by J. J. Green
“Very probably, but not at this moment. You see, the myth states that the silver placktoid you saw, the Liberator, laboured for many years to reach this point. First, it discovered how to disable its own termination program, then it struggled to convert its fellows to its cause. According to the myth, because the placktoids had lived all their lives in servitude, they accepted their lot. They could not imagine an existence where they would not have to serve the Creators until their allotted lifespan expired. To bring them around to a new understanding of what their lives could be was not easy.
“The moment you witnessed is the point where the Liberator succeeded in its aims and the placktoids began the fight for emancipation from the Creators. But there would be little point in today’s placktoids returning to that moment to alter the course of history. By then the species was already embarking on its path of autonomy and self-determination that led to the desire to dominate the galaxy.
“No, after much consideration, the wisest minds at the Transgalactic Council and the Unity have concluded that the logical time for the present-day placktoids to return to is an earlier point than this: the moment the Liberator discovered the secret of disabling its programming, and the beginning of its struggle to recruit its fellow placktoids to its cause. If today’s placktoids had existed then, they could have aided it. Or, rather, now that they do exist then, they are aiding it.” Gavin’s antennae wriggled. “English grammar does not possess tenses to express the past as it both may or may not exist or have existed. I hope you understand my meaning.”
Carrie didn’t answer. She’d thought of a question a minute before, but she’d forgotten it again. Dave looked like he was getting a headache.
Gavin continued. “The Council and Unity believe the placktoids’s plan is to demonstrate to their ancestors the freedom and autonomy they enjoy and aid the Liberator’s cause. If they are able to bring the date of their ancestors’ emancipation to an earlier point in time, and plant the seed of galactic rule in their minds, it is logical to conclude that this would probably result in a present galaxy much altered from our own. A galaxy that the placktoids rule.”
Carrie remembered her question. “Don’t we have any idea at all what happened to the Creators?”
“Not a trace of them has ever been found.”
“So they did destroy them,” said Dave.
“As far as we can tell, whatever species originally built the placktoids was obliterated from the face of their planet.”
A Council manager appeared at the door, carrying two bags.
“Errruorerrrrrhch, how pleasant to see you again,” said Gavin.
Errruorerrrrrhch ignored him. “Carrie, Dave, I have brought your additional equipment for your assignment.”
“Hi, Errruorerrrrrh,” said Carrie, wondering why the mother of Gavin’s children didn’t answer him. “Thanks.”
“You are travelling so far back in time,” said Errruorerrrrrhch, “that we are unsure of the conditions you will encounter. Archaeologists and geologists have extrapolated what they can from the available evidence, but there is always an element of doubt in these things. I have brought you a device that condenses water from the atmosphere, a supply of food, the latest placktoid-piercing weapons and, most importantly, a transgalactic gateway opening device.”
“We can open our own gateways?” said Carrie. “Cool.”
“Yes, you have been granted permission, limited to this trip. How else are you to return? Your translators don’t work across time. You will have no means of requesting a gateway, and we would not be able to locate you anyway. After you depart, we will have no means of monitoring your position.”
Errruorerrrrrhch turned to Gavin. A complex scent filled Carrie’s nostrils. Errruorerrrrrhch was using her species’ language to talk to Carrie’s boss. The translator she had with her did its work, however, broadcasting Errruorerrrrrhch’s words to her mind. “Have you not told them yet?”
“I have not. I thought it circumspect to leave the information until last.”
“What? What haven’t you told us?” asked Dave.
“Perhaps we should go to the departure area,” said Gavin. “I will then inform you of the last few items of information you require pertaining to your assignment.”
Chapter Five – Gavin’s Old Tricks
As the two humans and two aliens were passing through the Council starship’s corridors, Carrie took the opportunity to drop back and speak quietly to Gavin, who was bringing up the rear of the group.
“So, what’s up with Errruorerrrrrh?” she asked.
