The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “The prince is why I sent for you,” the land warden said. “The prince feels it is time she took a consort.”

  Arne was astonished. This was social matter that concerned only peeragers. Never before had anyone bothered to mention such a thing to him, let alone consult him. “She is young, but if that is her desire—is there a problem?”

  “A possible problem,” the land warden said. “There may be serious complications, and it is well to consider them in advance and be prepared to meet them. You see—the man she has chosen is you.”

  13. ARNE (1)

  “She won’t have anyone else,” the land warden said. “She has admired you ever since she was a child, but she was too shy even to speak to you. She still is, which is why she asked me to do it.”

  “I see,” Arne said dazedly. He had the sensation of having a deep pit suddenly open under him, and his mind was scrambling frantically to find an escape. There was none.

  “She had always hoped you would be free to be her consort when she became older. She thought it wouldn’t matter that you were a one-namer—no one cared what the peer’s second daughter did. Now she is the prince, and this is certain to cause an uproar. It would have been wiser for her to wait another sike or two, but she is worried you might get yourself wived in the village and no longer be available.” The land warden added anxiously, “I hope you don’t find the idea distasteful.”

  Arne found it staggering. He had never thought of Elone Jermile in any connection at all except as the new prince. His mind continued to search desperately for a way out. He said slowly, “I know that now and then a peerager mates with a one-name server, but it isn’t even considered respectable. For the prince to do it—”

  “It will cause a commotion,” the land warden said regretfully, “but there may be a way around that. There was all that talk among the peers about giving you a second name. If they had done so, you would be a peerager yourself, now, and there wouldn’t be any problem. You weren’t even consulted—about the second name, I mean. It still could be done.”

  “No,” Arne said. “The peer was entirely right—if she gave me a second name, she would have to find another first server. A peerager couldn’t associate with one-namers as I must do.”

  “You know best about that. Maybe it will help that you have been offered a second name. After all, you are the highest one-namer in the peerdom. The prince is waiting for your answer. What do you want me to tell her?”

  Arne suddenly remembered that he had heard of a prince taking a one-namer as consort. Egarn had been consort to the Peer of Lant when she was prince. Perhaps Egarn could help him find a way out.

  The land warden hadn’t given a thought to how the one-namers would react. Arne would have to consult with the Three and other leaders. He wanted Egarn’s reaction. Perhaps if enough people objected…

  First of all, he must talk with Deline. The happiness that had seemed within his grasp had suddenly been jerked away.

  “Please give the prince my thanks for the high honor she has shown me,” he said slowly. “Both of us have important responsibilities, as she knows, and for that reason we are not free to do exactly as we like. First we must consider what would be best for Midlow. The prince should confer with the peer, and the peer’s advisors, and other peeragers whose opinion she values. I must do the same with the Three and with other one-namers.”

  “I entirely agree,” the land warden said. Then he added, with a shy smile, “Even if everyone’s reaction is favorable, don’t forget that in the end you must also confer with each other.”

  Arne left his borrowed horse at the court stables and returned to Midd Village on foot, meditating worriedly as he walked. How would Deline react? Even though peerager matings were notoriously short-lived, he couldn’t say to her, “I want you to wive me, but you will have to wait until your sister has finished with me.” That described the situation perfectly, but she would have a right to be furious with him.

  He had to think about his responsibilities. He couldn’t take the prince to his dwelling in the village. He would have to live at the court, which would disrupt both his work and his life. Midd Village was the largest—and, with its mills, by far the most important—settlement of one-namers, and Arne was accustomed to starting and ending his day by dealing with the villagers’ immediate problems and the small daily crises that arose in their lives. That would no longer be possible. He would quickly become a remote figure, unavailable for routine matters. He also would be unavailable to Egarn’s team in a crisis, and neither Deline nor anyone else could be trusted with that responsibility.

  He decided to visit the Three and then talk with Egarn. In the end, the decision would be his, but he wondered whether he really had a choice.

