Crucible of Time

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Ik clacked his mouth shut and sat back, his fingers twitching in obvious satisfaction.

  Very good news, Julie thought.

  And with that, Cromus dismissed the meeting, and told the three that they were free to retire to their quarters.

  ***

  “They’ve given us a suite of private rooms,” Antares said, leading them into the residential section. “They promised we can be undisturbed for as long as you need to rest.” She made a husky sound that might have been rueful laughter. “Or at least until the next urgent meeting. Which I have a feeling will be first thing in the morning.”

  Julie was grateful for the privacy. But she was also thinking ahead. “Once we rest up, we’ll want to talk to the translator. Not just to these people.” She glanced at Ik. “And where is Rings?”

  “Hrrm, yes,” Ik mumbled, looking tired enough to drop.

  Antares didn’t answer until they were ensconced in their suite—four sleeping rooms arranged in a circle around a sitting room—and the privacy screens were turned on. Then she said to Julie, “I don’t know if they will let you contact the translator. I couldn’t, and I tried repeatedly.”

  Julie was shocked. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. But your friend Rings-at-Need has been here to see me, and I’ve sent messages through him. I don’t think they are able to keep Rings out.”

  “But they’re keeping you here?” Julie asked.

  Antares nodded and went to sit down. “Do you see that transport window over there?” She pointed to a silver portal frame where another bedroom door might have been. “It’s locked down.” In response to Julie’s puzzled expression, she said, “It made sense at first. I was weak—injured, really—from what happened—at the end. I probably did need people watching over me, to make sure I was okay. You should eat, by the way.” A counter to the right of the portal was crowded with serving platters and decanters of drink. Napoleon whirred and parked himself near the table, apparently ready to serve if requested.

  “I will. But Antares, what aren’t you telling us? What happened to you when you returned and we did not?”

  “Hrah,” Ik said, gathering a plate of bread sticks, fruit, and cheeses. “My friend, what is wrong?”

  Antares sat still, head bowed, moistening her lips. Finally she raised her head slightly. “When the bond broke . . . when I lost you in the ghoststream, and I felt you break into the future . . .” She looked at her trembling hands and turned them over, as if she wondered who they belonged to. “I was . . .”

  “Hrrm. You were hurt, yes. But how, exactly?” Ik leaned forward, the yellow fruit in his hands forgotten.

  “It was traumatic—the separation. I don’t know what it felt like for you. But I’d linked all of my empathic senses into . . . the ghoststream.” She balled her hands together into one fist. “I used my knowing-stones to amplify them. To make that long reach . . . to find you and connect with you.”

  Julie felt paralyzed. She wanted to say Thank you, and I’m sorry. But that would be so insufficient.

  Antares rasped a sharp breath. “It is what I do—though usually not at such an extreme . . . But I was afraid that your lives might depend on it.”

  “Hrrm. Indeed they did.” Ik reached out to touch her arm. “It is the second time you’ve risked yourself to save me.”

  Antares flinched at the touch. Ik’s gaze narrowed, and he pulled his hand back.

  “I’m sorry, Ik. I gladly risked . . . both times.” Antares’ face seemed drawn into a tight mask. “But when I lost my grip, and you tore away into the future, I . . .” Her voice caught, and stopped.

  “What?” Ik asked softly.

  Antares’ eyes dilated so far they were almost totally black, just a thin sliver of her gold irises visible. “It tore something from me.”

  Julie, moved by Antares’ pain, started to reach out as Ik had.

  “I lost my power, my empathic sense. I lost it all!”

  Julie drew a sharp breath. “Antares . . . I don’t know what to say. If it helps, you’re still the same to us.” No, that was stupid. Jesus.

  “No, I’m not. Don’t you see? I can no longer reach out and touch . . . I can’t search other people’s feelings . . . can’t share, or bring others together . . .” She looked from Julie to Ik and back, her face a mask of pain. “Haven’t you noticed? Haven’t you felt it?”

