Like the men in the trenches in my dream, they were frightened.
I squeezed Vanu’A’s arm and backed up against the wall. She must have sensed what I did, but had evidently ignored it in light of our goal. I, on the other hand, had more on my mind than simply seizing the Library. If the crew of the Procyon was on our side, they would be an invaluable weapon. Should we succeed, and the Librarian convince Tofan Res of his errors, and should Tofan Res somehow be able to reverse the damage, we would still have to contend with Farren and Lobok.
Except that “we” would not. Regardless of whether we averted the timeline disaster, Res Tofan still wanted to revolt against the Nuum—and he still wanted me to kill Farren in order that he might be in charge when the Returners came to Earth.
I was immune to Vanu’A’s telepathy, but no one else was. How could I defeat an army when its general could predict every move my followers would make before they could even make it? And since I was the only person whom Vanu’A could not read, that meant there was a target on my back…
Chapter 41
Exfiltration
Using the advantage of total stealth, I was able to scan the minds of those we passed with an unaccustomed strength and clarity. People who believe they are alone put less effort into their mental shields than otherwise, although they never let them down completely. I was unable to “read” minds as I supposed Vanu’A was capable to doing, but their outermost impressions and states of mind were quite plain.
What I had first taken for fear, I now saw, was more a general apprehension, peppered with a good deal of resentment, from the Thoran crew members. I felt no hostility; however, which said to me that Lobok had managed to conceal our absence with a plausible excuse.
Oddly, we saw no Nuum personnel, unlike when I had previously been aboard. I thought about how Maire had tried to stock the officer ranks with men and women she could personally trust; as it was highly likely that none of the officers was Thoran, I quickly grasped the pattern. Maire’s allies had been relieved of their duties and confined to quarters. The Thorans, seen as little threat by their erstwhile masters, had been removed from any positions of responsibility while nonetheless being left at liberty. Someone had to help run the ship, after all.
This meant that Lobok’s picked men would be concentrated in the command center with him. If we ran into trouble there, we could not count on any aid; all hands would be raised against us.
It also meant, however, that if we could rouse the crew, the rest of the ship would belong to us.
Due to the depleted roster, we experienced no difficulty avoiding detection until we reached the doorway that marked our destination. A sentry stood outside, bearing the requisite heavy sidearm. I could walk right up to him and slam his head into the wall, but what good would it do?
We loitered a few yards away while considering our options.
“There is a palm lock. Can you encourage the guard to open the door?” I was as interested in her answer for its own sake as much as it might present a solution.
“No. He doesn’t have the clearance to open it.”
“Clever,” I said bitterly. “I have to give Lobok credit for that. He is not stupid. He distrusts his own guards.” But the unspoken answer to my unasked question was yes, Vanu’A could control people’s actions. My distrust rose proportionally to my assessment of her talents. Meanwhile, I tried to think laterally; if Mohammed could not go to the mountain… “Can you get someone inside to come out?”
“I tried that. The command center is shielded. Even I can’t get through. That’s why they need the palm lock.”
“For which he lacks the proper clearance. The only people who have it are probably Lobok and his senior officers.”
Vanu’A blinked and looked at me. “And what was your rank, again?”
I only took time to slap myself mentally before I walked up to the unsuspecting sentry and slammed his head into the wall. Grabbing his gun as he fell, I motioned Vanu’A to join me before I opened the door with my palm print, which Lobok had never removed from the system, apparently not quite as clever as he thought he was.
There was the danger that, in the seconds between the door sliding open and Vanu’A hiding that fact from everyone, somebody would notice its movement and raise an alarm. That was why I had the gun. If worse came to worst, she could drop her mental veil and I could force everyone back while I snatched the Library and we ran like hell. Although, if I’m the only one with a gun, why not just take over the ship right now? I was about to tell Vanu’A my simple yet brilliant scheme when I noticed at the very last moment that every man and woman in the command center was armed.
They were not carrying firearms; even Lobok’s paranoia did not extend so far, but each of them was carrying the Nuum fighting-stick that I had once owned myself, that could be used as a stave or a staff or even a sword. I had a rifle, but I could only shoot in one direction at a time, and a roomful of Nuum armed with their native weapon would be a highly dangerous place.
Not only that, but the bridge was far more crowded than the corridors outside. It was laid out in concentric rings of consoles and workstations, and the aisles between them boasted uniformed men and women moving in a seemingly random but highly efficient fashion. We would have to cross two of those aisles, much like crossing a busy London street, to reach the central station where Lobok had once received Maire and me—and where he now sat, intently watching a series of screens on the wall and hardly paying any attention to the small silvery metal ball settled innocuously in a tray by his side.
As it happened, no one did notice the door’s movement, and we slipped inside without incident. At that moment, it seemed to me the safest thing to do simply to remain where we were, in the small alcove formed by the necessity of access—but we could not stay. If for any reason someone needed to leave the room, we would have nowhere to go.
