Time's Chariot (5 page)

'Now,' he said, 'about that shower.'

After a stinging hot needle shower, a massage
and a light meal, and with a drink in his hand, he
felt much better. Warm, relaxed, contented. He
lounged in his favourite chair, legs stuck out so far
in front of him that he was almost lying down, and
looked around him with a dour smile. Maybe he
could get used to it here. His recent demotion had
meant moving to a smaller suite, but even the last
had been smaller than Daiho's Himalayan pad,
which was practically a module in its own right. But
in this (slightly smaller) suite of which he was
master there was a main room, a bedroom, a bathroom
and an aggression room – four rooms that
were
entirely his
. Not bad for a spookboy from the
crèche; a child no one wanted to adopt, to give
some kind of start in life to, because – well, because
he was a spookboy, he came from the past and the
past was bad. By sheer hard work and without any
kind of sponsorship, he had worked up to this.

He had done all right, and two reprimands
weren't going to change that.

But as he undressed for bed, another thought
struck him. The fact was, he still didn't have that
computer. Maybe he would just have to write it off:
fate seemed to be against his getting it back. But he
also still didn't have an answer to a question he had
put to Su in fourteenth-century Brazil. What did the
Commissioner for Correspondents, who never did
any fieldwork of his own, want with a field
computer?

For Jontan Baiget, a biotech journeyman on
the Holmberg-Chabani-Scott plantation, the
journey to the Dark Ages started like a perfectly
normal day, five thousand feet below the surface of
the Pacific, north-east of the Marquesas. It was the
day before Union Day.

Jontan left the dormitory that morning and
headed with his friends to the foreman's office to
be given the day's tasks. His group and the women's
contingent got there at about the same time, to the
strains of the usual repartee.

From the men:

'Wha-hey!'

'All right, girls?'

'Over here, love, over here!'

From the women:

'Do your mummies know you're out, boys?'

'Too small for me.'

'Any three of you, OK? Any three of you.'

Back home in Appalachia ecopolis the journeymen
could mix with whom they liked. On the
plantation they were kept apart, except for their
professional duties and carefully chaperoned offduty
get-togethers. Journeymen were expected to
keep their minds on their work. Jontan glanced up.
Was she . . .

Yes, she was. Sarai Killin was there and looking as
fed up with the catcalls as he felt. She met his
eye for a moment, half smiled and looked away
again.

They had known each other since childhood
days in their module crèche in Appalachia. As they
got older he had become aware of two disturbing
factors: she was becoming more and more
attractive, with her dark eyes and short brown hair
and slender figure that always lurked at the back of
his mind and just wouldn't go away, and he was
becoming less and less so with what he considered
his quite unreasonably big ears, general gangliness,
hair that just wouldn't do anything . . .

But tomorrow was Union Day, and all the
journeymen would be going to the same party, so
there was hope.

'Baiget.' The foreman called his name and he
stepped forward. 'Sector twelve, abnormalities at
cellular level in nutrient solution.'

Two other journeymen and a supervisor were
assigned to the same job and a grounder took them
there, skimming along the path that ran through
the golden corn. It was a sight that cheered him up
and took his mind off the non-chances of ever
getting closer to Sarai. The ground beneath was
reclaimed sea bed, the 'sky' was pitch black – not
much sun got through five thousand feet of water –
and the plantation existed in a force bubble, full of
artificial air and light, but Jontan felt completely at
home there. And happy, and proud. The world
around him held twenty billion people and the
Holmberg-Chabani-Scott plantation helped feed
them, and he, in his own small way, was helping
with the process.

Their destination was a pumping station that
looked over a thousand acres of reclaimed sea bed.
The grounder approached in a curve to avoid the
gaze of a nearby UV pylon that faced safely away
from them and poured its beneficent ultraviolet
rays into the force-grown corn.

Inside the station the journeymen got to work.
The station supplied the solution that was meant to
be nourishing the seed germs, and 'abnormalities
at cellular level' essentially meant mini-cancers
above the usual rate of cell division. The solution
was notoriously unstable and could go bad at the
slightest unwanted variable – the proportion of
chemicals in it, the ambient heat, a slightly prolonged
filtration session. The solution suffered, the
corn suffered and the crop suffered.

The job was split between the three journeymen.
One looked at the solution that entered the station,
Jontan studied the mixing process and the third
checked the output. The supervisor hovered in the
background, somehow seeming to be looking over
the shoulders of all three of them at once.