  Julie’s face grew hot with embarrassment, sympathy, shame. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I have. I’m sure Ik did, too—right, Ik? But I wasn’t sure . . . well . . . I didn’t know what to think.”

  Antares opened her hands, and they were trembling. “That is why I could not greet you properly when you returned. Oh, my friends—” her voice caught “—it is like a physical wound. It is like, I imagine, being blinded.”

  Yes, Julie thought, while Antares continued, “I am a Thespi-Third female! Who am I, if I cannot do those things?” She raised her hands to her temples, and after a moment, began to shake.

  “Are they—?” Julie began, then stopped and shook her head. She started over, more softly. “Are your senses, your powers, gone completely? Or are they just—are they weakened, hurt somehow? I don’t even know what I’m asking.”

  Antares shook helplessly. “Who can say? I was in shock when I came out of the launch pod.” She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “They treated me medically—what else could they do?—but they didn’t know enough to say if I was physically injured. I overshot the present, too, by the way. I did a lesser version of what happened to you. I got flung about a week into the future. So by the time I woke up, they were already frantic about the fact that we all looked dead, with static life signs.”

  “So by the time we came along . . .”

  Antares shook her head. “I was useless. I’d tried a simple empathic joining, under medical supervision. I nearly passed out. They adjusted my medication. I tried again. That time I did pass out.”

  “Jesus,” Julie said, aloud this time. She reached out again, and this time she rested a hand lightly on Antares’ forearm. Antares tightened, but instead of pulling away, reached across with her other hand and fiercely clasped Julie’s.

  “I couldn’t talk to anyone, really. They were still looking for a physical cause for what was wrong with me, and at the same time, increasingly convinced that they—and I—had killed you two.”

  “Hrah!” Ik lurched out of his seat and paced around the food table. “Why didn’t they try harder to help you?”

  Antares opened her hands. “They didn’t know what to do, except medicate me, to help me resist the urge to even try to make empathic connections. To rest those senses, I suppose.” Antares let her head slump in a kind of nod. “I have not tried since, except in small ways. But—” She paused and shook her head. “It is painful and draining to suppress the effort. It is an affront to myself, as a Thespi woman. Can you understand?”

  Ik stopped his pacing and stood facing her. “What about your knowing-stones? Can they help, or are they damaged, too?”

  “Ik, they are silent.”

  Ik rumbled ominously.

  “They are still there. They are alive, and awake. I can sense them. But not much more.”

  “That,” said Julie, “is something the translator ought to be able to help with.”

  “The yaantel—oh yes,” Antares said, pressing her fingertips together. “But they have said, while I am in this condition, and until certain political matters are resolved—”

  “Political matters?” Julie asked.

  “—I have not been permitted to contact the yaantel.”

  “Hrah! Inexcusable nonsense!” Ik cried.

  “And yet,” Antares said, “there it is. It seems political matters are becoming important in this place.”

  “Perhaps they will find it harder to say that to all three of us,” Ik said, in a more measured tone.

  “Perhaps they will,” Antares said, and for just a moment, there was a hint of the old spark in her eyes.
r />   Chapter 36

  Lockdown

  FINE WAY TO come home, Julie thought, resting her head back in the uncomfortably large easy chair. Antares rested in a similar chair to her left. Ik was the only one whose frame seemed large enough to suit the furniture. Julie closed her eyes, breathing slowly. She was bone tired, but not sleepy. Bittersweet though the homecoming had been, she didn’t want to leave the physical company of her friends, to go lie down. After all that time in the ghoststream, she hungered for physical companionship—broken, wounded, or otherwise.

  Finally she rose and got herself some food and a glass of what she guessed was white wine, but tasted alternately astringent and sweet. After a few sips, she felt new warmth coursing through her veins. She drank a little more. Returning to her seat, she finally broke the silence. “Antares?” The Thespi turned her head. “Have you learned anything about John’s and Li-Jared’s mission? Beyond what Cromus told us?”

  Julie could see a muscle tighten in the Thespi’s throat. “Not much. But I was able to connect with a librarian—”

  “Librarian?”