“There is nothing up with her, as you say. I believe she is quite well.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why is she being so cold towards you? She didn’t say a word to you back there when you said you were happy to see her. Have you two had a fight?”
“Absolutely not. My species abandoned violent conflict a very long time ago. What a strange question. The very notion is repulsive to us.”
“I meant an argument, not a fist fight. Have you...” She was about to say fallen out but changed her mind. Gavin’s English was usually excellent, but he seemed to be struggling a little, or maybe he was being evasive. “Are you angry with each other?”
“Ah, um, well, perhaps Errruorerrrrrhch is angry with me. Yes, I believe she may be.”
“Why? What have you done?”
“Err, it is rather difficult to explain. And anyway, we have much more important matters at hand. It is best not to become distracted by trivia at such times.”
“Have you been putting it about again?” Carrie slowly shook her head. “Gavin, how could you? You should be ashamed.”
“I would not describe my actions using such a negative term. Relationships between members of my species are complex...and—”
“Don’t give me that. If it was normal Errruorerrrrrhch wouldn’t be upset, would she?” She waggled a finger at him. “You need to change your ways, Gavin. You’re a father now. You should be more responsible.”
The insectoid alien seemed to deflate a little at her words, and he said no more for a while. Gavin had a lot of qualities. Carrie wondered why he seemed incapable of keeping his...whatever it was...wherever he kept it.
Up ahead the corridor was lit with an intense green light, shining from a doorway. Carrie recognised the colour. It was from an open transgalatic gateway, though she had never seen it so bright before.
As they entered the room, she raised her hand to shield her eyes. Dave did the same. Occupying an entire wall, the gateway shimmered and shifted, swirling like the Milky Way in motion. Beautiful though it was, Carrie and Dave were forced to look away to avoid being blinded by it. A gentle breeze blew towards the gateway, lifting their hair.
“Our engineers are currently calibrating the drop site,” said Gavin. “It is a highly complex calculation because time is not constant and the galaxy has changed much in the thousands of years since the placktoids’ Liberator existed. I regret to add there is a further factor that makes this jump doubly concerning: we have only the placktoid mythology on which to base our calculation of the time and place of the Liberator’s first appearance. Mythologies are notoriously inaccurate in dating and many other regards.”
“And if they get it wrong and we can’t find the placktoids from our time or the Liberator, what happens?” asked Dave, his face tense. “How do we come back here?”
“Well...” said Gavin. He lapsed into silence.
Errruorerrrrrhch chittered. “It seems I must inform you of the full facts of your mission. Carrie, Dave, please understand that as a precaution in case you should fail, the Council will create a time shield. It will seal the period we believe today’s placktoids have travelled to, preventing them from returning to the present.”
“What?” exclaimed Dave. “But we’ll be stuck there too. We’ll be trapped there forever.”
“No, no, no,” said Gavin. “We do not want that to happen. You have quite some time before we seal the planet at
that point in its history. If you return within that fixed period, the gateway will open. I am very sorry. I argued strongly against this.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Dave through his teeth.
“It is quite a generous period of—” said Errruorerrrrrhch.
“How long?”
“In Earth terms, it is approximately two weeks.”
“Approximately?” spluttered Dave. “What the hell does that mean? How are we supposed to tell when our time’s up? How are we supposed to tell?” His voice rose to a squeak.
“Calm down,” said Carrie.
“Calm down? Do you understand what they’re saying?”
“Of course I understand...” Carrie frowned. “Actually, no I don’t. I thought you couldn’t seal gateways. That was why you wanted to confine the placktoids in the oootoon, because it was the only thing that gateways couldn’t travel through.”
“We cannot prevent gateways that are contemporaneous to us,” said Errruorerrrrrhch. “We are, however, able to create a dampening field to enclose a period of time. It requires an enormous amount of energy, but it can be done. It was decided that the threat the placktoids pose was sufficient to justify the expense.”
“But couldn’t they wait until the time period is up, then return to the future?” asked Carrie.