An hour later they had made progress, or at least
they had eliminated possibilities. There was
nothing contaminating the solution in the station
and the supervisor was getting redder and redder
in the face.

'Nothing wrong at this end. Nothing at all. But
the solution is cancerous when it gets to the far
end. Well, laddies, looks like we're going to have to
check the pipework . . .'

Oh, goody, more work
, Jontan thought. He pushed
himself back in his seat and stretched, gazing out of
the window at the corn that was the ultimate
beneficiary of their hard work. He frowned, then
smiled slowly and stood up.

'Going somewhere, Baiget?' The supervisor
stopped him with his hand on the door.

'Sir . . .'

'It's at the back, Baiget. You don't go outside.
That'd really foul up the solution.'

The other two journeymen sniggered.

'Sir, that pylon's directly between us and the
field,' Jontan said.

'So?'

'I'll bet the pipeline from this station runs
straight from us to the field, too.'

The supervisor frowned. 'It can't be . . .' He
turned to a display and called up a schematic of
sector twelve. Sure enough, a red line ran from the
square that was the station to the shaded yellow that
was the edge of the field, and the UV pylon stood
right over it.

'Which moron moved that there?' the supervisor
bellowed. The pylons weren't fixed and they got
moved around according to the whims of the
agronomists. Radiation spillage was quite enough
to upset the cell chemistry of the solution passing
through the pipes.

The supervisor symbed Control. 'Request shutdown
of pylon 12-UV-970. Don't worry, won't take
long.' A pause, then: 'Right, you two, get over there
and shift it. Stay here, Baiget.'

When the two other journeymen were gone, the
supervisor shook his head. 'How long had you
known about that, Baiget?'

'Um, I saw it just now, sir . . .'

'And you were going to move it all by yourself?
Did it occur to you you'd get fried? And if it did, did
it occur to you that you don't have the authority to
shut it down to prevent frying?'

'Um . . .'

'You're talented, Baiget,' the supervisor said
grudgingly. 'You can think laterally – you don't just
go through the motions that the book says you
should. Just learn to play in the team, OK? It'll do
you a world of good.'

A symbed call broke into both their thoughts.
'
Journeyman Baiget report to the foreman's office
immediately
.'

Jontan looked at the supervisor in surprise. The
supervisor looked back. 'Still here, Baiget?'

There was another man in with the foreman – tall,
dark-haired, bearded and immaculately dressed.
Jontan immediately began to feel self-conscious on
behalf of his working clothes.

'This is Baiget, sir,' said the foreman.

'I see.' For some reason Jontan expected the
bearded man to walk around him and study him,
but all he did was say, 'You did well in your exams,
Baiget. Congratulations.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Where's the other?' The man was talking to the
foreman now.

'Should be here soon, Mr Scott.'

Mr Scott!
And this was the Holmberg-Chabani-Scott
plantation. Jontan doubted he was
the
Mr
Scott, head of the family, but he was a Mr Scott and
that was enough. He would be a patrician, no doubt
about it. And he was here.

The door opened and there were footsteps
behind him. 'Come in, Killin,' said the foreman.

Jontan's heart leaped and he hardly dared look
round in case it was another Killin. But no, it was
Sarai Killin, standing next to him and ignoring him
completely; as he should be ignoring her, in the
presence of a Scott and the foreman. With an effort
he turned his attention to the front.

'Now you're both—' said the foreman.

'Now you're both here,' said Scott, not even
looking at the foreman but immediately silencing
him, 'we'll start. I have a job that requires two
biotech journeymen capable of working in unusual
conditions. The best equipment will be made available
but there will be no possibility of replacements
or resupplies. I need people who can work with
what they have and make sure that what they have
works. Your aptitude tests suggest you are the two. I
cannot say how long the job will last, so I have to
ask, are you capable of getting on with one
another? Be honest.'

Jontan and Sarai looked at each other. For a
moment it occurred to Jontan that Scott shouldn't
have to ask journeymen – journeymen were told,
not asked – but the doubt was swept away with the
thought of working with Sarai, indefinitely. And
with the worry that she might say no.

'I can work with Sa— Journeyman Killin, sir,' he
said. He was pleased to see one corner of her
mouth twitch in a slight smile.

'I can work with Journeyman Baiget, sir,' she
said.

Scott nodded. 'Good. As of now you're detached
from your duties. You won't need to pack anything,
just meet me at the surface port in half an hour.
That's all.'

