Time Past

by Maxine McArthur

  “Maybe. But I helped build the station and I know what we did.”

  “I know Tor. You and your limited stature cannot overcome them.”

  I thought of the gray Tor ship with its programmed trap that had snapped down on the unwary Seouras. The direct strength of that ship overwhelmed me after a few seconds’ resistance. No wonder it had taken the Invidi decades to defeat them. If An Serat had spent years restricting a Tor opsys so that it would not take over his Invidi systems, he was every bit as clever as his boast.

  I couldn’t imagine how to use Tor elements, which was why I’d abandoned the idea of doing anything like that with Farseer. Tor codes were too quick to exploit weakness, too complete in their takeover of other systems.

  “If you stay, ConFleet will soon fight their way past the Q’Chn at the jump point and they’ll take this ship away from you again.”

  “I am right. They are wrong. Your arrival is evidence.”

  “Arrival where?”

  “On your world.”

  It hit me what he was talking about, along with a great desire to know the answer. “You mean why I arrived before the Invidi came to Earth.”

  “Tor drag back Calypso. Tor have the power. I say this to Barik.” His voicebox sounded eerily triumphant.

  “Tor drag back...” The gray ships of the Seouras blockade were here in 2122 when Calypso arrived from 2027. If they somehow diverted Calypso when it went through the jump point and brought it to 2122, it would look like the jump had a ninety-five-year correspondence. But if the ninety-nine-year jump was also dragged back into the past the same distance, it would explain how I could emerge in 2023, not 2027 when I went back the other way in Calypso II.

  “You mean the Tor moved the points so Calypso arrived in 2122?”

  “I say this.”

  “Why?”

  No answer. Maybe the Tor wanted Serat’s hybrid ship as much as Barik did. But they were too early for Farseer. I wished I had a holo-diagram to work this out. Serat did send Calypso into a ninety-nine-year jump point after all. That point got skewed back four years, so that it linked 2122 and 2023 instead of 2027 and 2126. Then I went back through it to Earth in Calypso II and to Jocasta in Farseer ... no, what about that radiation surge on 16 May? And what about the slightly different coordinates? There must be two sets of points, side by side. At least, for two days until the surge disables one set.

  “Did Farseer open a new jump point between Earth and Jocasta?”

  “You use the work.” His voicebox sounded distracted.

  “You must have noticed one of the points destabilized or did something that sent off a radiation surge. Does that mean one of the pairs is inactive?”

  No answer.

  “An Serat, please stop interacting with our opsys. What are you trying to do, anyway?”

  If he could open jumps, he could set up his own jump network. One that owed nothing to the Confederacy and kept moving where he wished. If the New Council ever found out about Farseer and the points, this is what they would aim to use it for. Yet somehow I doubted it was An Serat’s aim.

  “I can go there.”

  “Where?”

  “You use my ship. It takes you into the place of no paths and all paths.”

  I’d had strange dreams when I used Farseer. But certainly not... eternity. Disappointment weighed my voice low.

  “I did not experience that place. At least, not so I noticed.”

  His tentacles twirled. “Of course. To expect that a species of your limited...”

  “An Barik said that using Farseer will destabilize space-time.”

  “Barik is wrong.”

  “Why should I believe you and not him?” Some small, unworthy part of me wanted to get back at him for his being able to get so much more from Farseer than I did. Inferior species, right.

  “Is your ‘spacetime’ disrupted?”

  The blunt, pragmatic question took me by surprise. I said nothing.

  To my further surprise, he continued, “Barik does not understand. The others do not understand. Tor power can work with Invidi. Become, as you say, greater than the two added.”

  “The sum of the whole being greater than the parts? But when we built the station, we had to override the Tor directives because their entire existence is based on taking over other technology when they find it. It’s encoded in every matrix of every strand of every material. You either get rid of it or you succumb to it. We found no middle way.”

  “You are not Invidi. You do not have the ability or power.”

  “Then how did I use the ship?”