  Deline was waiting for him with the same joyous greeting she’d given him earlier. She sensed at once that something was wrong. “What is the matter?” she asked. “What has happened?”

  “The prince has asked me to be her consort,” he said.

  She stared at him incredulously. Then she laughed. “From the expression on your face, I thought perhaps the peer had taken your name.” She went to a window that looked out on the darkened garden. “My little sister,” she said. “I keep thinking of her as little. But she is grown, now, and I never noticed when it happened. I never paid any attention to her at all, but she managed to grow up anyway, and now she is the prince and paying no attention to me. Probably it is time she took a consort.”

  She laughed again, harshly. “My sister wants you for a consort? If you agree, where is the problem?”

  “She is a peerager, and more—she is the prince. And I am—”

  “So what does that matter to anyone except you two?”

  “The other peeragers may object.”

  Deline shrugged. “There is no reason why they should take notice at all. They never paid any attention to my consorts. A consort never lasts long anyway. If Elone Jermile’s first is a one-namer, that doesn’t mean she is going to make a habit of it, and you are an exceptional one-namer. It isn’t as though she were taking one of the mill hands.” Again she laughed harshly. “You one-namers are much too serious about these things. Imagine keeping the same mate for years and years! Why be so glum about it?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  She laughed again and turned away. At the door, she paused. “Surely you aren’t thinking of refusing! She is the prince!”

  He wanted to call her back, to tell her again that he loved her, but he could not. It would only complicate things further. He couldn’t speak to her until he had decided what to do, but first he had to find out whether he had a choice.

  He sent for the Three at once, and they did indeed take his problem seriously. Nonen, the miller, said bluntly, “Now why would you want to do a thing like that? There are much prettier girls in the village, as you would know if you bothered to look at them, and any of them would jump at the chance to wive you and turn your big, drafty house into a home for you. I’ll guarantee you won’t get much wiving from the prince.”

  “Just a moment,” Margaya said. “It isn’t that simple. It wasn’t Arne’s idea. The prince asked him. What happens if he refuses?”

  “That is what I am thinking,” old Toboz said. “We had problems enough when Deline was prince. This would be a bad time for any of us to make an enemy of her sister. The peer doesn’t have any more daughters.”

  “Peerager matings aren’t like ours,” Margaya said. “If you think you can put up with the prince for a little while, it would be best to accept.”

  “My first concern is my work,” Arne said. “There is no way I could become the prince’s consort without neglecting it.”

  “That is true,” Nonen said. “You would have to spend some time with her—live at the court, I suppose. You might have to spend quite a lot of time with her until she begins to tire of you. Deline can manage routine things, but if a real emergency came up, we would have to send to the court for you. On the other
hand, you have always traveled a lot, and we manage to get along without you then, so I think we could cope with this. There is no way you could mate with anyone without neglecting something.”

  “The closer your connections with the court, and the more highly the peer and the prince regard you, the more you can accomplish for all of us,” Margaya said. “I am sure everyone realizes that. I think you should do it.”

  In the end, they decided it would be a considerable advantage to one-namers everywhere, even those in other peerdoms, if the first server were the prince’s consort. They also were in agreement that Arne shouldn’t accept for that reason. “If you want to do it, then do it,” Nonen said. “If you don’t want to, then don’t.”

  But they didn’t really believe that. They knew he had no choice.

  As soon as they left, Arne left also, through his garden, and strode off into the dark forest. The cool night air helped him to shrug off his exhaustion. He wanted Egarn’s advice at once; he also wanted to know how Egarn’s work was going, and he had a project of his own to discuss.

  Finding the ruins by night was an ordeal, and when he finally arrived, it was almost impossible to locate a checkpoint. The identification procedure was equally difficult. Even though Arne’s voice was known to all of the guards, his own orders permitted no exceptions. He had to crawl into a tiny shelter so a sentry could light the stub of candle and visually identify him.

