“That’s everyone’s favorite,” Rudo answered finally in Shona, and a note of doubt had entered her voice. Rudo’s lips twisted as if fighting for the courage to say something to master the situation.
“Who’s he?” she asked with a quick wave of the muzzle towards Belisarius.
“Someone with whom you enter into a business partnership in my time.”
“You trust him?”
“No. He’s too slippery.”
“Funny that you’d take him into the past.”
“Your choice, not mine,” Iekanjika said flatly.
“Do you have a ma’am to finish that, corporal?”
Iekanjika stared at the young captain until Rudo’s glare softened.
“I’m a full colonel in my time,” Iekanjika said, “so I’m not sure how to address you. This isn’t exactly in the manual.”
Rudo regarded her uncertainly, before turning her gaze on the Homo quantus.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“Belisarius Arjona.”
“Anglo-Spanish.”
“Yes.”
“So we at least make contact with the Banks in the future,” Rudo said.
“You believe me?” Iekanjika said.
“Because of the name? Or the song?” Rudo said. “No, neither of those things.”
“What tipped it?” Iekanjika asked.
“Your Shona. It’s too good, better than the Shona of anyone in the Force, probably better than anyone in the whole Sub-Saharan Union. You sound like you’ve been speaking it for years. And your French is strangely accented, like you learned it as an afterthought.”
“You didn’t warn me to watch my French when you sent me back in time.”
“That might have been on purpose,” Rudo said.
The hackles rose on Iekanjika’s neck as lines of logic, deception and causality fell into place. Lieutenant-General Rudo had omitted this detail on purpose.
“What happened to my marriage to Okonkwo and Zivai?” Rudo asked.
“You expect me to answer that?” Iekanjika said.
Rudo lowered her pistol and laid it carefully on the table, but still within easy reach. She exhaled noisily.
“So we figure out how to travel through time,” Rudo said, “while I’m still alive.”
Iekanjika kept her face studiously neutral. It would be too much to let the bitterness out, to tell young Rudo that there was no ‘we’ in this, that Arjona had stolen the time gates and he’d figured out how to use them, and that perhaps he and Mejía were the only people who ever could. Rudo frowned.
“You came through the time gates, didn’t you?” she asked. “Did you just emerge onto the ice in the middle of our security perimeter, or have you been here since before we set it up?”
“An hour ago,” Iekanjika said. “You kept some passwords and security channel frequencies all these years, no doubt for this reason. We used them to mask our arrival.”
Rudo stared for a long time, considering perhaps how she would do such a thing, how this might or might not be a grandfather paradox.
“Why are you here? This is dangerous,” Rudo asked finally in French.
Although neither of them enjoyed using the French of the hegemonic patron nation, its complex verb tenses and modes made speaking about time easier, in a way that, even forty years later, Shona had not matched.
This era was not just the military and scientific birth of the Sub-Saharan Union. The forty years in the wilderness had also midwived a linguistic renaissance and the Union’s national creation story. That in Iekanjika’s time Shona had not completed its growth any more than the Union had achieved its military independence meant only that the creation story had not yet run its course.
Iekanjika now straddled both beginning and middle. She couldn’t escape the feeling that her mission here would decide whether the story became a true national myth told by her descendants or a cautionary tale told by others over Union corpses.
“We need core samples of the crustal ice,” Iekanjika said, “going back as far as we can.”
“Just like that?” Rudo said, her French sarcastic. Juste de même? “Carting tons of ice samples back through the security perimeter?”
Iekanjika wasn’t used to a Rudo this... expressive. Anger flowed just beneath the surface of Captain Rudo’s facade, over a palpable need to prove herself. But mixed into Rudo’s manner was also a trembling confidence—uncertain and chrysalis-wet. This was dangerous, not just for the Union, but for Rudo. The Rudo of this era possessed a fragility Iekanjika hadn’t known. This visit from her poised and commanding future wife could cement Rudo’s confidence and faith in herself and the future, or weaken it.