  “Other species can use Tor ships as they will. This function is not desirable.” His tentacles resumed their delicate tracing of the opsys surface and he glided farther into the core, losing interest abruptly and completely.

  I followed him another twenty meters or so along the walkway. When I glanced back, the yellow light from the crawler shaft was half cut off by the curve of the core.

  “An Serat, you must stop. Please stop. You are damaging our life support.”

  No answer.

  “We’ll try to find you the material somewhere else.” When he still didn’t answer, I edged closer and tapped on the railing next to him. “Listen to me. We’ve probably got some untouched Tor junk stored somewhere. Bits of jump mines, booby-trapped asteroids. Can’t you use... ?”

  I didn’t feel anything. A quick flash of light that I thought came from something Serat was doing to the opsys, then I was flat on my face on the walkway.

  The metal strips pushed cold and hard into my cheekbone and my left arm was jammed under my ribs. Against it my heart beat huge and irregular and I was gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

  What the hell?

  Breathe in. Out.

  For what seemed like hours all I could focus on was getting air and staying still to give my body a chance to catch up with what happened. Like recovering from an asthma attack. No idea what was going on. It took a while to register that the filigree of shifting twinkles to the right of my vision was in fact the opsys core, out of focus. On Jocasta. Where I’d been talking to An Serat.

  The lights sharpened into focus and I lifted my head and peered along the walkway. Nothing but the eerie pale light and the metal strips curving out of sight. Had he gone? I pushed myself to a sitting position and looked back the other way, wincing at the stiffness in my neck. There he was, rolling slowly along the walkway toward the crawler shaft, sampling bits of the opsys as he went. He must have shoved me to the side to get past.

  I sat sprawled on the walkway, astounded.

  Attacked by an Invidi. Nobody had ever been attacked by an Invidi. Not personally. We never knew they would do that. Was it a weapon? Did Serat generate the charge naturally? An electric shock, by my heart’s reaction and the way my legs and arms were twitching.

  A hostile Invidi. We’ve never had to deal with a hostile Invidi before.

  “Why did you do that?” I called out, as loud as I could.

  His tentacles stilled, but he said nothing.

  “I thought Invidi did not harm others,” I said.

  “I am not like others.”

  “Why not?”

  “I comprehend the liberation of action. Acting frees me from the cage of knowing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Serat rocked and the walkway vibrated under my seat bones.

  “Action clouds the paths,” he said. “I cannot see the web. I gain freedom.”

  “But you lose your future sight. How can you function?”

  “As you do.”

  “Like an inferior species?”

  He didn’t answer and glided onto the ramp, out the entry hatch into the crawler shaft. I caught a glimpse of how he somehow half heaved, half rolled up the step onto the corridor wall-floor surface. I couldn’t see if he was still there and my legs and arms shook uselessly when I tried to stand up.

  A gentle hum overhead indicated the crawler was still functioning.
Its bulk blocked out the yellow light for a moment, then zoomed on. When I finally organized my limbs enough to crawl forward, An Serat had gone.

  We knew he was in conflict with the other Invidi, represented by An Barik and the Confederacy. They wanted him and Farseer, because he’d broken their rules, or gone too far, whether the explanation Barik gave me about damaging spacetime was the whole story or not. But so far Serat had behaved more or less like an Invidi. If what he said about acting was true, if he was unconstrained by whatever morality had kept the Invidi non-interfering until now, we were in deep trouble. Nobody had rules for dealing with hostile Invidi—we never knew we needed any.

  The next forty minutes were some of the most frustrating in my entire experience. The comm system was still down and I couldn’t contact Murdoch to confirm if Venner had kept her word and called off the Q’Chn. Nor could I call Engineering for backup, or ask anyone if they’d seen where An Serat had gone. From the state of the opsys as a whole, it looked like he had left the core. What if he’d gone to Farseer and left the station?

  If we keep Farseer here we’re damned because Serat and therefore the New Council and their Q’Chn won’t leave. And we’re damned if we let Farseer go and Serat uses it.