  Then came the ordeal of creeping through the totally black tunnel, followed by the torturous descent. Even in dim light the stairway seemed impossibly long; in darkness, it went on forever. At the bottom checkpoints, flashes of light were used to identify him.

  When finally he reached Egarn’s workroom, he turned aside to visit the kitchen and storeroom where a refugee one-namers named Fornzt ruled with absolute authority. Fornzt was from Slorn, the peerdom Roszt and Kaynor came from, and he served as Egarn’s housekeeper. He had managed a boarding common in Slorn, no doubt with the same firmness he used now. He supervised the supplies and tried to keep on hand anything that might be needed. He prepared the meals and busily concerned himself with everyone’s health and happiness. Rain water that dripped down through the ruins was hoarded for baths. He kept track of the weather outside, saw that the sentries were properly dressed for it, and gave them hot food in cold weather and cold food when the weather was warm. He took Egarn’s meals to him and, if the old man was too preoccupied to eat, Fornzt coaxed them into him while he worked.

  He had already gone to bed—he got up early to begin the day’s cooking—but he had a pot of stew simmering on his charcoal burner for those who came off duty late. When Arne called to him, he awoke instantly and came waddling out with a grin on his face. He was a short, tubby, round-faced man, as unlike Roszt and Kaynor as could be imagined. He had been emaciated from the ordeal of his escape over the mountains when Arne first met him, but regular meals cooked by himself agreed with him. He was unlike the lank, intense scouts in another way—he saw the bright side of everything. Egarn’s helpers tended to be grimly serious men, and Arne found Fornzt’s touches of humor a welcome relief in the gloomy depths of the ruins.

  Because it had been so long since Arne’s last visit, they went together to inspect the stocks of food and other supplies, and Arne made notes of shortages. Two of the sentries had worn out their shoes in their escape from the Peer of Lant’s armies. It was true they did little walking now, but the steel mesh of the stairway was painful for them to negotiate. Arne promised new shoes and also noted the need for more blankets. The cold dampness of the underground rooms was distressing to the older men.

  Arne next described a problem he had long been meditating. From the beginning, he’d had a nagging concern about what might happen if all else failed—if the massive armies of Lant arrived sooner than anyone wanted to believe and somehow discovered what the ruins concealed. Despite the optimism engendered by the sudden cooperation of the ten peers, Arne’s common sense told him that if war came soon, his sketchy little army would quickly be overwhelmed in spite of Egarn’s weapon. Arne could envision the Lantiff swarming over the ruins, torturing a sentry until he talked, and then pouring down the long stairway in a cascade of military might. Those who lived and worked underground had an escape route, of course. The guards should be able to hold off the Lantiff with Egarn’s weapon long enough for everyone to get away, but Arne wanted more than this. If they were forced to flee, Egarn’s great project would be ruined. There was no way he could take his machines with him. He seemed more aged and enfeebled each time Arne saw him, and even if a secure place could be found, with sufficient food and other supplies for him to start over, Arne doubted that Egarn had the strength and will to do it.

  Fornzt had more free time than anyone else on Egarn’s team, and he used it to explore the ruins. He found passageways where none were thought to exist, he tunneled through collapsed rooms, he made astonishing discoveries of materials that would have been valuable salvage if Egarn hadn’t already scrounged everything he needed.

  “Egarn should have a hidden workroom with a secret escape route to it and a reserve supply of food and water,” Arne told him. “He should duplicate all of his machines there. Then his project wouldn’t have to fail if the Lantiff captured this place. He could escape to the secret room with Inskel, Roszt, Kaynor, and a few others and finish his plan. I want you to work on this yourself and tell no one. Only Egarn and Inskel should know about it.”

  Fornzt nodded excitedly. “Of course. I’ve thought about it myself. If everything else fails, Egarn should have some place to go. I’ll start work right away.”