“Theoretically, yes,” replied Gavin. “However, we will be sealing a period of roughly 2,000 Earth years. It is very unlikely the placktoids will be able to repair and replace themselves without access to the modern materials and manufacturing equipment. Once the period of the time shield expires, they will have died out, so to speak.”
Gavin’s head turned horizontal. He was receiving a message. “The engineers say the gateway is nearly ready. Is there anything we have neglected to tell them, my dear?”
“If you become separated, you can communicate with each other through your translators,” said Errruorerrrrrhch. “Just speak the name of the person you wish to contact.”
“And, assuming you haven’t imprisoned us forever in the past,” said Dave, “what do we have to do to get back here?”
“All of this information is on your briefing tablets,” said Gavin. “But the word to open the gateway to the present is chacknolokankle.”
“Chack...what?” asked Carrie.
“We had to devise a word you were unlikely to say by accident.”
“Wow,” she replied. “You picked a good one.”
Errruorerrrrrhch’s head was also horizontal now. “Just a few more moments. Please position yourselves close to the gateway and ready yourselves for departure.”
“Does travelling through time...” said Dave as he and Carrie went over to the swirling green wall, “does it hurt?”
“No one has ever travelled back so far,” replied Gavin, “but as far as we know, it is completely painless, apart from the—”
“The gateway is ready,” said Errruorerrrrrhch.
Carrie’s ponytail was tugged forward in the increasing draft.
“Apart from the what?” asked Dave.
“Hold on,” said Carrie, “you haven’t told us what we’re supposed to do when we get there.”
“Apart from the what?” repeated Dave, louder.
“I would have thought the aim for this assignment was obvious,” said Gavin.
“Err, no,” said Carrie. The drawing force of the gateway lifted her.
“Apart from the—” Dave asked again as he disappeared into the brilliant green spiral.
“You must destroy the Liberator,” said Gavin.
Chapter Six – Not a Good Time
Carrie rolled to an abrupt halt as she hit a hard, rocky surface. A mountain bare of vegetation, made of some kind of sandstone, rose up behind her into a sky washed of colour by two brilliant suns. They were in a narrow valley, and more mountains and peaks went on as far as she could see. Her skin prickled with sweat. She hoped they wouldn’t have to leave the shadow of the valley and face the direct heat of the stars the placktoid planet circled.
Dave was sitting with his back to a boulder, his head in his hands.
“Did you hit your head?” asked Carrie.
Dave took down his hands. “I didn’t hit my head.”
“Did the time travel hurt, then?” She felt normal, remarkably unaffected by journeying thousands of years into the past.
“No, the time travel didn’t hurt.” Dave’s hands returned to his head, which sank down and began slowly shaking.
“What’s wrong then?”
He looked up. “What have we done, Carrie? Look at this place. We could be trapped here forever. When our food runs out, there’s nothing else to eat. We could die here.”
“Calm down.”
Dave stood, his hands clenched. He spoke through his teeth. “When, in the history of people being told to calm down, has anyone, ever, actually calmed down?”
“Look, just c—” The words died on her lips. She stood and brushed the dust from her jumpsuit. Sweat trickled down her face. “We agreed to come. There’s no point in having second thoughts now.”
“That was before they told us we were probably going to our deaths. If we miss the two-week deadline, that’s it. I mean, you’d think Gavin would explain that tiny detail, wouldn’t you? I don’t think he was even going to tell us. We were lucky that Errruorerrrrrhch was there.”
“He would have told us eventually. He just felt bad about it. And it isn’t that much of a problem. We know how long we have. All we have to do is make sure we leave in plenty of time before they put the time shield down. Simple.”
Dave didn’t look convinced.