  Shortly after An Serat disappeared, a bored-looking New Council spacer looked down from the crawler hatch. Male, cropped gray hair, full-face tattoos. He grunted when he saw me and sat down to wait until I finished.

  I concentrated on the closest communication subsystem node, using a toolkit taken from the maintenance alcove in the crawler shaft. Halfway through, the gravity switched off and I wasted long minutes chasing tools and trying to find the end of a lead that floated out of sight behind a raised section of panel.

  My guard amused himself by hooking his feet in the top of the door frame and doing micro-grav exercises. His red face appeared now and then in the half-circle of ordinary light that was the crawler shaft.

  Finally I set up a comm link to the Bubble, then to Lieutenant Gamet. I explained where I was and what I’d done so far, ignoring the New Council crew member listening outside the tunnel.

  “The New Council captain agreed to let three people up here,” I said to Gamet. “Make sure you use the maintenance shafts and bring hand-sensors because the main ones aren’t working.”

  I hoped they’d be all right, but what choice did we have? The opsys must be kept running or everyone died. I dropped my voice. “She wants you unarmed, but that’s your choice. Leave any weapons on standby, though.”

  Understood, said Gamet. How does it look?

  “A lot of connections are out. But I haven’t been up here for a long time. Could be part of our usual attrition. The environmentals shouldn’t be any trouble, reinitialize them from each ring.”

  The uplifts are running normally again. We just had a message from Alpha.

  The connection wasn’t good enough to pick up subtleties, but her voice held too much tension.

  “What’s wrong? Are the Q’Chn... ?”

  The Q’Chn started to come down, then went back up to the center, so we thought the captain had talked them out of it. That was nearly an hour ago.

  While I was talking to Venner. Murdoch had said the Q’Chn were on their way down.

  Then a minute ago, the Section Two uplift went straight down again. The biosignals were pretty clear. Two of them. Looks like the New Council can’t control them.

  Damn Venner. So much for H’digh promises. Or she really couldn’t control the Q’Chn.

  Commander? I’m sending my team up now in the Section Five uplift to keep on with the work, if you want to go down.

  “Thanks, Barbara. I’ll get down there now.”

  We’ll handle the core.

  Thirty-three

  I wanted to go and talk to Venner first, to try and persuade her to do something about the Q’Chn, but the guard wouldn’t let me into the dock lobby. Over my protests, he ushered me to the uplift with prods from his rifle. I didn’t know whether this meant Venner was busy trying to control the Q’Chn, or didn’t care what they did, or was avoiding me because of the loss of face involved in admitting she couldn’t control them.

  The uplift had never been so slow. Murdoch’s comm link put me on hold. I reached Sasaki instead.

  “Talk to me, Helen.”

  Commander, your exit’s going to open in Section Three. Section Two is emergency sealed. We have two Q’Chn active in there. Two K’Cher and four Melot are trapped in the Trade Hall.

  The Trade Hall was about halfway along the section. Too far to make a quick run for the uplift and safety.

  Most of the humans are out. Looks like the Q’Chn are only interested in the K’Cher.

  “Your people?”

  The three guards assigned to this section. They have armor, but no special weapons. Looks like they’ve grabbed some plasma rifles. Chief Murdoch’s on his way with a squad.

  “Thanks.”

  Four more interminable minutes. The uplifts might be working, but they weren’t working as fast as they should. I tried to contact Venner and, amazingly, she accepted the link.

  “What the hell’s going on, Captain?” I said. “You said you could keep them out of the rings.”

  I promise nothing. Her voice on the link was as flat as an Invidi voicebox.

  “No, you’re wrong. The New Council promises much and delivers nothing,” I snapped. “And I swear I’ll let the whole galaxy know just how much nothing.”

  I cut the link, fuming. If the New Council couldn’t control the Q’Chn, why had they brought them back to life?