  “Remember—except for Egarn and Inskel, you aren’t to say anything about this to anyone, not even under torture.”

  “I’ve had a bit of that,” Fornzt said. He smiled as though it were a pleasant recollection, but Arne knew his satisfaction came from having escaped. Now he had the privilege of helping Egarn strike back at the Peer of Lant. He didn’t understand what form the blow was to take, but it gave him enormous satisfaction to have a part in it.

  Arne left him and went to see Egarn.

  In the main workroom, an audience was seated before the cabinet and its enormous len: Egarn; Wiltzon the schooler; the scouts Roszt and Kaynor; and Garzot, one of the len grinders. Gevis, the young assistant schooler, was operating the controls; the others were so intent on the flickering picture the len showed them that for some time they were unaware of Arne’s presence.

  Gevis had become one of the most valued members of Egarn’s team. Because he was resposible only to Wiltzon, he could absent himself from the village for a few daez whenever Wiltzon thought of an excuse. He had assumed almost the whole responsibility for training Roszt and Kaynor in ways of the 20th century. He had an excellent memory and a genuine affinity for life in the past, or so Egarn said. He grasped things far more easily than Wiltzon did, and he instructed the scouts from Slorn with infinite patience. He also assisted Inskel whenever possible, and he was becoming highly competent in what Egarn called the technology of time travel.

  His appearance belied his capabilities. He was slight of build, boyish looking, sallow-faced. He was still impatiently anticipating a beard. When he was not underground with Egarn, he was in the classroom drilling students or in his quarters in Wiltzon’s house, reading. Villagers joked that he had never seen the sun. They also joked that he had never done any work in his life, but that was only because they refused to consider a schooler’s duties as work. Gevis worked extremely hard.

  The dog Val padded over to Arne, sniffed his fingers, and then returned to his place between his favorites, Roszt and Kaynor. Arne stood behind the others and stared at the len. It showed a street lined with buildings, wonderful buildings such as he had never imagined. Some of them extended upward far beyond the len’s reach. The people on the walkways along the street wore strange and dazzlingly colored clothing. Their behavior was even stranger. They hurried swiftly until they came to a cross street. Then they gathered in
groups and stood motionless. Arne was familiar with the mock car that Ellar had built for Egarn—he had even sat in it while Egarn tried to explain how it worked—but this had not prepared him for the sight of numerous cars in a variety of colors moving magically along the street in both directions. Suddenly they came to an an orderly stop, and the waiting people rushed across the street and resumed their frenzied walking. Arne found it totally bewildering.

  Egarn became aware of his presence and welcomed him with a smile. “Finally I have succeeded!” he exclaimed. “Now I can choose a time and a place and see it clearly. I can send Roszt and Kaynor exactly where I want them to go, and I can watch them after they arrive there. Maybe I can even send them messages—if we write in this language and use code words, no one there will be able to read them if they miscarry. The picture is clear enough to show Roszt and Kaynor what life is like where they are going, and that means they will be much better prepared. I think we have an excellent chance for success. A few more experiments—”

  He broke off. It suddenly occurred to him that Arne, the busiest person in the peerdom, wouldn’t make the laborious descent to his workroom merely to exchange greetings. He asked anxiously, “Is anything wrong?”

  Wiltzon had kept Egarn informed about the dramatic events at Midlow Court. Now Arne described what had occurred recently and told them about his journey and the creation of an army. The others were enthralled, but Egarn listened impatiently. “It is a turn for the better, I suppose,” he said when Arne had finished. “The only problem with Midlow all along has been its prince. Now there is a different prince. We can relax a bit.”

  “We can’t relax, ever,” Arne said. He dropped his voice. “There are things we need to discuss privately.”

  “Is the former prince making trouble?”

  The question surprised Arne until he remembered that everyone, including himself, had expected Deline to make trouble. He told Egarn she was becomming an excellent assistant.