho? I mean, he did the actual work,'
said Rico.

'Mr Daiho committed murder,' said a new voice.
Rico popped his head around the partition in
surprise. The Register's eidolon stood in the doorway
to the bathroom. 'Thank you for your help, Mr
Baiget, but would you mind leaving us alone now?
Op Garron, your clothes have arrived. Get dressed
and I'll brief you fully.'

'No!' a fully-dressed Rico exclaimed. He strode
around the apartment and kicked the wall on an
impulse. The Register's eidolon sat in a chair and
watched him with a faint, patient smile. 'OK, so he
worked out how to rekindle the Home Time, but
that's not relevant! It did not excuse murder, and I
mean, murder! That clone could think, it was self-aware,
it had brain patterns . . . it might only have
had a mind like a baby but it was still . . .'

'You're not saying anything that didn't come out
at the trial,' the Register said. 'In fact, most of what
you're saying was said by Mr Daiho himself.'

'But, murder?' Rico said. 'He must have known
the penalty for that! I mean, it's complete brainwipe
and new personality and all that, or . . .' He
stopped and his eyes went wide. 'Oh, you're
kidding!' he said.

'Or induction into the correspondents programme,'
the Register finished for him, with a nod.
'The Commissioner was an ardent student of
ancient philosophy. He was actually looking forward
to his sentence.'

Looking forward
. . . It all clicked in Rico's mind.

'
That
correspondent?' he said. He thought back
to the battered body remains on the floor of the
transference chamber, and sat down heavily in a
chair and put his head in his hands. Then he
looked up at the Register. 'But that doesn't work.
That correspondent – Alan – was sent back by him,
so how could he have been him?'

'Actually, Commissioner Daiho didn't send
RC/1029 back,' said the Register. 'When he first
began to make plans, that correspondent was
suggested to him by someone already in the know.
In fact, if you will, the ringleader of the plot.'

'But who could . . .' Rico felt his insides freeze.
Here he was, in a sealed apartment, unable to symb,
completely at the mercy of all the technology this
advanced artificial personality had at its command.
'You?' he whispered.

'Me,' the Register said. 'And now you are no
doubt going to tell me why it couldn't have been.'

'It couldn't have . . .' Rico snapped, and bit his
tongue. 'OK. He was sent back by your future self.
How did your past self know?'

'I've been in touch with myself for a long time.
It's only an arbitrary decision on my part which
keeps personnel from transferring within the
Home Time. I could send people if I so chose and
I can certainly send myself messages without anyone
knowing. So I knew, and when the
Commissioner asked me for a suitable correspondent,
I gave him that one.'

'But why?' Rico said.

'I wanted to keep the Home Time going.'

'But Morbern didn't!' Rico was close to shouting.

'He expected the Home Time to lapse at the
expected time, and he set you up to make sure
things happened as he wanted!' Rico could feel
tenets he had held since childhood crumbling
under him. It was frightening. It was also, strangely,
exhilarating.

'Exactly. I was set up as a mirror of Morbern's
own personality, complete with his own wishes and
desires. But that was four hundred years ago, Mr
Garron. People can change over just a few years.
How much more do you think they could change
over four centuries? If Jean Morbern had lived that
long, I expect he would have changed too. He'd
have realized that the Home Time had to keep
going. There are billions of people now alive who
depend on it. It's not ideal, but the fact is, society
now is so stagnant it will just collapse into chaos
without the constant input from upstream.'

Rico glared at the former icon of his life. 'And
was it worth it?' he muttered.

'You tell me. We're going to have a whole new
Home Time, Mr Garron, and this will be very
different from the last one. The last one was sprung
on the world suddenly and no one expected it. This
has been planned for the last twenty-seven years.
Morbern's Code is to be revised, made more
flexible. I was designed to expire when the Home
Time expires but I'll be cloning my intelligence so
there'll be something very like me still around, only
it will work for the College, not run it. Above all, of
course, we'll have transference again, and there'll
be an opening for you – an experienced Specific.
You could have your old job back.'

'Keep talking,' said Rico.

'Or,' the Register said, 'I could send you home
with Op Zo.'

'Home?' Rico murmured. He was already getting
used to the idea of starting a new life twenty-seven
years on. Enjoying the fact that most of the enemies
he had made in his career would be at, or
approaching, retirement. The same statute of
limitations that meant Asaldra could no longer be
held responsible for events twenty-seven years ago
also applied to Rico. And the future that the
Register painted of the new Home Time was rosy,
even if it did have Hossein Asaldra as a hero in it.
To his surprise, he was already adjusting to the new
situation.

But even so . . . home.

'But,' he said, 'I thought we'd already established
that Su goes home, I don't.'

'Su goes home,' the Register agreed. 'She
delivers the message to my earlier self that everything
has worked out, and she picks up her life
again without a blip. You, if you choose to go back,
will be facing a tribunal and a lawsuit from Mr
Scott's friends and relatives. However, the old
Register would certainly offer you a new identity if
you chose to return. So you see, it may just be
that you go back too and Jontan Baiget hasn't
heard of you.'

'You know, don't you?' Rico said. 'You know what
I'm going to do.'

'I do not. I have deliberately purged all knowledge
of your actions from my memory. You have to
act of your own free will.'