  The uplift opened, as Sasaki promised, onto Section Three. Behind me, the bulk of the spoke rose like a curved wall. In front of me lay an open section of throughway ending in the first building of the section. To my left, the gray, featureless surface of the airlock door that sealed off this section from the next one. It stretched from the spoke across to the wall of the station. I couldn’t remember seeing one activated since the time of the fire during the Seouras blockade.

  Sasaki and a lanky corporal stood beside the wall interface monitor in the sealer door. On my right, where the throughway led out into Section Three, a Security constable kept back a crowd of curious onlookers.

  Sasaki turned as I stepped out of the uplift. “Commander Halley. You can see what’s happening here.”

  Security’s visual pickups in Alpha were the most efficient on the station, firstly because nobody vandalized them, as happened on the lower levels, and secondly because the upper building levels mostly followed the building code and left space for the pickups to be attached.

  The screen split into two. One side showed the wide throughway of Section Two residential area and the other side a magnified view of a building. I recognized the Trade Hall and the unmistakable shape of Q’Chn. Two of them, huge spindly forms, on one side of the Hall in front of a side entrance.

  “Our people say the two K’Cher tried to make a run for it from the Hall to the uplift. They’re trapped,” said Sasaki. “The three Melot stayed inside. Mr. Veatch is with them.”

  “They should have waited inside the Hall,” said the corporal, his voice tight. “Then our people wouldn’t have to risk their lives.”

  On the overview of the section, three bipedal forms in green uniforms advanced slowly from cover to cover. They looked very small. I recalled Murdoch’s briefing—the only time Security was to fire on Q’Chn was to divert them from attack on civilians.

  “Let the Slashers get ’em,” yelled a voice from the crowd behind us. Others murmured agreement. “It’s not our fight,” called the voice again.

  “None of the Four’d save us,” growled someone else.

  I glanced back at the closest faces but they all avoided my eyes. Sullen, almost hostile expressions on the humans. A couple of Dir all cloaked in anonymous brown.

  Commotion behind the crowd. Clatter of boots on the deck.

  “Coming through,” yelled a voice.

  The crowd parted to
let a squad of Security through. They all wore full body armor and carried squat-barreled weapons. The dark helmets covered their features completely. I recognized Murdoch’s rolling walk as the leader.

  “Chief.” Sasaki pointed to the screen. “Caselli, Munke, and Yata. Trying a diversion.”

  “Follow me.” Murdoch’s voice crackled from his helmet speaker. He waved them forward as Sasaki opened one of the airlocks in the sealer door. We could hear the whine of weapons fire, like enraged insects. Murdoch’s squad filed through and the airlock shut again.

  On the screen the three small figures kept up a continuous wave of fire at the Q’Chn. Flashes from their hands left dark burn marks on the deck and the wall behind the Q’Chn. But the Q’Chn themselves showed no effect, beyond a thin halo that traced the outlines of their bodies. Natural shields. How efficient of the K’Cher, to create soldiers who need no equipment.

  On the screen now, Murdoch’s twelve humans spread out, their positions moving slowly along the throughway. They were running, but not fast enough.

  The Q’Chn turned from the alley. The two spiky figures reared up a little as if to assess the situation. They stalked toward the Security constables, one, two, three paces. Perfectly coordinated. But not coordinated enough to split up and cover both threats at the same time.

  “Get out now,” said Sasaki, the tips of her fingers white with pressure as she braced herself against the edge of the screen. “That’s enough.”

  It was more than enough. In the seconds the Q’Chn were distracted, two bulky figures shot from the alley and scurried back to the Trade Hall, the door of which opened immediately to receive them, then snapped shut. I’d never seen K’Cher move so fast, and their ungainly, bottom-heavy run would have been funny in another situation.

  The Q’Chn turned, started in the direction of their prey, realized they wouldn’t catch them, and stopped still for a second.

  “Get back,” Sasaki whispered.

  Murdoch and the squad were spreading out in an uneven fan-shape, keeping as much as possible to the edges of the throughway. As soon as the K’Cher disappeared into the Trade Hall, the three constables began to retreat toward the squad.