  “Yes. A Logothian named Amaduse.”

  Julie shook her head in confusion.

  Antares continued, “It was at the request of the yaantel. To send a warning to John—to The Long View. As a librarian, Amaduse seems to command an impressive array of connections. He promised to find a way to get a message sent—to warn John and the others that you were in the timestream, and they should take care what they did.” Antares drummed her fingers on the arms of her chair. “I don’t know how the message system works, or if they even got it. I was told not to expect a response.”

  Julie pondered that. “So, the thing Cromus told us . . .”

  “Might have meant that they completed their mission, and will be coming back.” Antares worked her fingers in something like a shrug. “Soon, I hope.”

  And not five hundred years from now, I hope, Julie thought. She hesitated, her face growing warm. “Did your message happen to mention me by name?”

  “Uhhl, yes,” Antares said, with a whistling sound. “If it got sent the way I worded it, and if he got it . . .”

  “I imagine it would have come as quite a surprise to him to learn I was here,” Julie said, a tremble in her voice.

  Ik stirred. “I would guess, hrah, he was even more surprised to learn that you were not just here in his time, but in the timestream with me.” He paused to reflect. “Especially since they, hrrm, went out there to try to stop the timestream.” He rubbed the side of his head with two long fingers. “I do wish we had news of them.”

  Julie nodded. She doubted they would get any news tonight. What was the local time, anyway? It felt late. Her gaze wandered back to Antares, whose fatigued posture reminded Julie of what the Thespi had sacrificed to bring them here.

  “Perhaps,” Ik said, gazing at Julie with an expression that seemed to say he knew exactly what she was thinking, “it is time we all retired.”

  Antares swept her gaze over both of them, and gave a twitch of agreement. Julie couldn’t argue. She rose unsteadily, bade the others good night, and slipped self-consciously into her private room. Sleep did not come at once. But when it did, it was long and deep.

  ***

  Though she agreed with Ik’s sentiment, Antares stayed where she was after Julie and Ik retired. While she was greatly heartened by her friends’ safe return, the inner quaking simply would not cease. She desperately yearned to extend and share her emotions; she could only let them circle around inside herself, slicing a trail of pain through her heart. How could she continue to live like this? /Stones, stones, can’t you help me?/

  From the stones, there came only silence. She was certain they were still active; she could feel them quivering from time to time. She wondered if they were as traumatized as she was. She prayed that the translator could help them . . . if she was ever permitted to go to the translator.

  You should sleep. She knew perfectly well that this obsessive inward focus was helping no one, least of all herself. As a Thespi third, if she’d met someone else with this kind of self-absorption, she would have found a way to ease it—or kick it—off center stage. Certainly, she’d know how to keep it at bay.

  You cannot let this rule you. Think of the big picture. They had beaten off a Mindaru incursion up the timestream—and John’s team had miraculously shut off the timestream without killing Ik and Julie. Wasn’t that worth rejoicing over? There was a cost to her, personally, but for Shipworld and the galaxy it was hardly any price at all. One Thespi woman ruined. Out of how many trillions saved, on countless worlds, who cared about one Thespi woman?

  Well, she did. And she supposed her friends did.

  Wasn’t that enough?

  For now, it would have to be. And with that resigned thought, she followed her friends’ example and went into her room to sleep, leaving Napoleon to watch over the lounge. To her surprise, drowsiness came quickly, and after it sleep.

  And dreams, vivid and troubling . . .

  ***

  The years peeled back to her training, an arduous time, and to the cadences of the instruction, the codes of conduct . . .

  “You were born to be who you are. You are no other . . .”

  “I am Thespi-third. I am Autumn Aurora (Red Sun) Alexandrovens. I am bred, I am trained to facilitate joining. I will overcome all obstacles to joining.”

  In others. Only in others. She will have no joining. Not on Thespi, anyway . . .

  The years peeled one way and another . . . the Scalapoorie sector, and so much trouble fitting in there . . . respite in the lounge in Atrium City. So many others to observe, aliens from all over the galaxy. The human and his strange companions, the norgs. The iceline, boojum, raging like a silent, killing fire.