No. Iekanjika knew Lieutenant-General Rudo. Whatever doubts she’d had about herself and her place in the world were long conquered and buried. Or were, until she’d had to tell Iekanjika her secret. Iekanjika leaned forward.
“Kudzanai,” she said softly, “in the future you need this. I can’t tell you why, but in the future, it could cement Union independence. We decided to gamble me on this. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Are you gambling him too?” Rudo asked. “What Anglo-Spanish Bank have we gotten into bed with?”
“Arjona is a scientific consultant, a kind of expert on wormholes.”
Rudo’s eyes bored into her. “He’s more than that. What are you holding back?”
“Everything!” Iekanjika said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “This is no controlled message being sent to the past, vetted by a dozen logicians! I’m trying not to burst causality with a misspoken word.”
Rudo flinched from the outburst, and Iekanjika was ashamed. This was her future wife’s first impression of her and she was losing control of herself. The captain was quiet for a time, eyes on the scatter of data-pads.
“I can’t get you to the core samples we’ve already taken,” Rudo said. “They’re with the research teams.”
“Can we steal them?” Iekanjika said. “They’re not a state secret under guard.”
Rudo stared at her as if puzzling at a child. “How naive are you? How did you get picked as my wife?”
“I don’t know anymore why you wanted me as a wife,” Iekanjika said, frustration pulling the words out of her before she could stop them.
After a slow, awkward start to her career as an officer, Iekanjika had been promoted quickly to captain and then to major. Then had come the offer of a position on Rudo’s staff and the baffling invitation to join the most powerful political marriage in the Expeditionary Force. She’d been a new major at the time, and there was no shortage of choice among the young colonels commanding warships who might have expected to be invited into Rudo’s marriage. Iekanjika had been forced to interpret Rudo’s marriage proposal as a sign of an excellence she didn’t see in herself. Over the years, she proved to herself that she deserved what she’d been given, even if she didn’t believe it.
But the last few days had undermined all the proving she’d done over the years, congealing new suspicions of why Rudo had taken her as a spouse. None of them knew what would really happen if they precipitated a time travel paradox. No one wanted to risk it. And now Iekanjika knew that from the time she was a captain, Rudo had carried memories of a young colonel visiting her in the past, telling her that she was to be one of her spouses. Regardless of Iekanjika’s competence or other qualities, this information alone would force any careful commander to take Iekanjika as a wife, even if it created one of those odd bits of cyclic causality, where cause triggered effect and effect triggered cause.
As difficult as it might be for Captain Rudo to accept, the information about her future came from nowhere. And as painful as it might be for Iekanjika, her marriage and career similarly came from nowhere. Maybe Iekanjika was married to Rudo because she was married to Rudo. Maybe Iekanjika was a colonel in her present because she’d been a colonel in her past. Who she was, what she offered as a spouse or as an officer, might be irrelevant. Captain Rudo’s
caustic words breathed life into all those maybes.
“I’m trying to find a solution, Kudzanai,” Iekanjika said with a touch of heat. “That’s what colonels do.”
Rudo’s eyes narrowed at the rebuke.
“I don’t know what things are like when you come from, colonel, but here,” she said, tapping the table, “everything is secure. We arrested all the Political Commissars the Congregate assigned to the Force. We think we’ve caught all the sleeper agents the Congregate hid in our crews, but now political factions in the Fleet are positioning for control. Everyone is watching everyone else.”
“I thought Takatafare had taken command of the Force after Nandoro died,” Iekanjika said.
“She did, but many officers remain loyal to Brigadier Iekanjika. Takatafare doesn’t know if she can trust them. You don’t know all this?”
“I know dates. I know promotions and assignments, matters of record.”
“Odd that my future self didn’t give you a fuller briefing,” Rudo said.