“Let’s see if we can find somewhere cooler while we get our bearings, shall we?” said Carrie, hoping some activity might reduce her friend’s anxiety. “An overhang or cave or something.” She scanned the mountainside. The light mist that had covered the surface in the placktoid creation story would have been welcome, but there was nothing here to protect them from the harsh light of the twin suns. Had the Council sent them back to the wrong time or place? Or was the mythology wrong about the mist?
Dave set off, and she followed as he half-walked, half climbed the slope. It wasn’t long before they were both panting. She scrambled over the rough, crumbly rocks, looking around for some kind of shelter from the heat. After climbing a hundred metres or so, Dave stopped to catch his breath. He put his hands on his hips and squinted as he surveyed the landscape. “How on Earth are we going to find the placktoids? They could be anywhere. It’s impossible.”
“We don’t have to find the placktoids. We have to find the Liberator. That was—is—enormous. It won’t be difficult to spot.”
“Yeah, the Liberator will lead us to the placktoids.” Dave resumed climbing. “Still, they could be anywhere. And even if we do find them, how are we going to stop them from helping the Liberator persuade this era’s placktoids to revolt?”
He’d clearly missed Gavin’s last words as they’d left. “Dave, you don’t understand. We have to find the Liberator, and we have to destroy it.”
“WHAT?” Dave turned and stared down at Carrie. “Destroy that great hulking thing? Are you joking?” He was standing on some loose rocks, and as he spoke he slid a short distance down the slope. Scrabbling up to Carrie he went on, “We might as well give up right now and go back. This is impossible. What were they thinking of? This is like trying to go back and kill Hitler. Only much, much harder. We should just stop right now and say that weird word into the gateway device so we can return to our own time.” He fished in his bag. “Hopefully we won’t have done anything to change the course of history. We can’t have, can we? Climbing up a mountain here can’t possibly have affected anything on Earth, anyway. What was that word? Crankhurdle? Chuckahandle?”
“Shhhh. Be careful. You might say it by accident and return us to the future.”
“That’s the idea.”
“That isn’t the idea,” exclaimed Carrie, snatching Dave’s bag from his hands.
“Hey!”
“Do you have to be so relentlessly negative? We can’t give up before we’ve even begun. We’ve been sent here for a reason. If we don’t do something, the placktoids will succeed, and then even if we do manage to get back to our present, it won’t be a place we would want to live in. Stop being so pessimistic. You’re always looking on the down side.”
“For the last time, Carrie, I’m not pessimistic, I’m realistic. I was right about your proposals at the call centre, wasn’t I?”
“Okay, if it makes you happy, you were right. But you’re wrong about this. We may be literally the only thing stopping the placktoids from taking over the galaxy. We have to try, Dave. We can’t just give up right at the beginning. Gavin, Errruorerrrrrhch, the Council and the Unity, the entire galaxy, they’re depending on us.”
Dave grimaced. “Yeah, no pressure.” His shoulders slumped. “This is my first assignment, and I’m commissioned with saving galactic civilisation as we know it.”
“I know. It’s hard. But they picked us. Out of all the Council and Unity staff, with all their skills and decades of experience, they picked us. That means, of all of them, they think two stupid humans who can’t even control things with their minds, whose species hasn’t even invented deep space travel, they believe we just might be able to do it. It’s a great honour, Dave. We should be proud.”
Her friend’s face relaxed into a wan smile. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” His focus altered and his eyes narrowed. He pointed to the mountain on the other side of the valley. “There’s a gap in the rocks over there, I think.”
“Great. We should get under cover as soon as possible, and not just to get out of this heat. If the placktoids from our time spot us, it’s going to be a lot harder to get close to the Liberator.”
They headed down and across the narrow valley floor before climbing slowly up the opposite mountainside. Dave was red-faced, pouring with sweat and puffing before they reached the gap in the rocks. Even Carrie, who was very fit due to her training in Bagua Zhang, a martial art, began to feel the strain. The black entrance led to a cool, dim interior. They slipped through the crack and immediately sank to the sloped, sandy floor. The back of the cave was open, leading away into the mountain’s interior.