Vanu’A did not seem to share my love of temporary security. “Follow,” she ordered, and moved off, leaving me no choice. Magically, as she approached the first crossing, two approaching officers each stopped, looked down, and stooped to pick up something they believed they had dropped on the floor. I contorted myself to avoid contact and managed to clear their path with a second to spare.
We traversed the second danger zone having to avoid only one woman, who halted long enough to scratch an itching shoulder. By the time she had self-consciously collected herself, we were standing next to Lobok.
I circled around him until I stood next to the Library, then gave Vanu’A a questioning look. She nodded, and I picked up the sphere, despite myself a bit taken aback when I saw Lobok apparently pick it up and examine it minutely.
Returning to Vanu’A, I took her hand and we turned to make our way back. Again, any person who might have interfered found himself momentarily diverted by seemingly innocent accidents or a supposed hail from another part of the room. Vanu’A stepped into the door alcove and I was right behind her when a monitor operator stood up without warning right next to me. I flinched, but I was still holding Vanu’A’s hand and I jerked her. She lost her balance, hitting her head on a wall outcropping.
And all hell broke loose.
Lobok jumped out of his chair, roaring at the sudden disappearance of the Library from his fingers. All eyes jumped to him, and then to us as Vanu’A’s veil faded and we were visible to all.
“Keryl Clee!” Lobok shouted, hoarsely.
Whispers of “The Ghost!” whipped around the room, but then their training took over and the crew scrambled to draw their fighting-sticks—only to freeze in mid-motion when they saw my own weapon covering them.
“Anyone moves, and I will fire,” I warned, waving the gun slowly from side to side. No one dared defy me. Even if they managed to take me down, I had only to get off one shot and the bolt could ricochet and endanger everyone in the room.
Vanu’A was weaving back and forth, but I thought she could walk, so I released her long enough to place my palm on the door. As it s
lid open, I urged her through, following slowly, gun poised. The instant the door shut again, I backed away and fired at the spot where I had operated the palm lock to get in; whether it would do any good I knew not, but it might at least slow down pursuit—at the very least it would if they heard the impact from the other side.
There was no one in the corridor, but that could not last. I grasped Vanu’A’s arm.
“Can you walk?”
She nodded, but her eyes were still unfocused. “I think so. But—my head hurts. It’s hard to read anything.”
I tried to hustle her along, watching for the crewmen whom I assumed had to be coming. The telepathic alarms were already sounding, our presumed location broadcast. From what I remembered of the ship, their presumptions were dangerously correct. And my assumption was swiftly proven true.
I felt them coming around a corner before I saw them. I knew they could not sense me, but for all I knew Vanu’A’s shields were completely collapsed and she was broadcasting for the entire ship to hear. I pulled her into a cabin which was fortuitously empty and waited inside the door.
It opened and the crewman and I stood at arm’s-length covering each other.
“Admiral Clee!”
He was a Thoran. He holstered his gun and held up his empty hand. There was no time to think. I nodded for him to come inside and let the door shut behind him.
He looked from me to Vanu’A, and back to me. “Admiral, we were told you were on a secret mission! We didn’t know you were back!”
“Nor am I,” I said. “I need you go outside and tell anyone you run into you missed us. Tell them we must have run in the other direction.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, nodding eagerly. “But—are you coming back? The captain—he’s locked up most of the officers, sir, and barred any Thorans from the bridge. Something’s going on, sir.”
“I know. Once we are clear, let the other Thorans know that her ladyship and I will return soon, and when we do, we will need every man among you.”
“Yes, sir!” With a crisp salute, he whipped out the door. I could hear the echoes of a terse telepathic conversation outside, then silence.
Vanu’A took a deep breath. “I’m feeling better. My head hurts, but I can think clearly. I can get us back to the lab and the pick-up point, but we’d better hurry.”
“Not yet,” I said. I took the sphere out of my pocket.
“Keryl, we don’t have much time!”
“We have time for this. It does us no good to go back empty-handed. Librarian?”
For a heart-stopping moment, there was no response, then a flicker of holographic light.
“I have had occasion in the past, Keryl, to remark upon your unnecessary flair for the dramatic.” The Librarian’s words were stern, but he smiled as he said it.
Chapter 42
The Mechanics of Space and Time
Maire was throwing her arms around me almost before I fully materialized.
“I was getting worried! Tofan Res said you only had a few minutes left.”
“What happened?” the doctor demanded.
I took a few moments simply to return Maire’s ardor, reveling in the feeling of my beloved wife in my arms. I refused to succumb to Tofan Res’s impatience. Let the galaxy collapse, so long as I never had to leave this moment.
“Are you hurt?”
It was only then that I realized he had not been talking to me, but to Vanu’A. I glanced over to see that her forehead was already starting to color.
“I’m all right,” she assured him softly. “I had an accident, but Keryl managed to get us out.”
Maire pulled back. “An accident? What is she talking about?”
In a few sentences, I relayed the story of Vanu’A’s injury and the stand-off with the Procyon’s officers. “After the crewman led the pursuit away, Vanu’A was recovered enough to hide us until we got back to the rendezvous point.”