  Caught up like fate—to fight together. Her heart raced—she soared, she flew! She flew and he flew too! Yes, in that golden star-spanner bubble to the undersea world, world of drowning but not drowning, deep sea, deep deep deep . . . John inside her, in her mind and body, merging . . . No no no, she is not to do that! Not to do that! But she did, and she loved it, she fell in love with it, she fell in love with John, as well.

  She became a beacon of light, flashing among worlds, flashing for all to see her love of the human, John Bandicut. Human!

  Disapproval, waves of disapproval—was that Julie Stone shaking her fist?—and fell away into the darkness. She turned from the Thespi voices . . .

  I am Thespi; I will be true and honest.

  But her love for John Bandicut . . . ?

  Life so different here.

  Anger flaring . . . Who could dictate—make love for others, not for yourself?

  Different now; all different.

  Did John love her? He did. Did. Did he still love Julie? He did. Of course he did.

  And when he returned and found her again?

  Of course he would. She had sensed it in his mind always.

  No!

  No!

  Sparks in the night. Flickering silhouette of humans, joined. She cried out in pain. How could Julie appear out of nowhere and take him?

  Fight it. Fight it with your empathic senses. Fight it.

  But they are gone, burned out!

  A darkness came over her, and she lashed out at Julie Stone, physically driving her from John Bandicut. Striking her, striking and striking again! Uhhl, it felt good, to release the venom and pain. Striking! But with the violence rose a sickness, drowning her in remorse. This is not Thespi! This is jealousy!

  Fight it with your powers—turn her emotions away!

  No! Help not harm!

  Are you Thespi? No! No longer!

  She felt an unbearable pain, like fire, as her own powers flared back against her.

  She screamed.

  ***

  And screamed and screamed, until she awoke, shaking uncontrollably.

  “Lady Antares.” Napoleon glowed out of the darkness, clicking solicitously. “Lady Antares, what is t
he cause of your distress?” The doorway to her room was open. The norg must have heard her from the sitting room.

  Antares gulped for air. When she could, she made a patting gesture with her hands, trying to communicate that it was okay, she was in no danger. At that moment the jealousy from the dream slipped away and she remembered the offer of friendship she had made to Julie, just before the galactic core mission. And she remembered how she had risked her life, and her sanity, to save Ik and Julie both.

  She suddenly was aware of Ik’s silhouette in the doorway, behind Napoleon’s. He, too, must have heard her screams and come to see what was wrong. She shook her head, feeling drained and foolish.

  “Antares?” Ik asked, striding past the norg into the room. He crouched beside her now, his bony face and deep-set eyes scrutinizing her. “Are you all right?”

  Her breath caught, and she suddenly was shuddering with something that must have been much like John Bandicut’s laughter—sharp laughter at what she had been thinking, imagining. Attacking Julie? After saving her life? “Oh, Ik,” she whispered. “Yes. No! I don’t know.” She took his bony hand and held it, and imagined her flood of emotions going out to him. But that didn’t happen; the rending pain was locked inside her.

  I cannot make the feelings go away. But I am a Thespi-third. I can channel them, and not let them channel me. I am a Thespi-third female.

  She sighed wearily. “I had a distressing night vision, in my sleep. I am all right now. Go rest. I am going to do the same.”

  Ik inclined his head and stroked his temple with a long finger. Finally he touched her forehead gently with his fingertip, before rising to leave.

  Antares asked Napoleon if he would mind keeping watch over her in this room. Then she fell back asleep, this time with no dreams that she was aware of.

  ***

  When Amaduse received word of the return of the galactic core team, the first question that arose was, Have they changed the timeline? Is the present different? Would I even know? He searched his own perceptions and found nothing pointing to a change. He sampled library data, hoping that if something about the present and past had changed, he might retain enough residual memories from before the change to notice. Here again, he found nothing. But that could also mean he simply retained no memories, because they had changed along with everything else.