That stung. She’d been given maps, codes, layouts, schedules, personnel records and shift rotations. She and Lieutenant-General Rudo had been focusing on moving through the past without being noticed, as if making contact with young Rudo was all she needed to do. Why hadn’t she gotten a better briefing? Knowledge of the past didn’t create paradoxes. Did Lieutenant-General Rudo really not trust her?
“We need core samples,” Iekanjika said. “What do you think we should do?”
Rudo examined her for a long time, as if trying to establish dominance. If Iekanjika had been facing Lieutenant-General Rudo with this tension, this might have been an uncomfortable few moments. But she found nothing intimidating in this captain promoted before her time, despite the shadow of the general who waited for the both of them. Rudo was unproven, to herself and to everyone else; a young officer, like Iekanjika, pulled into a political marriage early. Rudo looked away.
“This will take a lot of preparation,” the captain said. “Days. Hopefully not weeks. Do either of you have identification or any place to stay or belong?”
“We came to you for that,” Iekanjika said.
“Space on the surface is tight. A lot of crews have come down on different projects,” Rudo said, “and I have no way to issue security IDs. That’s done through Takatafare’s MPs.”
“That’s where I think your future self can help,” Iekanjika said. She slid a silicate data wafer across the table. “As an auditor, you had access to records of expired security codes. This wafer contains the codes for the main security network for this week. You kept them all these years.”
Rudo’s eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t take the wafer.
“Breaking into a network is a capital offense,” she said.
“I know.”
“It’s a good sting. You say the wafer contains the passcodes so when I try them, I’m detected, arrested and executed.”
“No sting,” Iekanjika said. “If some other faction wanted to remove you, couldn’t they already have done that with your real name?”
“Let Iekanjika do it,” Arjona said in perfectly-accented African French. “If it doesn’t work, you arrest both of us and you become the hero who caught two spies trying to break into the network. If it does work, we get temporary identities attached to your unit.”
Captain Rudo considered Arjona. “Cunning,” she said.
“Is he right?” Iekanjika asked.
“If you are really from the future, and I give you identities for a few days, then that gives me two operatives I can use to solve a problem.”
“What?” Iekanjika said.
“I’ll give you the identities,” Rudo said. “For twenty-four hours.”
Arjona’s suit crinkled as he stiffened.
“I’ll give you another twenty-four hours when I hear that a particular man is dead.”
“Are you insane?” Arjona said. “We have to avoid modifying the past at all costs. Any changes here could affect your future, not just ours.”
“Do you know a Lieutenant Zesiro Nabwire in the future?” Rudo asked her.
The captain’s hands had steadied. Her face showed a new sense of shaky determination.
“I guess not,” Rudo said, looking then to Arjona. “I suppose he’s not that important to history then, or that he really did die here, at your hand.”
“You can’t take that ris—” Arjona began.
“I’m not an assassin,” Iekanjika said, cutting him off.
“You’re a soldier, colonel,” Rudo said. “We do our duty.”
“This is an extrajudicial killing. If Nabwire deserves justice, give him to Command or MilSec.”
“You know how intelligence and counter-intelligence work, don’t you?” Rudo said. “The proof will be circumstantial, deniable enough to survive a court martial and do political damage to everyone.”
“Hit him yourself,” Iekanjika said.
Captain Rudo’s expression wavered. Then she leaned forward.
“I have you for twenty-four hours. He’ll be on the north comms trunk later today with his crew. Kill him and you get another twenty-four hours.”
“Do you not realize how important it is to get those samples?” Iekanjika said, rising from her hard seat. “This is the Union’s freedom.”
“So is this,” Rudo hissed, glaring up at Iekanjika. Steely resolve showed beneath Rudo’s doubts. “Your mother, if that’s true, is bed-ridden right now. It’s been a bad pregnancy from the rumors I hear. She’s gracefully accepted Takatafare’s command of the Force, but her followers haven’t. Nabwire is organizing false charges that will fall on people who, among others, happen to be my wife and my husband.”
“Why aren’t your wife and husband handling this?” Iekanjika said. “They’re both senior to you. Prove that the charges are false.”