“So you have it, then?” the doctor interrupted. “Did they manage to repair it?”
I held out the sphere. “Librarian?”
The Librarian manifested himself in what seemed to me a decidedly peeved manner, and although his tone was similar to that with which he had greeted me earlier, he was no longer smiling.
“I would thank you to accord the proper amount of respect, sir. I am not an ‘it.’“
“The subject is time travel, Librarian. Please arrange to download all data collected during your time jumps.”
The Librarian turned to me, his eyebrows crinkling. “Is this man a friend of yours, Keryl?”
If I said “no,” Tofan Res would get nothing out of the Librarian if he persisted for another 300 years. On the other hand, if I said “yes,” I would receive a withering eye roll followed sometime this evening by a lengthy lecture on the quality of my relationships. In the best spirit of the rhetorical tradition that we both symbolized, I contrived to respond to his question without answering it at all.
“This is Dr. Res. Please answer his questions.”
The Librarian regarded me archly. “All of them?”
I hesitated, but could think of no good reason to say no. “He knows who I am.”
The Librarian settled his gaze back on Tofan Res. “In that event, doctor, you may wish to sit down—as well as to narrow your search parameters.”
It came to me in a sudden flash of insight that if I allowed Tofan Res to attack the problem his way, we would run out of time before he solved it—because he refused to ask the right questions. I held up the branch library.
“Do you have a universal input socket?”
Tofan Res blew out an exasperated breath. “Of course! Of course you’re right. Sometimes the simplest methods are the best.”
The Librarian winked at me.
I handed Tofan Res the library—not without trepidation—and he placed it in a shallow indentation set into a work table. The Librarian’s image froze for a perceptible period, almost a full second, and then he said:
“Dr. Res, I have more than once pointed out to Keryl that his flair for spontaneous activity can lead to unnecessary chaos, and on occasion, destruction. I am compelled to admit, however, that on that score, you have most decidedly surpassed him.”
After the Librarian had at long last been reunited with the main Library, I was unsure which left me more astounded: the depth of the Library’s knowledge of chronological science (“Really, Keryl, do you think this is the first time mankind has invented time travel?”), or the utter change in Dr. Res’s attitude when confronted by the Librarian with the consequences of his experiments. I was aware, of course, of the almost religious faith men had in the Library’s infallibility and honesty, but while Tofan Res was stunned at the Librarian’s analysis and confirmation that my protestations were absolutely warranted, he never doubted that he was hearing the truth. Once he had comprehended the Librarian’s findings, his attitude toward his work instantly reversed course, and nothing was to be done until he had found a way to remediate the damage he had caused.
This alteration was all the more remarkable when one considered that not only had his experimental theses and the research to which he had devoted his life, been completely obliterated, but his plan to wrest control of the Earth from the Nuum was smashed as well. Without his army of historical soldiers, he could not hope to overwhelm the entrenched strength of the Council of Nobles and their servants, even aided by the Procyon—at least, not in the time remaining to him before the Returners arrived. In fact, from the moment he admitted his time travel experiments were too dangerous to continue, he forebore any mention of his prior plans. I, for my part, thought that leaving them lying forgotten in the dustbin of lost causes was for the best, and for once, kept my mouth shut.
On the heels of these developments, the fact that his time machine was the same apparatus as he had used to send Vanu’A and me to the Procyon barely merited comment.
“Your Professor Einstein had a glimmering of the truth,” the Librarian explained. “He th
eorized that space and time were two facets of the same concept, like opposite sides of a coin. It would be more accurate to say that time and space are like two hands, working together but always anchored to opposite sides of the body.”
Well, that certainly cleared things up.
More importantly, working with the data the Librarian brought him, Dr. Res was now fairly confident he could undo the damage he had done to the timeline!
“Just as you and Vanu’A carried traces of the subatomic particles that accompanied your matter transmission—” this was the first I knew of that, but I let it go—”each time traveler carries with him minute traces of, well, call them sub-chronologic particles,” he told us over our evening meal several days later. I had thought that he would be disinclined to take any breaks for such mundane considerations as food and sleep, but the Librarian had insisted, and to Tofan Res, his word was law. He greeted the doctor’s new nomenclature with a patented eye roll, but I believe I was the only one who noticed.
“You, Keryl, for example, are positively drenched in sub-chronologic particles, because you’ve traveled through time more than once. So is Vanu’A. So am I, for that matter. But every one of the soldiers I retrieved from the past would also show a measurable level—if one bothered to look for it.”
“So you’re saying you may be able to lock onto these particles from here?” Maire asked. “They won’t have faded away like the sub-atomic particles involved in matter transmission?”
“No. Fortunately, sub-chronologic particles seem to have a much longer half-life than their space-based counterparts. That’s why I was able to use Keryl and the Librarian as a basis for my tests. And the Librarian’s sensor logs from his trips have been fascinating.”
“I regret that my sensors were not designed for chronologic research, but accompanying Keryl to the 20th century was not part of my original programming.”
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