'Um, yes, sir.' Jontan and Sarai turned to go,
uncertain. It hadn't been a formal dismissal such as
they were used to, so . . .

'Get going,' said the foreman for their benefit.

'Yes, sir!' they said together, and went.

Phenuel Scott was pleased that the two journeymen
were suitably silent as the taxi flew swiftly southwards.
It was as it should be. He had no real desire
to travel with journeymen at all but he was
determined to keep them in his sight at all times
until they were safely ensconced at the College. He
had nightmare visions of the two of them arriving at
the College unaccompanied, and innocently
getting lost and somehow coming to the attention
of some official who would wonder why Scott had
hired two biotech journeymen . . .

It didn't bear thinking about and he shook the
vision away.

'We are heading,' he said, 'for the College. That
is, the College of Advanced Manipulation of
Probability and Chronotic Transference.'

He wasn't surprised to see a hint of awe in the
looks. Aside from the plantation they'd probably
never left Appalachia before.

'As well as helping with the family business, I'm
the assistant to the Appalachian consul there, and
you are officially on the staff as well,' he said.
'Remember that – you shouldn't have to meet any
College personnel, but if you ever do, your work is
Appalachian business only. You will discuss it only
with consulate personnel. You will just be doing
biotech work, nothing else, and you are under my
sponsorship.'

That last line, he thought, should buy their
loyalty if nothing else did.

'
Attention
,' the voice of the taxi symbed into their
minds. '
College Defence Systems request information
concerning the two unknown individuals on board this
taxi
.'

'Individuals are Journeymen Killin and Baiget,
staff for the Appalachian consulate.' Scott couldn't
avoid giving their titles but he had no compunction
about doing so to a machine – it was unlikely any
human with a sense of curiosity would hear about
this. 'Visitors on authority of Phenuel Scott until
due residence authorization is given.'

'
Visitors are requested to identify themselves verbally
.'

Scott nodded that they should do so, and they
symbed their names and citizen numbers
accordingly.

'
Please wait
,' said the taxi, and it slowed down and
stopped and hovered.

'This will take a couple of minutes,' Scott said.
'There's Antarctica. Make the most of the view
because you won't be seeing much of it.'

With his permission given, they pressed their
faces to the membrane. The continent of
Antarctica was spread out before them. It was
summer in the southern hemisphere and the pure
white of the land below them would have been
painful to look at if the membrane hadn't
been tinted.

The taxi was hovering in mid-air a mile above the
snow, three miles away from the geometric shapes
of the College. Scott stood with his arms folded and
feasted his eyes on the unattainable prize three
miles distant. It was insane. Down there was the
Earth's most valuable resource. Used properly, it
would set the people of Earth free from the grip of
the space nations. Instead of saving up a lifetime to
be allowed to emigrate in old age, as a grudging
concession from the established powers of the
former colony worlds, young men and women
could head out into space instead. They could set
up an empire of Earth in space that was new, not a
superannuated copy of Earth that was old.

But the College had the monopoly on transference,
and the College had Morbern's Code, and
the College would never allow what Scott and his
friends had in mind. Well, that would change.

The taxi announced that clearance had been
given, subject to the visitors checking in with
Security upon arrival, and began to move
again.

'Stay by me when we arrive,' Scott said. 'I'll
escort you to Security, then to the place where
you'll be given your first assignment.'

The College was a severe disappointment to Jontan,
who had been hoping to see the transference hall,
or at least a Field Op. It wasn't grown like an
ecopolis, so there was a strange oldy-worldy feel to
walking down corridors that were straight and
smooth and not very interesting, but otherwise
there was nothing new. After Security they reached
the offices of the Appalachian consulate, which
could have been anywhere on Earth. Then, instead
of showing them to their quarters, Scott whisked
them away and stopped halfway down a corridor,
next to a maintenance access hatch. He spoke a
code word and it opened.

'Follow me,' he said, and ducked inside. Sarai
went next and Jontan followed, shutting the hatch
behind him at Scott's command.

They entered the maintenance tunnel, which for
a while ran parallel with the main corridor they had
just exited, then veered to the left. It was narrow
and the roof was low, and they had to walk in a
crouched single file. The lights were spaced at wide
intervals along the ceiling. Jontan, bringing up the
rear, admired the way light would flare around
Sarai's silhouette in front of him, gradually revealing
all of her, then vanish again as they moved on
and his own body blocked the light out.