“This isn’t their forte. And it will take months to sort out the truth and clear ourselves. The charges are about trust. If Takatafare can’t trust us, even for a while, the damage is done.”
“There has to be another way,” Iekanjika said.
“There isn’t a more effective way,” Rudo said, “and this is the way I’m telling you to do it.”
Arjona put his hand on Iekanjika’s shoulder.
“You aren’t seriously considering this, are you?” he asked.
“Is my mother involved?” Iekanjika asked.
“Does it matter?” Rudo asked with an edge of contempt.
“Yes.”
“For what it’s worth,” Rudo said, “I don’t think so. But her followers aren’t happy Takatafare got command of the Force.”
“You’re not an assassin, colonel,” Arjona said.
“Do you see another way?” Iekanjika asked.
Arjona turned her to face him. He stared straight back at her.
“We do this our way,” he said, “with our resources. We’re not killers.”
Iekanjika shook off his arm and faced Rudo.
“Twenty-four hours,” Iekanjika said, “and Nabwire.”
Rudo holstered her sidearm and moved to a shelf overflowing with old data-pads. She handed one to Iekanjika. Arjona turned his back on the both of them.
“Enter your code, colonel,” Rudo said to her.
Iekanjika grabbed the pad. It was old, to her. She’d been tutored on some old holographic interface pads as a very young child, but even then, Force engineers had needed all obsolete equipment for parts or recycling, so very few old things survived the decades. She connected the pad to the main base network and logged in with an administrative passcode. She navigated to personnel systems, causing holographic orange authentication challenges to blink. The display greened when she entered the pass-code Lieutenant-General Rudo had given her.
“I really didn’t believe it,” Rudo said, her eyes wide.
Iekanjika turned the pad back to the captain.
“Get us a couple of serviceable identities,” Iekanjika said tersely.
Rudo remained
frozen, eyes on the data-pad. This break-in, more than anything else, seemed to have convinced her. She was in deep now, with no way out, whether she was facing time travelers or a sting. She sat, but didn’t touch the pad.
Iekanjika sat and crossed her arms, matching Rudo’s stare until the captain looked away. Little of the great military commander showed in the twenty-two year old, try as she might to see the substance beneath skin become unfamiliar in its smoothness. A fire smoldered beneath Rudo’s doubts and secrets, but the burning faith with which she would carry the Expeditionary Force all the way through the Puppet Axis was absent. Iekanjika had come back in time, trusting that she’d be led by Rudo, and instead she got this. And Nabwire.
She ought to have prepared herself better. Lieutenant-General Rudo must have known that her past self was too fragile a fulcrum upon which to lay the hopes of their war effort. But what if the Lieutenant-General was less concerned with the war than avoiding paradoxes? The Rudo of the future knew she had to send Iekanjika back. It was possible that Rudo remembered Iekanjika failing and perhaps dying in the past and was just making sure that past observations were preserved. Maybe Iekanjika and Nabwire shared sacrificial roles.
She leaned forward, until Rudo met her eyes over the table.
“Kudzanai, get started before we get arrested for spending too much time in your office,” she said finally. “Get us bunks and places to be. Then, start to get us the authorizations for surface work to get new samples.”
Rudo inhaled deeply, and set to work. It took her ten minutes to create personnel files and the associated records for two enlisted crew—a corporal and a private, transferred to the surface base from the Juba, one of the cruisers on distant sentry duty. She got them bunks in Barracks D, which had no crew from the Juba, and assigned them to external labor duties with the auditing team. The familiar administrative work seemed to fortify the captain.
“Stay out of everyone’s way,” Rudo said, and handed Iekanjika a data wafer. “Get out of the barracks during the day. I’ll keep my eye on MilSec notices for Nabwire. When I see that, I’ll extend your passes. It will take a couple of days for me to frame the right kind of audit to requisition the drilling equipment you’ll need.”
The Quantum Garden Page 13