'You know about Su, though.'

'Su's choice is a forgone conclusion. What is
there for her here? Her family are back there.'

Home
. . .

'It's a tough one, isn't it?' he said, but he already
knew what he wanted.

The transference hall had been packed with people
earlier. Now it was empty – emptier than Rico had
ever known. The thirty or forty levels – Rico could
never remember the exact number – were silent.
No one was entering or leaving the Home Time; no
technicians were working on the chambers. His
footsteps rang on the metal grid beneath him.

'It's almost over,' said Jontan. His services had
been retained for just a while longer – he could
symb, Rico still couldn't – and he was tuned to a
news channel inside his head. Even he had picked
up on the significance of what was going on. 'This
is amazing. They're actually counting down to the
end of an era.'

'Uh huh,' Rico said. The back of his neck still
tingled with the recent injection of the symb seeds
that were now regrowing their network inside his
head.

They came to a chamber, standing with its doors
open, and Jontan peered inside with interest. He
had only seen one of these twice in his life, and not
recently.

'You remember it as bigger and older?' Rico said.

Jontan smiled. 'Just bigger.' Then his smile
faded. 'This is it. They've reached ten.'

He stepped back slightly and looked around to
take in as much of the hall as he could.

'. . . Seven, six, five . . .'

He stopped speaking out loud but mouthed the
words silently. And then he reached one.

Something stopped. Rico frowned and looked
around. Something had been there, like the quiet,
unnoticed hum of air conditioning at night, or a
vibration through the soles of his feet, filtered out
by the brain . . . and when it had stopped it had
made just as much an impact as a sudden bang.

'It's over,' Jontan said quietly, and Rico realized
what it was. He reached out and put his hand gently
against the side of the chamber. It was still, cold
steel. No hum, no energy. Every chamber in
the transference hall was dead. Deep beneath the
College, Morbern's singularity had collapsed into
nothing and the Home Time was no more.

'Now what?' he said, wishing those symb seeds
would grow back more quickly. Jontan's eyes were
unfocused as he followed the images inside his
head.

'A lot of meaningless chatter from the commentators
– right – here it comes. Another
countdown. They're about to trigger the new
singularity. Um, nine, eight . . .'

Again, at five he started counting silently, and at
one . . .

The noise didn't just come back like that. It piled
up over a couple of seconds, like being inside a vast
machine that had just started up. But it was back, in
a matter of seconds, to the familiar subliminal
rumble Rico had always known.

Jontan's face was one huge, delighted smile. 'It
worked!' he said. 'Down in Control, it's a carnival.
They're shouting, dancing, whooping . . .' His eyes
fixed on something behind Rico and his expression
turned more thoughtful.

Rico looked round and saw Su and Sarai were
coming towards them. Jontan stepped forward to
intercept his wife and together they hung back
slightly, so Su and Rico met up again on their own.

'Well . . .' Su said. She was smiling bravely but it
didn't quite work. 'The Register told me.'

'No hard feelings?' They hugged.

'I understand. There's nothing for you back
there.'

Rico hugged her more tightly. 'There's you, Su.'

'Oh, stop it,' Su mumbled into his shoulder. 'I'd
never forgive you if you blew this opportunity and
you know it.'

'And I'd never forgive you if you stayed just for
me.'

'Oh, yeah, right, Garron. Don't flatter yourself.'

They stood close together without speaking for a
moment longer.

'The co-ordinates are set,' said a familiar voice.
The Register's eidolon had appeared next to the
chamber. No, not the Register's eidolon, Rico
reminded himself: the eidolon of the new Register,
outwardly identical to the old but with important
differences in what it could now do. 'Are you ready,
Op Zo?'

'As I'll ever be,' Su said. She pushed herself
gently away from Rico, then reached out once more
to touch him. She smiled again, turned and walked
into the chamber. The doors began to swing shut.

'Good luck,' she called.

'I'll manage.' Rico knew his own smile was
twisted.

'Give Asaldra a hard time.'

'Why do you think I'm staying?'

'I'll miss you,' Su called, and then the doors
finally closed.

Rico stepped back and looked at the
transference chamber. He felt a sudden surge of
irritation at its smug, shiny, spherical complacency.
The chambers just sat there while Field Ops came
and went and technicians tended to their every
need. They swallowed people up and, in their own
good time, returned them. It was as if Su was held
in one of them, and all it had to do was open its
doors . . .

'Mr Garron?' said Sarai behind him. He turned
round. She and Jontan were still standing a discreet
distance away, arms around each other's waists. And
more people were approaching, borne by a
carryfield.

'We called some people, once we learned you
were staying . . .' Jontan said, but Rico had already
twigged. The banner saying 'Welcome Rico' was
one clue. And the faces.

Tong, Su's husband – hair shorter and greyer
than it had been. A man and woman in their
thirties, with a couple of toddlers – grief, that must
be Su's descendants – and, at the forefront . . .

They stood face to face as, for Rico, they had just
been doing, each savouring the sight of the other,
drinking it in. Then:

'Those twenty-seven years have been good to
you,' he said.

'Hello, Rico,' she said, and for the second time
in a couple of minutes and twenty-seven years, Su
Zo walked into his arms.